24 September 1999
Yesterday wasn't as bad as I'd feared it would be. The creepy guy in testing only tried to strike up conversations with me a couple of times, and I think I finally convinced the supervisor not to take the mouse away from me. I sortof partnered up with another person who isn't usually a tester, and we pretty much just spent the day taking turns sending each other e-mail. (The thing we're testing is connected to e-mail; we weren't just goofing off!)

The testing lab is still freezing cold, though. I wore long sleeves and a sweater-vest today, but I'm wishing I'd thought to bring something for my hands.

Around mid-afternoon, I connected to AOL Instant Messenger and chatted with Matt and KT a bit. KT invited us to come over and have dinner and watch a movie with them, and since KT's a pretty good cook, we agreed.

It made our after-work routine a bit hectic; we left work and dashed to the gym for a quick workout, and then stopped at the grocery store on the way home. When we got home, Matt started sauteeing the vegetables we'd promised to bring and fixing the garlic bread, while I ran upstairs for a quick shower. (Ah, bliss - warm water!) Then I got dressed in a hurry and ran back downstairs to finish the vegetables while Matt ran upstairs to copy some stuff to disk that he'd promised Kevin. I was sure we would be late, but we made it to their place by seven.

Dinner was quite good, and even inside my diet range. Cheesecake for dessert was very good, and not in my diet points. Oh, well. I'll try to be good this weekend. And I'm having the leftover veggies for lunch, so that's got to count for something! The movie, Judgement Night was pretty forgettable - group of friends witness a murder and spend the rest of the movie trying to escape the murderers. The beginning was pretty funny, but then they got fairly serious. We had fun mocking it, though. (KT kept pretty quiet. I think she was wishing she hadn't asked us to watch the movie with her, but she didn't ask us to shut up, so maybe she was just tired.)

The movie didn't end until 10:20, by which time I like to be in bed, so we didn't linger very long after it was over. We said our goodbyes and thankyous and headed on home. Almost immediately, we found ourselves in a traffic jam - they were doing some sort of work on the interstate and had narrowed it from three lanes to one on our side. And of course half the cars felt it necessary to go all the way onto the shoulder as they passed the roadwork. It took us about fifteen minutes to clear that obstacle... Bleah. But then we got home and went to bed. Yay, sleep!


As we left the gym yesterday, I was walking on Matt's right. Then we got in my car, and I turned to look at him, and there were long streams of blood coming from behind his left ear - all the way down to his jaw. I gasped in shock and said, "Ohmigod!" Matt's first thought was that I'd seen a wasp crawling around in his hair or something, and panicked. (It turned out to just be a small scab that had come off in the locker room - head wounds bleed so profusely...)


I'm glad it's Friday, though. I'm ready for a weekend! Even if I wind up spending half the weekend working in the yard! Matt and I have determined that sometime very soon, we need to buy grass seed, a spreader for the seed, a lawn mower, mulch for the yard, and some plants - probably bulbs. And then after we buy all this stuff - we have to use it! Still, I'm almost looking forward to it. The only thing that makes us nervous is mowing the lawn - the contractor didn't bother to clean all the gravel and rocks out of our yard before putting down the topsoil, so we have to worry about a rock damaging the mower blades. Also, though we've both mowed lawns before, neither of us have ever had to maintenance a mower, so we're not sure how to. (What kind of oil do you use? Do you mix it with the gas before putting it in the mower, or do you add it to a special oil pan?) Oh, yeah, I guess we'll need to buy a gas can, too.

Ah, the joys of homeownership!

On the plus side, there was evidence in the house yesterday that a crew actually came in and did some work on the place! Holes had been patched in the walls! Whoo-hoo! Now we'll need to get some sandpaper to smooth the patches out so we can paint over them. (The shopping list is neverending...)

Anyway, have a happy weekend!