A photo meme of my life, inspired by Bluesleepy. Because I want to be cool like Karyl!
The rule was do an image search on Google using the answers to each of the following questions, and then post one of the search results after your answer. Here's mine:
1. My first car: 1994 Toyota Tercel
(Though mine was missing its passenger's side view mirror and was a pretty sea-green!)
2. Where I grew up: Fort Walton Beach, Florida
God, I miss this place.
3. Where I live now: Atlanta, Georgia
4. My first name: Chelle
That would be sooo tasty right about now.
5. My grandma’s first name: June
June Lockhart=so pretty.
6. My favorite food: Sashimi
Yum!
7. My favorite drink: Ice water with lemon
Boring, I know.
8. My favorite song: "Mandolin Rain," by Bruce Hornsby and the Range
I want this song played at my funeral someday. Yes, I am morbidly weird.
9. My favorite smell: the salty smell of the ocean
Ahhh...
10. My favorite pair of shoes: flip-flops
Wish I was wearing them right now.
11. My first pet: Katie, the cat
Meow!
12. My favorite color: Blue, unless I am wearing it, then Black
This pic is...strange.
13. My least favorite smell: Rotten anything
Ha! Completely unrelated...or is it?
14. My biggest fear: Helplessness
I think this is how Dave pictures our marriage in his mind!
15. My favorite hobby: Reading!
Yay!
Photo Meme
Ahhh, sleep...
Dave is sick. He has the same thing I had two weeks ago. So that sleep I'm supposed to be catching up on is. not. happening. I don't want to be a bad wife and insist we sleep separately while he is in agony, but I think I'm going to have to...at least for tonight. I am beginning to feel like a functional zombie and pretty soon I am going to want to kill someone if I don't get a good night sleep.
In other news, my new assistant is catching on quickly and I am ahead of schedule in terms of making the initial post-trade show contact with all of the people we met at the convention in Las Vegas. I am SO GLAD I was able to talk my boss into hiring a full-timer. It is exactly what this marketing department (can you call one person a department?) needed!
The only downfall is that the only managerial experience I have is limited to a shift manager at a shoe store and a high school English teacher. So I will be learning as I go. The plan is to teach her how to do everything I can do. I don't believe in compartmentalizing duties within a department. I am all for sharing the love, baby. I want her to know that I am perfectly willing and able to do the mundane stuff and that I'm not shoveling all that shit-work her way every time there is shit-work to do. Plus, if i train her to do everything, I won't feel so guilty when Dave and I finally figure out where we want to put down roots and he transfers.
Tonight I am supposed to have dinner with a friend I haven't seen in a while, so that should be fun, if I can will myself to be excited by these plans. I just have not been in the mood to socialize lately. I get the itch to make plans with friends and then when it comes time to implement said plans I just feel...blah. Maybe I need a pick me up along the lines of Xanax or Ativan. Or maybe I just need some sleep!
Homeless in Las Vegas
So my trip to Vegas was good. Not much to write about, except, MY HOTEL CAUGHT ON FIRE! And I was homeless in Las Vegas. Well, for a few hours, anyway.
This is what happened: I was at the trade show for it's final day when I received a phone call from my boss letting me know that the Monte Carlo, the hotel at which I was residing, had caught fire and was being evacuated and had I heard from Dave? This was at about 10:30am. I tried calling Dave, who was still at the hotel. No answer. I tried again for several minutes with the same result. Eventually he called from a pay phone to let me know he was okay. He had been out for a quick run before he was to head over to the convention center to help us tear down the booth. He was told about the fire on his way back from his run. Since they were already in the process of evacuating the hotel, Dave was forced to stay in his stinky running clothes and head over to the convention center without the tools we needed to tear down and with only $20 for the cab fare.
We finished up the show and got the booth all packed up and finally headed toward the Monte Carlo at about 4:30pm. They weren't letting anybody in the hotel, telling us to head to the MGM for more info. We arrived at the MGM Garden Arena, only to be given a hotline number to call for updates. They put us on shuttle buses and distributed us around to the various MGM Mirage owned properties. Dave and I ended up at Mandalay Bay, which was actually a pretty nice upgrade from the Monte Carlo. But we still didn't have any of our stuff.
I kept calling the hotline and they finally let us back into the Monte Carlo to retrieve our stuff around 9:30pm. We were escorted to our room and had to fill out a form indicating whether or not anything had been damaged. Luckily, our room was on the 15th floor, far away from where the fire started. Our floor smelled like smoke, but that was it.
All in all, we were pretty lucky. My coworker was on the 17th floor, where there was a bit of water and smoke damage, but his stuff was fine. Floors 26 and up were still closed when we were there retrieving our belongings.
I will say that the Monte Carlo did a great job organizing our distribution to other hotels and also the retrieval of our stuff. The whole thing could have been a lot more chaotic and it really wasn't more than an inconvenience.
It is good to be home. Though I would have paid good money to have been able to keep that bed in Mandalay Bay...it was SO COMFY!! Totally made the whole moving-to-another-hotel-because-mine-caught-fire worth it in my book!
Viva Las Vegas
D and I are in Vegas. We arrived Sunday after 6 hours in a very uncomfortably full airplane. It SHOULD have only taken 4 hours, but they made us board a broken plane, where we sat for two hours while they fixed the navigational system. I had to use the teeny tiny bathroom on a plane TWICE before we even left the gate, that's how long the fixing took. Then our plane needed to be de-iced, so that added additional wait time before we were finally airborn. Our 9:53 arrival time became 11:45, so we grabbed a quick bite before heading straight to the convention center to start setting up work's trade show booth.
Set-up went extremely smoothly, thanks to Dave. He is very good at putting things together and I'm not sure my coworkers and I would have been able to put the booth together so quickly if he hadn't been there to correct our mistakes.
The first day of the show was busy! We got lots of good leads and I found 40 bucks on the floor of the convention center. I decided it was to become my lucky money and needed to be gambled with, though it's more accurate to say it was gambled away. I think all I have left of it after an hour at a $5 Blackjack table is 3 fifty cent pieces. I hit 21 three times and the dealer "rewards" you with a dollar-fifty.
Since arriving, we've eaten WAY too much food, spent more money than we should have on clothes, gambled away someone else's money, and saw "Zumanity" which is a Cirque du Soleil show that is pretty risque. It was beautifully done and has probably been my favorite part of this trip. I also experience a moronic moment when I jumped into a cab to head from my hotel to the convention center only to remember that I had no cash on me. I had to get the cabbie, who spoke very little English, to drive me to an ATM. The ATM was "out of order" so I had to run across the street to a Walgreens to get some cash back, all while the meter was running. I think a ten dollar cab ride ended up costing twice that. But hey, it could have been worse!
Tonight I finally convinced Dave to stay in and enjoy a quiet night in the hotel room. I have been able to catch up with my awesome flickr group, answer some emails, and take a nap! I am finally beginning to feel human again. Hopefully, the break will be good for my poor little abused feet. Only one more day of working the tradeshow booth. Tomorrow we pack it up and can have some fun before getting on the airplane Saturday afternoon. I can't wait to get back home and see how my furry kids are doing. The pet sitter I hired is excellent, but I still worry about my babies when I am not there to take care of them!
I need to remember to take my camera with me tomorrow and actually use it! I am sad to say I have not taken a single picture the whole time I've been here. I wish we had been allowed to photograph parts of Zumanity, but at least I have a show program.
So to wrap it up, I am going to take a note from my beautiful new friend, Catie, and list the 5 things I have most enjoyed about Vegas:
1) Having Dave here with me. It is much more fun with him around, even if we have to share a hotel bathroom.
2) The sushi buffet Todai in the Miracle Mile at Planet Hollywood. All-You-Can-Eat-Sushi=Happy Chelle.
3) my new jeans from The Limited. Even though I had to buy a larger size than I usualy wear, they fit BEAUTIFULLY and I think I am in love with them.
4) The sanctuary that is my hotel room. When you are constantly surrounded by people, and are not a people person, there is nothing better than returning to the serenity that is your space.
5) Zumanity. The sensual side of Cirque du Soleil.
Again?!
It is snowing. Again. One of the cats sat at the window, fascinated by all of the small white dots floating to the ground outside. So I decided to properly introduce Gavin to the wonders of snow. Here's his reaction:
I felt sorry for him, because Dave was barring him from the safety of the garage. Dave is just mean like that. So I picked him up to carry him back inside, as Dave took photos. I think we can safely say that Gavin does not appreciate snow.
Poor guy. At least I have someone in the house that feels the same way about snow as I do.
