Where’s Lissy?

I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but I’ve been slightly absent from the internet the past couple of weeks. I have a lot of blogs in my RSS feed to go through, hopefully I’ll get to them this weekend.

What’s been keeping me so busy? Well, my job for one. Development hasn’t officially started yet, but I’ve been working late almost every day. This project is big and it seems like the more work I do, the more work I uncover that needs to be done. I thought I was OK until a meeting with the SE yesterday brought up a whole new slew of issues we didn’t really think about before. I also can’t seem to keep my test environments working. I really could use another person to at least bounce ideas off of. I work much better in a team. Anthony will be here soon, but he’ll have training for two weeks and then he’ll also be helping Eddie who’s overloaded too :( I’m also mentoring a couple of interns, which is my favorite work related thing to do, but adds to the overwhelmingness.

Remember that contingency training I had a few years ago, the ladder climbing stuff, yeah, that’s happening again. Every three years their contracts expire and we have to take training to fill their spots if there’s a strike. No in-person training unfortunately, just annoying online simulations that take up way too much time. And we can’t schedule vacation in 2012. Nothing we can do about it short of getting pregnant every three years. Maryam didn’t like that plan.

I also had a mishap with my kindle. It broke, and they sent me a new one, but that’s not what’s been keeping me away from the internet. I accidentally borrowed the third book in The Hunger Games series before the second. I quickly went back and requested the second, but then I had only two weeks to read both. I finished the second book on Saturday and I’m half way through the third now, so I think I’ll make it.

Last Friday we went to Bryan’s grandfather’s memorial service. I met his grandfather, but I didn’t really, because he had Alzheimer’s and it was nice to hear stories about his life. I also finally got to meet a bunch of Bryan’s cousins.

Last weekend was also my birthday, full of an incredible amount of food. We went out with my parents on Saturday and Sunday was my party with our friends. I made smores ice cream, because that’s just the best ice cream ever and I made a failed attempt at red velvet ice cream. It was a last minute thing and I pretty much just took a while cake mix and added some cacao for the cake part. I didn’t bother with the food coloring. Then I make cheesecake ice cream, which tasted a little too much like cheesecake than cream cheese frosting. It was still good, but red velvet it was not.

Emily, she made a cake. I told her pineapple upside-down cake was my favorite and she made a crazy pinapple upside-down layer cake with the best frosting ever! I’m not an icing person, but this was goooood. By Wednesday night, the little bit of cake that was left had gotten stale, so I mostly just ate the icing.

I also got some more food, some pretty jewelery a Farscape shirt, ice cream bowls and some much needed $$$.

Yesterday my coworkers treated me and Sumayya to an Indian buffet for our birthdays. It’s actually not far from our house, so Bryan joined us since he had off. Food was good. I ate too much, as usual.

I came home from work yesterday to find my street blocked off. I called Bryan to ask what was going on, but he didn’t know. I turned around and saw a house with its entire back-side burned off. Big fire. Oh yeah, it’s been really hot.