GO!

Conversion at work is almost complete. It's been a busy three weeks for me to get there. My boss cut off the OT this week so that I can work on Saturday morning and reconcile then instead of on Monday. But I found out Friday that it really didn't matter.

Friday, I wanted to get up early and watch the Royal Wedding, but I decided to record it instead so
I could get up at my normal time. And then I woke up early anyway. So I watched it and then went to work.

So Friday at work, the last day of conversion, I'm pretty much a zombie. No amount of hot black English tea was working to keep my senses keen. And I'm an ogre without my required minimum 6 hours of sleep. So, recapping... Friday, I was a zombie ogre due to lack of sleep. By the time I got home, the caffeine finally kicked in and was wired for sound and couldn't fall sleep for awhile even though I was fatigued.

Saturday morning, I went to work from 8AM to 12PM. I checked reports and did a bunch of manual processes that I probably could have done on Monday morning, but I wanted to be present and accounted for 'for the team'.

Amid all this end of month/conversion activity, I received an email notification that there is a job opening for me, especially me and my employment experience, in Irvine. Open positions for the type of job I perform are rare. And this one is 7 miles from my home. That would cut my 40 mile/up to two hours a day one-way commute down by 33 miles. If I get this job, I wouldn't even have to take the freeway if I didn't want to. I sent in my resume.

Yahoo.com reported Bin Laden was killed. 9-11 affected my work in 2001 as I was employed with Banker's Trust at the time. I think that the public should be cautious and not breathe that sigh of relief too deeply because there is sure to be someone else in his ranks ready to react in retaliation.

It's back to Ireland

Michael Brown in Ireland is the equivalent of John Smith in the USA. Tons of them.

Getting the name of a relative is always exciting to me. Getting a name of a living relative is a big YEAH!

I talked to my Aunt Grace yesterday and she called to tell me that she found the deed to the grave where my grandparents are buried which means she can grant me authority to lay my mom's ashes to rest there. It was a weight that was lifted off of my shoulders.

The previous day, I had sent an email to my Aunt Tressa about visiting the area for the funeral.

So it's on. It's on. I need to pick a date and time and get with the mortuary about the stone marker and pay the fee. I'm thinking Wednesday,October 19th.

I told my boss at work that I'm taking two entire weeks off.I haven't had a real vacation since 2001 when I went to see my Uncle Arthur on my dad's side of the family and then drove down from Atlanta, GA area to see my Aunt Grace and Uncle Bob.

So, while I was drinking my hot black tea this morning trying to wake up because I'm got a shit load of things to do and the desire to do them, I started to poke at my family tree on Ancestry. Yesterday, they sent me another 'thank you' for correcting bad transcription. and I was trying to fill in the missing people for Joan Staub, but could not because she's a living relative in New York and that state is strict with it's privacy laws and genealogy. So I was looking a little farther back and  thought, "Hmmm I have a photo of Michael J. Brown, my 2nd great grandfather by marriage to Mary Florence Killmer who was the sister of Julia Ann Killmer, my maternal 2nd great grandmother". And looked at his parents info and decided they were both immigrants from Irish Free State somewhere between 1867 (when he was around age 20) and 1872 (a year before the birth of his first child in the US). They should be on the Ellis Island registry.

Prolific in my head

I always have these great blog topics rolling about in my head when I don't have a keyboard around. Like when I'm driving to work in the morning. By the time I get home, I'm too spent from work to even remember what I was thinking to write about in the AM.

Yesterday, it hit me that I must finish my mom's euology so I can plan to go to New York, otherwise I'm just a traveling box of ashes, you know? And so instead of focusing on all of the crappy things she put me and my brother through as kids to get back at my dad, I focused on the word  "go" and "home" and I think what I wrote worked. It doesn't have too much detail. I don't think people really want to know about how she ran a Grand Torino over my left foot and busted up my pinky toe which sits off till this day. Or how we moved about atleast a dozen times as kids. Or that how she never took me to the orthodontist when I was a kid when my friend Liz was getting braces even though my dad's dental insurance would of paid for 100% because my mom didn't want to take time away from work. Yeah, I ended  up spending close to $13k out of my own pocket to fix my teeth from 2003-2005. I wish my dad got the chance to see my better smile before he passed. That would of been a big FU to my mom who really didn't have much to say about the subject after they were fixed.

There is actually a laundry list of crap I could dole out here, but it's now almost 11PM and I've got to get to bed. OT for the rest of the week and then I'm going to plant my tomatos, spring clean my house and think about having a big ass yard sale of all her crap in storage.

No Rain

The weather this week has been strange. Yesterday, it was cold as hell - in Southern California standards, that is. It was in the high 40's to the low 50's last night. High school friends living in Yucaipa complained of the snow ruining their fruit trees. That alone makes me glad I left. I hate being cold. I visited the snow just once as a little kid. I can't remember who took me, but I think it was my mom. She pulled off of the road and I remember getting out of the car and my feet crunching in the newly fallen snow, then the cold hit me and I was done. My day in the snow took all of 10 minutes.

Today, it's bright and sunny. My one cat was so happy she could go outside again, she talked me into it. I lounged on the chaise on my patio in the sun for awhile. It got too hot for yesterday's uniform I threw on again this morning... white Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, grey sweatpants and powder blue Uggs.

Beginning on Monday, work goes into overdrive. There was a final vote on Friday and the vote was go-go to move the vast majority of our first lien mortgage loan servicing activities to another company. I've already marked FHA loans as such. I think we're getting a whopping 22 days total to get it accomplished. My manager asked about my vacation plans again and I told him I'm coordinating with my cousins to make the trip. Vacationing in NewYork. I think I will be traveling there right before Octoberfest in Germantown. Something to look forward to besides trolling for headstones of my ancestors.

[Photo Credit: Dominic Grisafe, April 2011]

Daylight Savings Time

This is my favorite time of the year. When the days get longer and seasons transition from winter to spring and then to a warm languid summer.

Life is short. Life is fleeting. Life is fleeting when your time is spent working for someone else other than yourself. Your small victories working for someone else are not really your own.

Freedom brings choice. It also brings you the opportunity to succeed or fail. Most good intentions are not good enough because ambition only goes so far. Knowledge and planning.

I have to write my mom's eulogy and I'm stalling because I don't have much nice things to say.

It's a tree, it's a tree, a big old frickin tree

The more I research my family tree, the more ancestors I find in the state of New York. I've been working on my family tree for over 15 years now. The majority of that has been online.

Today, I wanted to blog about my find because it was substantial. I found a distant relative that is as passionate about genealogy and posted his tree online. But it wasn't just the tree, it was photos, too. A name is just a name until you can see a photo and then that name has a face and that is a find. In the process, I located an obituary that he needed and sent him a copy to fill in the blanks of a relative that was just a name and no details to him.

That's what genealogy is all about really, the details of life. You are born, you live here and there, events in your own live changes others lives and life goes on.

What I did on my summer vacation

Actually, I was thinking about my pending trip to NY and trolling through graveyards for ancestors right before I woke up from sleeping on the couch and realized I was hungry. It was Friday night and well past when I normally eat dinner. I thought making up a dish of yaki soba with some vegetables was a good idea. And it was until I decided to use the nifty mandolin slicer for a carrot and my right thumb got in the way. I lopped off about 1/3rd of the tip right next to the nail. It didn't bleed much at first since I was applying direct pressure immediately after it happened, but then when I went to the bathroom to find a bandage, I decided to run some cold water over it which stopped any clotting that previously occurred and the sight of my dark red blood dripping into the white porcelain bathroom sink was enough to make me realize this was kind of serious so I better pay attention to what I was doing. I grabbed some toilet tissue and again began applying direct pressure to the wound and the bleeding stopped. I placed a bandage over the cut.

I had to change the bandage a few times throughout the weekend. I kept hitting it wanting to use it, but I couldn't. You never know how much you use your thumbs until you can't. Buttoning my Levi's, my wool coat, using the fob for my car alarm, the remote for the tv... these were the most annoying tasks to perform without the full use my thumb. Ouch!

After babying it over the weekend, I'm using it a bit more, but it still smarts. The wound doesn't look that bad.

Yay me.

On 02/18/2011, I got ROTD on http://www.yelp.com/ for writing about when I shopped at 99 Ranch Market and found fish balls for sale. Yay me.

Today, I had my annual review at work. I did good and got a raise. Yay me.

I also went to lunch at the sushi place across the street and ended up talking about fashion to a lady that's probably, I'm guessing, almost 20 years older than me. It's nice that I don't have to talk shop on break sometimes.

I think I've finally got this low energy thing figured out. I've got to keep eatting and take mega doses of vitamins, too, and I feel a bit better. Yay me.

I have to make plans for my mothers funeral. Boo.

Automobile Accident Deterrant

So I'm driving to work north on the 405 freeway and in front of me is this newish blue BMW. I love the color blue so I'm immediately attracted to this object and I want to see who's driving it, so I accellerate to get closer. And as I'm following this car, I notice that as the closer I get, there is this smell - more like an odor in the air that's a combination of farts, cigarette smoke and body odor. The smell is so strong, it's got me saying Oh My God and Damn in my car for that reason alone and I backed off. I choose not to follow so closely after that. Could you imaging if everyone's car stank like something fierce that no one would drive so close and that there would be alot less auto accidents?  It was sad but at the same time funny, too. I wonder if this guys has any clue?

An uneventful month. And then...

Lots of things have been running around in my head this past month. Like how I've got to buckle down at work because pissing people off is not going to make them see things my way. Like how I feel so free now that both of my parents have passed on. Like how anything I do, good or bad, pass or fail is really only meaningful to me whatever it may be. And like how I really need to liquidate all the crap of my mom's I stuffed into a storage unit. Sell-sell sell.

And just when I thought things were going to get nice and boring for a good long while, Pancho pokes his head above the huddled masses after years of no contact and wants to meet me for lunch. But it's not lunch. And I'm on his menu. I know I should be flattered, but instead I'm slightly repulsed. It's a strange feeling to have. I don't want to be used, I want to be loved. I guess that's what I'm shooting for and he's not it. He's Mr. Right Now and not the right guy for me.

I'm not dating right now. I've got too much crap to take care of. I need to get back to my happy place and I'm not working towards that right now. Kinda just marching in place.