Come on a Nerdy Journey With Me!

It’s been quite a long while, but I finally posted a video to YouTube… It’s not the best that I’ve ever done, but I was so desperate to post something that I no longer cared if it was perfect or still needed work. So freaking much has changed when it comes to uploading videos on there since I last did it, that the longest part of the whole thing for me was re-acquainting myself with the whole thing. Uploading videos on YouTube is so much cooler now than it was the last time I did it. You’re dying to know what I put up, aren’t you? Okay… I’ll show you!

Like the description of the video says, I haven’t been playing the electric keyboards that long and I am 100% teaching myself, so it’s not the best that it can be but it’s the best that I can do at the moment. One day, I will get a guitar and you won’t hear me complain anymore 😉

In other news, I spent the entire day on Minecraft, even though I had absolutely not intended to. And the second I got off, The Boyfriend got on. But, I am creating something that I keep starting and then re-starting and then re-starting some more and finally for the first time since this journey has started, I’m finally getting to the point where I’m quite excited and happy with what I’ve got. So excited in fact that I’m totally going to invite you along with me on this nerdy journey…

Since I began playing Minecraft, I’ve always been most intrigued by the concept of building a massive city – a metropolis, if you will. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what I was going to call it. I played with “ValerieVille“, “MommyLand” and a few others, but nothing was fitting right. Then, I just decided screw the name, I’m just going to start building the thing and then maybe a name will come to me that is suitable.

Construction began and The Boyfriend and I both worked hard trying to figure out redstone and minecart systems so that I could make a functionining train station in the center of my superflat world map and in creative mode. However, once we had completed the train tracks heading to the north, south, east and west, we realized that we had made a few errors and done a few things that needed to be cahnged to get them the way that I really wanted them. And it kept happening. I believe I’ve restarted this at least 3 times now.

But today, being incredibly inspired by all the Minecraft Tutorials I stayed up late watching last night, I jumped back on and began construction on my new mega city and now would like to show you some of the wickedness that is:

Valerieopolis Central Station

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The above images are some of the projects that I’m currently working on in my metropolis. Right in the center of the map is Valerieopolis Central Station, which will have trains leading out to the north, south, east and west and then diagonally (although not perfectly, because you can’t do that in Minecraft) out to the corners. Here’s a basic drawing of the whole concept:

Valerieopolis – Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition

The yellow lines mark what will be the minecart or train system and highways. The circles represent a transfer station, which I’m hoping to figure out how to do eventually. I’ve been watching some tutorials, but it’s taking a lot of time for me to get the hang of all this stuff. So far, the only thing that I’ve gotten to work successfully for me and it took me over 3 hours to figure out is the Fully Functioning Ticket Booth (seen in the slideshow above). This is the tutorial that I watched to figure it out, although as you see, my circuitry is a little different and I’m still having a hard time figuring out exactly how to make it work over and over again for me, instead of just once…

If you’d like to learn more about this map and what I’m hoping to do with it, I’ve started a Google Doc dedicated to ideas for my mega city. I’ve opened up the comments on the document and everything so that you can leave me any suggestions, advice or ideas if you’d really like to jump on this nerdy journey with me 😉 It’ll be an ever-changing, ever-growing, crazy list of things to do…

So, that’s what my day has been like… How’s yours been?

Obsessions and Addictions

Man oh man… I just keep neglecting to come back here.

First, I’ve been getting obsessed with stuff that takes me away from the computer. I started reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a book that has been on my “to-read list” forever (one day, I’ll actually compose this list out, but for now it lives entirely in my head). I’m enjoying it, although I am finding it to be a little repetitive. I mean, I basically know from the very get go that Holmes is going to solve the mystery and Dr. Watson is going to be shocked about how he came to these conclusions long before the evidence suggested a case-closed situation. However, I’m still baffled every single time I read that Holmes and Dr. Watson did cocaine together, like it was just another part of any other day.

I know that this was the norm for the era that Holmes is based in. And what’s even stranger to me is that I don’t get that baffled feeling when thinking about say Freud doing cocaine or prescribing it to his patients and it doesn’t shock me every time I think about the fact that cocaine used to be an ingredient in Coca-Cola during the same time period. But for some reason, the whole concept of Watson and Holmes doing cocaine, just floors me every time. I swear I read it and the look on my face just goes straight to shock…

Then, the next thing that I’ve become entirely all too obsessed with, and really, we all have, is Minecraft. I’ve been hearing about this game forever and hated everything about it. That was, until I actually played it. On a whim, we downloaded the free trial for the Xbox, and we haven’t been able to stop playing ever since. The Boyfriend and I will literally sit there fighting over whose turn it is to play and we wake up every morning to the kids fighting over who gets to play it between them.

I don’t know what it is about this game that has got us all so hooked. Both The Boyfriend and I just keep trying to figure out what we love so much about it and neither of us can really figure it out. It also doesn’t help that it’s easy to lose track of time once you’re on the game and it’s one of those games that can easily result in one too many hours spent on it. Then, we decided to check out the Minecraft Wiki and now we’re even more obsessed! It’s been making me not want to get on the computer at all…

When we’re not playing Minecraft and I’m not reading Holmes, we’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek and/or playing Karaoke. I even got a video of The Boyfriend and I doing karaoke last night (which I’m hoping to have edited enough to share in a day or so – it’s over 2 hours long, so I gotta cut it down…). It’s been a lot of fun, even if it does make you feel incredibly lazy.

But all in all, things around here are looking really good. Besides a mound of laundry that just seems to keep building, the house is nice and clean and only needs a slight tidy up. The kids are all having a bit of attitude problems, but that’s to be expected as it begins to warm up outside – and I could not be more happy about it! I honestly cannot wait for summer! So that’s pretty much all that’s new around here.

Now, I want to know, do you play Minecraft?

Electronic Junkies…

I don’t know why I keep raising my boys to be total electronics junkies. With Kenzie, it was all about playing video games. The constant asking, the constant whining when he couldn’t and though he’s not as bad now as he was 2 years ago, he’s not cured. Keirnan, it seems to be Netflix. He gets upset when he doesn’t get to hold the paddle, when he doesn’t get to pick the show or when he just doesn’t get to watch it.

Cater, my sweet little Carter, is obsessed with the computer. I mean, worse than any of the other boys are obsessed with their things. He wakes up in the morning and wants to play on the computer. When we lock the computer, he’ll sit there attempting to write in passwords, clicking around on all the Ease of Access stuff and finally, he will get frustrated and just turn off the computer. Then he’ll turn it on again, thinking that password screen will no longer be there.

Once The Boyfriend and I are up and moving around, we’ll kick him off the computer and he’ll scream and cry and freak out that it’s his computer and that it’s his turn on it. If we don’t get on it the second he’s been kicked off, he’ll sneak onto it constantly, until eventually we don’t notice him sitting there playing his games!

It’s beginning to become the most annoying part of the day…

In other news, Kaeidyn’s still insisting on sleeping downstairs. She gives it a shot upstairs in her room but the sounds get to her and she eventually moves downstairs. The Boyfriend wants to get tougher on her and make her stay up there for longer before she’s allowed to come down, but I just feel bad for her. Explains why I let the kids stay sleeping in my bed until they were in Kindergarten!!

A lot of times, we’ll wake up in the morning to all the kids sleeping down here. I’m still having some issues falling asleep at night. For over a week, The Boyfriend and I didn’t go to bed until at least 4 in the morning. Just too worried about all the sounds. Some nights I’ll get away with not having to move the dresser in front of the door, but more often than not, I’m still asking for that dresser there every night. I’ll just stay up too long sketching about every noise if I don’t. But at least the actual break-in isn’t on our minds much anymore.

Well, that’s pretty much this last week in a nutshell. Boring, I know, but that’s life sometimes. How’s your week been going?

Boy Trouble…

I woke up this morning feeling like today was going to be the crappiest day in the history of days. The Boyfriend had just finished up 3 days off, which was wonderful and not-so-wonderful all at the same time (more about that in a minute), Kaeidyn and Kenzie were up at the crack of dawn this morning fighting over games on the Xbox – which reminds me that we totally need to make a new rule apparently about not playing games before school…, and then I got a phone call from my Mom this morning about my brother, who sounds like he’s not doing that great.

So, I went back to bed. After The Boyfriend left for work and once the older kids were gone to school, Keirnan sat and watched TV while Carter and I dozed back off. I slept much later than I had anticipated, although judging by my more optimistic outlook on the day, I needed it. Then my Mom came over and we talked a bit about my brother. I’m sure I’ve written about this somewhere on the blog before, but a few years back Goober did some experimenting with drugs and those drugs had a very negative effect on him. About a year after the experimentation, Goober came home and was acting very strange and he just seemed to get stranger. Talking to himself, obsessing about the end of the world, staring creepily at people, refusing to get any sort of medical help for obvious medical problems, never sleeping, the list really goes on and on.

One night, he gets picked up by the cops who decide that he’s not in the right mental state and get him institutionalized. They (the doctors who were in charge of him, I guess) decide that he seems to have psychosis brought on by the drug use and there’s a chance that he could continue having this problem for a long time. But he gets better. Then, another year passes and he begins to get worse again. After Mom and I completely coerce him, he gets institutionalized again and gets on meds and seems to be doing better. He gets let out and fluctuates for a long time between good and bad until one day he seems completely fine. For the past few months, he’s seemed completely fine. He’s held a job for a long time, he’s stayed living in one place with the same roommates for a long time, everything seems to be going good.

Then, my Mom gets a call from his roommates letting us know that he’s been talking to himself a lot and generally creeping the roommates out and they want to know how to deal with it. Last anyone heard, Goober was up at the hospital. We only know that he wasn’t there today when Mom called the hospital and we haven’t been able to get a hold of anyone who is in direct contact with him. It’s hard during these times with my brother, for both my Mom and I, and it’s even harder to know how to support everyone in this situation. Right now, it’s just a waiting game to see what happens next – is this going to be an all-the-rest-of-winter type of glitch with my brother or is it just going to be for a few weeks? What’s caused the glitch this time and what’s it going to be like this time? Needless to say, I’m nervous about the first time he comes over here – which when he’s like this tends to happen a lot more than usual, but so far, I’ve heard nothing…

In other news, I kind of feel like The Boyfriend and I are going through a rough patch – though it’s totally not obvious or visible and I’m probably the only one who feels this way. Rough patch is also probably the wrong words to use. It’s more like a disconnect between us. I don’t feel like we are as connected as we once were. I know part of it is because he got a new game and that tends to result in a lot of time where he’s on the game or wanting to play the game and I’m off here on the computer, so there’s no actual physical connection between us during a lot of these times.

I don’t know what the other part of it is. I’ve been mostly feeling it in terms of sex lately. He’s been very uninterested in sex and even when he have it (which thankfully hasn’t lessened much), he seems less like he’s enjoying it and more like he’s doing it because he has to. Or the one that’s really pissing me off is the half-assedness surrounding my orgasm. Let’s look at a few of our last sessions…

Last night, he decides rather early on in the night that he wants head. Being that I’ve gotten eaten out twice in the last 2 weeks, there was only excitement for me surrounding giving him head. I had asked him to trim up the other night just because I wanted to give him head. So, when he whispered in my ear that he wanted to go to bed early so that I could suck him off, I was more than pleased. The head went well, except that we’ve decided we need a new position for it, because with me laying next to him and at the particular angle, he feels to thick for my mouth and my jaw gets crazy sore. He came fast and was really into it and it was generally great. Once he came, I was itching for an orgasm and I made that very clear.

At first, he reaches down and frantically begins circling my clit and playing in my wetness. Then, his hand stops moving, his eyes start closing and he has no interest in my orgasm. I give him a little shove and he tells me he’s not falling asleep and acts all interested for a second. I start getting into it and I’m moaning and suddenly his hand stops again. This went on forever, when I finally got frustrated, reached down myself and ignored whatever it was that he was doing beside me and just focused on my orgasm. And this kind of thing keeps happening.

The other night, he offers to eat me out. I’m all for it and get myself all comfy. He gets down there and very gently sucks on my clit. My body begins quaking and shivering and he lifts off and waits a few minutes before going back in. Then, he gets so gentle that I can hardly feel what he’s doing at all. I try to grab his hand to guide his fingers into me and he lays his hand down on the bed and doesn’t touch me at all. I get this limp, un-enthusiastic tongue, very gently lapping at the top of my clit – not even the most sensitive part. By the time that I finally cum, he’s gone completely limp and doesn’t care to change that.  Like he’s just so uninterested in it all.

I’ll never understand where the whole concept of guys being total horn dogs and women being these demure and frigid beings came from, because this is the third relationship now where I’m just realizing that it’s absolutely the opposite way around. I’m still crazy interested in the sex, I’m still always thinking about cock and it’s only on his mind as a type of chore or obligation… I’m beginning to get frustrated with it.

I just want to have where I wake up everyday and my guy can’t resist thinking about the great sex we had last night and how much he can’t wait to do it again. I want to feel like my vagina is actually desirable to someone. I miss the days of my wetness being something that immediately got him hard and I miss the days when we had sex multiple times a day and it never felt like the same sex. I want to feel like he really truly wants me and this body and this sex, and I’m not getting that at all…

Trying to Figure It Out

I can’t stop talking about how much I need to get things back on track around here. I did so good for the first two or three weeks here and now, everything is completely slacking… And I’ve got plans like crazy. Now it’s just a matter of putting all those plans into action, which seems to be the absolute hardest thing in the world for me…

First, I need to start waking up at a regular time again. I went from waking up everyday at 7:30 to now, where I’m waking up whenever the heck I feel like it before 11:30. I just barely let myself become conscious enough to get Kaeidyn and Kenzie out the door before falling back asleep while Keirnan and Carter watch TV. And while it is truly blissful to have that extra time to sleep, it makes me lazy for the rest of the day.

Then, I need to start making the kids lunches again. After them not making their lunches properly for the past few weeks and after the messes I’ve experienced because of allowing them to make their own lunches, this needs to happen immediately! I just cannot for the life of me figure out what the best way and time to do this is. Do I want to do it the night before school or do I want to do it in the morning before school? Would I prefer to get down to making all weeks lunches once a week or does making them daily work for me? I also need to start discovering more healthy snack choices for school because I’m not liking what we’re choosing lately.

I also need to get some paper organizing going on around here. We got a file cabinet and files, but it’s in a awkward spot. Accessing it comfortable typically involves moving furniture around and the file cabinet part of it is so low that it almost never occurs to me to look at it. Kaeidyn ended up missing a birthday party because I put the invitation in her file folder and forgot that it was there entirely. I’m just unsure how to best do it. I’ve got tons of ideas floating around in my head. I saw one thing on Pinterest today that I thought was rather cool, having a whole bunch of little one inch binders for everything from finances to household management tasks like cleaning and scheduling and electronics manuals. But I feel like I’ll put the binders up and have them all fancified and then never do anything with them.

I’ve been trying to do all of that type of stuff on the computer with documents and spreadsheets, but it’s just not being out there enough for me to keep up with it. I need something that is bam, in my face. I need something that demands my attention and sticks out like a sore thumb. We’ve decided we desperately need a printer and a place to put all this important stuff. Now it’s just a matter of making sure money goes towards the printer and deciding what’s going to work best for all of us.

I gotta get back into a cleaning routine. I was doing so good doing dishes all day long and laundry all day long and sweeping and mopping on a regular basis. But when I came down with my cold (which can you believe, I’m still not over…), it all just started to slide. Sliding to the point where I haven’t done any of today’s dishes, the floor only got swept and mopped because The Boyfriend was restless while I was playing video games. Which is another thing I’ve just been doing way too much of. Video games on the TV, games on the computer, just too much…

I just want to get my life on some sort of organized type of track. And I want everyone to be on board with it. I just need to figure out how…

I’m Back and I’m Reading!

Well, I’m finally back online… It only took forever and a day!! And to think, if our internet provider had actually not sent my modem (which they weren’t supposed to), I’d still have at least 3 days left of the hell of no internet. This time wasn’t nearly as bad as other times have been, but that’s probably because I had just finished buying myself a whole whack of books.

And man oh man, did I ever hit the jackpot there. First, we went to Coles and I got The Last Nude and One Big Happy Family. The Last Nude, I finished in a day or two and was a little disappointed at the ending and One Big Happy Family I am still dissecting, because just a day or two later, we went to Value Village and I got tons more books!

So now, I’m a few chapters away from the end of Middlesex, which is an amazing story! It took me awhile to get into the book, but now that I’m as far as am I, I can’t seem to put it down. I also got the The Gendered Society Reader, which is proving to be a wonderful resource on gender and the male-dominated world in which we live and a huge Sir Arthur Conan Doyle book with 5 or 6 different stories including Sherlock Holmes – which has been on my list of things to read forever now!

I love how much I love to read. I love how much satisfaction I get from starting and finishing a book, especially if it’s a good read. And I love that I’m the type of book reader who never really sticks to one type of book. I like to go between the genres. Really, half the time when I’m picking a book, I pick on the cover alone. If the cover catches my eye, and the little quip about the book sounds decent and at least one sentence from a random page in the book is good, then I’ll most likely grab the book.

In other news, The Boyfriend and I recently bought all the kids’ Leapster Explorer’s for Kenzie’s birthday. We were originally just going to get Kenzie one, but figured it would cut down on a whole heck of a lot of fighting if we got all the kids one. Two days later, Kaeidyn’s screen got busted (not her fault) and after being played non-stop, there is only one that hasn’t had it’s batteries die yet. We did get a charger for them, just haven’t set it up yet.

I’m enjoying the quietness these devices have brought me. It’s no longer, twenty times a day, “Can I play a game?”, because they can now just grab their explorers and play. It definitely reduces a huge part of daily stress. It’s also good because they are really educational games. Keirnan gets a kick out of learning how to draw the letters on them, Kenzie is getting better at his math thanks to Cars 2 and it’s been all around really great. I’m enjoying them!

I was pretty disappointed today when getting the internet back up and running, to discover that the money that I transferred into my PayPal account so that I could upgrade Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous, couldn’t be used to upgrade the account because apparently Spruz likes to make things pretty difficult that way. I can’t just have a PayPal account hooked to my bank account, I have to add a credit card and guess who doesn’t have a credit card?!? I’m surprised I’m not more peeved about it right now, but I figure that I’ll figure something out sooner rather than later. Give me a day or two…

I’ve got a to-do list right now that will not stop growing, no matter how hard I try. I gotta find out about getting the kids into the dentist, especially Kaeidyn since she’s been having problems with one of her teeth. My house is still a complete disaster and I’m surprised that it’s not bringing me down more. We’ve been working on, but can’t seem to make any sort of real dent in it. Maybe because the mess makers are always here…

And don’t even get me started on all the things that I need to get done now that I’m back up and running online. I hate neglecting that stuff for so long, because it seems to take me so long to get back into my groove. Hopefully tomorrow will be a more productive day than today has been so far and hopefully I’ll figure out this site upgrade thing…

Well, it’s good to be back folks!

Cleaning, Work, Kids…

Today was a great day, even though The Boyfriend came home in a not-so-happy mood, and I’m writing this post to you in a still happy state. It’s been great! First, I got some cleaning done today. Not nearly as much as I had originally set out to do, but the kids were all being really pissy about the fact that cleaning was happening, that I only got to the kitchen. I’m counting it as an accomplishment!

Then, I made a delicious dinner, and it’s been awhile since I made dinner that wasn’t deep-fried. Otherwise it’s been takeout or The Boyfriend making dinner. So, it felt really nice to be cooking and experimenting with HP Sauce (which I haven’t used in a long while), and I even made delicious vegetables that the kids and I gobbled up in a heartbeat!

I also, after the last week of working on it, finished my resume and put one out into the employ-a-sphere. I really don’t know what I want to do in terms of work. On one hand, I’d really like to just stay home. I’ve been enjoying these last few days, and if I can get any part of my house more “in order”, than it would be totally worth it. I know my house was much cleaner back when I was a stay-at-home mom… But on the other hand, we really can’t afford me staying home for any long length of time. I’m thinking a couple weeks tops. We haven’t sat down and hashed out the numbers yet, but right now, we’re fine.

I’m also not sure if I really want to go back to being a stay-at-home mom. I mean, when I started working it wasn’t exactly because I wanted to be. It was because I was losing a huge chunk of my monthly income and needed to be working. I didn’t really feel ready to go back to work. But now, I’ve been working for over a year and except for the fact that I hated the job, I loved going to work. I loved interacting with adults, even though I missed the kids like crazy – and the lack of their drama…

But I’m also not sure of what kind of job I want to be going back to. Something like the last place, I don’t want. I would rather be broke-ass poor and struggling than do that again just to survive. I desperately want to work somewhere that I might leave at the end of the day feeling appreciated in some way. I want to work somewhere that doesn’t bore me to death. And the only jobs I’ve ever had like that were jobs like McDonalds – and I don’t want to go back to the food industry… I don’t think.

Oh well, not the point. I put a resume out there, so that’s all that matters right now. I figure do a couple every day, and eventually something’s gotta happen. Who knows what the future holds right now… In other news:

The kids are all doing relatively great, though some of them are sick and others are looking mighty beat up. Boys sure can be rough with one another… It’s exhausting. Keirnan had a bloody nose last night from hitting his face off of something and then today, Carter threw something at him and scraped his face. Carter has bruises just about everywhere on his body, most of them self-inflicted. He has become quite the stumbly, clumsy baby. It doesn’t help that he’s also a bit of a daredevil and can often be found jumping off the couch or half-walking, half-sliding down the stairs.

Kaeidyn’s had a cold that seems to not go away. She starts to get better and then guess who decides to go outside and take off her jacket, and next thing you know, she’s right back to where she was before. Today, she even took a nap because she wasn’t feeling good. I hate to say it, but I honestly love it when she’s sick. Normally, she doesn’t pay much attention to us adults in the sense that she could care less to really hang out with us. When she’s healthy, she’d prefer to be outside with her friends or drawing in her book. But when she’s sick, she loves to cuddle and insists on sitting near us and if I was having a bad day, it probably would’ve bugged me, but I’m having a wicked day and I loved all the cuddling.

Kenzie has been unbelievably loud. I don’t think he realizes how loud he’s being at all, but almost every time he opens his mouth, he’s shouting. Even if he’s not meaning to. He’s been doing relatively good on the game front, though it’s still something that is almost always being talked about. But we’ve been able to keep him off of it for a couple days at a time. It’s been good and I’m hoping it’ll just keep getting better. I’m not sure what we’re aiming for in terms of “rules and boundaries” surrounding games, but I’m sure we’ll know when we hit it or when we actually need to set a goal.

Other than that, things have been pretty calm and quiet around here (what’s new?), and things are going just as good as they always do 😉 How’s your week been?

Mission Impossible: The Neverending Housecleaning Story

This is seriously so ridiculous, but I cannot get or keep this house clean no matter how hard I try. We spent almost two hours getting the kitchen back to presentable yesterday, and today – the only reason you can tell is because the floor has been swept, that’s it. Then we were planning on getting a bunch of other cleaning done today, and it’s almost 6:00 PM and we have not done a single thing…

It’s such a downer when you clean an area of the house just to see it thrashed again a few hours later, it makes you not want to clean anything. But then you don’t clean anything and your house ends up looking the way mine does right now. I’m always shocked at how upset it makes me feel and then when I think about it, it’s like “Duh!”.

In other news…

Kaeidyn had two birthday parties to go to this weekend. The first was at a salon for kids here in town and she got her hair all curled up, make-up done and nails done. She came home smelling so much like a girl! And then she had another party yesterday at the girl’s next door. She had a load of fun and came home with tons of stories to tell.

Carter has been getting into literally everything, another reason why it’s so hard to keep the house clean. He’s figured out how to open the fridge, and how to dump over the toy box and turn on the taps. He seems to almost never tire, and yet The Boyfriend and I are tired all the time.

The older boys have been incredibly obsessed with video games these days, which results in days filled with “I want to play a game!” and “Can I play a game now?”. Saying no as often as we are is sure getting repetitive and exhausting. It doesn’t help that The Boyfriend is home on holidays for a couple more days, so whenever he plays games, it’s all we hear about from the boys.

I’ve been spending most of my spare time working on Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous-related stuff since The Boyfriend and I have agreed that we are most definitely upgrading the website in the next coming months, especially being that he has some larger checks coming his way from work since he worked so much overtime this past little while. Now if I could only start blogging more often – though lately I’ve been hating my writing…

Coming up this week is a stressful week at work, tons more of the neverending housecleaning story (and I’m hoping we’ll make some serious progress in the next two or three days!) and hopefully we’ll be calling a plumber to fix our toilet already – it’s been months now! Other than that, it should be a relatively quiet one, I hope! How’s your upcoming week looking?