Mama got a new toy, again.

I have a 2002 Infiniti and my sister has a 2002 Maxima and both of us have had trouble with the factory stereo. She has had hers replaced twice already and I haven't bothered. It's the CD player. The CD players don't play worth shit, the discs skip. The later model cars have better stereos but almost everyone I know who has a pre-2004 Infiniti has had this same problem.

At home, I have an umbrella cockatoo. She's a sweetie pie but she gives off a fine powder like dander and my CD player just couldn't handle it, so after about 6 years of this stuff, it went kaput.

I really grew tired of listening to the radio, so I went to Best Buy and I bought an i-pod. I also bought a thingy that lets me play the music through the radio in my car. I've already downloaded five or six CD's on the thing.

When I went to bed last night I thought of my sister. She has always been the one in the family with a passion for music. All music.

She is 10 years older than I am. When I was little, like about seven, we each had one of those little record players that looked like a box. It had a lid with a hinge on it and it latched when it was closed. I think hers was purple. She also had one of those hand-held tape players, not a cassette style, but a reel to reel one. When I would go into her room, I would have to be very quiet because she would record music from the record to the tape player. This was before "auxilliary" outlets were available that you allowed to record directly from one device to another.

I can't believe how far we have travelled in my lifetime. It's all going so fast.

About 4 or 5 years ago, I had my car broken into and all of my favorite CD's stolen. Then it happened again about a year later. It got to the point I didn't want to keep them in my car. So, WOW, how cool is this to have everything loaded onto this tiny little device that fits in my purse. I called my insurance company and confirmed that it was covered under my renters policy if it ever gets lost or stolen. So is my blackberry.

This little ipod is so cool; I think MacIntosh is on to something.

Deal of the Century

Ok, some of you might not be as excited about this as I am but I just had to blog about it.

Since my clientele has just moved up a couple of notches and I feel I need to have a much better understanding of the issues in money, marketing and real estate, in order to appear to know what I'm talking about, I decided to subscribe to the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. The online edition is $79 annually. Now that's a pretty good deal but that's not the "deal of the century".

THIS is the deal of the century. If I upgrade my subscription to $99/annually, I can have the print edition delivered to my doorstep. That, my friends, is the deal of the century.

After I signed up last week I thought maybe I misunderstood. This morning, was my first delivery, waiting on my doorstep.

Boxer brief - for girls

I had to go to Target yesterday to get some things from Target and on the list were "unmentionables"....oooooh. I was with my friend, Dennis. Dennis is gay and I love him to pieces. He's become a good friend.

So anyway, we go to the undies section and I find boxer briefs for women. So I buy a couple of pairs to see how I like them. They are sooo comfy, I love wearing them.

Dennis is really a lot of fun to shop with. He has really good taste in a lot of things. As most of you already know, I love to sew. So about two or three months ago, he and I went to a fabric store here in Houston called High Fashion Fabrics because I wanted to buy fabric to make a dress. When Dennis got wind of this, he wanted to go with me and pick out the fabric. He picked out the most beautiful fabric! I love it. I wore the dress to John's musical when it was performed at Lambert Hall. According to my sister, I turned heads. So, I take Dennis with me a lot when I go shopping.

I'm going to get me some more of these boxer briefs....for women.

The Prodigal Whatever

She lives.

It's been a while since I've posted anything but y'all have definitely been on my mind. I just haven't really felt like posting.

Most of you have followed the events that lead up to my disappearance and I can tell you it has been very difficult. I have one foot in the presence and the other pulling out of the past. About 2 weeks ago, I decided to forgive them. Forgiveness is a funny thing. Once you've decided to forgive and stop hating, the emotions no longer have anything stuffing them down. So, they all came up. I thik the final purging was aobut a week ago Friday when I called my brother and sobbed for an hour. The poor guy didn't want to hang up the phone. He has trouble understanding why I'm crying so much because where I am is so much better and the potential for income and growth is so much greater. I lost my "family", I explain. I lost all that work and I was betrayed. I have to re-adjust to a different environment. Life goes on; it could be so much worse.

Adding to the stress of the past is the stress of the constant change where I am now. I do mean constant. When I started it was just one broker, myself, and two "assistants". One assistant became an agent and we brought on another agent and an office manager. Now, our office acquired a huge listing at one of Uptown's coolest lofts and with that we brought on about 5 more agents. The changes in themselves have brought me to tears as I try to just adjust. Our office manager bursts into tears also over the changes but we both seem to be troopers and keep moving forward.

Something else that's interesting is that we are an office of women. Our broker is a male and he's pretty much the only one. And thankfully we are all pretty cool women. I have a lot of fun with them; two of them have pulled me into their social circles and have included me in "girls night". Man, I haven't had one of those in a long time. It was really hard to connect with the girls in the office at my last place.

My sister flew down to visit me in August. It was the best time we have ever spent with one another and we are growing closer by leaps and bounds. I just wish we lived closer to one another!

I read Freebird's blog the other day. I hadn't been connected in so long that I logged on Wednesday and started reading about her "ex"; I was interrupted and couldn't finish it. Then on Thursday, I spent the day at the museum and while waiting for my entrance to Body Worlds, pulled her blog up on my blackberry. I had to get the rest of the story. Her story makes me think about what it is about women and our resolution. Cathy's story makes me feel the same way. We just keep going. But man, I'm ready for a break. Something that tells me that life gives back and rewards us for our dilligence. Is there a reward at the end for not taking all the hurt, anger and pain and just becoming a destructive bitch towards the ones who hurt us? Is there?

As I just mentioned, I saw Body Worlds on Thursday. It was really quite interesting and made me think about things. I'm so glad I'm not a smoker. I think the whole world should seet that exhibit. It takes about 2 1/2 hours to make it through if you get one of the audio thingies that talk you through it.

Ok, I think I'm caught up for now. I probably will start blogging again soon. I'm close to getting a digital camera and I have some sewing projects I want to post about.

Cheers, all.