Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Happy Birthday Mr. J

Today is Mr. J's Birthday. Okay, it's not really his birthday but since we don't know when his birthday is because we rescued him from New Orleans after he was hit by a car, we decided it's today. I can't believe he's already 5 years old. As always, time flies. He's such a handsome boy. He's sitting on my lap soaking up the love right now. Tomorrow is a big day too. It's Alpa's birthday. In addition, I should be an aunt again by tomorrow evening. Yep, Tara's going in to be induced tomorrow morning. I should have a busy day at work tomorrow so I probably won't be able to get away but will be at the hospital immediately following work. I'll keep y'all posted!

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Frustration.

Boy, has it been an interesting week. To begin, I am already sick of school. I feel as though I’m constantly going schoolwork in addition to working 44+ hours a week. I wake up early to do schoolwork. I do schoolwork during any spare moment while at work. And then I come home and do schoolwork. Needless to say there was no down time during this week. I guess it’s the price you pay for getting to where you need to go but it sucks to say the least. I was hoping for a great weekend, but it didn’t get off to a good start. We went to Chet and Matt’s for dinner. David left early to go to a Madden Tournament (I’ll explain that later) at the La Quinta Inn, and I had to pay for the meal. No big deal, just give them our bankcard as usual. Well, the waiter comes back and says, it doesn’t look as though it’s going through. I hand him a new card while thinking to myself, “I know we have money in our account. I just checked it a few hours ago.” While I swallow the embarrassment of everyone looking at me and feeling like an idiot, I move on and receive a phone call from David at the Madden tournament. For those of you who do not know what Madden is, it’s a NFL game that is on game systems such as Xbox, etc. So he entered a tournament so he could play other individuals in the area just for fun. To enter the tournament you paid $45 and got a room for the night. So back to the phone call….David called and said the manager said he would upgrade our room to the jacuzzi room and we could bring the dogs because it’s a pet-friendly hotel. Sweet. Since we were able to bring the dogs I had to change their litterbox so it was nice and clean. I remembered we didn’t have any litter left so I headed up to Pet Supplies Plus to get some. When I arrived at the counter I explained that I’m not sure if my card will work as it didn’t just a few moments earlier. Nope. It doesn’t go through. I head over to our financial institution and figure I’d try getting money out of the ATM and see what happens. I enter my pin and select the amount I want and then all the sudden a red screen pops up saying that my card has been retained and then goes back to the main screen. And the machine prints out a receipt that says, “You are an unauthorized user of this account.” WHAT??? Give me my card. What the heck? Um? What should I do? I have people waiting behind me so I have to move. So the whirlwind begins. I call David, stop by the hotel and grab his card to get the numbers on the back and start making phone calls. 5 calls later I find that I can’t do anything and no one can help me. It’s pointless to cancel the card, as my bank has it. I checked our account online at home and it looks as though no one has charged anything onto it. So I must patiently wait until the morning. At the same time I’m trying to patiently wait for a phone call from David saying he’s done with the tournament. At about 9:30 I finally receive a call saying that he’s only done with his first game and that he already has the card to the room. He went on to say that he’d call when he’s done with the next game and head over to pick me up with the kids. At 10:30 I receive the phone call and we all head over the hotel. The room was nice and I was all excited to use the jacuzzi, but said I’d wait until David came back, expecting him to be back in about 1-2 hours. I sat up watching old Roseanne episodes, channel surfing, and playing with the kids. And at about 2am I decided it’s time for me to get to sleep so I could get up early to head to the bank. David finally arrived at 4am. I was too tired to even wake up to see that he won and didn’t open my eyes until 8am. I woke up to find that he won the tournament and some money along with it. Cool, but I was too focused on getting to the bank. He surprised me by waking up and joining me to go to the bank. We took the pets home and then headed over…yep, if you didn’t catch it, we never did get to use the jacuzzi. Bummer. We got to the bank to find that our card had been cancelled because there was some form of dispute with the TJMaxx Company and individuals’ information being stolen. Since there was a possibility of our information being compromised they closed our card and supposedly sent us 2 letters (that we never received) letting us know about the situation. We then asked about David’s card to see if his would work since he had used it earlier in the day on Friday. They stated that if it had worked earlier in the day that it should work now. Not trusting them, we headed to the ATM to see if it’d work. Surprise, surprise. It retained his card too. So that leaves us no access to our account with the exception of a checkbook. Are you serious? After that we went to a dealership to check out trucks. We found one that was a possibility but it was a total beater and considering the financial state our car is in the banks probably wouldn’t finance it due to the amount of miles, age, and the amount of the loan that we’d have to take out. So we moved on to a new truck, which was a stick shift. There’s one thing wrong, we both don’t know how to drive stick. So we called Alpa up and headed to the mall to learn. Due to my amount of frustration already for the week, I decided to sit it out and learn another time. David learned quickly. We decided to wait on the decision of getting it or not and went home. The afternoon went well, as we went down to Columbus with the ‘rents and we met up with Ande’ and ate at PF CHANGS! Woohoo! It was totally worth the wait. I loved every bit of it. And I have some leftovers. We checked out the rest of Easton, stopped by a scrub store for me to stock up on work gear, and then went home. In the end it was a good day. This morning we slept in and went out to the country looking for trucks. We came home, I did schoolwork, David played his XBox, and now we’re chilling, trying to decide where to eat. As usual, I hope this finds everyone well and I hope to write more this week, depending on the situation.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

In Search Of A Truck

Ah well. The Saints lost. What's new? All of "my" teams have been losing lately. However, I am glad the Colts won. It's been a longtime coming for Peyton. And I must say that I will be rooting for the Colts in the Super Bowl. Maybe I shouldn't even say that on here, in hopes that it doesn't jinx them.

David's on a new kick recently. He wants to get rid of his Alero and get an old truck. I think it makes sense. Since he now has a work van all he needs is a back up car that can get him from here to there if need be. It'd be great to get a lower payment by trading his in and getting a less expensive vehicle. The only thing is it needs to be in decent shape so we're not dumping loads on money into it all the time. And at this point I don't think we'd get an even trade-in for his car and the amount we still owe. We'd have to see. We're trying to find an actual dealership that will accept a trade. Because I don't think a dealership would be quite happy to trade something in and not make a sale on a new vehicle. I don't even think they'd allow us to do that. Meaning, it'd be hard for us at this time to sell it to the dealership and go buy an old truck from an individual up the street. I'll keep you posted...

Not much else is going on. Just day to day things. I've begun working ahead in my schoolwork. As of now I'm done through week 4 in my one class and I'm up to date in the other. (we're in week 2). That class will be what I focus on the next few days in hopes of getting ahead. Time to finish getting ready for work. Have a wonderful day!

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints?


Yum Yum In The Tum Tum

As stated in my previous post we celebrated David's birthday at The Cheesecake Factory in Crocker Park last night. Can you tell that we love Crocker Park? The shops are on the pricier side but it has such a great atmosphere including a huge chess set that you can actually play with (I kid you not the chess pieces are about 2 feet high...not as big as Harry Potter, but big.) and fire pits you can stand around to get warm. It's just cool. And they have a 2-story Barnes and Noble. You gotta love that. I guess they have a Borders too but we've never made it there. Anyway, I think we had perfect timing for our arrival at the Factory. We got ther about 10 minutes til 5 and got sat by 5. By the time we left, the lobby was packed. Our food was SO good and the portions were huge. It had been awhile since I had been to a Cheesecake Factory. The last time was in Columbus my Junior year in high school. And if I remember correctly we weren't that impressed. Well, this time we were. You get warm bread delivered to your table when you arrive. My understanding was it was very good (I didn't eat any...bread is my downfall and I'm trying to cut out as much as I can and loose the winter pooch). I got the Spicy Cashew Chicken. I swear there were like 3-4 chicken breasts in it. It was very yummy but I didn't even make a dent in it. I will have lunch for the next several days that's for sure. David had the Baja Tacos and he said it was very good too. I didn't hear any complaints from the rest of our party either. For dessert I had the Snickers Cheesecake. And David had the plain cheesecake with fresh strawberries. No complaints from there either. It was so light an fluffy, not like most cheesecake that you eat. So all in all a great night. Not sure what our plans are today. More than likely football. Only a few more games to watch and the season is over....then there's the draft....and it starts all over again....

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

It's Too Late To Think Of A Subject

The time has finally come. School has begun. For some reason our first day was listed as MLK day and nothing was available and of course the school was closed. What's up with that? I found my Speech workbook yesterday on the program's main site. And then finally today one of my classes showed up on my Blackboard site. So at this point I atleast have both of my workbooks but I am waiting for my Speech class to show up as a course on the Blackboard site. According to the college I'm registered and good to go but they are extending registration for the class through this week, which I think may put a small glitch in the schedule to begin with. I probably lost you through that. Whatever, I got my first week's schedule done today and I hope to get more done tomorrow with having the day off. And we're off....

Just so you all don't forget, David's Birthday is Thursday. He's going to be 25. I can't believe it. Weren't we just in high school still dating at the age of 16 and 17? My how time flies. But at least we're having fun. We're going to celebrate with something small during the week. More than likely Chili's since that's one of his favorite restaurants. And then we'll head out somewhere this weekend. Probably Cheesecake Factory or PF Changs. Ya'll know I'm leaning for PF Changs but it's not my birthday and with both sets of 'rents going we don't want to make them drive almost 2 hours just for dinner. We'll see. It's not going to be an exciting birthday in regards to gifts this year. He's already received his gift from my 'rents and then my gift to him was a personalized Vikings jersey. That's kind of something that you need him involved in since you have to choose what color and the number. Now he just has to patiently wait for it to arrive.

I believe winter has finally arrived for us here on Lake Erie. We've had tons of rain and it finally changed over to ice/snow within the past 48 hours. The temperatures have also dropped a decent amount versus a week ago. But it looks as though we'll be in the 30's for the next week or so.

I have to tell you a story. I woke up this morning with no cats waiting at our bedroom door. That's odd, as they always are there to greet you saying, "feed me!" Jax finally arrived, but no Natchez. After getting dressed I decide that it's time to perform the hunt to find her. Lucky for me she was the first place I looked, in the basement. Poor thing spent all night down there. I'm sure the boiler kept her warm. Then this evening for some reason she hadn't been around. I heard the knocking of one of our closet doors, but think nothing of it because Lily was moving around in a bed next to the door. I was thinking that she was just knocking the bed into the door as she was adjusting herself. I then sit down to write this and I'm continuing hearing the knocking and finally put two and two together. No Natchez. And a door knocking. The hunt is on again to try to find what closet the knocking is coming from. Come to find her in the downstairs bedroom's closet. Crazy cat. Needless to say this isn't the first nor will it be the last that we must hunt her down. There was even one time where David and I were searching for her for an hour. We looked EVERYWHERE. Finally we found her wrapped up in David's closet blending in with all of his "junk". Ah, I love my kids. They keep my life interesting.


Natchez just chillin' while we frantically searched for her

Sunday, January 14, 2007

The Holiday and A Birthday

On Friday night we started off eating at Chet and Matt's and then ended up at a late movie. We went to see The Holiday. I've been wanting to see it. We haven't since all of the showtimes seemed to be too late or something. Well, we decided what the heck and went to the movie. It was great. I am the luckiest woman in the world to have my husband, for many reasons. But one big thing is that he will watch chick flicks with me. He will even admit he liked it. And no, he is not lying. I love him so. So the movie was wonderful. I loved it. I must admit I'm not a huge Cameron Diaz fan but everything fit together wonderfully. And I want to go to England now to visit "Kate Winslet's character's town" and her little cottage. Quite picturesque. I cannot believe how much I cried. Yes, I will cry at movies here and there but I must be ovulating or something. Because boy did it just let go. It's definitely a movie I'd like to add to our collection.

Saturday was Dad's birthday so we made a day of it and headed up to Great Northern mall and then took a jaunt over to Crocker Park and ate at his favorite restaurant, Champps. It was very yummy. Hopefully next week we'll make it to PF Changs for David's birthday. We didn't want to take any chances with the possibility of a mixture of rain/ice and driving. We'll see. I had my first Pina Colada. It was kind of gross. I probably should have prefaced that with "I'm not a big drinker." I can count on my one hand how many times I've had a drink out. Maybe I should just stick to the virgin side of things. It's hard to ruin those.

I have succeeded in getting my mom, dad, and David into a pair of Crocs. Yes, I know I can hear the rumblings of "Those are so ugly. I don't care how comfy they are." But I LOVE them! I received my first pair on Christmas day after waiting about a year to get them and I haven't taken them off since. I've even added two more pair since Christmas. If you do the math, that's one pair per week. Yes, I'm insane. I'd love to say I started the fad, as I like to take things people think are crazy/ugly, and make them cool, but I didn't. I jumped on the bandwagon and am glad I did. So as I stated, my mom and David have 2 pairs each and Dad has 1 pair. We may be twinkies, but we're comfy.

My First Pair Of Crocs

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Time For Myself

I have only about 10 minutes to jot something out but I figured I'd use that 10 minutes for something. With David's new schedule/position I don't feel as though I have the time to write at length as I usually do. I'm not complaining, as we actually get to go to bed together and rise about the same time too. The first few days I must say that in the mornings it felt weird. He's very straight to the point...get up and walk out of the house. I get up about 1.5 hours before I need to leave, eat breakfast, do my hair, and then clean something around the house. That way I feel as though I've accomplished something before the day even begins. I've always felt the need to be able to have that extra time to do whatever instead of being rushed from the get go. Anyway, that's why I haven't blogged much or very long lately. It's about 9:50pm and we like to get to bed around 10pm. Lily tends to get feisty around bedtime so David always takes her upstairs with Viking to run off some energy and play. It's much easier for them to get traction on the floor in the bedroom with carpeting, than down here on the hardwood floors. And she just loves to soak up all of Daddy's love and be the center of attention. That gives me a bit of quiet time to sit and unwind with one of the cats in my lap. Boy, don't we sound like a little family. Well, we are. Just with a little more hair. I don't believe I've posted, but David was promoted to a new position within the company. He is now a mechanic. Currently he is following the other mechanic on a day to day basis, then in a couple months he will go to formal training and earn his refrigeration license. He now has a company vehicle, cell phone, and earned a raise. Can't complain about that and we are both quite excited. Just as I'm done explaining why my blogs aren't that long my time is up. Hope to write more soon. Night!

Who You Be and Where Y'at?

According to my cousins Erika and Jacki it is International Blog Delurking Week. In other words it's time to out yourself and let me know who reads this thing that we call a blog. You know you're out there....the ones that read and don't post, because everyone is always saying they read it and bringing up comments in regards to subjects I talk about on the blog. And guess what, I've been guilty of it too. So anyway, if you'd like to comment this would be the time to do so, if not, happy lurking!

Monday, January 08, 2007

Bummer.

I got to side with Jacki on this one. College football can be depressing. Hey, anything can be depressing for that matter. I just look to the brighter side of things and see what we've done to get where we are. Thanks for a memorable season Buckeyes. Thank you for being inspirations to so many individuals. Great job Gators. Very impressive. I will always be a proud Buckeye wherever I go, no matter what happens. And with anything, there is always tomorrow and the future to look forward to. You never know what will happen...exciting isn't it??

Small amount of relief....

I went to check if my credit card had been charged yet for the class, and it wasn't. Dang it. So I emailed the girl who sent me the information stating, "just making sure I'm lined up for the correct classes, as they start today." And for some reason I checked out the actual department site and noted that the semester doesn't start today, but next monday. Whew! I'm still and idiot, but that gives me some relief. One less thing to worry about today, kind of. At least I get one more week to put that off in hopes of them getting everything straight. Isn't it kind of sad that I'm actually wanting someone to charge my card and they haven't? Whatever...now, let's focus.....GO BUCKEYES!

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Get 'em Brutus!

Here We Go Again.

So school starts tomorrow and I'm not ready for that. But I must say I'm ready for the OSU game. Kind of nervous and I'm just waiting for the adrenalin to kick in. It's hard to think that I actually have to go through a whole day of work tomorrow. I'm kind of getting used to having Mondays off. Shouldn't this be considered a holiday too? Back to the school thing...I'm kind of frustrated. I checked out my credit card bill the other day and noticed I had only been charged for one class. So I contacted them, of course after several days of the office being closed due to the holidays, only to find that they supposedly didn't have my billing information for one of the classes. Now don't you think they'd contact me to ask or something? Kind of obvious. Anyway, so I got all the information to them. And they used to send your workbook physically in the mail. Then it went to getting it by email, then being on the school's site. Now supposedly there's not going to be a workbook. Say what? And when I go on my school site, called Blackboard, nothing is listed (classes, etc). The same thing happened last semester and nothing was on there until the actual first day of the semester. It just kind of sucks because I used to get a head start on the semester and have stuff ready way before they were actually due. And now it's kind of tough because I'm going to have to shove stuff through really fast this week to get things done that are due next monday. I'm done with my "freak out". I'm sure everything will be fine but it gives me anxiety. As usual we didn't do anything wild and crazy this weekend. On Friday night we had dinner at Fazolis and stopped by the mall with the 'rents. We ran into my cousin Jillian. She's starting to show and it's so cute. It was great to see her and see that she's doing so well. I'm so excited for her and her husband. On Saturday I worked and we did some running around. That evening we ate at Cedar Villa and then I ended up going to bed at 7pm. Yeah, that's just crazy, but I did. I was hoping to be fully rested by this morning, but that wasn't so. It felt good but not like any other time where I woke up raring to go and refreshed. I had to do a few things at work. So I headed in and took care of that first thing to get it out of the way. We went out for a drive this afternoon and stopped by the big antique store in Norwalk. We stopped by the Henry's and had pizza for dinner and here we are gearing up for another week. It sounds as though we're going to have some cooler weather this week. A far cry from last week's high 50's. Coming in the house today I looked over at one of my flower beds and saw that my daffodils had started to come up. Poor things. They must be so confused. Have a great week and a wonderful National Championship Monday.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Eve Of Twelfth Night

It's the Eve of Twelfth Night...is your King Cake ready??? Don't know what I'm talkin' about? Check this site out...History Of Mardi Gras

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Geaux Tigers!

I can't help but love LSU. It brings back fond memories.....Welcome back to the Superdome!

Pursuit Of Anxiety?

I probably shouldn't be sitting down to write as it is already 9:52am. It's my day off and boy did I sleep in. I know I probably shouldn't feel this way but I feel if I have a day off I should be running around getting something done. Obviously I'm not doing that. Anyway. I kind of feel like crap. Ever since about last Thursday I've had a toothache. It progessively got worse and by Saturday I was ready to have someone pull it out. And I was just going down the list in the phone book trying to find someone. If you know me I have a decent level of pain tolerance. I've even had 2 fillings done without any novacaine or anything. It was my choice against the doctor's wishes. And he said, "do you have any kids?" I said "no." And then he went on to say "well when you do that'll be a breeze for you." So if I say I'm in pain, I'm in pain. And Aleve didn't work. My glorious Aleve, that works for EVERYTHING didn't work. Finally my mom let me borrow this PreviDent stuff that's from our dentist that she just got. He said that it should help with any sensitivity. So I tried it. Finally! Relief. I don't know how it works, but it works. I went through the rest of the weekend pretty comfortably, but decided I'd call the dentist immediately on Monday morning. I did so and they got me in right away. I left work and went and had x-rays done and all. And they can't find a thing. Boo. Leave it up to me to have a problem that is unfixable. No signs of abscess or cavity and he said if anything he could possibly see a problem with another tooth that doesn't seem to me to be the one bothering me. So he gave me a stronger type of PreviDent and I'm on a soft food diet for a week. That's fun. No gum or soda. That's no problem because I don't chew gum or drink soda anyway. I stopped that the first time I had a problem like this about 6 years ago. At this time we're thinking something is bruised under my tooth or in my jaw that is causing the discomfort. And as we all know I have anxiety, etc. that makes me chew the inside of my cheeks and grit my teeth. So this is a good possibility. And if this doesn't work I have to go to the endodontist. And all I see is $$$. And for some reason this morning a headache has decided to greet me upon waking up. On a lighter note, David surprised me when I came home last night and said "let's go to the movies." So we did so and we saw The Pursuit Of Happyness. It was definitely a good movie, but you talk about anxiety......probably not a good thing to watch when I'm trying to stay away from that. You just feel for the guy and your heart hurts for him. Anyway. It was very good and made us appreciate all that we have, even though oftentimes we feel we have nothing. I better get productive.