Reasons to Celebrate!

We have lots of reasons to celebrate!

Today Shawn, my husband, accepted a new position at EMC corporation as a web programmer which means a nice hefty pay raise! Ya for Shawn! He's sad about leaving his current job but very happy to be trying something new. We went out to dinner to celebrate - something we almost never do.

My work laptop on the other hand is not a reason to celebrate - it died. I'm very sad for many reasons. The first being that I'm not getting another laptop and I now have a desktop. I'll be the only developer without a laptop which in and of itself stinks! The worst of it is that I now don't get the opportunity to do some work related things at home and on the weekends - which is something I actually enjoy doing. I'm really mad about that. Add to that the fact that I can't do my scrapbooking stuff anymore and I'm doubly pissed! The drivers for my cutting machine don't work on Vi$ta, which is on my personal laptop so I had to use my work laptop (which had XP) at home for that - now I don't have that and I'm super sad. The company that makes my cutting machine said they will not be updating the drivers any time soon... they just label themselves 'non-compliant'... great customer service huh?

But enough of that - I've been tagged by Lisa!

8 random facts about me:

1. I spend alot of time/energy/heart in volunteering for siamese cat rescue center. My parents used to show Siamese cats in shows so I've grown up around them. The shelter is based in Virginia but there are volunteers up and down the east coast - I'm the only active Rhode Island volunteer. I do the cat shows where I set up a booth to sell items for the center and talk to people about Siamese cats (and show the obligatory cute cat pictures, of course!) I go to shelters to evaluate cats for our program so that they won't be put to sleep. Siamese cats are very intelligent cats and are very bonded to humans and as a result they don't do well in shelters, they get very scared and won't eat. This doesn't make oneself very desirable to prospective adopters so my organizations goes to the shelter to try and get them into our program and into foster homes that are much quieter and without cages! I also evaluate cats that people are giving up for whatever reason and will also transport cats to adopters or foster parents. The most ironic part of this is that Rhode Island state laws prohibit me from being a cat foster and MA state law prevents cats being brought into the state so I deal with CT and NH ALOT!

We have our cat TiSan from them, we've had him for 6 years now. We also adopted our blue-point Balinese, Layne, in 2002 but she passed away in 2004 from cancer (she was an incredible cat). Shortly after she passed we got Katrina - who was a fun cat but got very dirty after the baby arrived so when we moved into the house Shawn drove her back down to the shelter in Virginia and she was adopted by a woman with no kids, which was a much better situation for her.

2. I was a band geek. My world, as a teenager, revolved around music. I played clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone and piano and was pretty good at all of them. So good in fact that I majored in music education after graduating highschool. I also suffer from TMJ and playing the clarinet (my main instrument) was painful so after my first year, full of pain in my mouth, I came to realize that I wasn't going to make any money as a music educator so I dropped out and went back to school part time/nights for computer science. I still miss my music alot. 3 years ago I sold my clarinet (which I had named Tracy) to a nice man who ran a music school in New Orleans. I used the money to buy skydiving equipment. I heard the school was destroyed in Katrina... I hope Tracy survived.


3. I'm starting to get grey hair. I'm 28... but I consider myself lucky as my mother and her brothers were all salt & pepper colored in their 20s. But I still feel too young! I have dark hair as I'm sure you've seen. Its actually gotten more red as I've gotten older but when I was younger it was easily confused with black. Just today I pulled 3 long grey strands out of my head. Yes, since having Arianna 16 months ago its been stressful - but not as stressful as other times in my life, why grey now!!??? I nearly cried after #3 today...


4. My husband and I met on the internet - before it was cool. We met in an IRC chat room (ya, you probably don't know what that is, its practically non-existent now) called EfNet#advice where people would come in with whatever problem was in their life (relationships, computer, medical, you name it) and everyone else would offer advice or support. I met my husband (his code name was Shadow9) when I was asking about help building web pages. He lived in CA, I lived in MA and we 'met' in September 1999. I traveled to CA to meet him in May of 2000 and he came to live with me in July of 2000 - talk about fast and totally unsafe! I'd probably freak if Arianna did the same thing. But we got married in January 2003 and I never saw that coming from our days in #Advice!

5. I'm scared of bugs in general but I hate spiders. I'm terrified of spiders and we have alot in our home and on our property. I don't care what time of day it is, even if Shawn is sleeping I will wake him up to kill a spider - he hates that but I really will flip out.

6. The one thing in this world that would make me feel safe and happy would be to have no financial commitments - no mortgage, no credit cards, no car payments and money in savings for emergencies and retirement. We're slowly getting there - we've paid off all the loans and credit cards and are working on paying off the cars early (the new job will definitely help with that!) and then we'll work on the savings and retirement. The house is on the very back burner as we want to eventually buy another, bigger, house in a few years.

7. I'm a very jealous person and I hate that about myself. I'm jealous of people with big houses. I'm jealous of people who had normal pregnancies. I'm jealous of people who are fit and thin. I'm jealous of people with lots of friends. I'm jealous of people who are happy with what they have and not envious of others. Its a sad personal trait I hope to work on soon. Someone once told me it'll be easy once I'm in my 30s... for some reason I doubt that.

8. I'm never happy with myself. There is always something that I want changed about the way I look or my professional life or something that I insist will make me happy - also need to work on this. I hope getting older will help change my view on this.

Anyway... thats it. I don't have anyone to tag that hasn't already been tagged - so if you haven't grab this and run with it. Just leave a note that you did it so I can check it out!