Saturday

I'm on my way to work for the first time in a week (at least according to the schedule--I was there for an hour on Tuesday before anyone else arrived). I'm dreading what sorts of weirdness people have found for me to deal with in the interim.

So instead of thinking about that....

1. Did anyone learn anything of value this week, either at the Thanksgiving table or at another venue? I learned that I don't eat turkey often enough for my body to tolerate it in large quantities, just like my mom. I also was reminded that I have really cool family members, and that my niece had a hero-worship thing going on with me while she was growing up. Oy.
   
   
2. The office is substantially cleaner, even though I stopped working on it after about 2 hours. I developed an allergic headache from the dust and had to stop. Once the headache cleared up, I spent much of the rest of the day Simming and watching CSI season 6 episodes and then How It's Made on the Science network (I think). I'll get back to the office tomorrow and start attacking the dust while wearing a bandana, or something.
   
   
3. Four hours' sleep. On the recliner. Yeah. Going into a workday.
   
   
4. Thoughts from this morning's shower...is it just me, or do people mostly use other people's names in only two instances (outside of family members): to call them/get their attention ("Hey Sammy! Come here.") and when making a (usually negative) point ("But, Sammy, you were supposed to do that two months ago!")? When talking to family members, I generally use nicknames ("goofball", "noodlehead", "sweetheart") unless I need to speak specifically to one person.
   
   
5. FEMA bites. The old guy whose house we spent most of our time working in last summer contacted the D'Iberville Volunteer Foundation recently. He had just heard from FEMA. The money they had given him--about $15,000, I think?--to rebuild his house, which he had spent in buying supplies to do just that...they want most of it back. They overpaid him. He doesn't have $10,000+ lying around (who does, really?). The best part of the news was finding out that he has been living in his house--since we left, other people have gone on and finished it for him.
   But, you know, FEMA still bites.

I have to go to work. But first I have to help clean up all the newspapers that someone (kids??) dumped in our ditch last night. Technically, they are our newspapers which we left out for the garbage collection today. Idiot kids. :-)

[Addendum: By the time I got my hair done and my shoes on, the boys had finished picking up the paper...
...and--at work--I have 175 listserv posts to catch up reading. Otherwise, things seems relatively calm, unless I count the fact that someone snagged my red and black Sharpies. This is why I hide bloody-everything important here!]