Snark?

 

Congratulations A and I

Congratulations A and I! Can you imagine pulling a wedding together in less than a week, tossing your stuff in a moving van the next day for a job in another state that starts in five days?! Whew! Good luck A and I!!!   The Wedding party at the courthouse. The bride, I is center with her new hubby, A to the left. Continuing left, M and his wife J. to the right of the bride fron is my Mom (yay!) and behind her, A's cousins, Y and Y.    I in her custom-made hand-beaded gown.  The bridesmaids: Y to the left and J to the right. A final shot, with flags!

Weaned

My Last Bit of Milk Consumed with much vigour.

Alas! I've weaned my little one. I feel so sad, despite the knowledge that breastfeeding must come to an end. I've pumped for him all these months, through aggravation, inconvienence and much, much love. I'd continue but once again, I've got thrush (sinus infection=antibiotics=thrush). Yay me, I made it this far!

The Contraption

To cope with the seasonal escalation of floods in the sunroom, Tennisfiend has devised The Contraption.

The contraption consists of an extra-large plastic trash can with a two-inch hole drilled on the bottommost side. Secured into the hole with silicone, a short length of pvc pipe is connected to a twenty foot length of remnant vinyl pool hose. The vinyl hose extends from the trash can and past the east and south sides of the house where it reconnects with a four foot length of pvc near the driveway. 

When it rains, The Contraption is swiftly positioned under the most problematic roof corner, to catch rainwater. Unfortunately, this position varies according to the intensity of the rain, often requiring numerous trips through one of the sunroom windows (the back door is taped shut during serious rainstorms) to place it correctly. The Contraption actually works just like it is supposed to, filling up with rain water which exits through the vinyl hose and is drained down the driveway. For the first several rainstorms, The Contraption worked quite well, but these were the insignificant storms of June, incomparable to the deluges of July and August.

The first big rainstorm revealed that to adequately transport the roof runoff to the driveway, we would need a Contraption about the size of a Ford Expedition. The Contraption was so swiftly overwhelmed by the flood that it floated away and had to be held in position with a broom stuck through a window until it filled with enough water to stay put. Tennisfiend and I were briefly at odds over how much of a difference it made, but frankly, when the water is two inches above the back door, the 39 gallons circulated by The Contraption is trivial.

Of course, the next day we considered gutters for the roof, even taking measurements with some optimism. Despite our sad financial situation, and possible move to another state, we will not leave the next owners of our house stuck with this problem, like the previous owners did to us. Unfortunately, we discovered that a downspout is required every thirty feet, which still doesn’t solve the flooding problem! We will keep you posted about our next genius plan.

Patricia Rules

I dropped by to visit with Pat tonight, peanut butter and celery in hand. I'm doing the Atkin's thing, hoping for miracle weight loss. Tonight is her last evening here before an exiting vacation with in California. My friend dearly needs a reprieve. Her work has been hectic and unfair. Brrr--accounting. Brrr--managing people.

The two of us would make excellent (but not very quiet) librarians. Anyway, I was in a blue mood tonight. Dragged down by our fruitless job search, discouraged by my weight loss, and disappointed with personal issues ( I really want us to ditch his company and get another job), I had a pity party in the middle of her living room. Bless Ewbliette for her unflagging optimism, sweet sympathy, and grounded reality check. Oh, and bless her for being insanely funny! And bless her for the mess of Atkins goodies she sent me home with. Heh. Have a fun trip!!!

Follow up

We received a nice letter from the recruiter and will look into the job in Massachusetts.

East Coast?

I have to be vigilant today! A big recruiter from the east coat is supposed to call re a position in Lexington Massachusetts. I pretty much rule this out since the last place I want to live is on the east coast. E and I talked about it and decided that while we would like to work with the recruiter, the East Coast is off the table for us.

Eleven Months

Whoa, almost a year old. To celebrate we took pics:



 Since Tyoma imitates my sniffing while I cope with a cold, I caught him mid sniff:   For some odd reason the abouve picture reminded me of this:

From blog

Sniff!!!

The worst of my cold seems to be passing but I still have a bad case of the sniffles. Tyoma clearly thinks this is some new form of communication. While I fed him and sniffed away, he started to answer my sniffs with his own. How hilarious!!!

Summer Cold

After being cold free for over two years, today I come down sick. I assumed that the sore throat I had yesterday was a remnant from the wild time Ewbliette and I had Saturday. Rats. Spent most of the day on the internet helping with Tennisfiend's job search. Time well spent, since when TF came home he informed me that our friend AK will take the job in Dallas. We were both rather sad. Our friend is leaving and my husband's company is loosing a vital member of the team. I spent the rest of the evening sucking nasty zinc lozenges and inhaling steam. Bleh. I've been sick more often than usual, must be stress.

Whoa!

I just recieved the official announcement. Our Friend AK and his sweetie IK are getting married! I was pretty surprised since they were so hush-hush, but congratualations!

Tyoma and I visited with my folks this morning. I felt a bit wiped out after not sleeping so well. That's what I get for drinking two cups of coffee plus endless afternoon sodas during my Orgy of Fun with Pat yesterday. Anyway, TF was pensive throughout the day, preoccupied with the possibility of AK leaving his company. Things will work out for the best.

Dinner!

Tennisfiend grilled tomatoes and eggplant! It looked so lovely we felt bad for eating it all up!
 
  Went to gym today and then Sam's Club. Bought a ton of meat and cheese since I'm starting Atkin's tomorrow. Yum. Also bought a giganto-bag of almonds. Let's count the days before I'm sick of Laughing Cow and porkchops.

Girls in the Pool!

Today was fantastic! Ewbliette came over during Tyoma’s nap and we dished while gobbling multigrain Tostitos and swilling Aquafina. When squirmer woke up, we fed him lunch and took off for a stroll at the mall. Gratefully, we found a shady spot under a tree a within walking distance to the mall entrance. As we rolled the stroller up to the main walkway, we approached a teen fashion show blaring nameless music. Nostalgically, I recalled my own days strutting on the mini-catwalk. Heh. The music was quite different then. Goodness, how time passes quickly.

The rest of the mall was elbow-to-elbow people. Hordes of Las Crucens packed the main thoroughfare. The crowd thinned out after we passed the mini-mariachi band near the Verison cell phone booth. With less people, I was able to get a better look at the mall’s new floor.

Two years ago, the mall began a massive remodeling project. They scraped off the original terracotta tiles leaving pocked and crumbling concrete behind. The bare concrete seemed to be the new look since they bare and unrepaired for the next nine months. Then one night, the folks from El Paso International Airport snuck in and randomly glued the ugliest squares of cheap industrial grade carpeting everywhere. Some of the squares were peach, mustard, cadet blue, and olive. The remainders looked like giant tacky swaths of fabric snipped out of Dr. Cliff Huxtable’s least favorite sweaters. Absolutely hideous. And not hideous in an interesting way. Hideous in a half-assed, ill conceived, running-out-of-money-and-supplies-way. The furniture was marginally more tasteful, as if some sensible person arrived at the last moment and decided that the perfect naugahyde benchs would fix everything.

Sorry. I’ve been meaning to complain about that for a while. Anyway, we detoured through Dillards, where out of sheer perversity, they were displaying their most awesome clothes, ever (I have no money for clothes and I am weeks away from altering my maternity wear to look stylish). After regretfully departing from the cutest blue and brown flirty top, we trucked over to our true destination: Barnes and Nobel. It took us less than fifteen minutes to load up on books. Ewbliette treated me to a book on interior design that I could not live without (cheaper that the flirty blouse), reminding me that she had missed my birthday. She is so sweet, this is the third time that she had bought me books because she forgot my birthday. What a pal!

We drove over to her place, where spices obscured her kitchen table as she re-invents kitchen storage. Once every three months, she likes to mix things up--moving furniture, reorganizing cabinets and shelves, and re-hanging wall art. I admire her energy and envy her tolerant husband. Once something finds a place in my house, it never moves. Tennisfiend despises change. We drank sodas and gabbed, feeding Tyoma dinner before returning to my place.

Tennisfiend whizzed out of the house the instant we returned. He left to visit with his buddy A, leaving us to our own devices. Tyoma took some alone time after even more food and I pumped milk while Ewbliette cracked open the design book I so adored at B & N. We chose patterns for our dream homes and spend thousands of dollars in twenty hopeful minutes. After he went to sleep (instantaneously!) Ewbliette went to the store and I fixed up the back porch with an umbrella, table, chairs, fans, a sprinkler and rope lights.

We talked for two hours straight before hitting the pool. The water was so warm; it was like swimming in blood. Nevertheless, a chill descended over the desert around 9:00, making the water the perfect temperature. We bobbed and circled each other until about ten, when I wobbled out of the pool and into the house. I heard a car pull up and stop in the driveway, and assumed Tennisfiend had returned home. Twenty minutes later, when we both returned to the house, I freaked since Tennisfiend was not there and the AC pump switch had been flipped “off”

E.T.A.: We discovered that out AC periodically switches the pump off), filling the house with a pungent fishy-algae smell. Swamp coolers suck. A phone call revealed that TF was still with A, and the car/AC thing event was a weird coincidence.

Gym Day

It finally happened! I went to the gym. It's been about four months since I've had any exercise that you pay for. I feel pretty good.

I dread the gym on the weekends--it's peacock city. The patrons are pretty blonde girls with ponytails and slick grunting studs with fades. It makes me feel old and fat. Well, actually, I am a bit old and fat, but who wants to be reminded by ten foot mirrors and giggling youths?

Today was splendid, rounder, more mid-thirtyish people were abundant. I also felt pretty with my new highlights and a slightly trimmer figure (by two pounds!). My workout? Good. I followed Tennisfiend's advice to move slowly through my exercises instead of rushing through them in order to get out of the gym ASAP. I'll be back again Wednesday.

I'm So Sick of Crickets!!!

I'm tired of vacuming up their dead little carcasses. I'm tired of catching their manic hopping bodies to toss outside. I'm tired of listening to them creak behind the bookshelf next to my bed at two in the morning. I'm tired of trying not to step on them. The final insult:



 Yep. A cricket has hitched a ride with Tyoma. The two of them toured the hall and living room before I scooped up the offender and flung him out front. It will take the little devil at least a half a day to hop around the house and re-enter through the dog door. Sigh.

Clippers

Went to trim Misty today, only to discover that the clippers had shrunk. I cut her hair only a few weeks ago and everything worked fine, and today the plastic blades wouldn't stay on the trimmer.

Go figure. They looked tampered with. Tennisfiend repaired them by using plastic ties. I am feeling better about going to the gym now, more relaxed and less self-conscious. Where do I get such volatile self-esteem? Dieting does no good. I used to skip lunch and drop five pounds! Maybe the depression meds are packing on the pounds like they did before?

Refried Blackened Beans

I took off for the store this morning without realizing that I had left a small pot of beans simmering on the back burner. I came home to a horrible smelling house. The water boiled off the beans, which dehydrated and then turned to charcoal and then ash! I was so lucky that nothing caught fire! Despite my best fumigation efforts, the house smelled like a damp fireplace all day.

Wimbledon

Last night I packed up for a trip to Mom and Dad’s so Tennisfiend could watch Wimbledon in peace. Despite my current brain fog, I thought of everything. Good thing, too since Tennisfiend woke me just before the match started and practically shoved me out the door.
 
He’d loaded everything up except the baby. I tossed on some clothes, zapped a pint of instant coffee, grabbed a Campbell’s Chunky Soup and staggered out the door with Tyoma. My folks weren’t expecting me at 7:15, since I always call and say I’ll be there “early” when I generally turn up around 9:30.
 
Dad contained his aggravation and mom expressed her surprise as they scrambled to assemble Tyoma Land. And that was just their stuff! Putting together all of my portable goodies made it feel like a festive camping trip! For the first time baby was totally relaxed at my folks place (Probably since we had so much of our home there!).
 
As usual, squirmer conked out on the way home. I rushed him into the crib and had time to watch the last minutes of Wimbledon with TF. The match was fantastic, according to hubby. I had kept an eye on it at my folk’s place, feeling relieved that his favorite, Federer, looked like the champion. The whole of the afternoon was taken up with resume stuff for TF.
 
The site where we needed to post his resume was down last week and we needed to post before Monday afternoon. I fiddled with Resumix, formatting info until the ANSWER website miraculously re-appeared. What a relief! TF opted to spend quality time with Tyoma while I transferred info onto about a zillion forms. At the end of the day, our job mission was accomplished. E.T.A. We did have enough time to take a Tyoma picture! I didn't realize that the baby on the box was 1/3 the size of our son. He dwarfs the little scooter.
 

From Mom

Mom Found this article on the Web:

Rt. 66 ISP kicked with criminal complaint

New Mexico Business Weekly - by Emily Esterson, NMBW Editor

Date: Sunday, April 28, 2002, 10:00pm MDT

Internet companies come, and Internet companies go, sometimes in a blaze of unpaid debt, lawsuits and angry customers.
Such is the case of Rt. 66 Internet, the state's oldest Internet Service Provider (ISP). The company, which had a criminal complaint filed against it for fraud and embezzlement, hasn't paid its vendors in several months. Board members of a related company say Rt. 66 has failed to account for $600,000 worth of revenue.
Last week, Rt. 66 Internet (rt66.com) customers found themselves without Internet service. The problem stemmed from a variety of sources, including an unserviced network that had deteriorated, according an email sent to customers on April 14, and unpaid bills to its carrier, Qwest Communications. Rt. 66 said, in that same email, "We are also unable to access our servers because they are holding them hostage," referring to an unnamed subcontractor who had failed to service its network.
The company served about 2,400 dial-up customers and about 13 broadband customers. The average dialup customer paid about $22 a month.
The email message to customers came from Sherri Baker, listed as the company's CFO. Tom Kemp, a CPA in Las Cruces, is the company's CEO. Kemp is also the owner of an Internet company called ACCESS New Mexico LLC. "It started with the process of billing disputes, some of those vendors are trying to do us in," Kemp told NMBW.

Technology company cries fraud

Also on April 14, George Richmond, board member and investor in Triolina Technologies, a network service provider who managed Rt. 66's Internet Service, filed a criminal complaint against Rt. 66 with the Albuquerque Police Department's White Collar Crime division for fraud and embezzlement.
Richmond claims the ISP has been collecting monthly fees from customers averaging about $61,000 a month, but not paying its vendors. "[The owners] have been taking money out of the company," he says.
"We have a billing dispute and they are calling it criminal, and they are the ones that won't talk to me," says Kemp who also says he wasn't aware of the criminal complaint.
Triolina Technologies says it stopped supporting Rt. 66's network because the company hadn't paid its bill since December 2001.
Richmond and fellow board member Filiberto Pacheco also sent a letter on April 15 to the State Attorney General, requesting she investigate the matter. The letter claims that Rt. 66 has unpaid vendor debt of approximately $300,000, owed to Qwest Communications, WorldCom, Triolina and Time Warner Telecom. According to Richmond's calculations, about $600,000 of Rt. 66's revenue is unaccounted for.
In a signed affidavit, principals of Triolina Technologies say Kemp told them he could separate the assets of Rt.66 from the liabilities because he transferred the assets into ACCESS New Mexico LLC. The Albuquerque Police Department is investigating.

Service switch

On April 14, Rt. 66 updated its server address to http://www.totacc.com, which belongs to Total Internet Access (TIA) of Las Cruces. H. Vince Thomas, who spoke to NMBW as the principal of TIA, says the details are still being worked out, but he's hoping Total Internet Access will take over the management of Rt. 66's customer base. The switchover should take place sometime during the next week. "We're making an agreement to take care of their customers," Thomas says. He would not disclose financial details.
Kemp says TIA will take over about 2,000 customers from Rt. 66 Internet. Soccorro customers and clients that operate on frame relay won't be among them. He says it was just not profitible to keep those customers. For the others, Kemp says there is no fixed purchase price.
However, Howard V. Thomas filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy on April 8, for a different company, also based in Las Cruces, called Total Access. That company shares a post office box with Total Internet Access, although that company's principal is listed as a Jonathon Thomas according to state corporation filings.
Jonathon Thomas had been vice president of Total Access until December 2000. Vince Thomas refused to answer questions about Total Access, which he says is a separate company from Total Internet Access.
In Total Access's bankruptcy filings, Qwest Communications is listed as a creditor, with claims of $1 million. Qwest says it couldn't confirm that Total Access owes it that amount.
Total Access also owes Balboa Capital, a computer equipment leasing service in Irvine, Calif., about $13,000. Balboa has taken legal action against Total Access. Its corporate attorney, Christopher Parsons, says it will remove servers and other leased equipment from Total Access if it doesn't receive payment.

Qwest turns off the juice

Things began to unravel for Rt. 66 in mid-March, when its circuits started going down. When Triolina checked into the problem, it learned that the company hadn't paid its bill to Qwest Communications, allegedly since February 2001, says a Triolina executive. Qwest hosts the wiring on which Rt. 66 runs its service.
Qwest spokesperson Mark Genrich says there have been service interruptions to Rt. 66's circuits since last week, because of unpaid bills.
Kemp says Qwest did cut off service, but the telecom won't look at Rt 66's billing to resolve the issue. "It's like they've done with many ISPs. We had verbal agreements, which they wouldn't honor and they would not talk to us again. Our attorney even sent letters to which they never responded."
CFO Baker, who authored the email to customers, says the company's problems stemmed from a dispute with an unnamed contractor. "If you have a contract dispute, you're going to hold payment until you get the dispute settled," says Baker. "We were in negotiations to try to settle that dispute.
"Right now I just want to service the customers first," says Baker.

No answer at call center

The company runs a technical support call center in Albuquerque. The landlord, 202 Central, says it became concerned when customers started showing up at the office looking for help with technical problems. A notice on Rt. 66's Web site says the call center is being moved, but the landlord, who says the company still has at least a year on its lease, hasn't received notice.
The company was founded in 1993, and was sold to Galaxy Internet, a Canadian company, two years ago. Galaxy sold Rt. 66's customers in March 2001 to two investors, Frank Etscorn and Bob Asprey. At the same time, Rt. 66 swallowed up the customer bases of two other New Mexico ISPs, NMCG and NM Fiber, both of which were having financial difficulties, NMBW reported last year.
The investors took the combined customer bases of the three companies, but left the debt load with Galaxy. At the time, Kemp told NMBW that the deal cost over a million dollars and the original Rt. 66 Internet was $200,000 behind on several bills. Triolina was hired to manage the technical side of the business.

Dinner with A & I

So we took A & I out to dinner. Pleasant evening. most noteworthy is Alex asking me to help him with his work searches. Leaving may become a reality. Sigh.

Lil' Cruiser

So how do we celebrate thirteen years of togetherness? By taking pictures of the baby! First, a serious portrait:
 Next, Tyoma stands:  The Crazy Pillow:  And he's got me!
We are really glad that he's starting to stand and cruising a little bit. Dr. Steeles said that if he wasn't cruising by ten months that we would need to schedule an appointment to have him checked out.

Job Hunt

Well, we've officially given up on E's business. It's sad that a venture he has put so much time and love into is coming to an end.  It isn't so much that the company will be completely gone, it's just that they are not paying his paycheck.  We suspect that certain people are  starving theoriginal stockholders into leaving to they can sell the company and get all the profits.  This sucks, but we can only stay in this situation for so long.

I predict a long legal battle. How sad.

Anyway, my time is going to helping E find a new job. I'm  touching up his resume, sending it out and searching non-stop for places to work. I hope we find something soon. My folks are buying our groceries.

The Neighborhood Visit

My Sunday visit with my folks wound up being a neighborhood spectacle. Jimmie, my kick-ass cyclist girlfriend (married to my childhood friend and neighbor), whisked Tyoma up, starling him into a loud crying jag. All the neighborhood women fussed and cooed over him.
 
I had a National Geographic moment, realizing that our little gathering of women was at one with tribes in Africa and Asia. What cheerful women! Joanne was flushed and happy, almost as if Tyoma was her grandkid. This was understandable, since I grew up with her two youngest sons and we split our time between her house and my mom's.
 
Irene, our neighbor with Alzheimer's, stopped by, said "I came to see the baby," and launched into a inexplicable story about a bird she saw the day before. Every move baby made was praised and commented upon. I didn't know if I should have felt embarrassed or proud! Anyway, I dragged myself away from the adulation to enjoy a guitar playing session with the folks.
 

  I took some more pics, but I'm a goof and they were mostly over exposed. BUT, here's my mom:   

And here's Misty!

Misty was so jazzed over the commotion and guitar playing that she ran all around the back yard shaking her little lamby toy.  Tyoma was a bit freaked, but he seems a bit freaked out in general. He loved Grandpa's guitar and experimented with string plucking. Dad serenaded us all, singing folk songs and some flamenco as well.