I’ve got a new Grand….

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Puppy.  I know you thought I was going to say baby, but Bryan and Katie’s baby isn’t due until June. However, Daniel got an early birthday present. An 8 week old purebreed pitbull.

Daniel called and said that he wanted to show me something. I said ok, and that I was at 520. The basement had flooded at work after the city crew put a water meter in yesterday. Not sure what failed, but the basement was FULL of water. The city crew started pumping water, San Isabel turned off the electricity and then the city turned off the water and gas as soon as they could. Meanwhile, I realized I couldn’t do any work and took a day off using up some of my comp time. Wheeee….

So, Dan and I waited. Dan said that Daniel had a new dog. I said, nah, it couldn’t be. Twenty minutes later, Daniel got to the house. He walked in with his coat all curled up and all I could think was oh gods! What now? Dan gave me that “I told you so!” look. Daniel opened his coat and set this little wrinkley 8 week old puppy on the bed. I tried so hard not to think it was cute. Really. I did! sigh…..

image528He doesn’t have a name yet. I’m lobbying for Buster.

image532Of course the minute I picked him up, he went to sleep. Dan teasing me about Nana’s magic lap…

Daniel wanted to go get him a collar. He’d already had his shots and weighs a whole 5 pounds, 1 ounce. So, cradling my new grandpuppy, we headed off to Safeway. No luck. Dan suggested that we go to Petsmart in Pueblo. None of us had to be anywhere soon, so off we went.

Divot, my car decided to have lots of issues. It took us forever to get to Pueblo. We had lunch at Taco Bell, and then headed to Petsmart. We found a collar, toys, a book and a magazine on pit bulls for Daniel and a new water bowl for our two dogs. Blanca is constantly knocking the one we have over and I am tired of wet floors.

We then went to the Mall and Daniel bought Brianna a prezzie. A necklace and matching earrings. He even got a Wedgewood box to put them in. Very pretty! After that, we headed back to Taco Bell for dinner. Daniel’s request.

We drove home and then got to deal with jealous dogs when we got home. They could smell the puppy all over us, but couldn’t figure out where I had hidden it. LOL!

A Sunny Doggy Day

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Work has been quiet, and as soon as I got done, Dan and I headed to 520 to pack up the light camel packs and grab the dogs for a walk. It has been unseasonably warm. I think the high was 64 today. Gads! So, we headed to the park. Lathrop State Park is only three miles outside of town.  Blanca and Brandy have never been there. They really aren’t sure of the whole traveling in cars in the first place. Ah well.

I got our parks pass and then we headed off to one of the campsites. Dan has a new GPS toy. (Garmen Etrex Vista) He says it is smarter than he is. Probably right. It would help if he RTM! teeheehee….. He marked the “spot” with a handkerchief and off we went. Brandy wanted to run and Blanca wasn’t too sure about this whole dirt/cactus/rocks thing.

img_0040Here is Dan and Brandy going cross country. My camera’s shutter keeps sticking. Hence the snazzy black slices in the corners. Blanca wasn’t too sure where Mama was going and told me so.

img_0042She kept doing that whole “Mama! they’re Over There!” and didn’t want to walk alone. So, we caught up with Dan and Brandy. Went down by the lake and walked the shoreline. Brandy tried to attack the waves and was biting at them. Then she fell in. Dan and I were laughing so hard that we could barely stay out of the lake ourselves. Blanca was not going near the lake.  We walked a bit more and then headed up towards the rocks. Brandy was pretty good, but Blanca was not happy. She backed out of her collar at one point and she and I played ring around the pinon pines. Finally got her collar back on and headed to the car. Dan and Brandy were headed back out because we’d been so long.

All in all we managed about a three mile walk. The dogs were tired. We were tired. However, I managed not to have an asthma attack! Huzzah!!!! After weeks of being sick and every little thing making me wheeze, it was really nice not to have to sit and think “Breathe!”.  The laundry room at 203 jsut rips me up at the moment. sigh…

We got back just  about sunset. Oh the girls were tired.

img_0043Blanca was too tired to wag her tail. hpim1610Brandy fell asleep snuggling the sheep.

hpim1612Blanca flopped in the chair. Poor tired doggies….

Now of course I have to get my tired arse out of this chair long enough to go make dinner. Yawwwn….

Just another manic wee-eek!

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Wish it was Sunday…. oh wait… tomorrow is Sunday. The days have boiled past. Now I could really go for a nice hot soak in a tub, a lovely dinner, watch a bit of a movie and then crawl in bed.

Saturday, I went shopping with Jolene. A girl’s day out! Wheeeee!!!! I got a few new sweaters, undies and a skirt. We had dinner at the China Recipe, a decent restaurant in Pueblo. Yummmm…

Sunday, I did grocery shopping with Dan.  Not a lot to pick up, but it seemed to take much longer than necessary. Hmm…. maybe it was because we had Morgan with us. teehee….. She needed new shoes, and I refused to buy them without her trying them on. Fussy feet. We went to Chile’s for dinner and had to tease her because she has become a “veggiesaurus”. Best part was her trying to flirt with the waiter. He was late 20’s, and she’s 12.

I started Monday with taking the girls, Brandy and Blanca to the vet. My mom gave me a little bit of money and after paying off some bills, I decided to get them fixed. Dan did a deal with the local vet, and so we got two dogs fixed for the price of one and the repair of a printer. Wheeeee!

Of course, it snowed that day. Lots of it. The roads were slick, and the WorkForce people didn’t make it up from Trinidad. So, I did bits of their job as well as my own. Plus, this week, Dan has been helping me out trying to get the office in better shape. Since he is now the treasurer for the Chamber, he wanted a place for his computer to park when he has work to do. The dogs were real unhappy with the snow when we picked them up. Don’t blame them really.

Plus, we’ve had to pick Morgan up from school this week. Jolene normally takes her to school and has been bringing her home. However, Jolene’s schedule changed. sigh… So, we’ve been driving up to Gardner to pick up the girl after basketball practice.

Thursday, we met with City Council Finance committee and got the ordinance fairly well straightened out. Talk about a sigh of relief!

Friday I went to a meeting with the Colorado State University Extension office about gardening! It was a good meeting and I think that this will be a good project for the city and the county.  Then, I got paid!!!! Wheeeee!!! We had to take a big box of brochures to Pueblo’s CF&I Steel Mill Museum, so we did a bit of shopping as well.  Dan and I got home late because we stopped into Barnes and Nobel. I got a book and a bookmark. It says “You say WICKED” like it’s a Bad Thing!” and it has the witch from the Wizard of Oz on it. 🙂 We saw our friend Shirley there too. Caught her up on the fun from Monday. She works for Workforce.

Today we got up at the crack of dawn to take Morgan to her basketball tourney in Gardner at 8am…. yawwwwwn! HWY 69 is an East-West road, and coming back (eastward) at 7:15am this morning was horrid. We pulled over for 15 minutes to let the Sun get off the highway. Dan literally couldn’t see to drive.

After playing with the dogs for a bit, we came down to the chamber. Why? Because Dan was meeting John from the finance committee to get the treasurer’s books. Whee….. I put in 3 hours extra time. ah well… Plus played on the computer.

We headed to Gardner around 1:30pm to go watch the girls play in the finals. Gardner took second. The Craven team was really nasty. They played a foul offensive game. grrr… One of the girls got hurt. Liz. She’s a real sweetie, and smacked the begeezus out of her kneecap. Dan, Cathy (the coach) and I gave her ice packs and cuddles while the game finished. It is a bad sprain, but should be ok.

Of course, my car acted up on the way home and so it took us nearly 30 minutes to go 1 mile at one point. We were rolling downhill and couldn’t make the turn to the house so we glided to the Chamber parking lot. Dan worked on the books a bit and I decided to post for the first time in over a week. Gads! I want to go home now!

Where’s my popcorn and movie!?!?!?!?!

Billing Cluster-****’s and lots of wind

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I’ve had my fill of idiots. Especially if they have anything at all to do with phones. For 4 months I fought with Qwest to straighten out my phone bill and service. No bills, wrong bills, wrong service, you name it, they screwed it up. Today I went to check and see if any of the credits I was told I would have had come through. Nope, and on top of that, nothing I asked to be canceled had been canceled. Keep in mind that I haven’t had DSL service since the end of October and no phone with Qwest since mid November. Shut off because I didn’t pay although I didn’t get any bills, or the billings I got were wrong. They even admitted that they were wrong!

So, I called. After the third person and 40 minutes on the phone, I discovered a few things:

  • I couldn’t cancel my phone while it was in suspended service.
  • I needed to pay $19.63 to have my phone turned back on so that 24 hours after I had service reinstated, I COULD CANCEL my phone.
  • I still owed $78 in phone charges
  • I have $122 in CREDIT coming to me.
  • I could not get the credit until I have the phone on, and they cycle it through billing.

So, I paid the $19.63. My phone service will be turned on and on Saturday or maybe Friday afternoon, I can cancel my service. I will pay off the $78 by January and at some point, I will get a check or multiple checks adding up to $122. I told the guy at one point that at least Qwest wasn’t as messed up as Sprint. Truth!

For the last month, I have also been arguing with Sprint via email, phone and finally in person at one point. In July, I called and told them that due to the fact that I was broke, I wanted to turn off my phone, cancel my service and pay off my contract. No problem I was told. (you can start laughing, I really won’t mind) Fast forward to August. I go to make a payment and find that my account has been sealed. No access. Hmm…. No access to my account, paperless billing…. hard to pay. I email tech support. No answer. Try again. Got told to go to my nearest Sprint store and pay.

When I cooled off, I explained that I live 60 miles one way from my nearest Sprint store. They did a “sorry, but not our problem, would you like to make a payment over the phone?” When I asked for an accounting and a paper receipt, I got told that wasn’t possible, I’d have to check that online. (What???) I said no thank you, I don’t like to make payments on the phone unless I have a paper bill to back it or an online bill I can check. Back to Customer Service.

Now I’m getting calls from a collection agent. One of them got Very Nasty. Called me a liar and a deadbeat and told me that I “just didn’t want to own up to the fact that I’d screwed up my account and didn’t want to pay”. I explained my views on payments online, especially to third partycollection agents. Reason is, I just got everything straightened out because of a small bit of identity theft. One of the things that they tell you is Don’t make payments over phones if you don’t have a bill in your hand, etc. It might not be the real collection agent, etc. So,… no bill, no payment. This collection agent told me again that I was lying! grrrrrrrrrr!

I did get to Pueblo and made a payment in person. I asked to be switched to paper billing so that I could pay my bill and keep track of my payments. This is after a 15 minute explanation of what had gone on. The guy tried. Guess what! Sprint can’t take you back from online billing back to paperless billing. He apologized.

Fast forward to this week. I finally got someone to listen to what I was saying and then got told that they had lost my payment I’d made in Pueblo. I about thumped my head on the computer. However, I talked to a real person on the phone and got the collection agency off my back until  they find my payment! gads!

In town, the weather has been either bitterly cold or just around 45 degrees. Not bad unless you add in the fact that the average wind lately has been around 20mph. BRRRR! Even the dogs didn’t want to go out the one day. Maybe it was because their water bowl froze!

This week at the chamber has been busy. Meetings no one came to, City Ordinances that look like they were written by Chinese Fire Drill and people running in at the last minute to sign up for the lighting contest.

I think I am really glad to be going to Pueblo tomorrow to finish my Yule shopping! Aieeeeeeeee!!!

Lawyers and paperwork and dogs Oh My!

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Here it is Saturday, and I finally have more than a few minutes to read my email and GASP!!! , write in my journal. I have been at the D.A.’s office for a week now. Technically, I don’t have a contract any more, but that is fine by me. Don’t like to sign contracts during Mercury in Retrograde. Lee, the D.A., said I’m to come to work on Tuesday, so that is fine by me. I guess that I will work the whole week and then find out if I have the full time job.

Everyone at the office thinks that Linda, the “HR person” is daft to hire me for a couple of weeks and then let me go. Stupid to re-train a totally new person. However, no one ever said she was intelligent. I like the job. There are some daft things about it though.

I know I was thrown in at the deep end of things, but I have managed to cope with it all. I know that there are still some bits of the job I’m a tad shaky on, but not surprising all considered. I’ve learned some crazy facts about this county. They’d probably be true of any small town…

  • 75-80% of the crimes are committed by 4 or 5 families. The same names keep popping up. Sometimes the same last name, other times the same exact name. Some of these people have 6-7 files all at the same time! Some people never learn!
  • Not all lawyers are as portrayed on TV…. (duh!) One of them plays solitaire instead of working. Another needs his ‘mommy’ to dress him! Came in with an unironed shirt on! All I could think of was no wonder things screw up in court if these are the people responsible for interpreting the law! I know that there have to be good ones out there, but OMHGS! One of them is also missing a can and the plastic ringy thing to hold the sixpack together!
  • Paperwork will eat you alive! I think in a week I personally went through 4 reams of paper. I probably handled 16 or 18 reams of paper. It’s everywhere and multiplies in the dark!
  • There are NO SECRETS IN SMALL TOWNS!!! I was trying to be polite and not mention names when talking about people when the other secretary said “oh yeah, you mean…..” and then filled me in on all the other bits I hadn’t known about that particular person. Gossip, thy name is the D.A. office and dispatch center!
  • Keystone cops don’t exist just in movies! We had cops trying to pull a suspect out from under a car, and couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t move! That’s when they discovered that two different cops had two different limbs and were pulling from two different sides of the car!
  • I have a very strong stomach. My fellow office mates were worried that I would be upset by pictures of dead bodies, dead animals or sexual case photos. I had to assure them that they don’t bother me. (which is true) I also learned that neither of them can cope with pictures of dead animals. sigh…. I guess I will be handling all the road kill pictures.

Last but not least, the person that hired me lost my application for the full time job. So, I frantically had to reassemble everything and fill out a new form for application on Wednesday during my lunch hour, because the Assistant D.A. was holding interviews that afternoon. In the middle of all of this, Daniel called and wanted me to be home at 5pm on the dot to meet his girlfriend’s mom. I told him I’d try, but that I was rather busy.

I had my interview, which I think went well, and made it home in time to find Daniel and Breanna waiting for me outside with her mom. Oh, and a very SMALL puppy. Breanna was sad that Daniel lost Oscar, and wanted to give him one of the puppies that her dog had had about 7 weeks ago. This puppy is a chihuahua miniture bulldog mix. Probably weighs 2 pounds. Which is really funny, because there has been a 7 week old puppy running around the sheriff’s office all week that we have been playing with. His name is Mongo. He weighs 25 pounds, is 7 weeks old and is a mastiff great dane mix.  Mongo’s head is bigger than the other puppy.

Of course, in light of Breanna wanting to give Daniel a puppy, I didn’t have the heart to say no. So, Daniel is now the proud “parent” of a dog named Fatty. He was the fattest in the litter. (omhgs!) John fumed, but gave in.

Today, I did sleep in a bit! Huzzah! Working 8 to 5 has been a challenge, as my system was set to non-school time! However, my parents came into town on Thursday and we are cleaning the sewers for 408, 520 and 203 today. Dan and I will be stinky!! ewwwww…..

Heat, glorious HEAT!

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    Ok, I know it is only about 53 degrees outside, but it feels like a heatwave. It is 65 in my office and that is without a heater! Even the snow is melting!

It is such a nice change. Albeit a short one no doubt. We will see. Yesterday was fairly nice too. After a late start, Dan and I headed to Pueblo to do the shopping. We had to stop at Sam’s Club first and get the tires rotated and balanced. Somewhere along the way I had thrown a tire weight.  It made for very wobbly driving at certain speeds.

After Sam’s, we had dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. Yummmm! Then it was off to Petco, Staples, Target and Walmart. We would have gone to Vitamin Cottage, but they closed earlier than I expected.  As it was, we didn’t get home until nearly midnight. Long day! I didn’t finish unloading groceries until nearly 1am.   Oscar whined outside the door the whole time, because “mama” was locked in! sigh…

Once we got done, I curled up in bed.  I had to get the dogs off of it and out of the room. Of course this morning Oscar had to help me get dressed. Checked the skirt, the tights and the shoes out to make sure “mama” was ok. It was a riot of dog noses and dog hugs.

Today I have tried to get some of the paperwork caught up, but my mind wasn’t on it. Much more entertained by Youtube videos and silly emails. Ah well…

WOW!

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    What a week, and it isn’t even over yet. Sunday night I was leaving the office and had just gotten to my car when I felt like someone was looking at me. I looked over the hood of my car and straight into the eyes of a six point buck! He and his buddy, another 6 pointer, were standing on the side of my car like I was suppose to let them in! I opened my door and they just slowly walked off!

I also got a bit of knitting done Sunday night. I made a kitty pie. This is a knitted and felted cat bed that is pie shaped. Very cool, and it is up on my Ravelry account in the projects section.

Monday morning it was so icy and foggy that I could barely see 100 yards ahead of me on the way to school with the kids. Good thing I was going slow, as there were 3 elk cows in the middle of the highway! Gads! They were each bigger than my car!  Tuesday morning was also icy, but there was only one elk by the side of the road. This afternoon there was a deer on the road by the house that I had to wait for. She crossed and then I headed off to get the kids.

We also got hacked at the office this week. It sparked a story that I am writing in blog style. Don’t know where I’ll post it. Maybe here when it’s done.

I also took Daniel over with Oscar to Karen’s house. We re-introduced the two dogs, Oscar and Stormy and saw how they got along. Karen is going to train Oscar to be a better dog. Yeah!

Well, I’m off to bed to read my book! Dates from Hell!