Alex is currently picking all of the stickers off of a Lightening McQueen laptop my parents bought him. The amount of anxiety this is causing me is surprising.

Due to the rain, we and some other folks we know have had problems with water getting where it shouldn't. Does anyone have a dehumidifer we can borrow? We have one, but we let someone borrow it who needs it more. And you can't buy any right now. I don't want to de-borrow our humidifer, but our basement is beginning to smell.

Thanks.

Thursday was a good day. The class wrapped up early and Steve was able to get me in contact with Rana, an Escape Pod listener that also works in wardrobe for Cirque de Soliel's "O". We meet for lunch and hung out for a bit. She was able to get me into the sound booth for that night's 7:30 performance. I saw "O" from the sound booth! It was awesome! In case you aren't familiar with it, "O" is the show that has the big pool in the stage and a floor that rises and lowers in it so the performers can walk around on it. I had a blast! I got to bed late and woke up early to pack and to get to the airport in time for my flight. The flight wasn't that bad. There was a group of about 6-8 kids who were sitting in the section behind me. While they weren't being obnoxious or misbehaving, the obviously were _very_ excited about flying to Florida for vacation and talked a lot, loudly. So I was not able to implement my plan, which was to sleep. I only said something once to the kid behind me after he and his brother/cousin/relative started racing to see who could raise and lower their tray the fastest. After I asked him to stop he did and I was happy.

Other observations: Even though I passed a few homeless folks every day, no one asked me for money. While I was walking around, a woman at a bus stop asked if I smoked. I said I didn't and she replied, "That's OK honey. I love you anyway." I noticed quite a few couples where that lady was dressed to the nines and looked awesome, and the guy was wearing ripped jeans and a dirty t-shirt. I believe there was some monetary exchange going on there, either explicitly or not.

It was a great trip. The car started at the airport, I lost $21 to gambling, I gained a friend, and I have a bunch of new memories of the shows and the sights of Vegas. I don't feel a particular need to go back anytime soon, but I had a great trip.

Last night the group taking the training went to dinner together at Bootleggers. It was a very good Italien place that was off the beaten track. The decor was mostly along the old-time gangster theme. When I got back to the hotel it was almost 9 and on the spur of the moment I decided to play the penny slots. My thinking was it's a penny a pull (actually a button press), I can spend a dollar, figure out what is going on, and then try the quarter or dollar slots later. Well, this sucker had about a dozen different buttons on it and I couldn't figure what out what I was supposed to do. As a result after 3 games I was down to $0.10 and needed to add more money if I wanted to continue playing. I called it a night.

Today is the last day of training. We are going to end a couple of hours early this afternoon so people can get to the airport and leave. There were no direct flights to Altanta after about 3 pm so I am taking a flight out on Friday morning. I am going to try and see Cirque's "O" tonight if I can get a ticket. An Escape Pod fan works in wardrobe and is going to try and get me into the lighting booth :)

Will finish later, class is leaving.

On Monday the flight to Las Vegas was nice and uneventful. The weather, of course, was damn hot. Someone said it was 112 F Monday. I took the shuttle to the Excalibur, the strip hotel-casino I am staying at. This isn't actually the hotel that was contracted for the training, that was an Hampton Inn just off the strip, but the price per night was $31 vs $89. Yes you read that right. The strip hotel was ~1/3 the price of the Hampton Inn. The Excalibur is not what I expected. At the price I paid I expected something like a Hotel 6. Instead I got a decent size room, it is clean but not fancy--about like a Holiday Inn. There are no freebies--no coffee, breakfast, internet, and the TV is ~19" tube style ( I was kinda disappointed in that, the website showed flatscreens). But it is right on the strip and therfore closer to the other entertainment offered by the strip, and offers some great oppertunities for people watching. Monday night I went to a half-price show booth and got cheap tickets to go see The Blue Man Group. The show was awesome! I was seated in the first row which was called the Poncho Section. I laughed my head off just about the entire time. It was all physical humor so I really think that Alex will get most of it, there was very little talking and none by the Blue Men. It ended up that I didn't get messy. They splashed some colored water around and at one point spit out crunched up cereal (I was glad to have been missed by that). They did some really cool stuff with PVC piping, drier duct, and strobe lighting. After the show I was beat so I took the monorail back to the hotel (It was $5 for a <2 mile trip) but I was so tired I thought it was worth it). I'm not sure it saved me any time/walking however because it left from Harrah's casino and ended up at MGM Grand and in both casiso's there was poor signage so I ended up wondering around and asking people where it was before I found it. I know they did it on purpose, they wanted people to stop and gamble, but I found it annoying.

Tuesday I unwilling woke up early and walked to the Hampton Inn to be picked up for the training. The Hampton was ~1/2 mile from the Excalibur and even at 7 am it was beginning to get hot. The training was good. I like the other people in the class and I am learning a whole lot about the instrument. Once we got back I walked to the Excalibur, chilled for a while, and then went to eat dinner. I went to The Steakhouse at Camelot which was in the Excalibur. The food was about the pricing of the Highland Tap, but not nearly as good in terms of quality and ambiance. I was tired so I decided to stick around the hotel instead of going out so I checked out the casino. I was planning on trying some slots and blackjack, but I was just overwhelmed by the choices (penny, nickel, quarter, dollar, two dollar, and higher for the slots and blackjack at two dollar and up), the lights and noise, the crush of people, the smoking, and the amazing amount of kids running around (there really wasn't that many, but I was amazed there were any). So I called it an early evening and went back to my room to read and hit the hay.

Tonight after training we are supposed to have a group dinner at an Italian place. If I'm not too tired I might try to catch a show afterwards.

With Alex I had three ER visits, one for stitches (I cut my finger while cutting bread) and two for migraines. All three happened during my last trimester. This time I got an early start. Yesterday at work while in my office working on my computer I got stung by a wasp. Yes, while at work-in my office-working on my computer. I knew I was allergic to wasps, previously I've had hives and shortness of breath after being stung, so I immediately took two Benedryl and notified my supervisor. After 15 minutes I took another two Benedryl because my throat felt funny and my supervisor drove me to the ER. I was immediately seen and given an IV injection of Benedryl and steroids. When the doctor came to see me ~45 minutes later, she said my throat was swollen and I got another injection of Benedryl and steroids. After 3 hours of additional observation, which I mostly slept through, they released me, Steve picked me up, I got some prescriptions filled, and I went home. I am not released to go back to work until tomorrow.

(Work rant follows, please feel free to skip)

This is the first time I've had a lost time accident and this caused the facility's OSHA incident rate to be set back to zero. Oh well, I don't see how I could have prevented this from happening. I hadn't seen any wasps flying through the lab lately, I looked at my chair before I sat down (not for wasps, true, but I needed to see where the chair was...), and I had been working on my computer for a few minutes before this happened. However the philosophy at work is that ALL accidents are preventable. I want to hear how they explain this. Anyway I am feeling much better today and I got a paid day at home so I am going to enjoy it :)

OK. I wasn't expecting all of my user pics to change... Anyway I made a community so check it out!

http://community.livejournal.com/eley_baby

Steve and I have tickets to the Johnathon Coulton concert Saturday night. Can anyone watch Alex or know of someone who can watch Alex?

Thanks!

I just got back home from Oregon a few minutes ago. Both trials were successes and everyone was happy. When I took Yuna out to the backyard, I called Steve.

Me: Hey Babe!
Steve: Hey did you just get back?
Me: Yeah. When did the tree fall?
Steve: What tree?
Me: The one in the backyard crushing the fence to the ground.
Steve: ...
Me: Was it there this morning?
Steve: Hmmm... I don't remember.

So. Does anyone have a chainsaw we can borrow after this weekend?

Today I was congratulated on my self control. Let me explain.

Work was having a mandatory all week safety training. Monday through Wednesday was at the lab so things could actually get done. Thursday and Friday we meet off site and we were assigned into breakout groups for the brainstorming activities, etc. So far so good. Except I was assigned to the group with the biggest $%#&, clueless, incompetent person I have had to work with in a really, really long time. He thought his was was the only way because "he had led safety meetings like this before", he would not listen to others, he would not answer the question that we needed to brainstorm about, he would be passive-aggressive "I don't like this but I didn't say anything earlier because I didn't care", he said several times he thought the process was stupid and would not work, and so on and so on. Yesterday I tried to work with him. After an hour this morning I decided to ignore him, and after lunch I changed groups. You see, a person from each group had to go up and present the results of our brainstorming to the entire group. I had done about half of them and another person in the group had done the other half. Well this person decided that he was going to present our ideas about how to measure progress in fixing problems "because I hadn't done it". He went to the front of the room with the sheet with our suggestions on it and said something along the lines of "I don't know what this means" "I think this was a stupid idea and here's why" "this will never work because of " and only reading part of the sentence written on the page. At one point I called him on that, "the first part of the sentence says 'survey the employees...'". At this point for the first time in 10 years at this company I almost lost my temper. I mean really lost my temper. And it was bloody apparent on my face. At this point I decided that if I wanted to keep my job I needed to say and do absolutely nothing. So I glared a hole in the wall across the room.

During the next break I had several people come up to me and congratulate me on my self control and wondered how this jerk got hired. One said, "I have never seen someone get so pissed and then control it. You are a god." I was also told that I was getting text messages from co-workers to calm down (unfortunately my cellphone battery was dead) and that they agreed with me. This was right before lunch. During lunch I changed tables. It was much better after that.

I am so grateful this week is over.

Sunday I fly to Albany, OR for a plant trial.