yay

ok.. when you switch over to beta blogger it has you save you old template by default, but it doesn't tellyou how to get it back..i just found the stupid link to do that.. this makes me very happy. not that i really *love* my particular layout, but it mean si don't have to do it over! and find all my links and what not. woo!

this is what happens when i'm bored at work

i thought i'd giv ethe new blogger beta a whirl.. now i have to update it and stuff, so i'm using an altra generic layout, and i have to upload links and shit, an di dont' know any off the top of my head so i'll get to it at some point. so far it's not terrible, but man i guess i shouldn't be bored at work. i'll ge myself into trouble with my blog and stuff.

i should be paying attention to my online class that i'm taking right now

.. but why would i do that. i haven't blogged in a while, and i'm well overdue for an update. life has been treating me well. i think i need to add oil into my car, sometimes my car makes a slight unhappy noise wehen i put my foot on the gas... and i know i'm well overdue for an oil change. i can never seem to keep on time with that. mostly b/c i remember when we're out of money and/or i'm in a place where i can't do it.. like driving the beast for work halfway across the state.

oh well. real estate is going well. my first transaction is moving along smoothly. a friend of mine is buying a condo. hopefully we'll be closing on the 28th or so that means money.. exactly how much, i'm not sure /c i'm sure the listing agent gave the guy a break on the commision b/c he' ssuch a big wig in his office he's probably allowed to cut the commision rate a little, and then century 21 will skim some off the top too, so we'll see.

i've lost 8 lbs this month! woo.. this diet is working :) but yet at the same time my belly is getting bigger, as it should at this point.. i'm almost 21 weeks now! i'll try and post a picture soon.. it's like i got fat overnight b/c of the losing weight thing. lol.. makes me wonder how much i've actually lost b/c i'm gaining weight too as i'm losing it.. it's weird, but hey it's a good diet ;) it doesn't work well for many people though.. just happens that babies work for me!

the leaves here are near peak if not full peak this week.. they look gorgeous driving down the highway... i went through shutesbury today, and not one tree was green absolutely gorgeous. made me wish i had my camera, but didn't think of it. however if you live out of the area, don't you dare travel here b/c the locals may shoot you for driving 20 mph down the highway!

life just gets in the way of blogging it seems

work has been stressing me out for a few weeks now b/c my boss is a douche. although since i nearly blew up in front of him over it, i've been feeling better. here's what happened:
a few weeks ago my boss pretty much said to me, but not in these words, "you need to take a pay cut for no good reason, or you have to find another job". what? yeah. so that sucks.. see i've been working this job for the state for over 2.5 years now, i started the january after evan was born. this ENTIRE time i've been getting paid salary, aka full-time, for a job that that on most occasions hasn't taken me over 24 hours a week to do. from the beginning i wondered why this job was paid salary, but my boss just shrugged and said whatever. okay. sounds good to me! so at some point in august he said to me casually, we're going to have to give you more stuff to do. okay i said b/c my number of clients is way less than what it once was, and i had alot of spare time within my 24 hours a week, so i assumed he was just going to give me stuff to do to fill up that extra time. a couple weeks after that i was in the middle of a phone call with a guy from the state when he says to me, "i need you tomorrow (tuesday) to go out and survey with me." i said, " i can't", he says "why not" i say, "because i have to work at my other job"... he was very annoyed. and i was pissed that he got mad at me. i told him that this job just wasn't paying enough that i needed to get a second job, and that the only day i had to go was tuesdays...

we proceeded to have a 'discussion' about how i've never had a raise at this job, but how i've never complained b/c i was getting paid for more than i worked, and how the cost of living has gone sky high thanks to gas prices, and what not.. we're just not making enough money. he says to me "well i'm gonna need you to work 32 hours" wtf?! "i say highly pissed off, "i can't afford the childcare for anymore time to work.. i've beent elling you that for over 2 years." he goes, "oh well what about tuesdays you don't get paid to go into real estate, so how does that figure?" he caught me off guard with that one. i forget what i said, but near the end of the discussion, heh, i told him that i was pregnant b/c i knew it would annoy him, and at the time i was 8 weeks, unnoticable. he has the gall to ask me it it was on purpose. and i said yes.. and he's all like how you gonna pay for that. i said, we'll figure it out. asshole. in a discussion later with another coworker, she commented on how inapproopriate it was of him to ask me that about my being pregnant. and she's right, and i was so pissed at the time i didn't notice.

the next day i told him i'd come in the extra day. i came in for 2 or 3 times that extra day, and i had absolutely nothing to do... no surprise. i literally just went online and blogged or went to the forums or whatever for 8 hours. so i stopped goin in. it was a waste of money i couldn't afford.

so about 2-3 weeks later, he asked me if i wanted to switch to hourly and a rate that if i worked 32 hours hours it would be the same as what i'm getting now, or if i wanted to just work the 32 hours for the same money. i said i'd have to think about it.

i was going to do the 32 hours a week until i went on maternity leave, and then go hourly after that, but my boss was sressing me out. everytime he would talk to me or email.. (okay well nearly all the time) he was chime in with "32 hours".. grr.. so i was only able to pick up the extra day at daycare this past week, but i had to do a thing in springfield all day weds so i couldn't go into work. i put that day on the calendar at work that i'd be out. at some point earlier in that week it donned on me that if he's requireing me to work 32 hours as full-time that i'd have no possible way to schedule doctor's appointments without a problem... my job isn't benefited so i'm not alloted any vacation/personal or sick time. so i was stressing out about it big time.. so i had emailed him last week to say just to make me hourly starting asap. last monday i think it was, he brought up the situation, and i nearly flipped out on him. he's just so frustrating b/c he doesn't understand why i'm upset about the whole thing.

if the big wigs in the department are the ones that said i needed to up my hours, fine. tell me that. it really got to me that he told me it was b/c i had another job. my job with him is adead end job for me. no benefits, no pay raises, and no way to move up, there's nothing there. it's just a job, and he doesn't see that. this is a guy who gets paid big bucks at umass who inherited enough money from the death of his father to pay off his mortgage, build a garage larger than his house, purchase a cessna airplane, build a hanger for said airplane, and buy an army transport vehicle which he often drives to work. he pretty much has no bills b/c he paid off his now ex-girlfriends studnet loan bills in exchange she was paying all the utility bills. they recently broke up b/c he left his long term girlfriend of over 8 years for a 22 year old chick from boston. he's 46 years old... he not pretty and can be downright degrading but not realize it.

so that's that work. i'm annoyed with it, but since i nearly blew up on him, i've been feeling better. real estate is going well so far. a friend is buying a condo, but other than that i don't have much going on. i've been doing some office work for my broker. she's paying me so it's fine. atleast i can hope that this job will be worthwhile, ya know. it has so much potential, unlike my stupid state job. so with the 2 jobs i've hardly had a chance to get online these days. seems like i have even less time to cook dinner. such is life, but oncei get in the groove of working the 2 jobs i'l be fine, and the house won't look quite so messy. heh

woo!

so not only chirstine gonna be an auntie again i am too!

pictures from the weekend

here are some shots from the weekend:

we went to the butterfly conservatory, which the kids loved, and the staff was showing off soem of the other creatures they have besides the gorgeous butterflies flying all over the place. here you see a giant hissing cockroach on my arm. it's native to madagasgar, and apparantly has as much protein as 5 hamburgers! i guess people eat these. no thanks.


Here is Christine sitting on the sandbox. she and scott took tons of pictures over the weekend.


Here's evan ad james on the turtle sandbox. it makes for a good trampoline. evan was posing nicely, james would barely sit still for 2 seconds.

here's the big sis' family looking over teh rail on mt. sugarloaf, our local mini-mountain... 670-something feet above sea level.

here's a face shot of our nephew james and his mom, my big sis.


here's my son acting like a big cheezeball while i ran into stop&shop for something.

the view from mt. sugarloaf. the connecticut river, and the holyoke range are the main members of the shot here. you can see all the farm land too that goes down the river.



a closer shot of some of the farm land

and to top off the weekend, the poison ivy i've been battling with on my right leg got better earlier in the week, but i developed more poison ivy on my feet and toes, which i blame on the cat. it itches like a bitch... although luckily the bumps aren't as bad as a co-worker at the office.. she had to get the shot. yuck

(insert witty title here)

summer has come to a close. labor day weekend has come and gone, and any warm weather after this point is few and far between although we're about to have a couple days of nice weather. christine and her family came up for the weekend i had a great time. christine and scott got tones of pictures from our adventures, but we only got a few. i'll post those later i dont' really have the time at the moment. the best part was watching the boys.. they had a great time with each other.

crap, i've got to go wake up evan.

fall is quickly approaching

the weather up here has definatly taken a turn in the direction of fall. woo! new england is known for it's beauty in the trees as they go to sleep for the winter. especially norhtern new england. around columbus day weekend the colors are peaked in our little nook of the state and everyone decides to drive out route 2 a clog the main highway that spans the northern half of the state. thanks alot leaf-peepers, can i kill you now? grr. it can get so bad on weekends ends that the blinky signs on the highways that normally announce constuction warnings and amber alerts now warn us locals of "foliage traffic" ha. it's a big thing out here and i dont' really know why. i grew up in southeastern mass and am used to the changing into fall colors. it's something i've experienced my entire life. i suppose i can understand someone who comes fromt he desert and see it for the first time to be in awe and see how pretty it is to live up here, but for local people to drive around and look at the leaves every.friggin.weekend just baffles me. i don't get it. drive to the store you'll see some leaves. stop causing traffic! i've always enjoyed playing in the leaves. when christine and i were kids we would make huge piles in front of the house, get on the railing to the porch and jump away. we'd have a blast. we'd also make little walls resembling a house and play neighbors or something. that was fun too. i'd evan make an effort to walk through the leaves on the way to and from the bus stop even thoughthe bus stop was only like 20 ft from the house.

the nights here are cold and the tomatoes are turning. i just love fresh garden grown tomatoes. the crap they sell in the stores over the winter are so bland and so expensive. we've been making pasta sauce with tomatoes we've been getting from the farm stand and from jay's grandmother's garden. we've got 3 grocery bags full we need to peel and boil down. we've also got to make some apple sauce this year. we ran out of the batch we made 2 years ago. we never made any last year. never got to it, and besides we had so much left from the year before.

summer is quickly coming to a close. it happens. jay starts school next week. he's looking forward to it. i think he was bored a bunch of the summer without things to do. that and he said he's sick of staying home ith evan while i'm at work. ha.. i said to him last night, "yeah, so.. you've had like 3 weeks or so at home with him while i work, i've had him for 2 years while you've worked. " he said it like it was a big deal that he's been home with evan so much, that evan's gotten on his nerves (b/c well he's 2 and he's whiney, which is understandable) and that it's different from when i have him at home and jay's at work. i don't think so buddy. lol it's alright.. now he knows what it's been like for me the past couple of years. :)

last week was our "vacation".. which pretty much meant we didn't go to work for a week, we didn't go anywhere special, although when evan was at daycare one day jay and i went to historic deerfield, which was interesting. we learned that the library has a season pass that they lend out to patrons for free so we took advantage and went. it was pretty neat. i remember going tot he capt kendrick house, and the one room school house as a kid. i wish they brought us back when we were older than 8 or 9. i thoguht they were pretty kool, and i've always been interested in local history stuff. ever since we got back form vacation i've been working alot. working my umass job as usual, and then i've been doing a bunch of office stuff over at the new job at century 21. and i worked yesterday too which proved to be good.. i picked up a buyer! and i'm doing an open house later in granby. and then it's back to work as usual tomorrow. it's been non stop it feels like, and i'm just not used to it. i've been wokring 24 hours/week for 2.5 ertty ( <--evan typed his name.. hehe) for 2.5 years and all of a sudden i'm workign full time again. i've been tired all week, which is why i haven't posted at all.

but it's time now to pay attention to my family before i have to report back to work around 12 for the open house, and jay has to go back to work tomorrow.

toodles

it seems like everone posted on their blogs yesterday but me... that's what happens i guess when i have to work all day and don't really have anything evetful to mention. perhaps later today i'll post something good.

i know i already blogged about it, but my boss is making me market myself, and thus i have to make an official announcement.

i'd like to announce my candidacy for governor of massachusetts....

wait wrong announcement.i don't think i could ever run for governor. i'm not good at making decisions. i'm too indecisive, or i just don't care so i just say whatever.. anyhow onto the real announcement:



I'd like to officially announce my new postion as a Realtor in Massachusetts. yup.. want to buy or sell a house? or want to know how much your house is worth in today's market.. i'm the one who can help you. even if you live far away from me you can still help me make some money. give me an email or a call and tell me what you need. if you want an estimate i can do that, but if you want to buy or sell i can refer you to someone closer to you. in another state in massachusetts, whereever. that little phone call will usually get me 20% of that agents commission.. an easy way to make a few hundred bucks, and to make my life that much richer.. so please call or email me..i need some clients. i won't be too sad if you want to wiat a few weeks or a month or two, just don't forget about me and make me beg you for business again.

i'll be mailing out official announcement cards to the neighborhood.. and to a few other people as well..

and people who live on the hill in turner's should be expecting junk mail from me in the near future and every couple of months after that.. that's the main area where i'll be marketing myself. why not.

that is all