Pictures

Not much to write... even though there's a ton going on right now. I just wanted to post a few pictures from class.

The Hetricks are coming to visit this weekend, and Erica came to stay with us last night. We went out for St. Patrick's Day and had a good time at Tommy Nevin's Pub. I actually saw people from work there, which was fun because I got to know them a bit better. It's nice to go out and see people I know, finally! :-D

Anyway, here are some pictures. The first one was what my teacher called a "Happy Accident"... I was panning with the bicyclist and happened to be going in the same direction as the flow of water, so both of those are clearer and the rest of the photo has motion.

The second one is of a girl from our neighborhood riding a little scooter... my teacher thought it was funny because she was so much bigger than it.

That's all for now!

-Ash

Long story long... Friday the 13th

Previously in my life, Friday the 13th was not an unlucky day. I was born on Friday the 13th. I met Casey on my 17th birthday, which fell on Friday the 13th. I had started to think of the day is kind of a good luck day, until this week.

I had to go to work early that day, and we had decided that Charley should go to Day Camp at PetsMart for the day since I wouldn't be home to let him out to go to the bathroom. He would get to stay overnight, just in case Casey's flight was delayed or anything. I dropped him off at the PetsHotel, and headed to work.

My day at work was pretty crazy. The phone rang off the hook. Everyone had problems. I had some of the strangest phone calls I've had so far (one man sounded like he had a trach tube; another wanted to tell me his life story about why his rent check bounced...). Anyway, it was crazy enough that I took a break around 4:30 so I could get my mind straight before Michelle left at 5. After 5, things slowed down considerably. The phone only rang 2 or 3 times until 7 when I left. I was really happy to get out of work on time for once. I deposited my paycheck at the bank, and then started to head towards the highway so I could pick up Casey around 8:30 from O'Hare.

I realized then that I had left our I-Pass at home, and didn't have enough time to go back to get it, so I rerouted the GPS to avoid tollways. I got on 56, and only made it a few miles when I started to hear this weird squealing noise on the right side of the car. I tried looking for a gas station, but the nearest one was 3 miles away, and I didn't know if I could make it that far. Luckily I was in a familiar part of town. I missed the entrance to the shopping center I recognized, so I attempted to do a U-turn because there were no cars coming. It was then that I realized that my power steering wasn't working at all. My car already doesn't turn very tight, but this time it was so bad that I had to make a 3 point turn on the highway just to avoid going into a ditch (on the opposite side). I did a lot of praying outloud as I saw the cars start to come toward me. I was lucky enough to get the car turned around and into the shopping center parking lot without getting plowed into. I called Casey's voicemale to let him know about the car trouble, then I called his dad to try to find out what I should do. It was just as I thought- a belt broke. I decided to call AAA for a tow truck. Meanwhile, I went inside Old Navy so I wouldn't sit outside in the dark in my crappy car.

AAA told me that a tow truck would come get me, but it may be 2 hours before anyone could come. Craptastic. So I agreed, and while the lady put me on hold, I realized that my phone was almost dead. I couldn't find the car charger before I left the house that morning... go figure. I could see the situation getting much worse at this point, until I remembered that Casey and I had gone to a Sprint store in the same shopping center... only 3 stores away from Old Navy. I decided to walk over to the store, tell them my situation, and see if there was any way I could charge my phone. The guys at the store came to my aid, and let me sit inside while my phone charged. Casey called me back, and decided to get a rental car because that would have been the only way he could get home at that point. Around 8:40, I figured my phone had been charged enough, and since the Sprint store was closing at 9, I decided to go next door to Chili's for a drink to calm my nerves. I thanked the Sprint guys for bailing me out, and headed next door.

I got a glass of wine, which didn't calm me down quite as much as I had wanted. I still hadn't heard from the towing guy, so I loitered around Chili's for a bit. Finally, the tow truck guy called and said he would be there to get me in about 30 minutes. Casey called back a bit later, and we had a discussion about the car situation. Hertz didn't have any rentals without a GPS system, so they made Casey pay more money for the rental than he really needed. Both of us were pretty upset at this point. We got off the phone, and I decided to go to FedEx Kinko's which was located in the parking lot of Old Navy. I figured then I could see the tow truck guy when he arrived.

At this point I'm so frazzled, all I could do was sit in a chair in Kinko's and try not to cry. I was thinking about how crappy the night had gone, when I see Casey walk in the front door of the store. I immediately felt better, just seeing his face. I knew then that everything would be OK, no matter what else happened that night.

We sat around waiting for the tow truck guy to come. He finally showed up around 10:10. He had no idea where he was going, so he followed us to the Firestone that we've used before. After Casey gave him directions to get to his next destination, we went to Hooters for some dinner. (Thought it might make Casey feel a little better...LOL... and it was right down the street from Firestone.) We ate dinner and tried to laugh about the way the night had gone. It was nice to have him home again. We came home and crashed after the super crappy day we'd both had. I think at this point we both realized that it was probably a very good thing that Charley had gone to the PetsHotel for the night, or he may have left us a mess to deal with when we got home that night.

The next morning, we got up and around, and went to pick up Charley from PetsMart. He had done just fine, and he was pretty tired from getting to play so much the day before. We went to Firestone to let them know why the car was there, then headed home to hang out with Charley for a bit. Firestone called us back... the car technically needs about $2,700 in repairs, and we don't even think the car is worth that much at this point. Casey told them to just repair the belt and do a system flush; they told us the car would be ready at 4:00 pm. To get our minds off everything, we decided to go to see Watchmen around 1:00. We got out, got the car at Firestone, and then went to return the rental car in Naperville. The crappy GPS that the rental car had sent us to a parking lot. Casey figured out where the Hertz place was (with no help from the GPS), and we went there, only to find out that it closed at noon on Saturdays. We tried to go to another Hertz drop-off location, but they were closed as well. We called AAA again, only to find out that the only places that were open late were Midway & O'Hare airport. Great.

We were both in less than spectacular moods at this point, so we came home to figure out what to do. Finally, we decided that it would save us more money if we took the car back to O'Hare. And that's exactly what we did. I am happy to say that my car made the drive to O'Hare without any problems... if only I could have said that the night before, I wouldn't have written this novel of a crappy story, and the weekend would have been much more enjoyable. Anyway, I am happy to say that besides having a slightly smaller bank account, things are back to normal now. Whatever normal is.

That is more than enough for now.

Love,

Ash

Sara & Lindsey's visit: 2-26 thru 3-1

I realize now that I didn't write about Sara & Lindsey's visit at all! Work gave me Thursday & Friday off (which was tough to ask for, considering it was my first week on the job)... I picked the girls up from Midway airport on Thursday afternoon. We went to Walmart to pick up some food for the weekend, and basically hung out at the house until Casey got home from work. We decided to take them to our favorite Japanese restaurant that night. They both tried sushi for the first time, and to my surprise, Sara liked it!! I figured Lindsey would- she'd been to Japan before, but apparently she'd never had sushi rolls before. It was a lot of fun... we even got a picture of us after dinner. PS: I had some wine, and didn't realize that my face lit up like a light bulb for this picture. Yikes!!

We got up Friday and I took the girls to downtown Naperville. We spent a few hours walking around downtown and shopping a bit. We went to Target later that afternoon and ended up spending a few hours there screwing around... esp. trying on crazy sunglasses and being strange, as usual. :) I found a hat that I probably would never have gotten if the girls hadn't said they liked it... see photos. We went out to Tommy Nevin's Pub that night, and Trashley had a great old time. By the end of the evening, some random lady walked up to me and told me she liked my hat... I couldn't pick her out in a line-up. She also said that the guys she was with were enjoying their view of Lindsey. :) An older guy bought her a drink earlier in the evening, but she didn't want to lead him on, so she gave it back to him. He didn't even give it to her personally- I think he had our waitress bring it to her. Weird. Anyway, all I can really say about that evening is that we had a lot of fun, and the next morning I was pretty embarrassed to hear tales of things I had said during the evening. Like I said before, Trashley had a great time. ;)

Saturday we took it pretty easy. It rained pretty hard that night, so we decided to order in pizza and watch a movie. The pizza guy got lost so we ended up getting $40 of food for free! Luckily we weren't starving, so it worked out well.

Sunday we took it pretty easy until it was time to go to Midway and drop the girls off. The weekend was exhausting, but it couldn't have been more fun. I always have a crazy time with my girls!! Although the weather was cold, we still managed to make the most of it, and had a blast together. :-) Enjoy the pics!

Love,

Ash

Casey's Houston Hiatus, Day 2

While I was eating dinner this evening, I decided to turn on today's episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show on DVR. I watch a lot of TV, and I have to say that I rarely laugh out loud (I'm really not sure why, because I watch a lot of funny TV... but anway...), but she was talking about trimming a tree in her back yard, and it snapped back and hit her in the face, to which she said, "I just got pimp-slapped by a Sycamore!"... I laughed loud enough the Charley had to come investigate. :) Hopefully it made you laugh, too! By the way, is the phrase "pimp slap" supposed to be hyphenated? Hmmm...

I feel much better today, thank goodness. I slept as late as I could this morning until I had to hop in the shower, but I took DayQuil and I guess it kicked in at some point... I was definitely acting my hair color for the first hour or so at work... I could not process anything!! I'm glad I'm able to laugh at myself, because I did some really stupid things this afternoon. Thankfully my coworker is very forgiving. :)

So, I miss Casey a lot. He called this evening and we talked for a bit. It's weird because it's been so long since we've not seen each other for a few days, I guess I anticipated it a bit too much last night because I couldn't sleep very well at all. I can't even blame it on the dog this time. Charley was a big wigged out, too... he got up really early this morning, I guess wondering where Casey was. I decided to treat him tonight by taking him to PetsMart when I got off of work. He got to see 'his people' and let out some energy. If it weren't so cold, I would take him to a park or something and let him play... which reminds me that I really need to find a dog park this spring/summer so he can socialize. If it were warmer, I would attempt to take some action shots of him outside, but the only action he'd be doing at this rate is shivering!

I can't believe it's already 9:00 pm... I don't really like daylight savings time right now! When it started, the office decided they would stay open later, so I now work 1-7 Monday and Friday, and 2-7 Wednesday and Thursday. For some reason I thought it wasn't going to start until May... oh well. For now, it's nice because I don't think many people realize we are open after 6, so the phone calls slowed down considerably!! I didn't think I was going to be able to leave last Friday night. It was one thing after another. The phone was ringing off the hook, mainly with people having problems with their real estate signs. At one point I was juggling 3 phone calls and several agents within the office who had problems. I pretty much ran out the door when I finally got the chance, which was almost 30 minutes later than I was supposed to. I felt especially bad because Billy, Clay, Jenny, and Casey were all at home waiting for me so we could go out to dinner. Friday ended up being a fun night with everyone- Billy took pictures so I'll add a few to the post. Saturday wasn't too bad, although I wish it wouldn't have rained most of the day so we could have gotten to see more of downtown Chicago with the boys. We ate lunch at Uno's, which was pretty good, but we had craptastic service that took longer than it should have, so we spent more time in the restaurant than we wanted to. Hopefully Clay wasn't too disappointed- he wasn't able to find a 'Chicago outfit' like he'd wanted, but it looked like Billy found a few good items, and they wear the same size. :) The weekend went too fast! Charley and I were both pretty wiped out Sunday afternoon, so I slept a good part of the day. I think I may have gotten sick from being outside in the rain on Saturday... oh well.

I guess that's all for now... here are some pictures from the weekend! (Thanks to Billy & Clay for taking the group pics!)

Love,

Ash


Group dinner at Jimmy's Grill, Naperville


Clay and his LEGO friend...


Billy's LEGO 'son'... they almost had the same hair style!!

I am a slacker.

As usual, I would like to start this blog entry by apologizing for not blogging in awhile. I've been busy with work, and have had company the past two weekends in a row. I will write more about that later, because I don't have a whole lot of energy right now... I've been sick the past two days. I missed work yesterday because I woke up with a fever. It got up to 100.8 degrees and finally broke around 3:00 yesterday afternoon. Since then, I haven't had a fever again, but my head and stomach have been achy. My nose is pretty plugged up, too. All of this is happening now, of course, and Casey just left for a work trip to Houston today. I miss him already. He gets back on Friday... hopefully the rest of the week goes okay without him here. I'm a big girl, though... I can handle it. I think.

I had fun with Billy & Clay last weekend. We made it to downtown Chicago, and although it rained all day, we got to do some shopping and see a bit of the city. Time went too fast, as usual. Same goes for the previous weekend when Sara & Lindsey came to visit. That was a wild weekend, too. Maybe that's why I'm not feeling as well the past few days- I guess I have been doing quite a bit more lately than I have the past 5 months or so. It was good to see great friends again and hang out with everyone.

I guess that's about all for now. I can't wait until Friday!!!!

Love,

Ash