eee!

It seems that every day I hear of more and more people getting H1N1. Now it's the son of the guy who sits across from me at work. I swear to God, if Joe passed H1N1 from his son to me and I spend my entire vacation with the flu, I will kill him. And I wasn't even concerned about H1N1 until I realized that I'll be stuck on a boat with a bunch of people from all over the country (and the world, possibly), and I have no guarantees that they're not carriers for H1N1, and those ships can be breeding grounds for illnesses. Remember the Norwalk virus outbreak? OMG, I'm going to be paranoid about eating at the buffet. (As if I'm not already paranoid about buffets as it is. You never know what people are doing to the food! I mean, it's one thing to worry about what's being done to your food in the kitchen, but at a buffet ANYONE can touch your food. It's creepy.) Anyway, I will be buying lots of hand sanitizer tonight at Target. That, and Dramamine, which I forgot to buy when I was at Target last night. D'oh.

In other news, I packed for the Scientist last night while he was at work. Hopefully I didn't forget anything he needs. Tonight's just about packing essentials, and then we're ready to go. Plus, I already got our boarding passes for the flight, and we're in the A group. Woo-hoo! For any of you who've flown Southwest, you know how awesome that is. The A group made my morning.

I am being a rebel and drinking coffee at my desk.

There are still compliments coming in about my new hair. Rock on.

I don't have an appropriate fall/Halloween icon (I know, right?), so I'm using Marcus from Terminator Salvation, with his face all messed up. It's not a zombie, people, you should know how much I hate zombies. Now, robot men with their skin all melted off, I'm fine with that.

Anyway, I'm thinking about Halloween because yesterday I got two party invitations (thank you both!) and I can't go to either party. That's when I'll be on vacation with the entire clan of in-laws, and I'll be spending Halloween on a (motherfucking) boat. No one could actually answer the question of whether or not there will be Halloween activities on said cruise, and if we should have costumes. But I just got an e-mail from the cruise line saying that it's on, so now I need a costume. Mind you, I need a costume that a) won't be overly complicated, b) can fit into a suitcase and travel well, as well as not take up much space, c) is cheap, and d) won't be too heavy to wear in the Caribbean. The Scientist recently mentioned that once he went to a party dressed entirely in stuff he "borrowed" from the lab he was working in, including scrubs and a lab coat, and everyone loved it. So I looked around online and there are some places where you can order scrubs for less than $30 for both him and me (without shipping, of course). There's also a place one town over that sells them and isn't a wholesaler, so if all else maybe I could check out what they have and figure out what size works for me. I hate ordering online when I don't know if the sizing will work, especially when we're under a time crunch. But I figure doing as a doctor and nurse would work, considering the scrubs can double as pajamas after the fact. Is this a good plan? Y/N?

What else? This week at work has been ridiculously stressful, so I'm glad it's almost over. And moreso, I'm glad that I'll be going to see my sister and her family this weekend. Yay! yakgirl has been holding Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus on her DVR specifically for this visit. It should be good times.

It is rainy and gray and poopy outside. The drive home tonight is going to suck. I don't actually mind this weather, though, as long as it doesn't impede my flight getting off the ground tomorrow morning.

Speaking of mornings, this morning when I was in the shower, the Scientist got up and made biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Mmmm! That was a great way to start my day.

I know there was more I wanted to talk about... Tonight is Stargate Universe. I watched it last week with the Scientist and was unimpressed. I'm calling it Lost in Battlestargate, as it's Lost in Space meets Battlestar Galactica meets Stargate. Frankly, I don't have much interest in watching it again. I'm actually pretty burned out on TV. Lately nothing has impressed me. Even my beloved Project Runway just isn't doing it for me, as you can probably tell from my lack of PR updates. Maybe it's the temporary judges being meaner than usual during judging, maybe it's that all of the designers with actual personalities are already gone (I miss you, Ra'Mon-Lawrence!), maybe it's just that we've waited so long for this season that the bloom is off the rose... I dunno. All I know is, there's very little TV that keeps me entertained these days. I guess I'll have to go back to reading books. GASP!

Anyway, it's that time. Thanks for listening to me ramble. Have a good weekend, everyone!

I just checked the forecast for our vacation next week. Thursday - Tuesday, temperatures range from 99° to 101°, with 0% chance of precipitation. Woo! I am currently trying to pack, though I can't find my black capris. This is no good, as most of my planned outfits for my vacation revolve around these pants. Hrm. I've checked my closet three times, the laundry room twice, the Scientist's closet twice (just in case), and still nothing. I'm going to try to trunk at the foot of our bed, and then dig through my dresser once more. If that doesn't work, who knows.

I am so excited about getting back out to the desert. I burn like crazy when I'm in the sun, yet I love the desert heat. Go figure. Thank God I have my SPF 85 sunscreen. ...Somewhere...

Last night the Scientist mentioned to me that perhaps we should start saving up for a vacation. He knows I've been wanting to go back to Palm Springs, and I've been dying to take him with me. I used to go once a year, but I haven't been back since my trip in 2006 with fava_bean. Most of all I really want to go out to see my uncles again. I've seen Uncle Joe many times since my last trip out there, but I've only seen Uncle Richard twice at most. He obviously came out here for our wedding, as he was a reader during the ceremony, but it's not like I had a lot of time to spend with either uncle that weekend.

Anyway, so since the Scientist mentioned it yesterday, it seemed rather fortuitous that I should get an e-mail from Southwest Airlines this morning stating that flights to Southern California are on sale. I did some quick fiddling with the website and discovered that the Scientist and I could fly to Ontario (about an hour north of Palm Springs) for $530 round trip over Memorial Day weekend. BOTH of us. And since it's a holiday weekend, we get four days of vacation but only have to take three days off work. Boo-yah!

I sent an e-mail to the Scientist, and he was all on board for it. Theoretically we should be getting a sizable chunk back from our tax return, and that should help us pay back his parents and fund this trip. So I called my uncles and talked to Uncle Richard (Uncle Joe has jury duty), and he was totally up for having us come visit. Which means that I just booked our trip to Palm Springs.

PALM SPRINGS!!! It's just about my favorite place ever! Seriously, I love it out there. And I'll get to see my uncles, and show the Scientist the desert, and can I just say YAY!!!

Okay, so I owe y'all some stories about our honeymoon. If you want to read all about it, ( click here. )

I haven't updated in a few days. Let's see what's been going on in the World of eep...

I had a good long talk with my sister yesterday. Well, yakgirl did most of the talking, and I did the listening. (Hey, I was at work.) Even though she may live far away, it's great to know she's there to give wise, older-sisterly advice. And she's gone through a lot of what's proverbially nipping at my ankles right now, so having her perspective and her sharing her past experiences lifted a big weight off me. Thank you, yakgirl.

The Scientist picked up Enchanted for me on Tuesday night. Circuit City had it on sale for $12.99, so there you are. I haven't watched it yet, though.

I'm taking tomorrow off from work. I have to use up my sick time before the layoff hits, so I'm taking off on Fridays. Seeing as how tomorrow's Good Friday and I'm not at work, I was thinking of hitting up the nearest Episcopal church for service. Except they only have service at 7:30 in the evening, so I may go do the Stations of the Cross at the Scientist's church at 3:00 that afternoon. Who knows. I don't know if we're doing Easter mass with his family on Sunday. I'll have to talk with him and find out.

Blah blah, I'm rambling...

We got our official info from the cruise the other day. We have flight info, all sorts of stuff. It's fun looking at all of it.

Today at work we're supposed to go to Elephant & Castle for lunch. I am looking forward to it. I think I'll either have Yorkshire pudding or fish & chips. Maybe I'll be a bad kid and get a black & tan. Ooooooh, drinking at lunch! ;)

It's currently a beautiful, sunny day here in Chicagoland. Unfortuantely, there's a winter storm advisory for tonight. WTF, March? I'm DONE with this crap weather. Seriously.

...Man, I know there was something else I was going to write about, but I just have no idea what it is. I guess that's a sign to wrap this up.

I'm out at yakgirl's place right now. Today she is at work, her husband is at work, and Evan is at daycare. That means that I'm at home with Nathan, the baby. Alone. And I'm doing just fine with him. After everyone left, I played with him, gave him a bottle, changed his poopy diaper (it's my first time changing a poopy diaper!), rocked him, and put him to sleep. I am actually taking care of a baby, and I'm doing it well. ...So far. But I'm all proud of me. It helps that Nathan's a really good, laid-back kind of baby, too.

So I'm having a nice time with my sister and her family. Yesterday their friends came down to have Easter dinner with us, and the food and company was all very nice. Rhode Island is still weird, though. All the roads are so twisty! What's up with that, Rhode Island? Huh?

I'm kind of bored right now. Can you tell?

I posted pictures from my Disney trip here in case you're interested. Please note that this only covers days 1-3 of the trip, as I had camera woes. But they're there if you want to see 'em.

I'll have to update the gallery more later to cover days 4 & 5, including engagement photos (sent to us by a complete stranger, hooray!).

So this morning I woke up, checked CLTV (the all-Chicago, all the time station) and found that all United flights were canceled out of O'Hare. Then I checked online and saw that flights were still on. So I called O'Hare, called United, and after talking to a customer service rep in India, we're booked on the 10:20 flight this morning. \o/ Seriously, this makes me so happy. Even if the flight is canceled or delayed, just getting on a flight 4 hours past our scheduled departure rather than 36 hours is in itself a victory. We have a printout of the confirmed seats, and we've already checked in online. Let's just hope the flight gets off the ground.

Please keep your fingers crossed for us.