good news

photo by Cindy Kassab

My work contract ended yesterday and my company extended it for another six months. It's been pretty frustrating, so it came as a HUGE surprise that they wanted to raise my hourly rate by $3.60.

BIGGEST raise I've ever received, and takes a bit of the sting out of the way that they've been handling my whole situation. Now I'm only $0.90 behind Bill, which has him chomping at the bit to get his air brakes course, which raises his rate by a couple dollars.

The snow has been driving us all crazy again this year, and my front lawn is completely covered by 18" - 24" drifts. Yesterday when I let Lola out the back door, she couldn't get down the stairs or across the lawn, so I had to shovel. First the deck, then the stairs, then a trail to the fence where our trash pick up box is, then another trail in a circle so that she could get her business done. It's hilarious watching her as she tries to maneauver through it all, lol.

Our family has been talking about music a lot lately, and we were just saying how Em's generation is the worst one since ours (in the 80's) where the music is disappointing as a whole; major synthesizers, lots of computer generated crap and lots of covers. To be honest, I don't listen to a lot of teen dance stuff anyway, but if someone like Jamie can't handle the new stuff, there must be something to it. Both she and Bill are on iTunes and Youtube every single day.

Happy Sunday!

back to normal

As of yesterday, our living room is back to normal.

I hate that it took so long to be complete, but between working and being sick it took forever. The only thing out of place this morning was Bill's little guitar. Speaking of which, he had another lesson yesterday, so that's got to be his fifth or sixth one.

I think he really likes his instructor. He's a seventeen year old kid whose dad, Ian, used to have a studio across from Dale's karate dojo. Ian's son was four or five back then and the day I interviewed him for teaching Bill, he recalled playing down there and being awed by all the black belts.

These days Ian's son looks a lot older than seventeen and he's gorgeous. He's pretty good at teaching and he's got all the toys! By toys, I'm referring to at least one beautiful Stratocaster, some others I can't recall, and an amp that Bill would give his left arm for (he strums with his right, lol)

Today I'm working a later shift, from 1:00 to 8:00. This entire week is set up for prospecting, and I need to get a good start. I've been averaging about five appointments per week and I'd like to shoot for ten. That means I need to make at least fourteen, to account for the ones that forget or blow me off on purpose. Wish me luck!