Monday Tuesdays and short weeks

Today has definitely been a Monday Tuesday. The day is lasting FOR-EV-ER, and no matter what I do the time just continues to drag and drag. This is not only due to it being the first day back to work after a long weekend, but during that long weekend we travelled to Denver and back. We had a BLAST! Jeff and I drove his new 4-door Jeep Wrangler across Wyoming on our way there and back the southern route via I-70 & Hwy 6. I must admit that the southern route is MUCH prettier, but it did seem to last a very long time. We went out to visit Jeff's sister and her family and see a few things in Colorado, get away from the house and give Jeff a chance to really drive his new vehicle. Jeff's sister is the oldest in their family, and Jeff is the third of four total, but since he didn't find me until after he was 30, the rest of his family seems so much more progressed with their individual families, and we feel like the youngest of the group. For example, we have a nephew who is 21 and going to college in Arizona. This is a little crazy for me to think about because my little sister is just 21 - how can I have a sister and a nephew that are the same age??? Plus, my sister has been married for two and a half years and has a son that is 18 months old, so in reality, my nephew is old enough to be a father... that would make me a great aunt! Yikes!
Anyhow, we arrived at about midnight on Friday and stayed until about 10:30 on Monday morning. We had such a good time visiting with his sister and her family. We went and saw the dinosaur tracks and the red-rocks ampitheater. We went on a scenic drive through the mountains and Jeff and I had a scrumptious Mexican dinner at their favorite Mexican restaurant. We shopped at the mall (but we got there too late to see Tiffany's... probably a good thing as I'm such a HUGE jewelry fan I most likely would have purchased something). We went to breakfast on Sunday at IHOP where our niece just started her first job as a hostess. We all had different varieties of french toast (Yummmmie!) and spent a little while WalMart hopping looking for GI Joes for Jeff (he is collecting the new 25th anniversary figures - he was WAY into them as a kid, and is having tons of fun seeing them all again). We had barbecued burgers for dinner that night again it was fantastic! We watched Patriot Games and all of a sudden the weekend was over and it was time for us to drive home.
Tomorrow my dad is having surgery to remove the cancer, and I am going to be at the hospital to be a support to my mom during the wait. So that means that I will have missed two days of work this week. The down-side of being a contractor is that I have no paid vacation/holiday time, so I'm working 12-hour days today and Thursday and Friday and will be working on stuff tomorrow at the hospital to make up the remaining 4 hours. So here it is 2:00pm and I have already been here for 8 hours. I'll be here for another 4, yikes! I don't know how long it has been since I worked a 12 hour day, probably over a year since I quit working so many hours when I met and married Jeff.
Yay! My boss took me and the two other new employees in our department on a field trip to see one of the larger substations in the Salt Lake Valley and then one of the smaller local ones. He explained what all of the equipment does and the different designs. When you see those arms coming off the poles, they don't look that big from the ground, but in reality they are like 16 feet long! Crazy!
Anyhow, that helped pass some of the time today, so now it is 3:40 and I only have two hours and twenty minutes left today!
Oh, and my dad is going in to surgery tomorrow morning at 7:00am. His surgery is supposed to last about 4 hours. I think I might come back into work after we get the news that he has come through and everything looks good (mostly I'm going to be there to support my mom), and then maybe I won't have to work so long on Thursday and Friday.
Anyway, please keep my daddy in your prayers tomorrow. I'm sure he's going to be fine, but extra prayers can never hurt.
Loves!
Rachael