Unfailing Unfairness

So my husband was laid off yesterday. Yep. No warning or anything. That was it. Shall I break it down a bit?

My husband has been working for this company for over a year. He was so talented with what he can do; they opened a whole video department with him as the head. He was bringing in business himself and wowing his bosses like crazy. He was being paid CRAP because the company was just starting out, but for months he was promised a raise come his yearly review. It was a long wait, but we were optimistic that we would get that raise and everything would be okay when we had to begin paying off Evan's school loans. For a year, Evan has not received any PTO or any overtime. And they made him work A LOT of overtime. 15 hour days. Those are always fun. This past weekend with the start of the Phoenix Film Festival, for which Evan did the logo/opening to every screening being shown there, he was there ALL weekend. Thursday night, after having worked all day at his office, he was sent to North Scottsdale for the Festival from 4:30 - 10:30PM, came home, went to bed, got up the next morning for work at the office, went to Scottsdale, came home Friday night about midnight. Saturday, got up at 8AM, shot another gig at 10AM for some BBQ thing, went to the Festival, and came home at 10:30PM. Went back on Sunday and worked at the Festival from 10AM-5PM. All. For. FREE. You betcha. He went in Monday morning to work, worked all day, and was brought in by his boss and his sister and told that there was no more work for him. They couldn't afford the pittance salary to keep him on staff. Evan asked if they could just keep him on for a week or two to give him time to find a new job. NOPE. Is he getting payment for all the overtime this weekend alone? NOPE. Is he getting reimbursed for the gas we spent getting him to North Scottsdale from Gilbert for the past four days? NOPE. You know what he's getting? A recommendation letter. No warning, completely caught off guard, not even allowed to finish out this week. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. NADA.

This post is a little all over the place, so sorry about that, but you can tell it's mostly cuz I'm upset. There's no harder worker than Evan. He's one of those talented, dedicated workers that could go so far and yet keeps getting screwed over by everyone. It makes my heart hurt. But anyway, I thought I would share and get it out of my system. You can see how amazing Evan is on his website: evansprague.com. Hope everyone else's luck holds in this crappy economy. It always sucks when you get to be a statistic on the news......

Death of a Crockpot

Being angry at Mondays is a good thing. It's like some sort of voodoo karma thing that bites you in the butt if you happen to be in a good mood on a Monday. And there I was yesterday, happy as can be, on my way home from work looking forward to some scrumptious chicken cacciatore I had made that morning in my crock-pot. My mood was so fine that I failed to notice my dog slink under the table as soon as I came through the door, my thoughts wholly centered on the fact that I have class on Monday nights and I get home long enough to eat really quick before diving out the door for the next three hours at COM100 so using my crock-pot on Mondays and Tuesdays works quite well. As I put down my purse and started to turn towards the stove to start boiling some water, that's when I saw it; this horrible thing. Shattered glass everywhere, the remains of my crock-pot flung about in disarray, tomato sauce all over the counters and floor, and the horrid lack of chicken cacciatore. I quietly let my dog out into the back, who escaped outside with a sigh of relief, and I turned back to the mess. I could physically feel the seconds counting down to when I had to rush back out the door again. Let's just say that for the rest of the time I was at home, I was pretty angry, and Molly was scared for her life. My crock-pot had been a wedding gift and I just wanted to sit down and have a good cry. Dratted dog! But anyway, I thought I would share my little movie with you all. Someday I will have a movie on how exactly she gets on the counters and knocks stuff off, so there's that to look forward to.

Furniture?? YES!

My in-laws are coming down at the end of April so we have been madly scrambling for bedroom furniture for our third room. Beds are expensive. While the frames are not too bad, buying a mattress for cheap is close to, how should I put it . . . ? IMPOSSIBLE! And that's where my friend helped us out. She just moved here from Michigan and has a lot of her stuff in storage and needs to get rid of some stuff, and when she started listing off what she needed to get rid of, I shouted, "SCORE!" So thanks to her, we are getting a bed, a MATTRESS!, a dresser, and a night stand for a GREAT price. The only downside is figuring out how to get everything over to Gilbert from NORTH Scottsdale in the back of our truck. Lol. Yay puzzles!

Anyway, I'm super dooper excited about getting to decorate yet another room in my house and it's going to be super sweet, and YES I will be putting up before and after pictures up on here, so do not fret my loyal blog readers. Stay tuned!

Conservative Moment

Today is a historic day for America. Today President Obama signed the healthcare bill, this bill that goes completely against what America stands for. Today another freedom was signed away to the roar of applause, and this is the day that every American will remember and know the name Obama as the one who took our nation farther away from greatness and closer to socialism. Closer to communism.

“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands." Nikita Kruschev, Russian Dictator, 1959

"For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is, there are simple answers, they just are not easy ones. The time has come for us to decide whether collectively we can afford everything and a...nything we think of simply because we think of it. The time has come to run a check to see if all the services government provides were in answer to demands or were just goodies dreamed up for our supposed betterment. The time has come to match outgo to income, instead of always doing it the other way around. Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is NOT ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only ONCE to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, HAVE NEVER KNOWN IT AGAIN." ~Ronald Reagan

Scared yet?

Wedding Madness

This weekend was wholly dedicated to our friends' wedding on Saturday. Friday was the rehearsal dinner which was held at Dave and Busters at Tempe Market Place, a location which I LOATHE. I hate driving there, I don't like parking, and getting out of there is a mess. But since we're awesome friends, we went. I left my purse in the car and ended up having to go ALL the way back to get it so the dork at the entrance could card me. Umm, I don't drink, moron. *Rolls eyes. Anyway, we ended up staying for almost a couple hours before we left. I was suffering from "woman woes" so it's amazing I lasted that long. On Saturday, the groom hung out at our house for awhile and went driving with Evan. I finally was motivated enough to actually get ready and came downstairs about an hour before the ceremony to find both men at the table talking. I asked, "Weren't you guys supposed to be at the golf club at 3:30?" To which they replied, "Crap, what time is it?" Lol. I shooed both men out and got them there and into their tuxes and found my seat. Let me just say, there's nothing more awkward than attending a wedding where you only know the bride and groom and your husband is a groomsman. I had to sit all by myself for most of the night. I finally found some people to socialize while I waited for Evan to be free from duties and they were funny. We stayed til about 9:30 before goin outside. We were posing as "the ride" to the hotel because the groom wanted to surprise his wife with a really nice SUV he had rented to take them. Well, the car was late and so I tried stalling at the curb with the bride while the boys lingered around the car, trying in vain to figure out where the car was. About a half an hour later, we finally loaded both into the back of our VW and set out. Luckily, we spotted the car and turned back to the club because we "forgot something" and unloaded the newlyweds. Lol. After settling them in their car, we went home. On the way, a horrible headache started and got worse until it reached full-blown migraine so I went to bed pretty early. That was a pretty terrible night. Then we woke up, rushed out to get a wedding present that we had forgotten to get before, and went to the after-party(?) at the newlyweds' home. We spent a few hours there before my migraine came back. Eeek! It took about 6 hours to go away and luckily, it was early enough to catch a movie, Bounty Hunter, which was fun.

It sucks that it is Monday and school is back in session, plus another class started and I managed to get my homework done, but I don't want to go to class tonight or tomorrow. Lol. UGH! I hate school. I don't want to deal with it anymore, but I'm almost done so I will keep pushing. This weekend we'll finally have time to finish painting and hopefully get our ceiling fan installed in our room. Yay! Keepin' my fingers crossed...

1 for the Penny, 2 for the Show . . .

It's so much fun reading everyone's statuses on FB about sleeping in, going to the movies, laying in bed all day because they're all on Spring Break, including me who still has to go to work 8-5 every day. The only difference this week is that I don't have to rush home, make dinner, and dash out the door again to class. Yay. Thanks guys. Lol.

Things are growing, Growing, GROWING. My little lavenders are sprouting like mad. And so are the weeds in my backyard. Little devils. But they won't be flourishing for long. Those bad boys are gonna be ousted tonight since I don't have choir to go to. I need myself some Round Up! Gitty up!

Next week we'll finally get the chance to finish painting the downstairs. I finally decided on a color. YELLOW! It's going to be amazing. It's not going to be an icky yellow like street paint or whatever. It's pale almost cream and it matches the cute little yellow flowers in my curtains so it will bring that out and with all the windows in my living room it will be TOTALLY sweet. That's the secret to yellow walls by the way. Lots of windows. Makes it look GOOOOOOOD. I'm not really sure if I want to do an accent wall or trying to paint all four "walls" in the living room, so that's still up in the air. I also don't know if I wanna do a different color in the entry way. Lol. Man this is tough!

Speaking of yellow, I got the cutest little sailor shirt this weekend at that boutique store my mom took me to, and I look darn fine in yellow. ;) I wanted to buy more, but unfortunately that takes more money. Lol. So I will be back! I also got to go to a cute little salon down the street where they also sell clothes and jewelry and got a really cute flower necklace for 9 bucks. I love reasonable prices for jewelry! Lol.

This weekend I watched the Rifftrax for Star Trek and Drag Me to Hell and laughed so friggin’ hard. I love those guys. Anyone who used to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 should definitely download a rifftrax to listen to during a movie of your choice. Well actually, anyone with a sense of humor should download one. Lol. We started the one for Transformers 2 last night, and it is quickly becoming my favorite one thus far. "Some movies just have it coming."

Toodles!

Week, week, go away.....

Seems like this week has been longer than most since I finished with February paperwork last week and my desk is empty now. My work computer decided to have a meltdown on Monday and got infected so that was a fun two hours of doing absolutely NOTHING while the antivirus program scanned everything. It's back to normal now, which means that it's still slow, glitchy, and obnoxious, but virus free.

Nothing too excited has happened since my last post. We didn't get to paint this past weekend because it was BUSY BUSY BUSY. Friday night was nice and quiet and we both went to bed early. Saturday, we went to church (I was exalting in just getting to sit in the pew and not having to be nervously anticipating when to play the piano) and then we had to rush home, pick up choral attire (long black sleeves, skirt to the floor, black tights, and closed toe shoes. I felt like Death Incarnate. Lol. All I needed was a scythe and a hood.) and then we had to rush to my parents' house to let out Abby for a bit before my Dad got home so we could go to Grandma's house for yum yums. I got a recipe for this kind of banana pie stuff. Vanilla pudding, bananas, cool whip, and these Italian wafer things from the 99c store (a place I never go because they're usually scary. lol.) Take the wafers and line the bottom of the pan, next layer is the vanilla pudding, then sliced bananas, another layer of pudding, more bananas, and then top layer of cool whip! It's so easy and yet SOOO GOOD. We had a good time sitting around the table chit-chatting with Grandma, and then left Willie there to spend the night, and set off to our part of the valley. We detoured to Stacey and Mark's house to watch them paint. I got to see my niece-puppy Penny who is friggin adorable. Lol. And we watched two of the best TV shows Archer and Tosh.0, laughing until our stomachs hurt. We got back to our house around 2AM. On Sunday, I got up early and spent a couple hours working on my 6-page paper due this week, practiced for my choir concert, made myself all pretty, got in my "death" get-up, and rushed off to MCC Red Mountain for the concert. It went really well, 'cept for 3 measures that I will pretend were SUPPOSED to be a solo ;), and a lot of people showed up which surprised me. After that, we fought through the rain and hail to go eat at Chile's. We left there right as the rain started pouring down so hard that the road disappeared and managed to get to Safeway okay to pick up dessert and fill-up the gas tank in the VW. We finally reached my parents' house and watched Law Abiding Citizen (which we now refer to as PS I Kill You. Gerry RULES!) and feasted on our banana cream pie. :) So overall a good weekend.

We'll prolly not be able to paint this weekend either since Evan got invited to go shooting in Casa Grande and then has a bachelor party to go to right after that. My mom and sister wanna go check out a cute little "boutique" on Main Street so I'm sure I won't be left at home all alone on Saturday. Lol. I'm not sure what else we're doing yet. Last weekend was busy and it wasn't even planned that way! Well the choir concert was, but nothing else. Haha. I love having a busy life so it works for me.

Evan signed up for Krav Maga classes which he attends three times a week so he won't get home until almost 8 tonight. I haven't decided whether I am up to cleaning the upstairs, making cupcakes, or passing out on the couch. I AM SO TIRED! I'm basically counting down the hours ‘til Friday night. I am excited to sleep in (thank goodness sleeping in is 9 o clock so I can sleep in AND go to church! Lol). I have like fifty billion crafts going on right now. I just wish I could choose one and work on it til I was done, but I get distracted so easily! I have my cross-stitch, my blanket, my bunny, and now my embroidery to finish. If only my hands didn't hurt so bad all the time I could get them finished in a timely manner! Ah, well. Some advice to my dearly beloved blog readers, "Life sucks and then you die." Lol. And on that OPTIMISTIC note, I bid you adieu! ;)