Dot-Bomb!

So, I joined this company 2 months ago and left my good job because there were rumors of layoffs (I was going to be one of them). This company is a new company, it's internet based and all self-funded with few investors... I probably should have known better, but it seemed like a great opportunity to get my foot in the door doing something other than mortgages. Its a great concept, but unfortunately, this company does not have the financial backing they need and therefore should not have hired on so many employees so soon.... Now they're claiming financial hardship and will not be able to pay us on our regularly scheduled pay days and are not sure of when they'll be able to do so within the next 90 days.... Last Friday, I finally got a paycheck for the first time in 3 weeks. And, as of today, I'm owed another paycheck as well as one for the end of this pay-period, which ends today... Meaning that on the 7th of April, I will be owed an entire month's worth of salary. No idea if I'll be getting it or not. Apparantly I work for free now days.....

I got a memo in my email this morning going over the office meeting we had last week and it explains that there are several options available to us. In lieu of our salary, we can 1.) purchase stock options equivalent to one months' salary 2.) invest in the company for .50 per share or 3.) if we stick it out the 90 days we'll be compensated for 1.5 months worth of salary in stock options... Anyone seeing a pattern here? There's no money involved - just paper stock options that mean nothing if the company dot-bombs.... And that doesn't pay my bills.

I didn't know what else to do, so I called D and explained it all to him.... He wanted me to pack up and walk out, but I do have a heart and felt guilty doing so, which means that I didn't (yea, I'm still sitting here.... Why am I such a nice person?!) After talking to him, I called an old friend that I had previously worked with and explained my situation... Would you believe that by the time I got back from lunch this afternoon, I have 3 opportunities to possibly choose from! My friend informed me of 2 possible positions within her sphere - one of which I'm seriously interested in but won't know about until next week sometime. And, D talked to his boss, who has some ties to the mortgage industry as well, and I'll be e-mailing my resume over to a friend of his tonight. He has promised to take a look at it and possibly share my situation wtih a few of his acquaintances as well....

So, we'll see what happens... I really would like to pack up and walk out being that I haven't been paid in ages, and have no idea when to expect my next paycheck.... But I'm just too nice of a person.... Which totally frustrates me because I can be a total bitch to someone that I love so dearly, but with a stranger, I'm sweet as pie and let them walk all over me.... I hate it.

Needless to say, my life has been turned completely upside down, backwards, and thrown for a huge loop so far this year. Honestly, what else can go wrong?! **knocking on wood** I just want my old life back....

Hearts

I think this is the design I'll be going with for my hearts.... If you don't know what I'm talking about - I've been on the look out for two interlocking hearts to have them tattooed on my pelvis... I've scoured the internet, posted on message boards, asked for help from some friends.... and this is the design that D came up with and I love it. And I like the significance of D having designed it... it has more meaning behind it.

I'm not one of those people that can just tattoo any cool random design on her body.... It has to be something that's filled with meaning. All of mine have a special purpose... The sun on my shoulder represents me. Growing up, I've always been the sun and my mom the moon. So, as my first tattoo, I got a sun on my shoulder. I've yet to do the crescent moon on my opposite shoulder to represent my mom. And down the road, I'll have a celestial design drawn up that will go from one shoulder to the other, pulling the two together..... The flower on my foot is a hibiscus with a cross in the center. It represents my Christian walk, as flawed as it is.... And the stargazers on my back.... They're my favorite flower and I came across a design that I absolutely fell in love with... I had always wanted a back piece - I think they're so sexy on girls - and when I saw this design, I just had to have it.

Okay... I got off on a tangent.... So, here are the hearts.... I need to have my artist make a little modification to them, but the overall design is what I'm going for. I'm going to flip the hearts so that they're facing eachother, rather than opposite directions and I'll be removing the black outline.... All you will see is the red outlined hearts with the blue ribbon woven behind them. What do you think?

Art Journal

Thank you Jaime for getting this going! I'm loving it already! I decided to go with a smaller journal, it measures 8x6 and it has thicker/heavier pages, which will be perfect for painting and inking.... I want to get a bit wild and crazy with this - I want it to be completely different than anything I've done before, something so out of my ordinary style.... Some pages may have pictures and some may just have journaling or doodles.... There's no requirement for this - just to let loose and enjoy it.

I don't know that I'll be posting all the pages here. Some might be too personal to share. But what I do feel comfortable with sharing, I will. This is going to be a journal that I can use to get my thoughts and feelings down.... A place where I can just let it all go and hold nothing back.

So here goes.... Here's my cover page, dedication page, and the first page I've done... I've got a couple more pages in mind, but I'd like to get a picture for them before I start... So be sure to check back often for updates!

Is it July yet?!

Seriously... I'll probably be asking that question every day until July 1st! Friday night was pretty typical... Hung out with Jodi and Derek on Yahoo and we got to chatting about how awesome it would be if we could meet... We had talked about it before - meeting in Vegas, then maybe meeting up in PA (where they live) but something always seemed to get in the way - flight costs, me not having time available to take off.... Turns out that Jodi's office closes down for the entire week of July 4th... And they priced tickets - for them to come out from July 1st to the 9th was only like $700. And, I've decided to just take the time unpaid from work for that week.... I've got a couple months to save up, so I should be fine. They booked the tickets and now we're all so antsy to actually meet! So fun! We've got tons of stuff we want to do and just can't wait!!

Had a great time at Lindi's bbq on Saturday... She rented a bounce house for the kids and we got in and jumped for a bit... I'm so out of shape! After 5 minutes I could hardly breathe! Oh, and I got my first ever speeding ticket on the way up! (not saying that I'm proud of it or anything, lol!) I was doing 74 in a 55 on a 2 lane highway.... Everyone else was going that fast, I was just the lucky one to get caught. The not so good thing is that I had taken my insurance card out of the car when I got into that little fender bender in December and never put it back... I showed the officer my old card and explained the situation - he cited me for not having insurance, but just informed me that it'll be waived if I can prove evidence of insurance to the courts when I pay my ticket.... I'm just hoping I don't have to drive all the way to Victorville to go to court - that would not be so hot.

Other than that, it was a good weekend.... It's Monday again and I'm at work chilling.... both bosses are out of town today and tomorrow and have left nothing for me to do.... Boring!

Guess what today is?!

I think it's going to become my Friday tradition to have just a completely random post.... How does that sound? Okay, good!

Here's a joke that I got in an email from a girlfriend.... It cracked me up!!

The World's Shortest Fairy Tale ...

Once upon a time, a girl asked a guy, "Will you marry me?" The guy said "No" and the girl lived happily ever after and went shopping, drank martinis, always had a clean house, never had to cook, stayed skinny, and farted whenever she wanted.

The End.

Now if only I can get the clean house and staying skinny part to be true ;o)

I posted the other day that I wanted to add some pictures to my blog and I'm a lazy bum and never got around to it.... So sorry! But here are a couple that I snapped today... The first is of Lady and the second is of Smokey.... I normally can't get descent pictures of either of them.... Guess I got lucky today!



Let's see, what else..... Oh, I got another page done this week.... I'll have it uploaded to SJ later this evening and you should be able to see it on my sidebar....

Had a half day at work today, which is totally awesome... We were in the middle of a little pow-wow and the power went out. Turns out the electricity on the entire block was out.... So I went and met a girlfriend for lunch and swung back by the office to find that power was still out, so I got to go home... Yay for me!!

I came home and vacuumed, did 2 loads of laundry, dishes and dusted my room (well, kinda).... Now I'm Jazzing and Blogging.... Waiting for Jodi to get home so we can scrap and chat... That's our nightly thing.... I love having a cam cuz we just sit and chat and scrap together (most nights we talk about scrapping instead of actually doing it, lol!). But it's cool to hang with her (and sometimes her boyfriend Derek).... Then D will usually pop on Yahoo and we chat a bit... For some reason the cam always freezes up and gets all wierd with him, so we don't get to use it much together. No biggie.

Tomorrow morning I'm driving up to Victorville to Lindi's house for a BBQ that they're throwing as their Open House. Looking forward to seeing her munchkins. Which reminds me... I should go watch Napoleon Dynamite before Matt freaks that I still haven't watched it.... :o) When I get home, D's gonna be here and hang with me for the weekend. Nothing big planned.... Hopefully we'll get to go out to dinner at Claim Jumpers - been craving their calamari!!! But it's probably going to be a pretty relaxed weekend.... I've got a couple little things I want to do but nothing spectacular.

So that's it for me.... You all have an awesome weekend! See ya on Monday!

I love Panera!

Met up with D for dinner last night... it was a last minute thing. We met at Panera and I had a delicious bread bowl with potato soup, yum!! Although half way through, I got a really wierd nauseous feeling and my stomach's been upset since.... lame! But it was still good, lol!

The bad thing about blogging during the day is that I'm at work and don't have any pictures.... I want to post some new pictures for you all.... I'll have to remember to jump on here for a bit tonight and just post some photos....

That's it for me... another quickie. I'm sure I'll be back ;o)

Another Week

I feel like I live for the weekends, even when there's nothing special going on... The weeks just drag on and then the weekend flies by before I even get a chance to enjoy it.... Am I the only one that feels this way? Am I the only one that feels that time goes faster and faster each year as I get older? What is going on here?! It's insane....

I got out of work early on Friday and managed to go home and take a nice little cat nap... Cleaned the house a bit, ordered a pizza, had some wine and watched Fever Pitch. I'm notorious for buying movies and never getting around to watching them, so I'm trying to catch up a bit on my movies....

Saturday I slept in, cleaned a little more and then went out and had some retail therapy ;o) It's been a while since I've bought any new clothes and what I have now is getting pretty tight... I bought 3 new pairs of jeans, a couple cute little t-shirts, a denim skirt and cute little haulter top... Now if the weather would just warm up so I can wear it! I was supposed to have a friend over Saturday night but never heard from her, so I sat home and watched another movie (can't remember which one though).

Sunday I went and hung out with a girlfriend and we went to lunch and shopped a bit... Found a cute little mail organizer thing to put in the kitchen for 15.00 - such a good deal! It was nice to meet up with her and just sit and chat.... We haven't had any time together, just the 2 of us in months!

And here it is Monday again, and all I can think about is next weekend.... I've got a BBQ to go to and am really looking forward to hanging out with my dear friend Lindi and her munchkins.... Then D's coming over and hanging out with me for the rest of the weekend.... Looking forward to it!

Finally

I finally got inspired enough to put a layout together and I love how it turned out.... I've been bored out of my mind the last week and seriously wanting to scrap but everytime I'd sit down at my table, I'd draw a blank. Well, last night, I decided enough was enough! I pulled out my stack of pictures (like 500 of them!) and just started going through them, waiting for something to jump out at me..... I found 3 pictures of Jake that I adore, and broke out my new Elsie stamps (thanks Jaime!) and some ribbon that I got from Jennifer H as my Secret Cupid.... And whala!

**Okay, blogger's being a PITA and won't let me upload, WHAA!!! ** Anyways, the layout's over on my side bar - the one that says 'Untitled'.....

Happy Sunday y'all.... I'm off to finish some laundry and get my disaster of a house straightened up. ;o)

Music Suggestions?

I'm loving music right now... Anything and everything! And I've got a 60gig iPod to fill.... and I've only filled 10 so far.... So give me some suggestions -

*what are you loving right this minute?
*what's something that you hear out of the blue and go "I love this one!"
*what's the last CD you've bought?
*what's one CD you've had forever and just can't get rid of?

I'm open to any and all suggestions!

Friday, where are you?!?!?!

Could this week go by any slower?! My goodness!! It's Thursday, and SJ is down again... now what am I gonna do? I'm sitting at work with nothing to do (what's new?!) and now, my only vice - SJ - is down!! **insert crying smiley here**

Loving my Tazo tea and slice of banana loaf from SB this morning.... Sometimes I'm too easy to please ;o) I'm in serious need of a vacation... I need to get away and go have some fun, or go on a retreat somewhere.... Anyone want to donate some money to me?! LOL! Seriously though, I really want to take tomorrow (Friday) off so I can just chill and relax... I've always got so much going on over the weekends, with errands, housework and hanging out with my friends, that I just don't have time to rest..... and I'm in serious need of some R-E-S-T!! This insomnia's getting to me.... I don't know how much longer I can take this... Anyone have a good excuse I can use on my boss?!

I'm waiting for my medical coverage to kick in here at the new job (May, cross your fingers!) and then I'm going to start seeing a therapist.... I think it'll be good for me. I think I need to have an outsider to talk to - not friends, not family (not that you guys aren't awesome, but I need someone that I can just dump on without feeling guilty, kwim?).... Hopefully that'll help and I'll be able to make some progress finally...

Feeling a bit bummed for my girl Jaime... She entered the Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fame contest and the big calls went out yesterday... Unfortunately she didn't get the call from Lisa.... I know that CP and I were pm'ing back and forth yesterday on SJ - 'did she make it?' 'have you heard from her?' kinda thing.... So CP called Jaime to see if she'd heard anything, which she hadn't.... But when talking to me and reflecting back, she felt bad bc she called and Mac had answered and she just asked for Jaime.... so they both probably thought it was Lisa - oops! It's funny now, but she felt bad at the time... I would too.... (oh, and if none of that made any sense to you, I appologize - you have to be a sb'er to understand.... ;o))

Alright, that's it for now... Have a wonderful Thursday y'all!

Loving you all....

If there is someone on your friends list (or blogroll) who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

**thanks for posting this on your blog Jolene!**

A Quickie

Just a quick post and run.... Played with some photos tonight, loving lots of things right now... these borders, my camera and new lens, and my best subject - Jake. He seems to be the only one willing to ham it up for the camera and cooperate, so you'll be seeing lots of Jake pictures... Here are a couple that I love from tonight!

And, SJ was down for a few hours.... So before I broke out in a complete sweat and panic, I decided to work on a couple cards.... I got 5 done! They're going out in the mail tomorrow. Alright, I'm off to bed... wish me luck!

Friday Randomness

I saw a challenge on someone's blog this morning.... And so I thought I'd post it too....

10 Things that are Guaranteed to put me in a Good Mood:

1. Getting a new magazine in the mailbox
2. Finding a surprise present on the doorstep or in the mail (loving those RAK's!)
3. A nice hot cup of Tazo Tea from SB
4. Chatting with my buddies on IM or SJ
5. Getting a wake-up call from D
6. Meeting up with my girls for lunch and a movie
7. Playing catch with our puppies
8. Hanging out with D
9. Hearing "I love you"
10. Playing with my camera

Some random stuff for today....

* I'm meeting up with my gf's tomorrow for lunch and a movie. Looking forward to it.... We haven't hung out since mid January... Gonna go see "Failure to Launch", looks so cute!

* I'm craving a chicken salad from Ruby's... and I have been all week, I just can't drag myself over there to have a salad all alone... Waiting to hear back from an old colleague to see if she wants to meet for lunch today.

* Sunday D and I are hanging out.... I want to take him to that yummy chinese place my brother took me to... I'm craving their sweet and sour shrimp (those things were huge!) then we're going to a comedy show in the evening. It'll be nice to hang with him... I haven't seen him in a week and half, so I'm really looking forward to it.

* Waiting for this storm to pass... I really want to go out on a ride with D, but we've been having some really crazy weather lately....

* Wanting to go home and play with my camera, but the munchkins aren't the most cooperative subjects.... Plus, it's too dark by the time I get home, so it's all indoor stuff and not the best lighting...

Okay, that's it for now. Just a mellow day, fighting to stay awake. Not sleeping still.... maybe one day.... Happy weekend!

A Second Helping

I was just doing some catching up on some blogs and over on Elsie's site, she mentioned that she's wanting to have Randy Bacon take some photos of her and her husband.... So of course, I have to go check out his site. WOW!! This man is a genius and so extremely talented.... His photos are amazing and his website is equally as cool... You have to check him out! I'm ready to fly out to Missouri to have my pictures done too!! ;o)

Inspired

If you have never read Ali Edward's blog (it's listed on my sidebar) I suggest you do so... I've never been more inspired (either creatively or in life itself) than when I'm reading through her blog.... She is an amazingly talented and beautiful human and I just love being able to peek in on her world, knowing that I walk away inspired and motivated in one shape or form on a regular basis.

Through her blog, I have been introduced to SelfPortrait Tuesday... a very interesting, creative, exciting website... I've never actually participated in any of the challenges, but I love to read through them. The most recent challenge is that of time.... To capture yourself or your surroundings at the same time on a daily basis - to see over a period of time the changes that you yourself go through, as well as the changes in your surroundings. I think this is a challenge that I'm going to participate in....

In light of all that is going on around me, I'm on a quest - a quest to figure myself out, to finally love myself, get to know myself, take control over myself.... What better way to capture the process and really get to know Me.... I'm excited about this, so stay tuned!!

I'm a happy girl!

Got my new 50mm lens today! What a great surprise to come home to after the day I had.... Not so much a surprise, being that I ordered it and all.... I just didn't expect to get it until Thursday. I played with it a bit and love it... I'll post a couple pictures here, but keep in mind that I'm very much an amatuer. Plus, this was all indoor lighting in the evening... I can't wait to get some shots outside and with natural lighting. Plus, I need to play a bit more and know how much to adjust the settings a bit.

These are just some silk flowers that I have on hand for scrapping...
My ribbon jars....
Here's Jakey.... I love this one of him!And of course... the infamous mirror shot....