3-day weekend - woohoo!

Thursday, a day when I should have been able to leave the office early, I ended up helping send our clients some Easter candy at the last possible moment. It's a wonderful thing that our company does ~ send off candy & goodies, but they always wait until the 11th hour to do this sort of thing. I've offered to handle these little projects, but that has fallen by the wayside. I probably wouldn't have even found out it was going on but the gal who was tasked with buying at least 100 boxes of Russell Stover candy let it slip. We turned my office into candy packing central & got the job done in a few hours.

The company also bought each employee a box Russell Stover chocolate ... a nice gesture I guess, but I don't eat it & couldn't take mine home. I gave it away to a friend with kids. We have several employees here that cannot eat sweets. How about a non-candy or sugar alternative, folks?

During the whole mess that was Thursday, I ended up not eating lunch. A co-worker & I were supposed to go for all-you-can-eat Chinese but he backed out on me & with the client-candy-debaucle, I just kept working. I got very cranky & shaky. Brian told me to stop & get something on the way home, but with every other dollar I make going into my gas tank, I really didn't want to ... even though I had saved the money I would have spent at lunch.

Once we took the entire cart full of FedEx packages to the warehouse, I was free to leave. (Yes, they paid to overnight all the candy to our clients!) The original plan for Thursday after work was for me to swing by another co-worker's house to dig up some hostas that are taking over their yard. I totally did not want to go, but found out that he was counting on me for a ride home, so off we went. After getting the grand tour of their home, koi pond & yard & seeing my co-worker his shirt off (ACK!) we set to digging up two buckets overflowing with very nice variegated hostas.

I was SO happy to get home!

Whew - what a workout!

My mother & I went to Ikea today to do some shopping. We've not been in a long time; in fact, I think she's only been once before. Ikea is one of those places that has some awesome stuff, some weird stuff, some stuff that you simply cannot get anywhere else & some stuff you wouldn't bring home even if they paid you. Since I had the day off & have been wanting to make the trip for quite some time it seemed like the perfect day to go. I am really glad Mom was up for it because for some odd reason I did not want to go by myself.

We enjoyed the requisite Swedish meatball lunch (yummy!) & I introduced Mom to the wonders of the lingonberry. It was fun watching Mom try to figure out how to say all the Swedish names of the products. We also had fun in the children's section - lots of neat stuff in there. We stayed out way longer than anticipated & Mom was a bit wore out. She says as long as she has a day to recuperate, she'd do it again.

Bummer of the day:
They were out of the shower curtain liners that I love. It's a nice soft rubber (not plastic) & is long enough for our shower stall. OK, they had neon green & blood red, but neither of those does me any good.

Finds of the day:
New knobs for the hallway bathroom's medicine cabinet. Nice pewter ones to replace the plain old wooden ones & to continue my mission of changing over from brass to silver hardware throughout the house. Now to find screws with the proper thread that are long enough.

An absolutely exquisite cow hide for Mom's birthday/Mother's day gift. She fell in love with it immediately. Of course, it had no price tag & unlike the old days where if there no price it was free, this particular piece of bovine was $199. I paid for it out of the money I earned by working as second shift manager. The hide is a light brindled color with very short fur - it truly beautiful. And it has a brand!

Super find of the day:
The last place you look before the checkout is the "AS IS" room. There are usually all sorts of fun things in there from nekkid furniture to shelves of all sizes to stuff that should have been thrown away to things you can't figure out what they are. This time round they had several bookcases & dressers. One tall, 5-shelf bookcase in birch caught my eye. It had virtually no damage & was marked down to $55. Since it was taller that I was, I wasn't sure if it would fit in the Endeavor. $55 was a good price, but I talked myself out of it.

Just as we were finishing in the check out line, an announcement came over the speakers - everything in the "AS IS" department was being marked down 20%. I looked at Mom & she looked at me & I ran back to the "AS IS" place. I asked the guy to pull the shelving unit out so I could double check it. No damage. I asked what if I couldn't fit it in my vehicle & they said no worries. The shelving unit was marked down to $39.60 & they even got a cart for me.

Getting it in the Endeavor was hysterical but we did it!