BINGO!
OMG, does this mean I'm getting old? I went with Karen, Betty and Bob to play BINGO last night. I didn't win anything but I sure had fun. Bob won $350 two weeks ago. I'm starting to worry.

My little garden is doing surprisingly well. The cucumbers are just starting to produce little, tiny cucumbers, about an inch lobg. They are so cute! The collards are doing well but I don't know when it's time to harvest them. Does anyone out there know? Here's some pictures of my vegetables.

The sisters left this morning. They arrived Monday night and left this morning (Sunday). We had a really nice visit. It's great to see them all get together. Dave's siblings are scattered across the U.S. so it's really nice to see them get together in one place to reconnect. It's nice that they stayed almost a week because that gave us time to do tourist things as well as vegging at home. We went to Universal Studios on Wednesday. Dave and I decided that we are done with theme parks. We enjoyed their company there but we had to wait an hour for a 5-10 minute ride/attraction. That's not too fun. My pups were howling when we got back to the car.

We went to Kennedy Space Center on Friday. That was awesome. We really enjoyed it. They have two 3-D IMAX films about space that were cool. We saw retired rockets, the launch pads, the crawler that carries the shuttle to the launch pads, and all kinds of space stuff. The highlight of the trip was at the observation tower for the launch pads. A racoon and her babies were trapped on top of the tower. Trappers put them in a cage and lowered them down to remove them. That was pretty cool. We went to the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Dave rode a flight simulator that got up to 4 G's. I wimped out because it had a spinning motion and I didn't feel like barfing. We definitely want to go back next year.

Today's the last day of Dave's vacation. It sucks that he only gets one week/year. I'm trying to let it all be about Dave today. He deserves it. I wish he could get more time off. Maybe, one day, since he has me on a budget, he'll be able to semi-retire. If I quit pissing away money, we can sock away the cash to make that happen. It'll happen.

I've been a banana bread making fool today. Nina bought a bunch of bananas during the week. Yesterday, there were 15 bananas left and they were getting ripe so I started making banana bread. I found a new recipe online that's really good. I made two loaves yesterday. Today I bought 4 mini loaf pans at Publix and made 8 mini loaves (3x4). They are the cutest things ever! Dave is taking some to work tomorrow and I'll freeze the rest. I love the mini loaf pans. They are just the right size for two people. I'm going to make some mini meat loafs, mini salmon loafs, and mini breads.

Well, I have one more day off. My goal for tomorrow is to organize things around the house to make life easier for the next 4 months since I'll be working a lot of hours due to the computer conversion at work. I have to hunker down and focus on work for awhile. That's against my life game plan. I try to make my focus about home and not work. Work is something I have to do in order to pay the bills. Don't get me wrong, as a rule, I enjoy working in the ER. But it's not my life. Sometimes I think the way I cope is the totally separate the two. When I'm at work, I give them 100%. It's not about me, it's about my patients. I'll work as hard as I can. But at 7pm, it's quitting time. I try to erase work from my mind. Work is done, now it's time for home. If I had a really bad day, I may have to come home and vent to Dave...then it's erased. He's a trooper about listening and letting me get it off my chest.

Well, that's it for now. I'm just rambling on.....

Dave's sister's Nina and Deb are coming this evening to spend the week with us. It'll be great to see them. Dave's youngest sister, Denise, was suppose to come Friday night or Saturday. We waited for her all weekend and she never showed up...so it wasn't a very nice Easter weekend. Of course, all sorts of things run through your head....is she hurt? Is she dead? Is she being rude and thoughtless? I don't know....we'll see.

Dave's on vacation this week. It sucks that he only gets one week per year. Since we had to sit at home this weekend he took advantage of "vacation mode". He spent a lot of time lying in the porch swing and using a yard stick to push the swing back and forth. AAAHHH!

Dave was creative yet once again. The house catty-cornered from us have four dogs. Two are Rotweillers, one is a Rottweiller mix and the forth one is some sort of yipper dog. The little yipper dog is the one that stirs up the shit. When Larry is out in the yard, the yipper dog starts barking and soon they're all barking and trying to get at each other through the fence. Well....Dave added another layer of fence panels on our side of the fence, as well as, he placed an old interior door between the two fences (he put it on its side) so the dogs can't see each other. We'll see how that works.

I planted two Confederate Jasmine vines on either side of the west gate yesterday. We want to train it to go up over the gate. They smell really nice. I hope they do well. The tomato plants are starting to form tomatoes. They're tiny right now but it's fun to watch them grow.

I'm off work for another 8 days, then everything changes. I'll be a working fool. The computer project at work is about to take off. The three hospitals are changing their computer systems and I'm the ER Lead for the conversion. So, from May to September I'll be working Monday-Friday and every other weekend 7a-7p. That's a killer schedule but the way I'm looking at it is....I absolutely HATE to work Monday-Friday. It sucks! So, as long as I have a sucky schedule for the next four months, I might as well add some weekend days and totally immerse myself in the drudgery. That way I can sock away some money. My credit card will be paid off the first month. After that, I'll start hacking at the Equity and Mortgage. I'm going to stay on my budget and in September I can poke my head above water and go back to my normal schedule and be ahead financially. Then in October, after the conversion is behind us, I'm going to take a long vacation...and go to Atlanta.

A sad day today. Pam and Dhamikka moved away. They are going to live in Sri Lanka. I wish them luck. They've been wonderful neighbors and we'll miss them a lot. They are "good people".

Dave has me on a budget. He thinks I'm "out of control". Maybe he's right. If I want something, I get it. Oh well, time to pay the piper. I made out a budget on a spreadsheet. UGH, I hate the thought of a budget. Well, I'm going to make this a challenge and make it fun. My debt is not THAT bad and I can pay it all off this year if I hunker down and watch my spending and work some extra days. After next week, I will be working with the Cerner project full time, Monday through Friday. Then I told my Manager that I'd still like to work my two 12 hour shifts every other weekend. That's 24 hours of OT a pay. That really adds up. I looked back over my bank and credit card statements and my biggest problem areas are the grocery store (we eat DAMN good) and Amazon.com. Well, I can give up Amazon for awhile and it's going to be "beans and rice and rice and beans" for us.

Dave's three sisters are coming down for a visit. Denise should be here tonight or in the morning, we're not sure when. The other two sister, Deb and Nina are coming Monday. They'll be here until next weekend. This should be fun.

I went to Atlanta this week. It was great weather for driving. Mom and I went shopping on Tuesday. We went to Tanger Outlet Mall in Locust Grove. I found some t-shirts and flip-flops at Eddie Bauer's. That was about it. There are so many outlet malls around, they are really not that great of a deal. After the mall, we went to Belks in McDonough. I think you're better off going to the regular stores and shopping for their sales. I bought a couple of pairs of Capri's that were on sale. The depressing part of going shopping is that nothing fits right and looking in the mirrors. I was so disgusted. When you're fat, nothing fits right. I always start a major diet after a shopping trip. So I started low-carbing it Tuesday. The low carb diet is the only way I can lose weight, but logically, the healthiest diet is portion control. My problem is that I have no will power. So, I'll probably do the low carb for a week or so for a boost then ty to watch my portions. Dave's sisters are coming down next weekend so it will be hard to diet....but I don't have to be a pig.

Last weekend Keith and Eileen had a dinner party for Charlie's birthday and then we played poker afterwards. How fun!!!! There were 11 people. I was the first to be out of the game, so I was the dealer after that. I lost most of my chips on one hand. I has an A,K,Q,J,4 flush, so I was betting high! Then Tracy beat me with a Royal Flush. Man! I thought I had it! Poker is a lot of fun.

Dave and I are doing a Lowe's run today. I want to get a few more plants for the yard. I planted 4 tomatoes along the west fence and they didn't do well (not enough sun) so I'll move them and maybe put some pentas there. I also want to get some geraniums. I want to get more color in the back. We're also trying to think of some sort of barrier between our yard and the one diagonal to us. They have 3 Rottweilers and a yipper dog that bark way too much and aggravates Larry. I'm sure Dave will come up with some brilliant plan.