Every bit helps

Saw this going on at my www.televisionwithoutpity.com site. It's a fund raiser for the libraries hurt by Hurricane Katrina. You can buy stuff off their wishlist or send cash. Check it out.


http://deweydonationsystem.org/

Awe.some.

One of the many reasons I LOVE living in Austin. We get weird stuff like this happening. I might have to buy some tickets for this. Some of the movies look really freaky.

http://fantasticfest.com/

Lots of crazy people out there

I'd been hearing about 'YouTube' all over the place lately, so finally checked it out. There's some fun videos, and you can tell people are just having a good time. I liked the feature where users can post reply videos. That's nifty. The sad thing about it is users can leave comments on videos, and people aren't very nice. I won't even get into the spelling and grammar issues...but in general, it seems like people enjoy leaving nasty mean comments. Even on videos of teenagers that are so obviously just having fun with it, people put them down for their looks, dancing, etc. That was really annoying. Some people were getting really personal. One of the videos is a teenage girl doing some funny stuff and she's got a large gap between her front teeth. A lot of the comment were just so mean about it. Geez, give the girl a break! She's young, and that stuff costs a ton of money to fix. I'd say the comment ratio for everything I saw was 80% negative, 20% positive. I don't know why people just can't be supportive. They've got to tear others down for no reason.

This was funny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhTeYaqIe3E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVov6NJU2tk

A new resident

Nathan came out for a few days to look for a house. We went out on Sunday and looked at a new housing development near Manchaca and Slaughter. It was a really cute neighborhood. He saw one he liked, but he still went out with John (my brother-in-law who's a realtor) and they looked at houses on Monday and Tuesday too. It turned out that none of them were a better deal than the house we saw on Sunday. So, Nathan signed the papers and that's it. Luckily the sod had not been put in yet so he was able to get a sprinkler system for the front and back. That will help a lot when they want to sell it. Not many homes in Austin come with sprinkler systems. I really like the floor plan and think it will work out great for him and Tony. It's about 45 minutes from me, so I won't be bothering them too much!

While Nathan was staying with me I put him to work. I knew he'd done a lot of home improvement projects in his condo, so I asked if he knew how to change a faucet. He said yes. Of course, the CONCEPT of changing a faucet is pretty damn simple. It turned out the hard part was getting the old faucet out. We couldn't loosen the plastic anchors that held the faucet to the sink. The next night my dad came over with some other tools and he was able to get them loosened. Then I found out the copper pipes that were there wouldn't fit with the new faucet without some gaskets, so we had to wait till the next day to go to Lowes and buy some new connectors that had the right gasket size. I would have been able to do most of it, but my arms are like two inches too short to get a good grip for tightening the nuts. Nathan's really tall so he was able to reach everything pretty easily. So far no leaks! And the faucet is really cute. I've realized that I can deal with electrical home projects, but I'll be calling professionals for any future plumbing needs. I just do not want to deal with that again.

It's only Tuesday?

Last week was such a craptastic week at work. We're having some personnel issues and there's these three girls that think they're in some freaking high school clique. Everyone else in the office is so annoyed with their behavior, and now they're picking on a new girl. My boss is getting so fed up with them. She's been asking me what I'd do, and when I tell her (it's not very nice) she just kinda looks at me with a 'thank god you're not running this place!' kinda look. She knows I have no patience for people causing problems in the office. And to top it all off, we found out that some of the people in the other clinics have not been following all of the protocols, which is making the billing people's jobs really difficult. It's like, ok, we gave you the frickin instructions, you used to do it the right way, and now you're so frickin lazy you can't add this information like you're supposed to?? Don't people have pride in their work anymore? I mean, I love the fact that my job is strictly regular business hours and when I'm home I don't even think about work, but I still pride myself on doing a job well done. So many of our employees are just in it for the paycheck and don't feel like they need to work for it. We found out today that a couple of the girls in one of the clinics talk on their cell phones all day. It's so frustrating. I just want to get them all into a room and yell at them. Argh.

Well, besides last week being sucky, Friday night rocked. We had a No-Kidding Party Games night and it was at a new couple's house. They'd been to some events and seemed really down to earth. Their house was about 15 minutes from me, and I got there hella early. The husband, Jack, was at home and showed me around. It's a normal sized house, but they had a lot of fun with the decorations. Their guest bathroom shoud be in a magazine. It's one of those downstairs toilet/sink only deals so it was pretty small. They had painted it to look underwater. Half of the wall was a sand color...and the paint was actually rough with sand in it! The rest of the walls were blue with fish and plants painted on it. The really cool part was the ceiling where they got a fisherman's net and pinned it to the ceiling with sea shells scattered around it. So cool! Jack mentioned he just ordered a 2007 Corvette (see what you can buy when you don't have kids??) so hopefully we'll have another shindig at his house and he can give rides around the block. There were about 15 people there. Usually at these things people leave at the stroke of 10pm. At Jack's we were still playing charades at 12:30. I must say I ROCK at charades. Lots of fun. Some of us were there until 2am. The next event is Movie Night at Mike and Annette's house- with the theater and 10ft screen. Shaun of the Dead won the votes. Yay!! LOVE that movie. Haven't seen it in awhile, so looking forward to it.

Is it Friday yet?