Just to back track....

Thing have been kind of a whirlwind again. April is flying by and I'm off to Ireland soon. My eyes are improving each day, the weather here is well... up and down. We've had snow/rain/hail/sun in a 24-hour period. Sheesh.

I can blog about this now but at the time a few weeks ago I was so emotionally overwhelmed and drained. After coming off several long stretches for the past few months of working, I had just come from this amazing long 4-day weekend in Dallas: catching up with everyone, having these great conversations, seeing old and new places.

And then I come back to Tacoma, where I proceed to work an extra long week, my mother and I have another disagreement because as usual she jumped to the wrong conclusion and then my grandmother dies.

Since I'm the only full-time woman on the desk, there is a lot of stuff said back and forth that really most other departments wouldn't get away with. But's is still sort of a 'good ol'boys' network back there and I can roll with the punches because what is said is in good fun and no one is personally attacked.

Well this didn't happen to me, it happened to one of our two part-time female writers (who happened to be helping us that night on the desk and doing some agate for another co-worker).

It was a heated comment during the Final Four semis during the Kansas game (the guy is a Kansas alum.) He misunderstood that she was agreeing with him that the tv announcers were stupid and just out of nowhere yells,"You F---ing Bitch!" and then proceeds to throw trash at her.

Needless to say, we were all SHOCKED! He has been one of the nicest people to me since I moved here (he's in his late 50s) and the rest of the desk was stunned.

Another male colleague reported it. Some of the people who were not there that night are not taking it as seriously as they should. I have never been so humiliated for another woman in my life as well as sad. The offender was punished. He has apologized to both of us women who were there. I can forgive him, but told him that if it ever happened again.... The person who was the victim in all of this is doing well. She's keeping a low profile, but the sad thing is that it has only poisoned her thoughts on this place even more so. Frankly, I don't blame her.

For awhile there (after this happened) I was having doubts as to whether I can stick this job out. Up until that moment, I was liking my job, even getting to laugh at some of my (grumpy) co-workers. Everyone seemed to like my work and I have so many ideas and things I want to accomplish here.

I need this vacation and the time away from the desk to just sort of let things go by. Hopefully it will have gotten better when I get back.

I can see!!!!

20/20 that is...

The surgery went great (drugs are goooooooddddd!) and I managed to get a positive check-up today. I'm getting tired as we speak since I've been oh, up early for me at 9 and never did get around to taking a nap.

Thanks again to Mindi for being my seeing eye-person and ride... And highly recommend Masa for lunch to everyone... We had a fad dining experience (yummy guac and salsa, superb fish taco and awesome quesadillas!). I still wonder where Divish and Pacey were going? We saw you too....

But the day was gloriously sunny and I wanted to take advantage of the new sight with sunglasses in tow...

And I was jonesing for some sort of ice cream float.shake.soda and found this little place over in Fife (after making the mistake of hitting rush hour north on the 509). It was the darling little dairy-esque shack ... and if the weather was not so cool, it is great with some picnic tables for sitting and chilling.

Tomorrow a Y 5K and the daffodil parade to conquer.

What kind of karma is that?

The Dali Lama will be in SeaTac for the next few days for a conference and free tickets have been gone for quite some time.

So people have resorted to selling them on craigslist for up to $200.

All I have to say to those who are trying to make a buck from this:

What will you be reincarnated into in the next life?

How's your bracket??????

Mine was fab. Thanks for asking!

I can brag since I won the office pool -- and some moolah. And i plan to share with my colleagues at a future date and by some pizza.

Thanks Kansas for making it one nail-biter of a game....

Sad news...

My grandmother Connie passed away this afternoon in Michigan after a short illness.

Her health had been deteriorating the past few years and well... I think she just found it all a little too overwhelming. She lost her long-time partner a few years ago (he passed away after a decline in health) and it seems as if she kept falling further into the past.

While she may not have been my grandmother in blood (she was my grandfather's errr... second wife), she has always made me feel no less. And she was never one of those grandmother's who treated you as a child even when you were a child.

I'll have great memories of her and her partner, Al. They would take cousins and I every year to the large Shrine Circus... She was part of my early (bug-bitten) travel trips on a train ride to Ann Arbor. Her funky house out in the country and those large, large cats (the size of medium dogs!) And her adventures in her younger years of travel and glamor were always relished.

The last time I was home, we were cleaning out some boxes and came across one from her pile that had long been forgotten. In it were old menus from trips from around the world, back in the days were dining was an event and an adventure. I know some of the menus my mom did save. And I think I may have taken a couple for myself. Now I just need to find them and collage them.

As glamorous as her days were before I was born (she and my grandfather split when I was a toddler), her later last years would become a routine. She was always cold in the large rambling house of my parents and every year I bought her these silk thermal underwear. It became a running joke in the family of when she would actually not wear them and I think we actually got her out of them before the 4th of July one year... Although we could not get her out of them at Christmas time in Florida one year.

And she was so proud of all of her grandkids and their accomplishments. She was keeping my job intact by reading the paper every day from cover to cover. And when I worked for the Detroit papers, she saved all the special sections I worked on.

I sent her cards at Christmas and for her birthday and I would get updates on her from other family members. And she had read them and in typical Connie fashion had put them in her pile of 'to do' stuff that never really seem to get smaller.

But i know in my heart, I was next.

The things we share...

So it is always refreshing to talk anything but sports when I am working.

And when an older colleague ran across an Austin City Limits show featuring KT Tunstall (the same show I was at in Austin and was a great outdoor performance!), and he found it even more amazing that she was from St. Andrews, Scotland and NOT a golfer, I just had to share my wealth of music of Ms. Tunstall with him.

And it gets me listening AGAIN to just a great breezy, sunny album at the edge of spring in the PNW. I have a tendency to listen to one album over and over again for a few weeks (even with my vast music collection and ipod)

Who says we can't share music? I do... with joy.

P.S. Said ipod is starting to die (a long and slow painful ending...) Why can't they make something that will last more than 2 years?