This is what happens when free time, leftover streamers and my dear friend Erika's birthday collide.

I did my best to decorate the hell out of her workspace, and I had plenty of help from the rest of the three ring circus. The little scraps of streamers dangling from the fabric walls of Erika's cube were carefully and lovingly placed there by Punkin, and are held securely in place by really l-o-n-g pieces of tape.

We also brought a really big balloon and flowers and brownies for her. Punkin colored a picture on Erika's birthday card, and left her a voice mail wishing her a Happy Birthday.

It was fun to do something like that for her. She is a really good friend of mine, and has been there for me through a really adventurous year. Punkin loves her completely. Erika is a wonderful person, and I'm glad that we could bring a smile to her face.

My class for these 8 weeks is Intro to Desktop Publishing. The book I had to buy is a big, thick monster called Quark Xpress 4.0. Quark is the desktop publishing program we're using in class. (duh)

The first evening of class, Amy was already waiting when I got there. She saved me a spot at a computer right next to hers. I was touched.

The first thing I thought, after "Oh wow, she saved me a spot!" was "Oh, wow. Is that his real hair?" The instructor who I'll call Sparky for now, has a really great head of brown hair. The only problem is that there's a little part in the back that doesn't 'blend' with the rest. His beard is also filled with tons of gray, the hair on his head doesn't appear to have any gray in it. It kind of gives the overall effect that his hair kinda "snaps on" like the lego men we played with when we were kids.

Sparky seems like a nice guy, pretty laid back. Last night he had on a really colorful, snazzy computer tie.

Amy is very familiar with Quark, so this class is a breeze for her. I'm learning Quark as I go. Sparky tends to go over things thoroughly, and sometimes I can get the concept right away, concepts Amy already knows. I commented on this last night and she admitted that she may be a little ahead of the class, but "that shouldn't last more than a few minutes."

I laughed and said "Yeah, but for those few minutes, you'll be GOLDEN baby!"She's the Golden Girl.

There have been a couple of times when Amy and I have emailed each other during class (because we wouldn't want to disrupt class by talking) about the people in the class and our surroundings. Sometimes we send emails to our hubbies. It's very easy when I'm with Amy to find that giggling high school girl inside of me. There has been a time or two where it is a struggle not to laugh out loud and give ourselves away. (Sparky was talking about "Greeking" text and it came out as "Geek" text...*snork*)

(Oh hey, I shouldn't tell you this, but Amy almost got "busted" last night when Sparky took an impromptu walk around the room to see that everyone was grasping the concept he had just explained. Oops.)

We have some characters in our class, besides us I mean. The first night of class, there was one woman who seemed quite determined to interrupt Sparky as much as possible, even going so far as to walk right up to him at the front of the room to ask him a question while he was in the middle of "lecture." She was a frustrating distraction, to be sure.

The next week, the loud mouth was a gentlman who was sitting behind us. I don't remember his name, but since Rude Lady wasn't there, he seemed to take up the slack. He blurted out questions and kind of talked to himself as he worked through some things.

Last night, it was a younger guy talking without a purpose, and at a toddler's pace, too. You know what I mean, right? Someone who just. can't. get. the. um. words. out. and. um. stalls. and. stops. and. um. starts. again.

It will be interesting to see who it is next week. I think it's good that our classmates are sharing this responsibility. We wouldn't want one person to have to carry the burden of being the class pest, would we?

Heh, another classmate finally grasped a concept and (apparently) Quark did what it was supposed to do. In his glee he shouted out "Boom, baby!" Amy and I showed great restraint and just smiled at each other, rather than burst into loud laughter.

Around 8:00pm, a full two hours before class is scheduled to get out, a warning flashed on all the computers in the room. Apparently the network, which had been sluggish and sensitive all evening, was going down. The network was crashing.

The room full of happy little Quark campers was let loose to s-l-o-w-l-y make their way to their respective homes in the pouring rain and the very heavy fog. This weather is for the birds.

We were going home early, it was raining and the roof didn't even cave inthis time.

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