Bette, you were brave to go out shopping on Friday! I avoid it completely, it scares me. Congratulations on quitting smoking! That is really hard, and it's great that you were able to stay quit even after spending time with your mother-in-law. It's hard to be around other smokers so soon after quitting.
GH, glad to hear your daughter is doing well, and that you were able to have family over for thanksgiving. Also glad to hear that work is a little better (it sounds like it is), but sorry to hear about the intolerance you still fear. That does suck. I'm also glad to hear that your daughter can share about her African heritage. That's always a good thing. I wish I could share about my African heritage.
Was your Thanksgiving good MzD? I hope so.
Same with Kata, WD, WM, Reno, Hemight, and everyone else. Hope you all are doing ok!
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My weekend--actually my whole month--has been a blur.
OK, here comes a bunch of blah blah blah, sorry, and thanks if you actually last to the end. I've been saving it up. ;D
My car busted an exhaust manifold, and on Black Friday I had to take it to the evil ones at Earnhardt Ford.
It wasn't too horrible, basically my "service advisor"** was nice to me because I was ultra nice to him, but he still did the bare minimum, didn't listen to me, and acted like he was doing me a huge favor on everything.... sigh.
Thanksgiving was good. I was worried about my car the whole time, but it was fine. The food was fine, not too much stress, we went to see Stranger Than Fiction. It was a good movie. I love Emma Thompson, she's hilarious. I've also been to see Flushed Away, and Casino Royale this weekend, with various groups of people. Those were also good, but I think I don't need to see any more movies for awhile.
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I sold the last puppy, but I'm holding him for 2 weeks, and will be a "Santa's helper" when the little boy who is getting him comes to pick him up. That will be fun, because I get a little insane around Christmas. Out come the crafts, the Santa hats, way too many decorations for my little house. Plus, my daughter has a little puppy to hold for a bit longer.
I've had some craazy weird interactions with people this time, with the puppies. I had a coworker suggest that he'd like to "rent" one for a couple of weeks. Yes, I do believe he was serious, and I might have hurt his feelings when I laughed like I thought he was joking (we couldn't see each other, we were talking over the cube walls) and said I had to go (I did). He hasn't talked to me since. But, what could I do, tell him it was a bad idea for so many reasons? (Exposure to disease, injury, etc for the puppy. If someone wants to have a puppy, they need to commit to its care permanently, because the risks are just too great otherwise.....)
I had another person call me via relay (meaning I wasn't talking to him/her, exactly), and then email me with a Nigerian Banking scam-like deal, where he/she wanted to send me an overdrawn money order and then have me give his/her "agent" the extra money to ship a puppy to London... or something. I told him/her I'd like more information/didn't feel comfortable, just so I could pass whatever on to whoever deals with these scams, but never heard from him/her again. Yikes.
Then I had this insanely picky woman who wanted all kinds of extra guarantees on the puppy, insinuated at every chance she got that I was trying to scam her or something (nasty b!tch), and wanted all kinds of extra information on me (it wasn't enough that she was in my own home when she was asking these things... like having all my phone numbers is going to insure that I'm not going to pack up and leave in the middle of the night or something).
On top of that, the usual assortment of people I'd just rather not have knowing where I live, and sometimes it's not easy to tell on first contact..... I had forgotten about all these things. This is the main pain (besides the poop) of raising puppies--PEOPLE.
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Work's been ok. We're in our new offices and everything. The IT people here are amazing--the computing environment is basically unchanged. HR doesn't exactly have their sh!t together, and that's frustrating, but at least we're able to do our work without too many hassles.
More later... I promise I'm going to start checking in more frequently. This has been an INSANE month.
--T
**Service Advisor: Walking testosterone factory who makes it obvious by opening his mouth that he doesn't know sh!t about technical details of cars, and assumes that I am also clueless 'cause I'm just a girl.
If nothing else, the school cannot be accused of type-casting... 
