Rules of the road

I guess the rules of the road changed since I learned how to drive. It seems you are only supposed to pause, not stop, when making a right turn at a red light. And you are no longer supposed to yield to on-coming traffic. And signaling when you need to change lanes? Forget it!

I consider myself a decent driver, but considering how many times I was honked at (three) tonight (all for yielding to on-coming traffic), you'd think I should stay off the road. Sigh. I do miss living in an area with good public transportation.

Sometimes you estimate wrong

We went away for a few days and left Rascal alone. We had someone checking the house, but didn't want to burden them with the rabbit. As it turns out, we left the rabbit alone about half a day, maybe a day too long.

I had been monitoring his water and food intake very carefully over the past few weeks since I knew we'd be traveling. He had never finished his water in all that time. I knew that there was a strong possibility that he'd finish all his food in the first day or two (but he'd still have his hay), but I never imagined he'd finish his water. :(

Thank goodness I checked on him as soon as we got home. But I think he was okay. Given fresh water and food, he was more interested in the food .

Tempo tales

What is Tempo you ask? They're a brand of tissues available in Europe and other parts of the world and hard to find in the US. It turns out, a coworker bought some on his recent European trip and fell in love with them. They're much heavier (4-ply) than the tissues available here. He was raving about them to another coworker and he thought they were fantastic. Another coworker overheard them and said that her husband loved them too (I'm noticing a theme here) and brought them back whenever he took a trip to Europe (me, I'd prefer chocolate). Lest you think that all we do at work is discuss sundries, I'm sure these were very short conversations that took place during lunch or after hours (I can't say for sure though because this happened when I was at Memory Trends and I was told all this later).

Anyway, I saw the Tempo tissues in my coworker's cubicle and he was talking about ebay. I was like, huh? What do those two things have to do with each other. As it turns out, you can buy anything on ebay, including Tempo tissues. The above mentioned coworkers went in on a group buy and purchased a few hundred packs of Tempo tissues. They were thrilled to get them for approximately 11 cents each, including shipping. At that, I informed them that the tissues are available at the 99 Cents store. They were dumbfounded and perhaps even a bit skeptical.

So on the way home, I purchased a few packs of the tissues. Cost? 99 cents+tax for an 18 pack. It came out to about 6 cents each. They felt a bit sheepish then and I think I may be making another trip to the 99 cents store after the cold season, lol.

Memory Trends

I just got back from a big scrapbooking tradeshow, Memory Trends. It was held in Las Vegas so it was a pretty easy travel trip for me. I was a little nervous since I was going to be staffing a printer station up front, to draw people into the booth. I felt like a carnival barker (step right up little lady and let me show you this AMAZING printer!). It turned out to be easier than I thought. I think I sold a few printers, but don't really know since I don't have any way to track it. Some people said they'd be coming back on Thursday to order, but I wasn't working that station to see. I was also a "rover" to help wherever needed and worked the 4x6 printer station. Now that was easy! Even though I had never used those printers, I was still able to expound its various features. Guess I can think on my feet better than I thought! I did take the time to review all the marketing material I could find before I left for the show so that was helpful.

I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to walk to show and take pictures of all the new stuff. And I wish I had spent more time reviewing the previews at LM. Then I really would have known what to look for.

The show is much smaller than CHA so I didn't feel as overwhelmed (as in sensory overload) as I did there. Plus it was scrapbooking stuff instead of all crafts supplies ('cause you know I like it all, lol). I think most of the manufacturers do their big annoucements at Winter or Summer CHA. I got mixed messages from a lot of manufacturers. Everyone tried to put on a good front, but you could tell that they were tired of three shows a year. Plus there are other shows they might be attending, the NY Stationary show and other events. Who knows how much traveling they might be doing.

I did get to have dinner with several LMers, some of whom I already knew and some of whom I met for the first time. Of course, they are all very sweet. We had a good laugh with T who turns out to be more naive than me. W is superwoman. V is as fun and bawdy as ever. L is just a sweetheart. Unfortunately, we were sitting too far away from each other to talk much.

All in all, I'm glad I was able to go. It was great to get away from the office for a few days and feel like I was still contributing to the company.

Tag - Songs, more

or rather, not more since no one took my tag, lol! So either those people don't read my blog, don't care, or both. Oh well, I tried.

Tag - Songs

I usually put blog tags in the same category as those pass-it-on emails and ignore them in general. Usually because they are too long, require too much thought, and require me to put too much of my private life online. I was tagged by S; I'm supposed to list seven songs I'm really enjoying right now. Although it should be easy enough for me to do, it isn't. First of all, I don't listen to the radio that often, nor do I listen to my CDs very often.

So I'm going to modify the list to include a few favs that I've heard recently:
Over the rainbow/what a wonderful life by Iz (Israel Kamakawiwo'ole)
Pacabel's Canon (saw/heard an electric guitar version on you tube)
Lady in Red (TV commercial)
Long time gone by the Dixie Chicks
(title unknown) by Coldplay

I had to struggle to get to five; how sad is that?!!?

I tag Kristie, Misty, Dianna, Lisa, and Stephanie. Remember, seven songs that you enjoying right now. Now let's see who really reading my blog, lol.

Nice to know I'm missed

Thanks S! I didn't realize it had been a month since I updated. Let's see if I can sum it up. I named my rabbit Rascal, because he is a little rascal (and oh so cute!). I've been trying to train him, but it is slow going.

Arctic Frog (a SB company) had their huge Deal or No Deal contest all summer and I entered twice and placed in the top 10 once so that's a pretty good track record. (Now if only there was a design team looking for simple layouts like mine....)

Work slowed down for a bit, but based on all the e-mails going around today and the meetings scheduled for this week, that will end soon.

I was trying to lose some weight, but decided to just try to maintain until January. I'm doing a lot of traveling over the next month, plus the holidays are coming up. So I don't want to yo-yo diet.

Family is doing fine. Garden isn't, lol. That's about it.