This weekend's bride was HIGH maintenence, but it looks like we are good to go there. I will still heave a great sigh of relief once 4:00 PM or so rolls around on Saturday, when I know that wedding is over and we hopefully don't have to deal with that again.

The guest singer bride found out that her proposed guest singer had a conflict, so she will not have a guest singer at all. She sent along her selections last night, so all is done there.

The third bride is still somewhat difficult. She sent along quite a few selections I'd never seen used at wedding Masses, and I highly doubt they will be approved. I think she chose, like, a five minute song for the Sign of Peace, a part of the Mass that lasts (at most) a minute and a half. Even if the bride and groom go and hug every member of their bridal party, both sets of parents and grandparents, and head back to their spots on the altar, it still won't take five minutes. I also might have to hire a string quartet for her in the space of a week and a half. Damnation. Nothing I can do about that one until Monday, though.

Tonight I get the all-important job of heating dinner while Lowell and Alex are out running. I will also be continuing the never-ending battle against laundry. I have to get all of it out of the basement by Friday next, if my grand plan of cleaning the basement that Saturday is going to come to fruition. And it is. Just like my grand plan of cleaning the garage that Sunday is going to, as well. Booyah.

Time to keep myself busy for the next five and a half hours.

I've done just about everything I can do in preparation for Gaming Day. I'll be doing some shopping in about an hour, will do more shopping once I can extract Lowell from work, and will continue doing laundry until every bit of it is done. Then I will go to sleep. When I wake up, I'll set up anything I want set up for the evening, vacuum the couch, cover the couch, shower, dress, and be ready for a day of awesome fun with awesome people. Boo-freaking-yah.

I am going to be so tired on Sunday. But it will be so worth it.

This is going to be an incredibly busy and rewarding month:

June 4: BIRTHDAYS!!
June 5: Blinds finally installed.
June 7-8: Max and Adina in town!
June 12: Starved Rock
June 18: Massage
June 19: Dim sum and Gaming League
June 20: Father's Day
June 22-24: Jon in town (TBC)
June 25-28: Jill, Kelsi, and Sally in town!
June 29: LOWELL'S BIRTHDAY OMG

WHEW. Methinks I will need all of July to recover. XD

Today has been very...odd, I guess. I spent most of my morning being irritable and then sad. Now that the work issues have been more or less resolved, I am more or less resigned to the rest of the day. I have to go shopping with my boss around 3:00 PM for wine, fruit, and possibly dessert for the mini-party-thing he is throwing for the professional choir. I believe we are ording a Thai curry thing, as well, but I am waiting for a confirm from him on that. After I am all set up with that, I get to babysit for about two and a half hours. I will then bolt out of the building and head to the Metra, as that is the mode of transportation I've opted for to get home. I will have a cheap but delicious martini at the bar in the train station, take the train to Morton Grove, then take a nice evening walk home. Booyah.

I will need to go get another small coffee when Ricardo heads over for a meeting at 2:00 PM. I'm assuredly drowsy right now. This mid-late afternoon sleepiness thing is killing me.

As of today, we are down to two choirs rehearsing. One of those two, I have little to no involvement with, so in my mind, we only have one. This is a HUGE weight off my shoulders. Even though the three choirs that are done as of today are generally much less work for me than the professional choir, it's nice that we only have to worry about the professional choir. They have one more rehearsal (this Thursday), two more Sundays with Masses, and one more "event" (they are singing for a Confirmation service on the first of June). Then they are done, and all that remains for me is cantors, weddings, funerals, and day-to-day miscellaney for three glorious months. I think I can handle this.

The next few days will be VERY laid back. When I get home tonight, I will do laundry, clean the kitchen, straighten the living room, and play Trials and Tribulations. Tomorrow on Day Off the First, I will clean/organise the guest bedroom, do more laundry, organise things in the basement, and play Trials and Tribulations. On Wednesday, Day Off the Second, I will finish all the laundry, work out, do some random cleaning, and play Trials and Tribulations. Lowell will help me move furniture in the guest room on one of these days, and it will be ready for Kate when she is in town this weekend. Thursday is work and dinner with three of my singers. Friday is Day Off the Third, which will be the true day off. I will see Million Dollar Quartet with the girls, and it will be swell. Huzzah!

My fangirling over Miles Edgeworth might have reached a ridiculous point. Just need to get that out in the open right now. But I am enjoying the hell out of these games, and will continue to do so until there are no more games to enjoy. Then I will probably play them again. Not right away, of course, but very soon.

Other games-wise, Lowell picked up Red Dead Redemption last week, and we've been enjoying the hell out of it. I like the voice actor chosen to play the lead. I also enjoy the little posse the main character puts together in the first half (third? Who knows?) of the game. It consists of the main character, a crazy gravedigger, a drunk, unlucky Irishman, and a snake oil salesman. They are fantastic.

Our wedding DVD from the videographer could be here as early as the end of this week, though it will most likely be next week. I am more excited about this than I care to admit.

There's a lot going on in the brain, as per usual, but I should probably get payroll done. Breaktime be over.

I am basking in the silence of my office. Mondays are usually a day sorely lacking in such. David is out, which does cut the noise level down a great deal, but Ricardo is in, and adds his own sort of noise. We've had a few moments of panic already, though both largely unnecessary. He's readying to play a memorial mass right now, then will play 12:10 Mass, then will hopefully go to lunch and leave me with a final hour of silence. I'll be able to get everything done today, including what he's added to my list, and will leave feeling more than accomplished. That is, of course, if it all goes according to plan. Most of life doesn't.

This next week will likely be filled with moments of panic, crises, and so forth. This upcoming weekend is incredibly busy around here. Only two weddings, one Friday and one Saturday, but still full. One set of ordinations is on Saturday morning, and the other is Sunday afternoon. Sunday also is the last big choral Sunday of the season, with all three choirs joining together at the 11:00 AM Mass. After that is our yearly potluck, one that is more hastily planned than any since I've been here. It'll go through well, and everyone will enjoy spending time together before departing for a summer, but I know it will be hectic. The professional choir will only get to be down there for about an hour before their call time for the ordinations, and many members of the ladies choir and the volunteer choir will not be there at all. It will be nice either way, and we will have a good time. It'll just be a little more hectic than usual.

I am on the clock for Sunday, as I am legitimately working from the time I get there until the time I leave. I also have to be in Monday to turn in payroll. I do get time off because of this, though, on Tuesday and Wednesday. So next week will be a little easier than others. The following week holds a national holiday, so I'll have another short week. And then night shifts end, and I'll work a somewhat "normal" schedule for three months. Such bliss.

We got the living room mostly taken care of on Sunday. I'd like to run the robot vacuum for a little while in there. We can't get it finished until we get the new guest bedroom finished, as some of the furniture from the living room will get swapped into the guest bedroom. Since I will be home tonight and Wednesday night, I hope to get every bit of laundry out of the basement. I'm sick of seeing a pile of linens in the basement, and it's taking up storage room besides. There's quite a few things we also need to get out of our bedroom and out of the nerd room and downstairs for storage. We also need to reorganize the basement in general and get rid of some of the stuff that's been sitting down there for almost a year and a half now. Now that we're working on taking out another loan that will hopefully cover waterproofing the basement, it's more pressing that we get things clean and organised downstairs.

Our wedding photo DVD came in on Saturday, and I've been having fun looking at the pictures that "didn't make the cut", so to speak, onto the slideshow that our photographer posted back in December. There's a few I need to order through her, since many of the 5x7s don't print well from Snapfish, and barely any of the 8x10s do, either. Now that we have these additional photos, we can finally (FINALLY) order the sponsors' gifts. Note to anyone planning to get married at any point in their life that doesn't invove running to the courthouse: you'll still be paying for wedding stuff long after the actual wedding is over. Blargh! Now all we need is the DVD proper, and we'll be good to go. That should be arriving any day now. I'm hoping it comes today, Wednesday, or Friday, though with my luck it'll be Tuesday, when I'm at work. Booerns.

We officially started with our friend Jon's guild on Gilneas on Sunday, and it was rather fun. We're looking to do Ragefire Chasm together on Sunday next. Lowell and I are two of the highest-level people in the guild, as we spent much more time this weekend playing than we realised. I don't know about Lowell, but I know I'm in competition with him, level-wise. I don't know why I'm bothering, as he always is better at WoW than me, but that's just how I am, I guess. Lowell is playing a Blood Elf Paladin (surprise surprise), and I'm a Tauren Druid. I am working on my cat form and already have my bear form. I'm a bear! :D We're going to play a bit more tonight, I believe, and then ease off for the remainder of the week. Most members of our guild are four or five levels below us, so we don't want to be too far ahead for next Sunday.

I think I've enjoyed my solitude for long enough. Time to get back to work.

I'm going to get spoiled by these four-hour Mondays. Last week was because we were getting measured for blinds in the front room (finally). This week was because I didn't sleep well last night, and, well, because I wanted to go home. It's easy to fill the missing two hours in on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, either by piling them on one (such as Wednesday of this week, as I will be staying downtown to babysit) or spreading them out over two of the days. I will likely have to nip this in the bud after today, though. Don't want to have to work an eight-hour Monday for a special event or something (or even a six-hour Monday) and have myself go stark raving mad.

I only have two more weeks of double-duty evening work. After May 23rd, the volunteer choirs (sans the Filipino choir) are on summer break, so I'll only have to work late on Thursdays, due to the professional choir still being on call. After June 7, the professional choir is done, and I will only work nights if I need to be home or running errands in the morning. That rarely happens, so from June 7 onwards, I get to work all days. I am somewhat looking forward to this. I do like my mornings off on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but this does free up two evenings in case I should want to do things like go for drinks and catch up with people. Plus, it's much easier to handle that office when the choirs are on break. Not only that, both organists usually take long vacations in the summer, so I get a great deal of freedom in the office.

Work has not been pleasant. Ricardo throws himself into the Ordinations head first, and we kind of get dragged along with him. I would have thought things would be a bit easier this year, what with being at home and all, but alas, things are still kind of crazy. Emotions are up and down on all fronts, communication fluctuates, and everyone ends up on edge. After re-reading entries from this time the past few years, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Some days I feel like I'm just treading water.

We also had a run in with a bride and groom who went against policy and hired their own musicians. It was very unpleasant, and we all got screamed at for various things. I don't know what's going to come of it, but I am having nothing else to do with it. I am not the best worker in the world, but I am not incompetent, as I had flung at me last week. I assume that someone in authority told her she went against policy and had to abide by our wishes, due to an email I received this morning, but it's still going to be an unpleasant month and a half until this wedding is over and done with.

Other weddings are coming along more or less smoothly, thank goodness. We seem to be keeping up with demand, as it were, and have as many weddings for the summer as we've had before. This will keep some of my cantors happy, which will keep me happy. Weddings, cantor stuff, and organ concerts are the main concerns this coming summer. I'll keep busy enough with all that.

I'm keeping busy at home with prolonged spring cleaning and gaming. We were thwarted in living room cleaning this weekend, but we have tonight, Friday, and Saturday to do that. The blinds will not be installed for at least another fortnight, so we do have time. Lowell might be having the guys over this weekend, though, so if he does, it'll have to be done by then. Shouldn't be a problem.

On the gaming front, I've been playing a bit more WoW than usual. One of our friends we met through A4 contacted us to possibly start a guild on another server and work our way up through the levels again. Lowell seems to want to wait until Cataclysm to do something like that, but I'm all for it. We're playing Horde on Gilneas, and it'll be interesting to see things from that perspective. I know I'll be playing Horde when I roll my goblin for Cataclysm (I will live in Kezan FOREVER (yes, I know about the phasing)), but this'll let me revisit the world one more time before it all explodes and such. I rolled a Tauren Druid, and she's just dinged level ten. Now to decide if I want to go feral or balance, as we already have a resto-Shaman. I know nothing of druids, other than Evie is one and Evie is awesome.

I also decided to start Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and I'm having a lot of fun. I'm on the third case in that game, and I'm having problems putting the game down. I also love Miles Edgeworth. Just saying.

I'll be doing some reading this week, too. We are taking the baby plunge, so to speak, and I picked up the prequel (so to speak) to the highly-touted "What to expect while you're expecting" series. It's telling me things I already knew, which I expected, but I'm also getting some good pointers. I'm doing most things right, and am working on eating healthier and getting to a healthier weight, so who knows? Might have good news in that arena sooner than later. Trying to not get my hopes too high, though, as such things take time.

Pappy also informed me that a new Pendergast book drops tomorrow (OMG), so I might have to give up Starbucks for the week to pick that up. The last few books (all of the Pendergast/Diogenes trilogy, Wheel of Darkness, and Cemetery Dance) were picked up the day they dropped, and finished within a few days after that. I'd like to keep this tradition, as I enjoy those books immensely. We shall see what happens.

Tonight will include laundry, cleaning, light weight-lifting, and napping. Must get started on the former and the latter now.

( More lists for my benefitCollapse )

Must decide what girly thing to wear to work today. It's so springy and nice that I might as well mirror the weather. High spirits, whoo!

( Just day-logging here.Collapse )

Stuff to do today:

--laundry
--clean bedroom
--play World of Warcraft
--play Mass Effect
--clean kitchen
--shopping?
--bake angel food cake

Stuff to do this week:

--work
--walk with Lowell on Monday and Friday
--laundry
--drinks on Wednesday?
--babysit on Wednesday

Time to get all this started.

There will be no falling apart today. I feel good about myself and all I accomplished at home this weekend. I will not let that be ruined by panicky bosses.

I will admit, I did not get everything done this weekend that I wanted. For one thing, it was a lot more work than I realised. For another, a lot of the organising/etc. I could not do on my own (i.e. the new guest bedroom did not get finished because most of the stuff remaining in there was Lowell's and I did not know what to do with it). For yet another, my schematic (as it were) for the new guest room did not work. I probably should have measured the bed before planning the way I did. Now the armoire will have to get moved, which is a task I was hoping to avoid. Oh, well. C'est la vie.

It's not like this is the only weekend we have, though. This week we can keep the kitchen and new nerd room in order, do laundry, and other such nonsense. Then on Saturday, we can attempt to start our new routine:

AM:
--walk for 30 minutes to an hour
--putz around the house/play WoW

PM:
--pick a room and get to it

I had thought about finishing the guest bedroom this coming weekend, but Lowell raised a valid point about our own bedroom. It's by no means messy, but it could assuredly use some reorganising and deep cleaning of its own. The curtains we bought for the nerd room are affordable and rather nice, so perhaps we will purchase the same brand for the bedroom this Friday. We can also move furniture and clean underneath stuff, reorganise Lowell's closet (we now have too many clothes to fit in our small closet, so my clothes are in the nerd room and Lowell's will be in the bedroom), maybe hang some of the wedding and engagement photos, and so forth. I wish there was some way to rearrange the furniture in the bedroom, but the room itself is too small and the bed is too big. C'est la vie again.

And now my day has gotten all sorts of weirdly busy. Payroll is due, but there are two remaining topics to discuss with Ricardo, and I don't know that he's back before I leave. If I have to harass him during Mass, I will, but I hope I do not. I also hope I don't have to stay late to address it, so I suppose I need to decide which is the better path to follow. I've also been asked to call a bride about rescheduling a meeting from months ago, over something that I thought had already been taken care of. The lack of communication in this office still baffles me. There's definitely enough to keep me chugging right along until I leave, either way.

Tonight:
--weights
--walk with Lowell
--laundry
--WoW
--sleep

Productivity abounds!

( Getting the house in further order...Collapse )

I am indeed at work, though with nothing pressing to do. I suppose I could mail the Easter VI music to the cantors...and prep envelopes for payroll next week...meh, it's something. Other stuff will come to me as the day progresses, I suppose.