"Life's Just a Cocktail Party on the Street.."

*YAWN*

Well, the baby shower on Saturday was a huge success. Wheeeee! And the mother-to-be LOVED the time capsule idea. People brought some pretty fun stuff to stick in there. I was wishing someone had done something like that for me when I was a baby so I'd have something cool to open up and go through years later. Neat.

I made my first batch of home-made hummus over the weekend and MAN was it good!! It's SO MUCH CHEAPER to make it yourself than it is to buy it already prepared. Athenos makes some tasty hummus varieties, most certainly, but $2.99 for 8 oz of hummus? Funk dat chit! For the same amount of money I whipped up 6x that amount in less than ten minutes. Hell yeah! I'm making another batch tonight... this time I'm gonna add in some roasted red pepper along with the garlic I love so dearly. ;) Nummy!

Work is pretty busy today, but that's making time seem to go by faster so I'm all about that. We have some registration deadlines coming up (this Friday and again on Dec 5th) that will require a lot of data entry from me and payment processing and follow-up, etc., so things are really going to start picking up here. I have mixed feelings about that! LOL It's good to be busy enough that the days go by faster, but bad that I won't have as much time to be getting paid while i'm screwing around doing a bunch of personal shit online. haha!

Looking forward to meeting for the first time when she flies down this Wednesday. I've known her online for over a year now from playing EverQuest together and we have so much in common and have done so much talking over the past year that I feel like I've *already* met her! Should be both interesting and fun, I'm sure, and I'm really looking forward to getting to hang out in person. Wheeeeeeeee!

Because Nolan and I switch off years on who gets Jory at Christmas (and this year Jory will be with Nolan), my family will be having our "Christmas" together early. The weekend of Dec. 13-14th, to be exact. ACK! That means I have almost two weeks LESS to get my shopping done... but it also means that I'll be all done and kicking back when most of the rest of the Christmas-celebrating world are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, karate chopping people over that last spongebob doll on the shelf and all that.

I'm stuck, though, for gift ideas for some of the people on my shopping list. Ugh! And it's always the same people I get stuck on year after year! What's up with that?! I need some good "guy" gift suggestions... like for my brother-in-law and my dad. Anybody have any good gift and novelty-type websites bookmarked that you'd be willing to share with me? Good funny tshirt sites? Just... you know... COOL sites that sell... *stuff*? LOL Yes, I'm begging for ideas. hehe

Okay... enough dawdling on the ole LJ. Back to work! *mental crack of the whip*

Ahhhhhhh! Where'd my weekend go? Seems like it was just Friday and then... I blinked... and I'm back at work again. WTF? ;)

First I must report that I'm a shitty Gator fan for totally writing them off against LSU. They actually (to my pleasant surprise) pulled off a win this weekend. They looked like a completely different team from the one that played last week. Talk about inconsistency!

Saturday night I stayed up so late playing Everquest with Carl, Nolan, Leanne and Danny that I was nodding off at the freakin' keyboard! Good god!

Sunday, Mike and I drove to meet my sister and her husband halfway between our towns so we could have a couple of drinks and shoot the shit. It was a nice visit. I <3 my sister and just don't get to see her often enough. Three hours is TOO FAR!

Carl and I have really been burning up the wires sending music back and forth to each other recently. I've been having a lot of fun with that. We cue up the same mix in winamp and listen to it together, making comments here and there as we are each doing other stuff on the computer. It all started with Nolan's last set broadcast on pulseradio.net (which, by the way... he's spinning again this coming Saturday on pulseradio. Sometime between 5 and 8pm. Not sure who else is spinning with him or who will go first.) I'm sure Carl, Leanne and I will be tuning in again! Maybe David too!

Speaking of David... He rocks!! I looooooooooooooooooooooove making new friends. Thank you Carl for introducing us!! :)

On a really concerned note... I'm worried about Keith. :/ He's going through some very difficult times right now with his family and he and I have hardly spoken at all this past week. I hate not being able to "be there". It really sucks. Hopefully now that Mark's back in Mississippi he's taking good care of him. Keith really needs a good friend and some serious distractions right about now. Keith... if you read this... *greatbigbearhugs!* I miss you so much.

As part of a teacher workshop my office hosted yesterday, I got a chance to visit Shands Hospital's Hyperbaric Chamber. Those things aren't just for treating scuba divers with "the bends"! I had no idea!

From the Shands website:

The painless therapy often is used to treat burns, carbon monoxide poisoning, slow-healing wounds or the diving-related decompression illness known as "the bends." Gas gangrene and other tissue-destroying infections also are among the conditions helped by hyperbaric treatment.

The nurse speaking to our group talked about "dives" they do to treat air/gas embolisms and how the "depth" they go to causes a nitrogen narcosis equal to the consumption of 6 martinis, so they call these "6 Martini Dives". LOL. The patient wears a mask with 50% oxygen, but the attended does not, so the attendant inside the chamber with them is actually more 'narc'd' than the patient! It's a good thing there's 3 nurses running the show and the attendant inside makes none of the decisions once the treatment begins!

Most importantly, however... where do I sign up? And can I forego the oxygen mask, please?

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Well, it's FRIDAY! Wheeeeeeee!

And thank god for that! If Carl and David keep me up any later on a weeknight before work the next morning, I'm going to perish fitfully. I NEED SLEEP!

The weekend: Watch the Gator game on Saturday (it's LSU... the Gators are gonna lose :(), go hang out with Nolan and Jory, meet my sister and her husband for dinner on Sunday. Lots of Evercrack!