passport arrived today! pic is shitty but I think that's one of the requirements.

And of course there was a problem. *sigh* Sharlene with an S from the passport office called looking for more ID. Hopefully what I sent her will be sufficient since I don't have a lot of photo id.

So the other night my grandfather called and invited my mom to go to Italy with him and her siblings. Ever since my grandmother died my grandpa has been on a burning $ kick so he was going to pay for everything. He called back about a half an hour later and I answered the phone. He said, "tell your mom that your dad is invited too. Do you want to go?" So as of right now I'm on track to go to Italy all expenses paid with my extended family in October.

When I went to work the next day I wanted to make sure that Colleen would be able to handle everything and to let her know I would be taking a couple of weeks off. I started with, "so my grandfather called last night..." and she interrupted with "and he wants to take the whole family to Italy." and I was like, "um, yeah, actually." and she said "NOOO!" in this incredibly funny way. It was hysterical.

I'm incredibly paranoid about things I've never done before. I overly plan. I like having 2 or 3 backup plans. It helps me to keep the stress down. I don't have a passport. Travelling for long periods of time is not my favorite thing to do and I'm generally a homebody so I doubted I would ever have use for one. So of course now I need a passport. I went onto the website and one of the pieces of ID that they want is an in-state ID. I have an ID but it's from MA still. I very rarely need it for anything and it was still valid so it didn't seem worth replacing. According to the website they will accept out of state id but with secondary documents. So I photocopied everything I own that could be construed as a secondary document. The postal employee glanced at the ID, made a copy and returned it. That was it. I had a ream of paper and a witness to verify my identity just in case but I didn't need any of that apparently. It went so smoothly that I calmed down pretty well until I got back to work and Jinny said "maybe the passport people will stop the application instead". Gah!

Ha!

PHL17 (one of the local channels in philly) is having a "My Beautiful Baby" contest where delusional parents send in massive amounts of poor photography in the hopes of showing the city that their drooling offspring is the most beautiful. A friend of mine asked me to vote for her drooling offspring so I registered with the station and am now attempting the voting process. Have you ever taken one of those "intelligence" tests where how smart you are is based on when you give up? This seems very similiar. In an effort to make it not a popularity contest you can't search for a particular photo, all they have are first name and last initial. The site shows you a pic and you vote. Then the next pic appears. There's no indicator to say how many you've seen, or how many are left. Can I stop voting and log in again later? I have no idea. Periodically the site craps out and I have to hit refresh. When I do it returns to a set of twins who are arguably pretty cute (minimal drool) but I think I've given them a 6 about 5 times now.

they settled! Oh woe!

i'm on a jury. yay!

i love my housekeeper. it's so nice to come home to a clean kitchen and bath.

saw "the producers" at walnut street theater. It was FABULOUS!

still ... not ... done ...

more later. maybe.

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/

sample:

(847): I accidentally had sex with my boyfriend's twin last night...and he didn't stop me.
(1-847): How was it?
(847): Fantastic, but that's not the point.

I'm reading the Twilight series currently. They are not too bad. I'm a really fast reader though so the 500 pgs a book doesn't intimidate me.

so the new box is in and working (at least right now). I checked the important things last night (fridges, dishwasher) and everything seems to be up and running. I still made an appt for him to come back on Thursday because he needs to put another GFCI outlet downstairs for the washer/dryer and maybe do some more cleanup of the electric wires of doom that is my basement. I will endeavor to test all the outlets today sometime so if there is a problem I can let him know on Thursday. Light at the end of the tunnel or on-coming train? You decide!

so I'm a little paranoid (part of the stress monkey package). I like to have contigency plans in place, and good thing to. My grandfather was supposed to let the electrician in. I was paranoid and I hid a key outside just in case. And what happened? The electrician called because no one was home. *sigh* Luckily grandpa is okay, he just forgot. I thought about calling him at lunch but didn't want to be a nag.

Left some $$ for him to go out and buy a new panel box. I didn't want to have to go there but it looks like I will have to. Electrician is supposed to stop by on Tuesday after work to start that project. Justin says it should take awhile so I guess I'll be lighting burners on the stove by match and cooking by flashlight :)

so the electrician came by. He was pretty nice and it was nice that he came out at night which is when I'm usually available. I think he lives near Justin though so I kinda feel guilty for having him out here. Anyway, the electricity is better, still not 100%. He's supposed to call this weekend and we're going to set up something for next week. Unfortunately he broke two things which were working, the fridge and the stove. Luckily the basement fridge is still working. The stove is gas but it won't light without power. *sigh* The saga continues...

so the electrician came by and what we thought the problem was wasn't the problem. Luckily we have a new theory! More later.

So dad just left me a voicemail. He said "I didn't fix the problem but I did fix the power." Uh-oh. I'm not sure what that means. But the upstairs fridge is back up and running which is good. Probably still need to call an electrician but maybe it doesn't have to be an emergency call now.

So PECO came out last night and the guy was really nice but it's not their line. Eep! PECO guy did use his tester on the circuit breaker inside the house for me (which he didn't have to do) and one of the main breakers is not working. My father happened to be up so he's going to attempt to replace it. PECO guy left the seal of the meter off so dad doesn't have to work with the electricity on which is good. More saga later.

half of my power is going off and on. thank god the computer's on the good circuit.