Work work work...is work....

Holy. Crap. I'm tired. Why didn't any of you little cheerleaders remind me how HARD working is? Huh? WTF? Didn't any of you think to poke me and say "Uh, you know, Nessa, this isn't going to be sitting on your arse and socializing. You might have to do stuff and learn new things?"

I'm a spoiled little wuss, I know. I know. I've worked three days in a row, eight hour shifts of standing behind a faux-cherry counter smiling like a sycophant and taking people's money. Not rocket science, right?

But the standing. Oy, vey; my dogs are barking. I very smartly purchased some spiffy new shoeses for the whole "business casual attire" requirement (I didn't think they'd be impressed with my housewife clogs or tennies, and the slut heels stay at the back of the closet), only to discover that cute new fashionable shoeses cause BLISTERS after a few hours. I think my feet swelled to the size of that colon in the Mutter museum after the second hour. They sure felt like it. I hobbled around wincing and muttering the 'f' word by about hour six Friday.


Not that there was much hobbling to be doing as a cashier. Because as a "Seasonal Cashier", the management feels that we are not competent enough to actually venture out onto the book floor where a customer might see our nametage and assume we know where anything is, so we are safely ensconced behind twenty feet of that faux-cherry wall. God forbid we usurp the Trained Booksellers by guiding some trembling social phobic to the Self-Help section. In our untrained ignorance and being, apparently, too stupid to read the shelf headers, we might take them to the International Travel section instead, thereby causing mass confusion and hysteria and the End Of Days. Nope. We stay behind and just ring up people's piles of stuff.

And my feet weren't the only reason I was exhausted. After the first day, I had WORK DREAMS. All night, I rang people up on a computer that didn't work and frantically ran around the Sugarhouse B&N searching for some elusive...something. WTF? I mean, I understood when I had the teacher nightmares, all teachers have those. You dream that you show up without any lesson plans or behavioral map and the kids have decided to take over. I get that; teaching is a hard job and I was constantly afraid that someone would find out that I really had no fucking clue what I was doing.
But this is cashiering at Barnes and Noble. Again, not rocket science.
Last night, I don't think I ever got to the REM stage of sleep in order to have the dreams. The girl came into my bed every hour (she missed me, which both bolsters my heart and breaks it), and the rabbits were staging an in-cage riot all night because no one had let them out while I was gone.
So now I'm all groggy, and I have writers group tonight. I'm suspecting there will be very little intelligent wittiness from me this evening.


It's been a few years since I've worked retail, and the times they have a'changed. Instead of just scanning and hitting 'total' and taking their money and wishing them a nice day, we have a script.
"Welcome to Barnes and Noble. Were you able to find everything you needed?"

" Great. Will you be using a Barnes and Noble member card today to save ten percent on all your purchases?" [If the answer is "no", mention one more benefit to paying 25 bucks a year for another card to clutter up their wallet]

"You are a member? Great! Let me tap four different buttons on my screen to get to the proper screen so you can swipe your member card. Ok, great. Let me re-tap the four fucking buttons to get me back to the POS screen. Nothing like an efficient computer system when you're surly and in a hurry, right?"

[Insert witty banter to feign interest in what they are purchasing, unless it's something uncomfortable like "Why Men Marry Bitches" or "How to Escape an Abusive Relationship" or "Smokin' Hawt Nekkid Chicks" or "How to Recover After the Loss of a Child". That purchase actually made me cry a little. With books like those, it's generally a good idea to shut the hell up and avoid eye contact.]

"Okay, then. We are doing a holiday book drive. Would you be interested in purchasing a book [indicate books nicely displayed next to my register in such a way that I knock them down every time I bag someone's order] to be donated to a local underpriveleged elementary school student?"

"And would you like a bag for your purchases?"

I am the High Inquisitor. I feel like a moron. They make me do it. I innocently asked if it would be okay to not ask all the moronic questions if it was a purchase like one of the above, or if the person had obviously just come in because we're the only place to buy a roadmap for Northern Iowa. NO! God NO! Never skip the questions! It might be a secret shopper pretending to be surly and uncommunicative and depressed and they might give you a BAD GRADE and then you've ruined EVERYTHING.

Oh-kay. Thank goodness the Corporate Gods are sensitive to their customers' needs.

And the customers. Ok. I think there is a secret conspiracy. I've been lucky; I haven't had any fit-throwers or real psychos. But, I swear, I think I've been ringing up the same twenty people, over and over and over. I look at them and I SWEAR they were just here. Is it just my brain being overloaded with new information and refusing to process anything else? Because here's who I keep getting:

Uncomfortable Guy.
Surly Old Man.
Big Burly Betty. And her girlfriend.
Dysfunctional Crack Whore.
Snotty College Professor.
Even More Snotty College Student.
Strung-out Housewife and her four screaming kids.
Perfect Hair-Nails-Boobs Barbie. (Chiseled and Uninterested Ken optional)
Defensive Dan.
Happy Heavy Honey.
Twilight-Might-Happen-To-Me Hopeful Girl
Granola Gus and his girlfriend Stinky Jane.
The Subaru Outback People.
JockStrap Jared.
Militant Mike and his Violent ADD son.
Squeaky Mouse Girl.
Vanilla Ice.
I'm-Better-Than-You 'Tude.
Duuuuuuuuuuuuude.
The Mormon Bishop.

Yep, I think that's about it. The entire customer base for B&N. I can, if you're bored, tell you exactly what each of them buys.

Ugh. That's it for now. My brain is SOOOOOOO done. Thank Quark I have five days to recover before going back. If you're at work right now, I apologize for being such a baby. You rock.

I have to go fold twelve loads of laundry now. Back to the daily grind, which I have discovered is no grind at all.

:)

Twilight is sucking my life away...

Right now, I should be doing many other things. I should be addressing Christmas cards, wrapping presents from Santa, vacuuming and dusting the house, finishing the shopping that I've procrastinated about like I do every year, blah blah yadda yadda. And yet, I'm not.
I don't even want to be sitting here, writing this, really. But I need to write, as I haven't so much as touched my novel-in-progress in a week, even though I'm at a crucial point (as in: It's almost done, after four friggin' years!!!). But, no, I'm still in my jammies, hair all bed-headed, last night's mascara still smudged under my eyes, teeth mildly fuzzy due to an over-abundance of peppermintinis and a hot tub. And still I sit.

Now, some of you know me and know that I am the queen of procrastination, that me letting the house fall into complete chaos is not so much news. But this is just getting insane. It's worse this time, I promise.
Why the over-abundance of procrastination? Why is this normally laid-back-but-at-least-somewhat-productive housewife completely blowing off all responsibilities?

I'll tell you why. But it ain't gonna be pretty.

Twilight.

You heard me.

As loathe as I am to admit it because I swore I would never read it (I'll detail my book snobbery momentarily), I inhaled the first book in 3 days and am halfway through the second one, which I started yesterday. I can't put the stupid thing down.

So why was I so obstinately hesitant to read it in the first place?
1. It's by a BYU graduate. That right there is repulsive.
2. It's being fawned over by the women around here. The women who have very carefully decided that I am not one of them. The women whose idea of a Mom's Night Out involves squealing over the latest scrapbooking crap, whereas mine involves bottomless martinis and squealing over cute men who are not my husband. It is my personal crusade to rebel against all things Utah Housewife. Even though I am, technically, one.
3. I figured that the things in 1 and 2 immediately indicated that these books would be akin to the likes of Nora Roberts (*gag*) and Mary Higgens Clark (*retch*). I hate those kind of books. Hate them. The phony dialog, the implausibly convenient plot twists, the retarded narrative. They are written by and for mental midgets. (See? Book snob. Yes I am. Sorry if you're a fan.) I don't want to read about throbbing manhoods, windswept hair, smoldering looks, and bursting bodices. I need a good story and some realistically angst-driven conflict. Not girlie crap.

So, then, why the hell am I enjoying this story so much?
1. It's an easy read, and not unpleasant. She's got a good voice, and absolutely does not sound like she's from BYU. There are actual funny quips, snarky lines, the characterizations are realistic (yes, even the vampires), and even though there are smoldering looks, it's done without much cheese.
2. I'm a secret fantasy believer. Love the Anne Rice books, love all things Harry Potter (written anyway. Don't get me started on the movies). Somewhere inside me, I want to believe that this shit could really happen, and love it when authors can make it plausible.
3. There's a chance that I, the snarky Domestic Goddess, might just be a bit of a romantic.

There. I said it. I'll even go further.

I want an Edward. I have been yearning for an Edward my whole life. (Hey, there's some cheese now!) I am addicted to that whole pulled-toward-someone, to the first blooming moments of wanting someone. To the leaning, the covert looks, the tentative touches, the forgetting the rest of the world exists when you look at someone. It's an addiction that has almost cost me my marriage. It's something that I've done a lot of work to bury. I've written my own 12-step program for it.

We can go into the whole "Why don't you have that with your husband" thing, but, come on. As much as I love him, as lucky as I know I am, as handsome and caring and selfless as he is, there will always be something about an Edward. And I don't think Edward would be an Edward after 12 years. Comfort and happiness and knowing someone's annoying little personality quirks can just....delete the smoldering. I'm pretty sure I don't smolder when he thinks of me, either. We love each other, can't imagine life without each other, and there is occasionally some romance.

And we had those first moments with the glancing and the touching and the smoldering. We did. And it lasted longer than with anyone else. But, then, well....life happened.

So, I'm going to go read some more, before I absolutely have to rejoin the real world to get my daughter from school and take her flute shopping.

How about you? Any books that you never thought you'd enjoy and then ended up absorbed in?

Get to know me!

Thanks to Susan, I'm finally feeling like a member of the blogspot community. (uh, other than Jesse wanting to recruit me as a stripper, that is).

So, without further ado:

8 TV shows I love: ( in no particular order)

1: Grey's Anatomy
2: NOVA (Geek alert!)
3: Desperate Housewives (Yup, we housewives are ALL that hawt. Yup.)
4: Keeping Up Appearances
5: Samantha Who?
6: MythBusters
7: Dirty Jobs
8: The Office (UK and US)

8 Favorite Restaurants: (in no particular order)
Uh, Okay. It's kind of against my husband's religion to eat out, but I'll do my best.

1: Ruth's Diner
2: Himalayan Kitchen
3: Millcreek Cafe
4: Yanni's Greek
5: Uh, there's a possibility that I'm overly fond of a Big Mac.
6: Cafe Rio
7: Citris Grill
8: Rino's

8 Things that happened yesterday:
(Shit. What was yesterday? They all blend together....oh! Yeah.)

1: Gym with the hubby.
2: Lunch with hubby
3: Christmas shopping (*shudder*)
4: Trying to surreptitiously check out the ass on the guy running the treadmill in front of me who was not my hubby.
5: New shield on the iPod (yay!)
6: Petted a bunny
7: Cooked something
8: Went to bed waiting for the hubby to return from head-banging at the Metallica show. *snicker*

8 Things I look forward to:

1: Wine
2: Friday Brunch, Bitch and Booze with Sara and Tami (and Susan if she dares!)
3: Wine
4: Annual Lake Tahoe Girls' Escape
5: Gambling in Tahoe
6: G becoming a bibliophile. (She has to. I will shrivel up if she doesn't)
7: Wine (is there an echo in here?)
8: The next four years.

8 Things I love about the Fall:
1: Wool socks
2: Rainy days that give me the excuse to curl up on the couch and read and drink tea. Or wine. Whatever.
3: School's in!
4: No more sunburns or additional freckles
5: Big comfy sweaters so I can stop sucking in.
6: Down comforters
7: Mulled wine
8: Playdates at Susan's.

8 Things on my wish list

1: A waist
2: A dog without a nervous bowel
3: My daughter having a life happy enough to spare her from ginormous therapist's bills in the future.
4: Boobs that aren't trying to make friends with my knees.
5: A month in London.
6: A vacay below the equator. (Not my equator...the Earth one where things are warm and sunny and there's a beach where someone will bring me endless drinky drinks.)
7: An end to knee-jerk hatred, close-minded opinions, uneducated rhetorical spew, no starving babies, no dead soldiers, no excuses for personal failure, a realignment of our national priorities.
8: That I could always be as deep and profound as that previous statement.


Um, I'd tag someone specifically, but don't really know anyone on here, so if you're reading this: Hey! Your it!

Quirks, Quarks and Qurap

So. I dunno if anyone noticed, but I've been a little absent on the myspace scene of late. I know, I know; you all missed me horribly and were worried sick. Don't fret, I'm okay. It's autumn and I do this every autumn, it's just one of my things.

Speaking of "things", I have a thing. More specifically, I have a husband. Whom I love, who loves me, blah blah blah, we're livin' the dream, but really: at what point is it okay to smack someone upside the head and ask "What. The. Fuck?"

We got a new refrigerator. Which, in our household where the general philosophy is to use something until it dies a painful death, is pretty major. We stopped at Sears one night when driving home from the grandparents' house, which is also major because we never go anywhere that might involve shopping, but the husband had some fun money burning a hole in his pocket and was itching to sacrifice it to the Manly God of Craftsman. My husband doesn't do porn, it's all about the garage toys with him. So, the daughter and I left him happily fondling wrenches and other metal manly things and went to find the appliances. The fridge we had came with our tiny little house and was also tiny and had no crisper drawers nor ice maker but did come with annoyingly bendy wire shelves, which I was okay with, I'm no princess and can make my own fucking ice. But still, looking at the shiny new fridges with the adjustable shelves and the humdidity-controlled drawers, well, let's just call that a little bit of housewife-porn, shall we? Ditto on the front-loading washer and steam-cleaning dryers. Oooooohhhhh…..must…have….more….But; we are the people who live simply with what we have until it sends out smoke and bangs, so when I mentioned that I found a really nice fridge ON SALE, I nearly wet myself when he said "Okay." The fridge was delivered, the husband drilled holes in the kitchen tile floor and plumbed that sucker and viola! I am in ice, baby. My gimlets are chilled, mo' fo'. And my lettuce is not wilted, either. It does what I want it to do and I am happy.

He, on the other hand, has spent the last three weeks making minute adjustments to the refrigerator temperature settings with several different measuring devices, including the remotely read hygrometer/thermometer he had to pry off the outside of the house. He's moved that wheely-thingy inside the fridge a hundredth of a millimeter until the temperature holds steady at 34.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Which is fine, it's just one of those quirks that I've grown accustomed to over the years. My husband gets into something and cannot let it go until he knows every detail, has every aspect exactly where it seems he thinks it should be. Did I mention he's German? Not that I like cultural generalizations, but let's just say he might have made a mistake marrying an Irish girl who could give a rat's ass how something works as long as it does what she needs it to do.

Before, when I said that he said "Okay" to the new fridge? That was after a week of him researching EXACTLY which model would be right for our needs. I would buy the cheapest one that made ice. This fundamental difference between us is quite pervasive: His garage is immaculate with a place for everything and everything in its place, mine has a flattened soccer ball in the middle of the floor that I try not to run over every time, and if you move something on a shelf be prepared to have things fall on you. I can never find my keys or cel phone; his never leave his body unless they are precisely placed on his dresser for the morning ritual. I don't check voice mail until someone calls back asking if I got their message, he diligently reviews the saved messages every day and repeatedly tells me how many of them are for me. How we don't kill each other, I don't know.

What else….

I finished reading the His Dark Materials books by Phillip Pullman. Ate them up, actually. Remember the Golden Compass movie that came out last year? These are the reading-thingies that go with that. I'd not seen the movie, although it looked really cool, but I for some reason prefer to wait until something isn't cool anymore before I see it. That's how I roll.

Anyway, I LOVE THESE BOOKS. If you've been to my page, you might have noticed the What the Bleep? graphic posted under my movies. That movie was my religious epiphany. I've never gone into my personal religious convictions in here because, eh, who cares? But here's a hint: I believe that there is no Heaven, there is no Hell, there is only energy and God resides in quarks. So to find a story supporting that, my goodness, I was a happy little bunny. I would recommend these books to anyone who wants to be mad at the church, anyone who thinks physicists are on to something big, and anyone who ever thought it would be really, really cool to have a talking animal accompany you everywhere.

On the personal dilemma news: I'm here, writing. The book is eeking its way out of my head at a pretty darn satisfying rate right now. It might be a pile of crap, but it's mine and it won't be bugging me all trapped inside my noggin for much longer.

Hope you all are well, sure enjoyed talking with all of you and getting supportive messages while I was mired in a pit of despair and depression…oh, wait….;P

I Always Wanted To Be A Stripper

There. I've said it. Secret's out. I feel much, much better now.

Of course, I'm going to qualify that statement by revealing that I wanted to be a stripper based on seeing that classic 80's movie, "Flash Dance" when I was eleven. I mean, come on; what could be more desirable than getting to work a badass job like welding during the day and then after that getting to go put on fancy frilly costumes and do really complicated choreographed dance routines on a stage in front of men who fall in love with you? And then use that valuable experience to gain entry into an exclusive dance company? How awesome!

And let's not forget the great little Burlesque routines that sometimes would show up on the variety shows in the 70's. Bah-dah-dah, Bah-dah-dah, BOOM-tsh-tsh! BOOM-tsh-tsh! And all they had to do was take off their dress, flip it around and maybe shake their still-brassiered chest. How much fun would that be?

Then someone took me to a strip club.

Never mind.

When I was 19 and still living at home and looking for gainful employment, I perused the want ads one morning over coffee. Well, I say morning, but I was a college student. It was probably more like noonish. Anyway, I see all these ads for "ESCORTS WANTED." Huh. Get paid to go out with men? I'd seen "Pretty Woman", and figured it was probably something like that, without the being a whore part. How hard could it be to wear really nice clothes and escort rich, handsome men to fancy-schmancy cocktail parties and dinners with the mayor? And then, of course, said handsome rich guy would fall hopelessly in love with me, climb up the fire escape and whisk me away to his mansion/penthouse. Done.

"I think I'll be an escort," I say nonchalantly to my mom as I sip my coffee. I think her coffee came out of her nose before she choked out "What? NO! God No! You're not doing that!" I'm sure I rolled my eyes, figuring my totally-uncool mom had it way wrong.

Hey, then I met an escort. By chance, while studying at a coffee shop, one of my friends introduced me to her. She looked like about ten miles of bad road (at the age of 20) and had two kids. She proudly showed everyone at the table pictures of her in her "Escort attire" when she was, oh, nine months pregnant. And my illusions were shattered. She told me what really goes down. Uh, including her. No Pretty Woman? No Richard Gere-type rich man falling in love? Nope. More like Dick the garbage man on pay day. Not that there's anything wrong with paying for a little lovin', but, um, no. No. Never mind.

Naïve?

Yes. Yes I am.

I also thought that I could major in Biology just by taking lots of classes in college about science stuff. Like Evolution, Morphology, Bird Care, Astronomy, that kind of thing. Imagine my shock and horror when I finally went to the Biology Department and met with a counselor. Physics? Organic Chemistry? Physics? Calculus? And, um, Physics?

Math is not my friend, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I needed Physics to be a zookeeper, but I gamely tried. Did you know it's really, really hard to learn Physics and Organic Chemistry when the classes are at 7 a.m. and the words are really big? Especially when one has a killer hangover from the Jager Bomb special the night before? Nope. New major!

So, after all that, I learned an important lesson:

Do your research. Don't go through life making big decisions with just half the story or with some crap someone forwarded you on the internet.

And never, EVER, innocently ask an escort how much money she gets for a hummer, especially when her boss is standing nearby. Ass-whupping all over.


So, how about you? Ever have a "dream job" and come to find out it wasn't what you thought?
Is there anything going on in the world right now that, oh, I don't know, you think you should do some research about before forwarding stupid rhetoric-and-hate-filled emails?

A whole New Generation of Playground Fun

One good thing about being a parent is the ability to take your child somewhere that you loved as a child and relive the magic through their eyes. The wonder of experiencing something new, the joy of simply doing something for the sake of doing it, of learning new skills.

The Dinosaur museum: Ooo! What if we had pet dinosaurs? Would that one eat me? Did they REALLY live on Earth? Where's the gift shop? And I watch her crane her little neck up to see the dino's skulls and smile.

Swimming pool: Look! I'm a mermaid! NO! I'm a platypus! Watch me cannonball! Momma, why is that man wearing swimsuit bottoms like yours? Where's the vending machine? And I watch her slip through the water like she was meant to be there.

And especially:

The playground: Watch me do the monkey bars! Watch me climb up here! Look how much bigger the slide is than the kindergarten slide! Look what I can do on the big pole!
And then I watch her slide down the big pole, spinning around with one leg hooked around it, other arm gracefully extended, head back. When she lands with a little flourish, I clap like any good mom. Then I look around, to see one of the older girls (third grade) with whom we walk home also spinning around while sliding down the pole.
It's after school, so there aren't a lot of kids there, but I notice that there's quite a line for the pole. Each little girl climbs up the slide next to it, grabs as high as she can and then gracefully spins down. One even has mastered the behind-the-head grab, spinning slowly backward to the ground.




And I realize:

They're doing stripper pole moves.

A million questions start to spin through my brain.

What. The. Fuck?

Do they know what they're doing?

Do they get points for the difficulty of each move?

Could I do that?

And most importantly: How in the HELL did elementary school girls find out about this?!?

Walking home I'm trying not to giggle. The other third grader that we walk is a talker. I've been able to get some pretty juicy stuff out of her before, so I ask her if she likes sliding down the pole. "Not really," she says, but then brags that her mom "can do the one where she's upside down and only hanging on with one leg!"

"Wow," I say, "she, uh, do that in your basement?" Hoping to get some dirt on the neighbors, you know. *snicker*

Her face looks momentarily horrified, and I realize I might have tapped into something here. "Uh, No, uh—wait up, you guys!" And she scurries off before I can ply more secrets from her.

My friend Susan called me the other day. She was stuck at the school with a busted car and was watching the kids at morning recess.
"Have you seen the sliding pole thing? How they all line up? There's a line a mile long for this! How funny!"
"You mean the stripper pole?"
Pause.
"OH. MY. GOD. You're right. That's totally what they're doing!"

Ah, childhood innocence.

Something's gotta give

I. MUST. Do something about my life. Seriously.
Maybe if I put down on cyber-paper exactly what I need/want to do and then outline a plan and daily check off what I've accomplished.....BWAHAHAHAAAaaaaahhhhh...yeah, that's totally not me.
I'll at least do this:

I need to quit smoking. I HAVE TO. I'm 36; I've been smoking off and on since I was 19. The little sticks of joy control my every waking moment. I love them. LOVE smoking, which is absolutely disgusting, right? I'm terrified to quit, which is something I've done about 452 times over the years. I did do one thing right: I quit when I found out I was preggers and didn't touch 'em for three years. Almost didn't even miss them, amazingly enough. Then, you know the story, I go to a party, my best friend is smoking, I'm out for a rare evening of freedom and I"m drinking and BAM! Next thing I know I'm sucking on those coffin nails like a starving man. Woman. Whatever. The point is, I'm so hooked on the nicotine that every little puff I take is simply a burst of happiness in my brain.
The worst part? Well, not the worst maybe, but definitely the most annoying. I'm a secret anti-social smoker. I don't want anyone to know that I smoke. My parents and I have this lovely dysfunctional little dance that we've done my entire adult life where I pretend I don't smoke and they pretend they don't know that I smoke. My raspy voice? Allergies, obviously. Bad breath? Musta been the pound of feta cheese I eat every day, mum, I dunno. WTF? And forget about telling friends, unless I know they're not going to judge me for it. I mean, let's be real, smokers are the new lepers. Nobody wants to be around them and look on them with a mixture of pity and disgust. So, I huddle in my back patio by the garage, in a corner where no one can see me, running into the garage if a neighbor happens to come out and might smell it. Pathetic. yup, that's me.
The other worst part? My daughter is now old enough to know what I'm doing, since they do the whole anti-tobacco thing at school. She keeps telling me to quit, I keep telling her I will, she keeps busting me, and Ta-da! She gets a few years in therapy as an adult because her mom lied to her. Or died early of cancer. I should probably not do that to the person I love the most.

So.

I need to feel the fear and do it anyway, or some such new-agey crapola. I'll bust out the last of the nicotine gum I bought 2 years ago and occasionally munch on when I attempt to quit. That stuff is fairly nasty, but better than being a screaming banshee. I'm a nightmare when I'm coming down from the nicky. What I really need is to hole up in a cabin in the remote woods for three weeks and have no one to yell at but myself. I'll just stock it with books, my laptop and about 94 bags of cheetos and I'll be fine. Fat, but fine.

Ok. That's that. One down, sort of, I just need to set a date. Okay....my quit date will be....hmmmm, when is my period? Uh, I'm going to go with SATURDAY. This Saturday, November 1st, 2008. Look, I've written a big Q on my calendar. I'll just tell my mom that it means that I'm renting the movie "Quigley Down Under" that day. Loves me some Tom Selleck.

Yup. Doin' it. Yes I am. Wish me luck.