Enjoying a much needed break away from everything.

Mini-Vacation, Here I Come

I am very happy to report that as of 4:30 today, I am on a mini-vacation and don't have to be back in the office until Monday morning. Words cannot express how good that makes me feel. I need a major break right now to get some rest and to get some school stuff done, and I intend to take full advantage of my five days away from work.

Rushing The Season

Fall is finally here in the Ohio Valley, and the upper 90 degree days are over, I hope. In fact, this morning when I went to work it was downright cool. If my visiting cousin hadn't been asleep in the back bedroom I would have gone back there to grab a jacket out of the closet. But I digress. As I left the house this morning it was a cool 54 degrees. And lo and behold, on my way to work this morning I saw the first big winter coat. Normally it takes at least a few cool mornings before I see a big coat but this season it happened today - just a mere 4 days into fall.
I hate to see how that person will be dressing when it really gets cold.

Link Of The Week

Fall is officially here, and that means one thing -- the NFL season is in full swing. Once again, the good folks at Campbell's Chunky Soup are doing their part to help in the fight against hunger in their Click For Cans. This year, visit http://www.chunky.com/ClickForCansHowToPlay.aspx once a day and look for your favorite team in this week's match up and click on them to cast your vote. You can vote once a day, so spread the word and have your friends vote for your team. If you'd like, feel free to vote for my favorite Tennessee Titans.

Sunny Saturday

It's one of the most gorgeous days we've had this year and I've spent most of it inside working on school work. But I don't care - that's the choice I made a year and a half ago when I decided to go back for this second Masters Degree. But anyhoo, it's a glorious early fall day here in the 'Ville. And it's been a productive day. I've been reading over the 200+ pages of articles, reports and research for my big project for this class, and I have to say that I honestly don't feel as stressed as I did in the past couple of weeks. Yes, I know the deadline for the project is looming over my head, but as I read and underlined and took notes today, I felt a bit more at ease. I can't explain it but as I said, I feel a bit less stressed. I just hope that it continues.

Breaking News

We interrupt the regularly scheduled Flashback Friday to report that it actually rained here in the 'Ville today. After weeks and weeks of no rain, it actually rained today. It didn't rain much, and if you blinked you might have missed but I did in deed witness the rain. A couple of times, even. The first time was around 3:00 this afternoon - a coworker said it was raining, and by the time I got my keys out of my purse and ran outside to put the windows up on my Blazer, it had already quit. It rained about two hours later on my way home. I actually had to turn on the windshield wipers for about 30 seconds. But alas, it did rain.

Happy Birthday, Mom

TWIT would like to wish a very happy birthday to my Mom. She's proudly 76 years young today. She's been celebrating since last weekend, and from what I hear, the celebration will be continuing for another week. As her daughter, I just hope I'm included in all of the parties and festivities.

Party On

Mom's birthday is tomorrow, and as we've done for the past ten or so years, her birthday has been a two-week celebration. The partying started on Monday, and will continue this week and most of next week when my cousin from Alabama comes up for his annual fall sabatical. But I digress. Tonight we celebrated Mom's birthday eve with a visit to a new 'hood Mexican joint called Pina Fiesta. We hadn't been there ten minutes when we all three agreed that it was our new favorite Mexican restaurant in town. But a little background first. The restaurant used to be our favorite Italian place, Tuscany. We ate there every other week faithfully, and last week when we found out they closed we were close to distraught. But we gave the new place a shot tonight and we loved it. It wasn't your typical "I'll have the number 23" Mexican place. The food was very flavorful and not bland, and there were more choices on their menu than the other Mexican places. Like I said, it didn't take long for us to proclaim it as our family favorite Mexican restaurant. Dad even said that he wanted to start going there on Friday nights. Now, if you my Dad, you know that was one huge statement. He normally prefers carryout to dining out in a restaurant. So when he said that, I knew that was the ultimate compliment the new restaurant could get.

Deja Vu

First of all, I'm worried about myself because in my bizarre mind, I kept track of this today, but I'm astonished to report that I heard the word "simular" a record total of four times today during my eight-hour day at work. In case you've forgotten, "simular" is a Non-Word. I can only imagine what I'll hear tomorrow.

Fall Cleaning, Here We Come

My cousin from Alabama will be making his annual fall visit to us at the end of the week, so that can only mean one thing at The Compound: fall cleaning. As always, I've procrastinated and have put off and put off cleaning up the back bedroom for his arrival. As I type this on Monday night, I'm looking ahead at one of the busiest week's I've had in years. My school work load is more than I could have ever imagined in this entire Master's degree program; add in a big research project that's due at the end of this class; add in being busy at work with cross-training and an unusually busy time at work; and add to this a lot of other stuff going on. Add that all together and you've got one majorly stressed-out Puddin for the next few weeks, maybe even months.

For now, I'm only going to think about what I can do tonight. First on my agenda is to clean up the back bedroom. Hopefully a missing bracelet will be found. Dad got a head start on the back bedroom today - he put in a new light bulb in the ceiling light so now things are very bright back here. Then I'm going to go on a mad search through the house for a missing bracelet. Then I'm going to sit down with my text book and read as many pages as I can tonight. If you're praying people, please say one for me.

Link Of The Week

Gas prices here in the 'Ville have inched their way back up to close to $3 a gallon right now. I know we sure got spoiled earlier in the year. But as a friend said to me, you pay it or you stay home. But I digress. I know vacation time is over, but I found a site that will help you get a rough estimate on your fuel costs for taking a trip. Just visit http://www.fuelcalculator.com and see how much it will cost. The fuel calculator is brought to us by the good folks at AAA. Unfortunately I can't figure out how much gas will cost me for a trip if I drive the old BMW or Blazer, because the oldest year they use on the calculator is 1998. But good luck in calculating.

Farewell, As The World Turns

TWIT would like to say farewell to As The World Turns. Yesterday, the longest running soap opera aired its last episode. The soap was in the top of the ratings for its impressive 54 year run.

ATWT was a pioneer in the soap world. It was one of the first half-hour shows and used techniques that the soap genre became famous for, such as the lingering close-up, and portrayed a greater depth of character so that we knew motivations. Like most soaps, ATWT focused on one main family, in this show, the Hughes family.

ATWT was one of my Grandma's favorites to watch. One of the main characters was named Lisa, and she was the viliainess of the show. Before I was born, Mom and Dad were thinking of names and at one point wanted to name me Lisa but Grandma put her foot down and didn't want me to have the same name as a conniving, cold character on the show.

Flashback Friday

Not So New Product Review

We tried a new product for supper tonight at The Compound and it rocked. It was Kroger brand Chicken Florentine. Even Dad liked it - and he's not that crazy about chicken dishes.

The bag said the serving size was 3.5 servings. Since we're trying to cut back on our portions here at The Compound, we thought that would work out pretty good. We had salad with the meal and I will be the first to say that I was full.

Mom said she didn't add anything else to the bag, and that it only took about 10 or so minutes to cook. It tasted awesome. It didn't have a heavy Alfredo sauce to coat everything; the sauce that was produced from the cooking of the pasta, chicken and spinach was just fine. Dad said he would definitely eat it again.

The only thing I would change about this would be to maybe add a bit more chicken. The next time we have it, Mom said she'd fix a chicken breast and then chop it up and add it to the bag.

Krogers Chicken Florentine in a bag definitely gets the Seal Of Approval from TWIT. And more importantly, Dad said he would eat it again.

Wacky Wednesday

There's a lot going on in my life right now, faithful readers. First of all, I'd like to ask a huge favor. My current class is giving me major fits, and I'd like to ask for you all to add me to your prayer list for the remaining 5 weeks of this class. It's been by far the hardest class I've had in this Master's Degree program, and I'm not ashamed to say I'm struggling. Just this weekend, I did something that I've never done in all of the many years of college and university classes I've taken: I failed a test. I don't need to tell you that I was near-suicidal.

To be specific, all I'm praying for is for wisdom, to stay focussed, and for guidance. And to my faithful readers, please be patient with me in during the next five weeks if my daily TWIT posts aren't up to par. I will try my best, but my school has to come first.

I'm Not As Bad As I Thought

I guess I'm not as bad in math as I thought. I showed yesterday's TWIT picture to quite a few friends at work and at school, and out of the dozen people that saw it, only one noticed the mathematical error. I will give props to the 'Rents. As soon as they saw the picture, they noticed the subtraction error right away. I guess that goes with all of their years of checking over my math homework in school.

File Under: WTF?

Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm the most mathematically challenged person out there, but even I know when a simple subraction math equation is wrong.

Link Of The Week

You should know by now that I am a diehard Tennessee Titans fan. Sure, we've had some ups and downs over the past couple of years but my devotion has never wavered. Surely you all have some allegiance to an NFL team - visit http://www.nfl.com and you can click on the team you love. You'll be able to get all the info you've ever wanted to know about your team, plus you'll be able to buy any type of merchandise with your team's name and logo on it.

And as an extra plug, TWIT would like to congratulate the Titans on their opening Sunday win against the Oakland Raiders. Go Titans!!

Something To Be Proud Of

I spent most of the morning running errands, and while I as out and about, I was listening to one of my favorite local radio channels. On Saturday mornings, they replay back one of their week day shows, and today, they were talking about how Kentucky is in the top five dumbest states. I did some quick research when I got home and it didn't take long before I found some sites that did extensive research, and unfortunately according to various polls and questionaires, my home state is in deed one of the top five dumbest states in the country.

I don't even know where to begin with this, so I think I'm just going to leave it alone. All I can say is I'm doing my part to stamp out ingorance.

Flashback Friday

I sat through an almost two-hour meeting today at work about changes in our retirement fund. As I endured it all, I was thinking back to the time when my retirement fund would be almost a foreign phrase in my vocabulary. Back in the day, we just didn't think of anything like that. It's not that we thought we would die early and not make it to retirement age - we simply just didn't think about it. After today's meetings, it was all we could think about.

Back in the day, we thought the government would take care of us in our old age - we'd have Social Security to fall back on. Well, we all know that Social Security will be running out in a few years, so it's up to us take care of our retirement. I'm just thankful that my company cares enough about us employees to give us many options to manage our retirement fund.

As I type this, I think back to the time when my parents were the age I am right now. Unfortunately, their company didn't care nor take that good care of them when it came to their retirement. I'm just thankful I'm in a bit better position than they were.

I'm Glad Summer Is Almost Over

To read the subject line, you probably think I'm going to start rambling about how hot the summer was and how glad I am that cooler weather is on the way; I could not agree more. But there's another reason I'm glad summer is almost over. This summer, I've seen more and more people driving mini-vans with the side doors open. Yes, with their side doors open. And most of the time, there were people in the back seats. Thank goodness most of them were wearing seatbelts, but on a few occasions, the people were just sitting in the back seats with one or both side doors wide open. I can't even begin to describe how dangerous that is, even if you're in the seat with your seatbelt on. All I can say is I'm glad cooler weather will be here soon so people will not drive with their mini-vans with the side doors opened.

Go Bats!

TWIT would like to congratulate the Louisville Bats on their 8-4 win tonight over the Durham Bulls in game #1 of the playoffs. On Monday, the Bats won the "Quest For The West" - the Western Division. The Bats will play again at home tomorrow night; the first pitch is at 6:05. There's plenty of great seats left, so if you're in the Louisville area tomorrow evening, please come by Slugger Field and help me cheer on the Bats.

Louisville FREE Public Library?

I took today off so I could spend some time researching for a big project for class, and spent most of the morning and a good part of the afternoon at the local public library branch. I was so frustrated by this experience that I almost walked out and drove on home. Let me preface by saying that you have to use the computers at the library to access their databases; you can't do it from your home computer. Believe me - if you could I would have stayed home and done it. So I get there about 10 minutes after the library opened and all 20 of the computers were full. So much for a "free" computer. I decided to spend my waiting time wisely so I sat down at a table and did homework while I waited. The table had a clear view of all 20 computers, and I will venture a very conservative estimate that over 3/4 of the computer users were on Facebook. I kept on waiting and doing my homework, but no computers became available. Before I knew it, it was noon and I had all of my chapter read and outlined. Just as I was ready to walk out a computer became available so I ran over and snagged it. As soon as I logged on and found an article I wanted from their database I quickly found out it would be 5 cents a page to print it out. I was there just a month and a half ago and printed out numerous articles for school and there was no charge. I didn't have my purse with me so I just signed off and left, as frustrated as the people that I read about in my chapter on the frustration theory of criminal behavior.

Happy Labor Day

I hope that all of my faithful readers had an awesome, relaxing, safe and happy Labor Day today. I'm going out on a limb and guessing that the highlight of everyone's day today was the fact that we didn't have to go to work. I know that was the highlight of mine.

Link Of The Week

I'm not a big South Park fan - mainly because I'm usually never home on Saturday night when the show is on. But I've watched some episodes in my time, and I want to share with you, faithful readers, probably the funniest South Park scene that I've ever watched. First of all, you know that I don't throw out a link to You Tube every week - it has to be something incredibly funny to make me want to share the video with you. This definitely fits that description. Please take a few minutes to check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cn7xfBpZ3M. You might have to watch it a couple of times before it sinks in but it ranks right up there with Pearl and Charlie.

The Silent Minority

As I type this, it's 3:18, and the kick-off to the big UK vs U of L football game has been underway for about 13 minutes. And I could really not care less.

We've spent most of the day here at The Compound outside in the garden and yard, and I took a break about an hour ago to run some errands, but as soon as I post this I will be back outside again working diligently and not paying any attention to the big football game that most of the state of Kentucky is watching.

I really have no preferance over who wins. I'm just happy that it's a Saturday and that I don't have any place that have to go tonight and I can stay home and do nothing if I want to. I'm pretty sure that there's quite a few people here in the 'Ville that feel the same way that we do.

Flashback Friday

Something You Don't See Everyday

Here's something you don't see everyday -- a gnawed-on chicken bone on the floor in the fruit and vegetable section of Wal-Mart.

Pray For Me, America

I'm the first to admit that I'm always hard on myself when it comes to my school classes; anything less than an A causes me to spaz out. Well, faithful readers, this current class is really kicking my ass. "Criminal Behavoir" has turned out to be about five times as hard as I thought it would. I spend almost every waking moment reading and studying and I'm still struggling with it. This could very well be the first class in both of my Master's Degree programs that I get a B in. I'm not giving up, and will do my best, but please say a prayer for me for the next 7 weeks. All I'm praying for is for wisdom, understanding, and time management.