ShannonAlbert.com - June 2009

On Saturday, I woke up with terrible upper back pain which continued into Sunday. On Monday, abdominal pain was more of my concern as it felt like a 9 month old fetus was lodged in my ribs and wouldn't move. Eating made the pain more intense. By Tuesday, I had decided that I needed to go to the doctor.

Appointment for Wednesday morning and the dr. sent me to see a sonographer a few hours later. The findings: a very, very sick gallbladder. Immediately I am sent for an appointment with a surgeon who schedules me for gallbladder removal tomorrow.

I am glad the fix is relatively simple and that I will get better soon. The timing isn't great as we were planning to all go to Texas this weekend. Now we are trying to figure out what our nee plans will be. I was told to expect to be out of commission for a week. I've never been down for that long so I am hoping for less.

So, this weekend the four of us are going to Texas and then Andy has his interview on Monday. We will spend this weekend doing some fun stuff plus driving through parts of the city we may want to live in. We hope to know more about our future plans by next week.

Andy has been off work now for about 10 days and this has been the first week with Blake. They've been having fun and spending time together and have met me for lunch a couple of times. (Payton is in KC for the week).

He's going to Texas on July 13 to meet with Lockheed. We may go with him for the weekend to do some scouting in the area.

I feel really fortunate that Andy has a good option for a job given that so many people don't right now. However, having said that, this is hard, y'all. We didn't want to move Payton. We don't want to lose money selling our house. We don't want to drive 8 hours to KC all the time. We don't want to move Payton....and we don't want to move Payton. I know she will adjust and I know she'll be fine but it's heartbreaking...and it's not our fault.

Dan's restaurant officially opens tomorrow to the public but this weekend was for family and friends to enjoy. To say that we are proud of him and super crazy excited would be an understatement. When he went from a restaurant manager to a corporate job some years ago, we stayed up at night talking about how he *needed* to have his own restaurant because it was obviously his calling and what he's really good at. The barrier to entry is scary for a not-rich person but after years of perseverance, he finally made it. What's even better is that we are big fans of Genghis Grill food and of the Power and Light District. A collision of mega awesomeness if you ask me.

There were lots of pictures taken of the night but here's 1 album that was put together by Tom.

Pics of family and friends night

I'm in the printed paper today (though I have yet to see it) and the info is online too.

Justin Timberlake makes Sullivan Higdon & Sink employee’s weekend

The last time I posted, I was feeling crazy excited about receiving 2 messages from JT because there's no celeb that would make me happier to hear from. I thought that was it. I was wrong.

On Friday, I got an email that said "Justin Timberlake is now following you on Twitter" which is what you get each time somebody new follows you. I've gotten 200 of them over the past couple of days but this one nearly made me pass out. The amazing thing is that he has over 300,000 people following him but he's only following 32 people. Now, I'm one of them.



This means I can send him a Direct Message (private message) on Twitter if I want to. People have said I'd be silly not to. The thing is, I really, really like him and have no intention to bother him.

EDITED TO ADD: He's not following me anymore. He removed about 8 people including me. I figured he would do that so I'm glad I got a screenshot while it (briefly) lasted. Ha.

My subdued mood today can't properly convey my mood at the time. I'm not going to lie. I was shaking and giddy about this. At work.

Then he Tweets me again. He says I should make a video of my squee. I don't have a screen cap of that because he removed it within about an hour which is good because I wasn't going to do it anyway. :) People sent me messages saying that I had to since he said so. They obviously don't know me because I don't do anything I don't want to....even if Justin Timberlake says so.

Lots of people have been asking me questions. Here are some of the most common.

Q: What does your husband think about all this?
A: He's known that I love JT for many years. I think some marriages have jealousy (even about celebs). We don't. He's happy for me though he can't think of who would make him react quite as insanely.

Q: What does your daughter think?
A: There seems to be some misconception that the JT love is due to my daughter. It's not. I love JT. She thinks he's an awesome entertainer but he isn't her thing. She's much more into Forever the Sickest Kids, Ludo, Pink and many others. I'm no cooler to her today than I was a week ago (which is to say, not at all).

Q: How can I get a celeb to reply to me or follow me?
A: No idea. I wasn't trying to. It just happened.

Q: How do you know it's him?
A: It's him. He's a verified Twitter user. And yes, he writes his own Tweets. Almost all people on Twitter do.

Q: Will you get me an autograph or tickets?
A: What makes you think I could?

This should just about be the end but I will be in the newspaper tomorrow to discuss it so I'll post a link to that when it's online.

It's been fun.

So I love Twitter. And I love JT. And tonight, those two worlds collided into a big ball of awesomeness.

I follow nearly 200 people and I keep up with all of them fairly easily but when Justin Timberlake sends a message, I squee. So, tonight, I tweeted this.



It's true, I contemplated unfollowing my second most favoritest celeb (Oprah is 1st, obvz) because I SQUEE when I get a message from him. I love him. For real.

Then......he replied.



OK. Ummm.....if him sending out a link to a website makes me squee, what do you suppose a question directly from him does?

MAKES ME SCREAM AS I RUN THROUGH THE HOUSE!!! And I so eloquently replied to him.



Yeah, I play it cool.

So I gather myself and try to remember to breathe again. Kami calls and says "umm...did you see what he said this time?"



Translation: he started a new topic on Twitter in my honor.

Honest to God, it doesn't get much better for me than this.

If you'd like to try to keep up with what people are saying to me, check out these messages people are sending to me. I can't keep up but it's so fun!