Whoo! We were going to drive to NM to drop off our gear today, but we slept in. Fuzzily, at 5 in the morning, we decided we'd rather do it on Wednesday. So I have today off, just like everybody else! Yay!

Of course, that means that I can do my dishes and laundry and cook and sweep and dust and, oh yeah, do heaps and heaps of paperwork. But still! I feel all optomistic about the day. And I made us breakfast in bed and it's a gorgeous day out.

Woo hoo for unexpected day's off!

Also, aurelia, Scarlett and Rhett are adorable!

Today I clean and do laundry and pull weeds. And get some writing done. Also I downloaded a jigsaw puzzle game which I am currently obsessed with, so there will be that. Yes, I sit around doing jigsaw puzzles on my computer; tremble befote my mighty coolness.

A friend of mine works in an IT call center. Friend is married with two children and makes $14/hour (fairly decent for Utah). The company has a Microsoft account that is being shifted to an Indian company. My friend has been offered the chance to go to India to help train the folks there. The Indian company will pay the airfare, for housing, transport to the job site and back, and two meals a day. The Indian company is even going to pay for his passport. Duration would be from 4 months to two years. My friend can't get a straight answer on several points, including type of housing, how will taxes be dealt with on his pay, food, etc. My husband believes that his "quality accomodations" will involve cinder block and tin roof and the traditional Indian workers meals, which are brought in by train from the villages. My friend thinks he's going to be put up in a hotel and he can call for his family to join him. He is not college trained.

One of the missing details is "who pays for me to get home?" It's very hard to get things in writing.

Should my friend skip this "once in a lifetime chance"?

A cousin trained accountants in India for her company and she stayed in a very nice hotel and was basically catered to in every way. The people she worked with were smart and motivated, and she had a lot of time off to explore temples and backstreets and suchlike. She LOVED it.

((((tommyrot and Senor Sock)))) Apologies for not speaking sooner, but I've been away from the board all weekend.

And no experience with dating neighbors or the separated-but-not-divorced, but I can see a difference between the recently separated and the longtime separated.

But I haven't been away from the Net, where I've spent lots of time at ancestry.com. And I think I found my paternal great-grandparents. One of whom was born in Bohemia. Which means (1) my last name is actually Czech, instead of German as I'd thought all my life, and (2) I'm 1/8 Czech, which I never knew before. And apparently my other paternal grandfather was named William, and not Hugh, as I'd always thought -- though he was still born in Wales.

I'm using my new toaster oven for the first time. So far, it hasn't caught fire, but it is ticking at me to let me know it's working.

I think I prefer the flames.

Does anyone know anything about the Cambridge Who's Who Among Executive and Professional Women? Because they want to list me, and I cannot believe this is not some sort of a scam.

A few years ago they wanted to list me too, Zen, which is why I believed it was a scam. I posted here about it, and was convinced by the response. Not that I remember what that was.

Who's Whos are pretty much all scams. Scam may be too harsh a word, actually, but basically you're paying money to have your name listed in a book that only you and the other people who paid will ever look at or care about.