He's off again!

Yep! Russ is traveling again! He leaves Monday morning for Vegas. He will be working Monday thru Thursday there and coming home every weekend. This should last thru October and possibly into November. The timing works well for this first trip since I have to finish about 50 swaps for Portland Regionals and my Circle Journal for the Spamily.

The swaps and the Journal are both "due" on the 12th of October, and I leave on the 11th for Portland. Getting a few days in with Mom since after the travel fiasco last year, I *refuse* to travel over the Holidays ever again. What a nightmare! Russ will fly directly from Vegas to Portland. SCS is having a dinner Friday night and he wanted to go to that and witness the insanity. LOL.

I have the actual Regional Seminar on Friday from 9 to 5 and then the SCS dinner is at 6. AND MELISSA IS GONNA BE THERE!!!!! WOO HOO!!!!! (and bonus for me since she is the one I send the Circle Journals to, I get to hand deliver this one instead of having to mail it on the 10th!) Russ is looking forward to meeting Melissa and her husband, Jason. Should be an entertaining evening!

I have the album done (we are doing 6x6 format, which is REALLY CHALLENGING for me, especially since this is my FIRST "real" scrapbook) and I have the intro & instruction page all typed up and ready to print. I have the tag pages almost figured out and I have some ideas for my 2 page layout. So I still have some WORK to do on it these next 2 weeks. My swaps are about half done. All 300 pieces are cut and the stamping is done, the designer paper has been layered on the front and the front and back pieces have been punched. All I have left to do is distress 100 edges, make 50 glitter windows and then punch them out, cut 50 pieces of ribbon, layer all that together on the front of the "card", attach the front and back pieces and label them all. Not going to post yet what it is that I'm making, but I promise to post a picture right before I leave for Portland. And, Judy, I think I sent you one in your birthday box.... at least I intended to..... hmmmm....

So that's my world in a little nutshell (hush, Judy). I imagine this weekend will be spend doing laundry and helping Russ pack. I have to take him to the airport at 4:30 Monday morning.... yawn..... Should be fun......

Hope this works.......

This is for you, Judy!!!!!!

Julee didn't tag me, but I thought I'd play along....

The "Alias" game!

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car): Mitzi Forester (not bad!)

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fav ice cream flavor, favorite cookie): Bubble Gum Oatmeal Raisin (OK - NOT!)

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name): L-Dal

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal):
Purple Cat (not workin, is it?)

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born): Anne Berkeley (OK - getting better)

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first) : Lisda

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink put “The” in front): The Pink Champagne (defender of cheezy vegas weddings!)

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers):
Robert Frederick (that works)

9. STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne, favorite candy): Happy Gummy Bear (ok - this is going downhill again!)

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names): Rae William

OK - Judy - I want to see your answers up on your blog!

Grab a beverage.... it's a LONG post!

Texas was a BLAST! I arrived on Friday afternoon and Kate picked me up at the airport and we went to get a sandwich since I hadn't eaten anything but peanuts all day. That, of course, made it happen for Janice to get off work early so we went straight from lunch to dinner! Janice brought her hubby, Jeff, and her friend, Kim and Kate's hubby, Ty, joined us as well. Then we transferred my stuff from Kate's car to Janice's and off we went!

OMG.... I was SO not prepared for what I saw and heard when we got to her house..... 23 BARKING WEENER DOGS! ROFL! I call them "the Herd". They are SO CUTE and SO FUNNY!!!!!!! I actually bonded with a couple of them while I was there.... Abby, who is one of Janice & Jeff's dogs, and Joey, who is one of the foster dogs, but he already has a family wanting to adopt him (otherwise he woulda been in my luggage coming home!). I also bonded with their orange tabby cat, Pumpkin. WHAT A SWEETIE!!!!! He liked that someone in the house paid more attention to him than those "crazy dogs", I'm sure!

Saturday morning I awoke to "the herd on the move" as they all skittled (think 92 little feet with doggy nails running across laminate flooring) out the back door for their morning constitutional. We had breakfast and got ready to meet Kate and Kim at a local Scrapbooking store and then we were off to ARCHIVER'S. I have never been to an Archiver's store and now I see why people say that they are impressive. The place was HUGE. We must have been in there for 2 hours and I still don't think I saw everything. I want one here. BADLY. LOL! Then we went and had some AUTHENTIC Texas BBQ for lunch.... YUM!!!!! After that we ran some errands and then everyone went home. Janice, Jeff and I went out for burgers at the place where their daughter works. TASTY! They do some sweet potato fries that TOTALLY ROCK! We stayed up too late yakking and playing with the dogs. Sunday was the stamp camp at Kate's house and we had everything all planned out...... UNTIL......

Sunday morning I woke up to hear the herd on the move. Then Janice came back in and said something to Jeff and he went outside. The next thing I heard was Jeff yelling, "THAT CAT ISN'T DEAD!". Welcome to Sunday..... LOL! Apparently, a feral cat had tried jumping the fence and didn't quite make it and his back leg got caught between 2 of the fence boards. NOT PRETTY (apparently.... I sure as heck wasn't gonna look!). Well, in freeing the cat, it bit Jeff THRU THE LEATHER GLOVES he was wearing, and ran under the house. So they had to call Animal Control to catch it and test it for rabies..... Here's the fun part.... Janice and Jeff did not have a license to have that many animals.... the limit is 5. They have 3 outdoor cats, 1 indoor cat and at the moment are home to 23 weener dogs. Just a tad over quota! LOL! So, Janice takes the majority of the dogs into her closet with her and they hide out when the animal control lady comes. (Same thing on Monday morning when she came back to check the traps.) They managed to catch all of the feral cats that have been hanging around EXCEPT the one that bit Jeff. sigh.

So we finally get on the road and pick up Janice's customer, Lupe, who was going to the stamp camp with us. Kim was with us too. We got to Kate's and made our Make & Takes (the same projects we did at Convention) and chatted for a while. Then we took Lupe home and Kim left and we had a fairly peaceful Sunday evening. Jeff cooked some YUMMY steaks and we had baked potatoes and salad. The dogs got the leftovers which was HILARIOUS to watch!

Monday we stayed at the house, partly because we had to leave for the airport around 12:30 and partly because the Animal Control lady was due back and we needed to be ready to hide the dogs again..... We saw about 6 raindrops on the window on the way to the airport. Apparently when I left the rain came and hasn't really left since. So I brought the sunshine and took it with me, I guess! LOL! The flight from Austin to San Diego was great. Smooth and I was able to get a lot of work done on my swaps for Portland. And then......

READY FOR MY DRAMA????????

So first my flight is delayed over an hour. OK. These things happen. I kinda thought I was gonna miss my connection anyway (only 20 minutes between flights) and be on the flight that left San Diego an hour later. So I get back to Sac and get my bag and catch the shuttle to the parking lot. Now, I *know* where I got on the shuttle. I parked there purposely. It's the LAST shuttle stop before the shuttle goes out the gate and back to the terminal. So I'm riding along and everyone is getting off and we get to the place where they normally turn to go to the section I'm parked in and he tells me this is his last stop and I have to get out. Uh, NO (DUMBA$$), the last stop is the one by the gate - where I got on. He tells me they have that area closed for a medical emergency and tells me I have to get off the bus. (if they had announced they were only running to 42T, I woulda got off at 42J instead of waiting for 43J). I asked if he could please call security to walk me (in the dark) across the 6 parking sectors and he tells me he can't do that and drives off! A$$ MUNCHER!!!!! So, now I'm PI$$ED and I call Russ and interrupt him watching the game because I wanted someone on the phone with me in case I got mugged or something.

So, as I get closer, I see a sheriff car and a couple other cars a couple aisles over, right behind the shuttle stop I WANTED to get off at, so I'm a little less upset since there obviously WAS something going on, but I still planned to let the gal at the booth know about the driver's bad attitude. Since I lost my stupid ticket from when I entered the lot on Friday, I have a couple minutes to chat with the gal while the computer finds my car's license plate from when I came in and tells the computer what the ticket # was, so I was telling her about the shuttle butthead and she did take that down because she said he could have radioed security and they would have come in the little golf cart and DRIVEN ME to my car. Grrrrrr... But then she says "Yeah, we thought it was a medical emergency but then the CORONER SHOWED UP...." Apparently the guy pulled into the parking lot on THURSDAY and someone found him in his car MONDAY around 6PM. IT'S BEEN IN THE 90's here..... and he's been dead in his car since THURSDAY, AND I WALKED RIGHT NEXT TO THAT CAR ON FRIDAY MORNING!!!!!! EEEEEEEWWWWWWW!!!!!!! YUCK YUCK YUCK!!!!! I guess it's a good thing I was running late on Friday and was running to the shuttle stop since the bus was already there.... if the bus hadn't been close I would have sauntered over to the stop and probably woulda seen the guy.... DOUBLE EEEEEEEEWWWWWW!!!!!

Taz, by the way, did NOT approve of the scent of weener dogs that came home with me. LOL! So I'm back and have done a million loads of laundry (or so it seems) and life is back to normal. Today I took advantage of the GORGEOUS weather (hi of 78! WOO HOO!) and ripped out all the spring/summer plants that were dying in the front wine barrels and went to the nursery and got some fall color. I got one barrel replanted today with 4 mums. I need to get another bag of potting soil since I had to dig out plants with big root masses from the other barrels. Tomorrow I will plant 4 mums in the front barrel and then fill the back barrel with snapdragons. Then I got 2 plants for the backyard to replace the 2 I killed this summer when I failed to realize that the drip lines had been pulled out of their pots during a week of 98 degree days.... oops! So I'll pull those up and replant those 2 containers tomorrow too! I also got some little stakes to keep the drip lines where I put them, so hopefully these two will have better luck.... LOL!

So now I'm current on my blog.... HAPPY, JUDY???? ROFL!!!!!

YEE HA!!!!!

I'm off to TEXAS in the morning!!!! I will be in Austin visiting my friends Janice and Kate who are hosting a SU! Stamp Camp on Sunday. Janice does Dachshund rescue, so I told Russ I might just bring "someone" home if any bonding happens. He was NOT amused.... he he he....

Everyone have a FABULOUS weekend! I'll see y'all on the flip side!!!!