Bonding With Co-Workers

Last night was a kind of busy night at work, but there was still time to chit and chat at work. There was an organ placer working who I'd never met and we hit it off.

We bonded over pets and sports.

She and her husband take care of rescue cats and dogs and she shared some amazing stories about that. I've since decided I really have to go ahead and spend the money to get an automatic litter box cleaner. I shared with her some of my favorite recent pics of our cat Belle.

And the bonding over sports was really great. We're both baseball nuts and have had the pleasure of getting amazing seats at US Cellular Field to see a Sox game. In my post about the best weekend ever, I talked about us going to the game. She and her husband are going this weekend. We had 4th row seats on the first base line. They're getting 3rd row behind the plate. Good times. So I showed her more pics.

Read the scoreboard on this one. It's from when their pitcher got taken out in the 4th inning. Priceless.

I love bonding with co-workers. That is, when they are worth bonding with. 'Nuff said.

Best Weekend Ever!!!

This weekend should one of the best ever for Easy and I. We had a great week last week between me finishing a huge section of training at work and Easy getting job offers plus finishing recording his CD. And now we have an amazing weekend!

Our engagement party on Saturday. A baseball game on the 4th row on Sunday. I just know it's completely fitting that we should enjoy the hell out of this weekend.

I hope to have lots of great pics to share when the weekend is over.

What are you doing this weekend?

Gonna Get Married, But There's More To My Life, Part 1

I have only 8 1/2 months to plan a wedding! Yikes! What was I thinking?!?!

Well, I know what I was thinking. I love Easy so much, and I wanted to press fast forward on the process toward becoming his wife as much as possible. Still having a wedding that falls 1 year 7 months 9 days after we first met is pretty good timing I think. I'm just glad Easy agreed with me that moving forward at this speed is the best idea for the two of us.

That being said, there are other things going on in my life. 1. Men I used to date who still don't know I'm engaged yet. 2. Looking for an apartment. 3. Settling into this new job and the financial situation that goes along with it.

1. Yeah... so I didn't send out some sort of mass text to everyone I've ever talked to that may or may not pop back up again. I think that would just be odd. And since I'm not on Facebook, I don't have the benefit of spreading the news simply by changing my relationship status.

So what is my plan of action? I figure I'll tell them if and when they pop up. Except two got ahead of schedule; instead of popping up after the engagement, they popped up a few days before I was engaged.

One is my ex-boyfriend from college, who I have referred to as Light in my other blog, texted me to see how I was last week. I feel like I should tell him because we have so many mutual friends and I'm sure he will be offended if he doesn't hear it from me. But we only catch up every couple months or so.

Since we caught up last week, I'm wondering if I should call him up to tell him or wait until the next time it's reasonable to be back in contact and risk him hearing it from someone else? I only care because our break-up and subsequent roller coaster friendship cause quite a bit of hullabaloo amongst our college friends.

I don't want to once again be the asshole who didn't consider Light's feelings in the situation. Plus, if he were getting married, I'd like to know. Actually, I don't care, but I feel like I should care, you know?

Then there's PT. This is the guy I was still-sort-of-dating-but-definitely-still-liking when I met Easy. In fact, I wrote an interesting post comparing the two men that you can read here (sorry for bringing that back up Easy). PT popped up again right before I got engaged wanting to catch up.

I mentioned in a previous blog post that we planned on going for coffee but I have PT firmly in my unreliable category, so I didn't expect that we'd actually catch up. But he texted me again to set a specific time for Thursday evening to go have coffee. I feel like somewhere in there I should have mentioned the life changes, but all I mentioned was the new job. It just felt... weird... to bring it up via text. And when we first talked about meeting to catch up, there was no engagement.

Waiting to say, "I'm in a relationship now" makes sense. Waiting to say, "I'm engaged now" makes less sense. But the major concern is that I met Easy before PT and I were done. We were fizzling out, but weren't done yet.

When we fizzled out, I figured I'd never have to hear from him again except for the next time Cody Ross (google him, he's awesome) does something fantastic, and even then it wouldn't be to catch up, it would be a quick conversation that wouldn't include information about either of our lives.

If I'm lucky, he'll have a girlfriend and simply be interested in being one of those people who stays friends with all his old flames.

I wish Easy were the type of guy who was against staying friends with exes. But both he and I are pretty nonchalant about it. I'm nonchalant cause I mostly don't care to maintain those friendships myself, but I'm not the jealous type. He does in fact maintain those friendships, but he's also not jealous. So I have no reason not to try and make the best of these interesting situations.

I coffee tomorrow goes well and drama free, I may take the plunge and call up the ex from college before he hears it from someone else. And then I'll handle anyone else who pops up out of the woodwork as they arise. I guess that's what happens when I go through an.. abridged.. process towards the altar.

My friends who date people for like 5 years don't have these issues.

Thinking About Easy In Barcelona

I wonder how he's doing. I wonder if he's missing me.

I wonder if it's weird that I've already sent him two e-mails before I got a response back.

We decided e-mail was the best way for us to communicate while he was gone.

Phone cards and AT&T cell phone rates and time zone differences pretty much dictated that.

I sent him the first e-mail when I knew he was on a plane from Chicago to Newark.

He e-mailed me back when he got there, but he ended up calling too, which was sweet.

Then I e-mailed him when I knew he'd be on a plane from Newark to Barcelona.

But there was no immediate response when he got there.

I figured there wouldn't be. He had lots to do. Getting to the hotel and checked in and meeting up with his group without speaking a word of Spanish is no easy task.

But I miss him. While I was at the bowling alley, there was an incredible finish to the Spurs-Nuggets game.

If you follow American basketball, you know what I mean. The Denver Nuggets were robbed!

I knew it was something Easy would love to know about, so that sparked another e-mail.

This e-mail was super long and included all the information about that night's games.

Ever since the NBA season started, he's been on NBA.com every night checking out the info.

I know that he was switching his phone from regular Internet to wifi. What I don't know is whether or not wifi is readily available to him while he's there.

So, trying to be extra useful, I sent the e-mail.

And now I'm hoping he doesn't see two e-mails from me and think I'm doing too much.

I also hope he doesn't see it and is like, thanks, but no thanks. I have a tendency to not want him involved with things I love and he just tolerates (ahem, Christmas).

And now I'm hoping he doesn't do the same to me. Because I'm not a fan of basketball.

I'd rather watch almost any other sport on TV. Skating, bowling, hockey, hold 'em poker, fly fishing. Anything.

That being said, I'm going to turn over a new leaf and let him in on the things I love and he doesn't. Because I'd hate for him to do that to me.

I want to him love and appreciate my e-mails. Not think I'm a weirdo with too much time on her hands who's trying to hone in on his favorite sport.

December Is Quite A Month

There's a lot going on this December.

*I'm going to visit the White House next week with my mom. I'm very excited and hope to have some pictures to post here from it after that.

*The weather has turned violent. I walked outside and stepped immediately into a snow bank and got slapped in the face with hard snowflakes.

*At least I'm not driving in this weather. I'm taking the train to St. Louis in the morning and haven't driven all day. But I've still been out in the weather because of plans I made before it started snowing.

*The Bears are killing me! They lost so horribly to New England tonight! I think when Dallas started playing better, they sucked up everyone else's talent. Not literally, but maybe there's just only so much talent available in a given Sunday.

*Lots of good movies I want to see are out. For instance, I'm seeing the third Narnia movie tonight and I just saw the Harry Potter movie last week. December usually sucks for movies, but not this year.

*New Year's plans aren't set in stone (thanks friends), but they are mostly going well. I should still get the grown-up Chicago style New Year's Eve I wanted.

*I pretty much know what I want to get my people for Christmas, but the problem is going shopping. I don't want to pay shipping but I don't want to venture out into the snowstorm to shop. I guess I'll see which one wins as Christmas approaches.