Facie’s Ramblings

If you follow pro-football, and especially if you follow the Steelers, you know all about the brouhaha surrounding the Steelers' signing of Michael Vick. People have threatened to boycott the games and burn their jerseys. I have no doubt some have and some will. Animal Rescue League, an organization that I financially support yearly, really made a statement when they pulled out of having their gala at Heinz Field, after first having removed all Steelers-related auction items from the event. I get why they did it, though, to be fair, the Steelers don't own Heinz Field. And there are plenty of other players on the team who seem to be decent. But as for the rest of us? Well, for sure we can all choose to support or not support a team for whatever reason. But personally, I think some people are taking it a bit too far. Michael Vick did a terrible thing. [He pled guilty to bankrolling a dog fighting enterprise and participating in every aspect of it, including killing dogs that...

This weekend, I got about 8 hours of sleep two nights in a row. That surpassed the number of nights I got 8 hours of sleep the previous 20 days. I have not slept well this month of August. Between work stress and my mom moving, and throwing in anxiety about my kid starting 7th grade and worrying about various things around that, sleep is elusive. But I don't want to dwell on that. I want to just acknowledge the weekend for what it was. It was busy at times. But it was a good weekend. I slept. I had some Blue Moons. I liked the cinnamon one; I was not fond of the spiced chai one. I cut three weeks' worth of coupons. I cleaned the bathtub well (every 2-3 weeks, I give it a deep scrubbing/cleaning; the other weeks it gets a perfunctory wipe-off). I went through my credit card receipts. I watched some TV with the kid. I slept. I spent some time with the hubby, just hanging out. I walked the dog, and I ran the dog. I lifted weights. I went with J to a frien...

On Thursday evening, the first day of "The Verizon Plan," the kid and I walked into a local Verizon store ready to make my soon-to-be 7th grader a smartphone owner. A woman greeted us, and I proceeded to tell her exactly what we wanted: the new plan for two smartphones for $20 each monthly one new smartphone for my kid, a Galaxy Core Prime, which I wanted to pay for outright 1 gig of shared data for $30 monthly Nicole mentioned a cool phone case she had, and I told her we would look at it, but we had already found something on Amazon we liked. Then she went to the back to get the stuff. After a few minutes, Nicole returned with the phone, a case, and a cover, and explained the plan she recommended, which contained 3 gig. I said that I had yet to use 1 gig in any given month, and my child would be using wifi only at home, so there was no need to spend the additional money ($30 versus $45, not including the 20% off the bigger plan with my Pitt discount). She then mentio...

J will be 12 in just over a week. We decided now was a good time to get her a cell phone. The vast majority of kids in her class have a phone; some have had one for years. J never needed one until this past school year, when she joined the drama club, which sometimes resulted in play practices being cancelled, added, or ending early or late. During those occasions, she had to borrow someone else's phone, which was not so convenient, to text the hubby, who, like many of us, hates to answer his phone for a number he does not recognize. What solidified the decision was last month, when J spent a week at a Carnegie Museum day camp. I signed her up as a self-sign out, which meant, as the name suggests, that she could sign herself out each day, rather than wait for me. I had no intention of her actually doing that, but I figured if I ever ran late getting there (I was a 5-minute drive or a 9-minute walk), then I could just meet her at the entrance. Unfortunately, her very first day the...

I have pretty much never written about work. At least not in detail. Not this job. Not my last job; well, until I was let go. And then I wrote about it afterwards. I still think my good-bye email to the office was one of my best pieces of writing to date. Things at work have been slow. That is pretty typical for the summer. And we work pretty hard throughout the year, so it is not altogether unpleasant to be slow (though I prefer to be busy), particularly when we get out .5 to 1.5 hours early most Fridays. But things were becoming unnervingly slow. We did not have many contracts on the horizon. Then we heard about people (the people whose work we do) leaving. First it was one person. Then another. When we got to the fourth and fifth, I was downright panicking. And then last week, we were told about a mandatory, full company meeting on Monday (yesterday). I did not like the sound of that. Not one bit. I felt very uneasy the entire weekend. The only reason I was not in a full-on pani...