Peaceful Mondays....

It was a pretty day out there today. Sadly, the humidity is already creeping back in but we did manage to enjoy a rather nice Monday. It was rather nice at work too; next week is our annual conference and because of budgetary issues, not everyone from our company gets to go this year. Naturally, I'm one of the no-goers. I'm not terribly sad about it because it involves a lot of work as well as getting up in front of an audience and talking about our products. I actually don't mind the actual talking in front of an audience thing anymore. It's more that I don't really have a whole lot of enthuiasm for our products and it's hard to get excited when talking about them.

Still, it means there's a buzz of activity in the air in the office and those of us not going feel a little like we're on the outside looking in. Even with all the work the attendees have to do, they still get a trip out of the office for a week with meals and a nice hotel. In the meantime, us lowly left-behinders get to keep everything going. The only problem is that we sort of need the attendees to help keep things going and, at the moment, they're all far too busy to stop and help us do our jobs. They're all abuzz and the rest of us quietly sit at our desks, working peacefully until one of the slightly panicked attendees asks us for help on their presentation. That seems a little fundamentally wrong; we help with that part of the work as well and yet we still don't get to go.

I'm actually not bitter. It means I don't have to leave the pups for a week. It means my good friend can come and stay this weekend. It means next week, I can throw my first bash or, as my evite stated, a hootenanny at my house. I invited all the conference rejectees and we'll just have a happy hour with snacks and puppies. The puppies won't be the snacks of course because that would be silly.

Of course, throwing a hootenanny means I have to make sure my house is spiffed up. I'm currently working on the garden. I'm starting to lose my veggies in the weeds which grow very, very fast. I weeded tonight and planted some donations from my mother's lovely garden only to discover that the bunny I so enjoyed seeing in my garden not so long ago had eaten half of my plantings.

Yes, the stupid rabbit ate my corn which was coming through. It also ate every last piece of my swiss chard which I was very excited to plant. To eat my veggies, it sat on the ones around them so in addition to losing my chard and corn to the teeth of the bunny, I now have several flat zucchini plants and tomato plants.

I'm not happy with the bunny. I was quite excited about the corn. I was going to be a good Midwestern transplant and grow the traditional vegetable of this area. Apparently, I'll be buying my corn at the farmers market again. Sigh.

Still, even with the weeds, my garden is starting to take shape. Thanks to my mum's generosity, I have flowers, herbs and vegetables all slowly starting to choke out the weeds and make my garden look nice. I even managed to weed my front garden. As I was doing so, I met a new neighbour, Bob. I know his name is Bob because he introduced himself and, not wanting to run into another Possibly Joe situation, I said it to myself several times so as not to forget it. He seems nice. He's retired from a university where he was a public safety officer. He's lived in my 'hood for eight years and he's recently taken up golf. He sucks at golf, he said. He seemed very nice. He also doesn't seem the type to get up close and personal when he chats or use human hair on his plants. Perhaps we will begin a new walking route where we walk by Bob's house instead of Larry's in future. We shall see.

All in all, it's been a fairly nice Monday. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain and the humidity is supposed to build again. Still, as long as we have days like this in between the mugginess, it's bearable.

Of course, ask me how I feel in a week.

Happy Tuesday!