Category: Uncategorized

Ok – no arguing over what she said first – I caught it on film! What you don’t see in the video is that Stephanie is in the room behind her and she only called out when she heard Stephanie – so

it wasn’t a fluke and she wasn’t talking to me! I’ve heard her say it several times now when she wants Stephanie – so its official, her first word was “MAMA”!

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Ok – so I enjoyed the MAC theme but like many of you guys, I like to see change every now and then.  So having just taking off all of my CSS clothes for a day I though when I put them back on, I should change ’em as well.  I think I might offer you, my avid readers, the ability to pick which OS theme you want to view the site in…

So… if you aren’t a big Vista fan, check back soon and you may find you can make the switch at the click of a mouse!

OK – now I know I’m hitting geekness with this one.  I just found out that its css naked day on April 9th.  So, in honor of css naked day – my website is naked!  That’s right what you see here is my site without a Cascading Style Sheets, which is a language used to describe how an HTML document should be formatted.  Here it is folks, naked as a jay bird…

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/strip-down-your-blog-css-naked-day/

Its cliche’ but when it rains it pours! This last week was a very difficult one for me and my family. And it seems we have some tough road

ahead of us still. A friend I met in a long line (I’ll explain in another post – so check back) once told me a story about life that I think might fit here – I’ll give you a short version:

A man once had a horse that escaped and ran away. His neighbors said to him, “We are sorry about your bad luck” – to which he replied, “Good Luck, Bad Luck, whose to say?”

A week later, his horse returned and brought with it several wild horses as well. His neighbors said to him, “Congratulations on your good fortune!” – to which he replied, “Good Luck, Bad Luck, whose to say?”

Later that month his teenage son was breaking in one of the wild horses and was thrown to the ground and broke his leg. His neighbors said to him, “We are sorry about your son’s misfortune” – to which he replied, “Good Luck, Bad Luck, whose to say?”

A week later all the towns sons were drafted for war, many of them died in battle, but the man’s son was unable to go because of his broken leg. The moral of the story is (with my Christain spin) No weapon formed against you shall prosper and that which the enemy meant for your harm will turn into blessing…

If that idea holds true, I’m in for a lot of blessing! So what happened? Well, the week started with my mortgage company sending me a form letter telling me that they cannot talk to my realitor about a pending shortsell contract because the authorization letter I sent them (containing all of the correct information) wasn’t on their letterhead! That contract could fall through because of the delays.

Then I get the letter from the IRS – yes, I’m being audited! Actually, they already did an audit and are telling me that I owe them thousands of dollars! I disagree so I have to pull up documents from two years ago to show my net worth before and after I moved to Arizonia. That should be fun.

Now the real problem – My landlord had his realitor call me to say my lease was up (I thought we had another month). She asks if we were planning to renew the lease, which we were. Then she tells me that’s not an option, because my landlord is selling the house. I only have two options, go month to month while its on the market, allowing strangers to walk through my home any given day; Or get out in 30 days.

Remember the paragraph above regarding a ‘short sell’? Yeah, we lost our tenant several months ago in Ohio and we haven’t made a mortgage payment since – so my credit score is in the basement, and now I’m going to have to explain that to total strangers for the next month or two while we apply for a place to live.

Well, since its raining, I might was well start singing (I’m not implying that I have any ability to sing well, just that I am able to sing albeit poorly). I’m not one to believe in luck, as I see it, ‘the steps of a righteous man are ordered of the LORD’ so forgive the quote when I say, “Good Luck, Bad Luck, whose to say?”

P.S. If you want to help – click the green sign up now button in the right hand panel (top of page) and get yourself $25 signing up for Revolution Money Exchange – I get $10 when you do and you really do get $25 – which if you really want to help you can always send to me as well -LOL

Are you a Law and Order fan? I am. I have been a fan of the show for over a decade. The first half of the show is where the police investigate crimes, and the second half of the show is where the prosecutors convict the offenders. Do you know the 20 mins in the middle where they select the jury? No? That’s because they don’t have that in the show – and now I know why… It would bore you to tears!

I had to report to jury duty this week for the first time in my life. To be honest, I was looking forward to it. Like voting, I consider it my civic duty to serve on a jury and the fact that I have never been called until now was starting to get on my nerves. I wanted to be a part of the process – to have a role in justice. Whether that role was to release an innocent person or lock up a guilt one, I didn’t care – as long as I was part of the process.

I show up at 9:15 as requested. I walk the four blocks from the parking lot to the court house, sporting a stupid smile on my face from the excitement of serving on a jury. I take everything out of my pockets at security and still have to be ‘wanded’ because something was setting off the metal detectors. I work my way through the hallways and corridors to the jury room and check in. The kind lady working the check in counter was polite and asked me to fill in a form and wait.

And wait… and wait… and wait… Then she came over the supermarket style PA system and announced that she would be calling the first ‘panel’. Again I found myself getting excited at the idea I was going to see our judicial system at work and be a part of it at the same time. Fifty-five names later, I’m still waiting.

Then she puts on an orientation video. I couldn’t help but wonder how the first panel would know what to do without having seen this crucial information. After hearing the Arizona Officials as well as the local county officials tell me how important jury duty is and how much Arizona is working hard to make the experience move from good to great, I went back to reading my book. Later they put on a cheesy movie from the early nineties.

A couple of hours later, the second panel was called. Another fifty names, and still not me. Then we break for lunch. I walked around downtown a bit and grabbed a couple of pictures with my phone. I headed for a burger joint someone in the courthouse had suggested – two blocks away – to find that they are closed for the next few weeks. Then I find Crazy Jims. It looked nice but very busy. When I asked Jim how long the wait was, he noticed I was by myself and suggested I sit at the bar. There was one seat available at the bar with about 30 inches of space – and last time I checked, I wear 48 inch pants. I left hungry and looked for another place to eat.

I finally settled on a quaint sandwich joint and ordered a burger and fries. The food was OK, but at $15 bucks, I found it a bit pricey. I ate quickly and headed back to the court house. There were new faces of people that were instructed to show up at 1pm instead of at 9:15am as I was. At two, the next panel of names was called. I was 27th out of over 50. One of the guys just in front of me was one of the new faces that came at 1pm. Still, I’m excited to serve and don’t mind. There was a small Asian man behind me, he was about 5’3″ and couldn’t have weighted more than 130lbs. He was wearing gloves – not nice leather gloves, they looked more like cloth gardening gloves. He had been wearing them all day. They looked out of place and made him stand out.

We walk down the long corridor, around a few corners, to an elevator. We go up in groups as many as could fit in a load. Once we got up to the court rooms, we waited in the hall and were lined up numerically. You would think this would have been a simple process… It wasn’t. One older heavy set woman decided to sit in one of the few chairs available in the hall and declared that because she was number 35, thats where 35 goes. If you were less than number 35, get to her right. If you were higher, get to her left. The fact that only about 20 people could fit to her right was irrelevant to her.

After standing awkwardly with 34 people in a space for only 20 people for about 30 mins, the bailiff steps into the hall and informs us that there is good news and bad news. The bad news: we have to walk all the way back to the jury waiting room. The good news: we don’t have to serve and are being sent home. WHAT? I just spent all day sitting in a room watching bad movies with strangers in uncomfortable seating for nothing? Then we are told that our being there, ready to serve is part of the process and that we have helped despite not actually serving on a jury. I’m not buying it. Besides, I was really hoping to meet D.A. Jack McCoy!

Ok, it started a couple of years ago with MySpace – which wasn’t too bad. In fact, it was kind of cool that shortly after I signed up, I was getting emails from high school friends I hadn’t talked to in a while. But recently I am overwhelmed with the number of new social networking sites available .

LinkedIn popped up as a work related networking site where I can recommend my co-workers as well as get recommendations. I liked that, since it allowed me to keep up with old colleagues – where they work now, what skill sets they have developed since I worked with them, etc. I didn’t mind having to keep up with two networking sites, since they served different purposes – one was social, the other career minded.

Then came facebook. I ignored it for months and months, but finally succumbed to the peer-pressure. Now I get emails regarding Oregon Trail and someone wrote on your ‘funwall’. I didn’t even realize I had a funwall. Then Plaxo’s Pulse joined the mix. In my Pulse site, I was able to tell it about my facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace sites. Wow – kind of like a one stop shop for all my social networking sites, only now my inbox is flooded with sites I can’t go to from work – and you guys are just networking away everyday adding pictures to each of your pages, updating your emails, contact information, which schools you went to – each of which trigger an email to my inbox that doesn’t tell me what you updated, just that you updated. I have to actually log into the respective site to see your updates – and again, I can’t do that from work because I get the big “YOU CAN’T GO THERE FROM WORK AND WE HAVE REPORTED YOU TO YOUR BOSS, OUR BOSS, THE CEO, THE NETWORK NAZIS AND THE MOB” error message!

If I get fired for checking out MySpace – I gonna hit you guys up to stay your YourSpace since I won’t be able to afford mine any more… watch for that update on facebook! I gotta go, I just got an email from LinkedIN…

Hey – just wanted to let the blog-o-sphere know that I’m still here, just have a lot of things going on. I started school, I’m getting settled into my new position at work, and I tried out for a TV show (you guessed it – The Biggest Loser). For the last couple of days, my kids have been sick, and now I am. I missed a day and a half of work because if it, so now I’m behind at work. The TV Show is a long long LONG shoot, but if I were to make the show, I would have to work it out with my job and finish this semester’s classes in the next month instead of having the next four months, so… I’m behind on my school work as well.

I’m sure I will take time soon to blog about the wonderful people I met while waiting almost eight hours in line last Saturday for the audition. And I hope to blog about my new school life soon as well. In the mean time – click around in the tag cloud and checkout some of my old posts that you never got around to reading!!!

Hey – another website update! I’ve added a “Tag Cloud” to the About Us page and in the sidebar on the right.

What’s a Tag Cloud?

Its a cool way to navigate my posts based on categories and keywords. You’ll see a bunch of links to keywords and categories that vary in size and color based on how many posts match that keyword or category.  You have likely seen one before on other websites, but just didn’t know what it was called. I’m still working on some of my ‘tags’ so its an evolving cloud – and as I add new posts, it will continue to update. Regardless, you can always get the latest just by coming to the home page.

Still aren’t sure what it is? Check it out, let me know what you think…

Fisher-Price has released a Knows-Your-Name Elmo (http://www.fisher-price.com) that can, among other things, say your child’s name. I don’t keep up with these things, but I learned about the new doll from this disturbing news report – wait, before you watch it, I want you to know that it was disturbing to me for a much different reason that you might think.

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Some people might be disturbed by the ‘offending’ elmo comment, but it seems very obvious to me that this mother is looking to hit the lawsuit lottery. She says that she was upset to hear her son repeating the phrase, but plays it several times while the child is in the room. She said it was her son’s favorite toy – so much so that her son was “climbing up the counter, up the closets to get it”, but the entire time they film the news report James is ignoring his ‘favorite’ toy while his mother plays with it to show it to the news cameras.

Did she try re-program it? Did she take it back to the store for an exchange? Did she take the batteries out so her son could play with his favorite toy without hearing the offending phrase? The answer is, No, No, and can-I-get-a-lawyer-NO! She said she called Fisher-Price and they “didn’t even sound concerned”, as a parent I wouldn’t have been concerned about it either – I would have simply offered an exchange or sent her to tech support to walk her through re-programing it. But if I were a Fisher-Price Lawyer, I might be preparing my case, since this chick is sue-happy drunk with the lawsuit-lotto mentality!