Virtual smoothies

Mmm, smoothies…yummy!

Today is such a lovely day.  It’s a perfect day for an ice cream cone.  I may just buy one on my way home from work.  A lovely strawberry one, in a sugar cone…Mmm, it doesn’t get any better than that!

How I wish I didn’t have to be cooped up in the office, strapped to my desk.  It’s such an inviting day out there and I long to be part of it.  The sun is shining, there’s not a cloud in the sky, the temperature is soaring (along with the humidity in anticipation of the impending storm)…Must I stay here in this artificial, climate-controlled edifice?  I think not.  But there are no errands for me to run, so boo.  Oh, if only there were errands to run, then I could go for a walk.  And who knows?  I might forget to come back. 🙂

Ooo, ooo!  We got our pictures back!  Apparently they came in quite a while ago, but the photographer never called us to let us know we could pick them up.  Jerk.  But they were worth the wait, so I’m super-excited.  As soon as I get the software for my lovely printer/scanner/copier loaded on my laptop, I intend to get them scanned and then you know I’ll post them.  This means I have to get to work on the announcement so that I can get it sent in to the paper for pretty publication.  *so much squeeing, you don’t even want to know*

Okay, I think I’m done now.  But it’s just so pretty and loverly that I can’t help but be in a good mood!  Also, I cruised the loop in Reinbeck last night with the windows down and Eminem up.  Totally felt 17 again.  The only thing missing was someone else over the age of 6.  Actually, after I picked Rachael up, I changed the song to a more family-friendly Barenaked Ladies song.  You can’t go wrong with a song named after Brian Wilson.

Alas, I suppose I should quit procrastinating and daydreaming and such and get back to doing actual work.  Happy weekend!

(c) 2009.  All rights reserved.

No news

Sorry.  There’s just not much to tell lately.  I really haven’t felt like writing all that much, which is rather odd for me.

So to update, we’ve finally settled on the bridesmaid dresses.  Yay!  One thing down, 970 million more to go.  Um, I’m being confirmed at church Saturday night.  And my tummy hurts.  Apparently all the antacid I took after lunch hasn’t kicked in yet.  It really needs to, though, cuz I’ve had awful heartburn since yesterday and it needs to go away.

I actually made some progress on my type-up-all-my-old-stories project.  I got one all typed up and I started on another one.  Oh my God.  Seriously.  I knew they were bad, but holy crap, I didn’t realize the exact extent of the horror.  Yikes!  I should be shot for writing such utter drivel.  Aside from the fact that every time someone asks my character to tell them about herself, she gives them her life story in one paragraph, well, there are really no words to describe just how bad it was.  I kept making remarks like, “It’s a good thing I never got knocked up at fifteen like some people do because I’d have stuck my kid with a truly heinous name,” or, “You have got to be kidding me.  What the hell was I thinking?!”  And I thought these were good once upon a time?  I was out of my freaking mind!  Greg asked me why I was typing them all up if they were so bad.  I told him it was so that I had a record of what I used to write.  “Oh, so you’re not going to have them published?” he asked.  “Oh, HELL no!”  I replied.  “I’d die of embarrassment!”

And I would.  They are true horrors.  *shudders*  And yet, I keep on going…

We got 8 inches of swearing Sunday.  This is April, dammit.  That’s not supposed to happen.  When they said April showers bring May flowers, they meant rain!  Not white crap!  NO MORE WHITE CRAP!!

Okay, I think I’m done now.

But on the subject of crap, my long-awaited piece of BSB-inspired fluff is nearing completion.  Yay!  Because everyone loves a good bit of fluff, right?  Right?  You know I’m right.

*sigh*  I hope this afternoon goes by as quickly as this morning did because I just want to go home and curl up in bed.  I seem to be feeling rather averse to productivity today.  So with that, I think I’ll go back to doing quizzes on Facebook and hope that this time, stupid WordPress will post my entry when I tell it to instead of saving 90% of it as a draft and losing the rest of what I typed.  I hate when things of that sort happen.  Stupid computer glitches.  If I could remember everything that I typed, it wouldn’t be such a big deal, I guess, but my memory sucks, so there ya go.  Apparently my computer sucks, too, but I already had suspicions of that.

Friday needs to hurry up and get here.

(c) 2009.  All rights reserved.

So proud!

I always knew Iowa rocked.  Yay Corn State!

So it seems that I never got around to posting anything yesterday.  Whoops.  Must have been the Class 3 Skull-Splitter messing with my head.  Or the actual work that I had yesterday.  They just kept piling it on!  I love days like that, where I have things to do.  It makes the time pass so much faster.  I really appreciate it when the work day flies by because frankly, I would much rather be at home.  It’s a lovely day outside and my boys will be home by 3:00.  The only thing missing is me!  How I wish I could cut out early.

In other news, a good friend of mine has been having rather a hard time lately.  She’s lost several relatives, all within a few months of each other, as well as a very good friend.  I called her the other night to chat and she had just found out that her uncle had passed away earlier that day from a massive heart attack.  I really hope things will start going better for her.  Maybe today’s news will cheer her up!  I hope so.

Spring is totally in the air today.  The sun is shining, there’s not a cloud in the sky, the wind has finally calmed down, and there’s a lovely crispness in the air.  It’s beautiful!  And they’re discussing possible swearing over the weekend.  Apparently the meteorologists haven’t gotten the memo that says since it’s now April, it’s not allowed to swear anymore.  Swearing is only allowed in winter and since it is clearly not winter anymore, swearing is strictly and expressly forbidden.  The Great Kay has spoken.

*sigh*  I keep staring out the window and thinking of Time Enough for Drums.  I suppose I always think of it in the spring because it was springtime when I first read that book.  Also I think of it because there’s a lovely passage about Jem losing herself to the spell of John reading French and staring out the window into the inviting April day and getting scolded for daydreaming.  I love that book.

And now I suppose I’ll get back to searching the internet for work-related items of non-interest…

(c) 2009.  All rights reserved.

Unsuspecting Sunday Afternoon

Last night I saw the fireworks
The kind of pain that never hurts
The one you hate to love is made for you
Another unsuspecting Sunday afternoon

Oh, I love that song!  It was requested that I provide a complete review of Unbreakable and I intend to comply, but it will be rather a short review because I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT.  It’s easily my new favorite album.  The other BSB cd I bought over the weekend was The Hits – Chapter One, which has a whole bunch of their old songs plus one new one.  I haven’t gotten to listen to that one yet because I refuse to take Unbreakable out of my car stereo (though really, I should take it inside and rip it so that I can listen to it on my Zune) and the cd player in the bathroom at home is dirty and I’m too lazy to clean it.  But maybe I’ll do that tonight.

Anyway, I love love LOVE Unbreakable.  There are so many good songs on there that I can’t pick one favorite.  I love them all!  I really like Unsuspecting Sunday Afternoon and Intro, which is a little snippet of Unsuspecting Sunday Afternoon that they did a little differently.  It’s seriously awesome.  Panic is lots of fun; great rhythm.  I’ve had bits of Something That I Already Know floating through my head all day.  Trouble Is is awesome!  In short, I love this album.  It has fueled my fancy the way that Backstreet Boys and Millennium did back in the good ol’ days.  Woo!

In other news, I adored the weather we had Monday and Tuesday.  It was so springy, so lovely!  Yay warmer weather!  Today it’s in the fifties, but it’s still really nice outside, so you won’t hear any complaints from me.  For now, anyway. 🙂

*sigh*  I suppose I should get back to work, but since I apparently forgot to post yesterday, I thought I’d play a little catch-up this afternoon.  Happy Hump Day!

(c) 2009.  All rights reserved.

Modern torture devices

I have discovered that torture devices are alive and well in the 21st century.  I had a particularly close call with one this morning.  It taunted me with its promises of better health and weight loss and for thirty agonizing moments, I succumbed to glorious images of a new and improved me.  Then, hot, sweaty, tired, and in pain, I wondered incredulously what the hell I had been thinking.  Obviously it had some sort of mind control powers that it failed to mention or it would probably not have succeeded in keeping me in its clutches for as long as it did.  In future, I will know better than to heed its siren song and fully intend to steer clear of it and any and all like devices.  What is the device of which I speak, you may be asking yourselves, so that I, too, can avoid them?  The answer, friends, is simple: the elliptical machine.

Yes, I have begun in earnest the workout regimen that I’ve been promising to start for at least the last two years.  I somehow managed to break free from the lovely warmth and comfort of my cozy bed at 5:45 a.m. this morning and engage in an arduous workout.  By arduous, of course, I mean that I set the thing to level 2 and spent thirty minutes whining about being bored, thirsty, hot, cold, tired, and sick while struggling to breathe through my nose for the first time in days.  That’s right, folks, I’m a pansy and a whiner.

But of course you already knew that.

My goal is to get into better shape and lose all the weight that I’ve gained over the last year.  Ideally, this will happen prior to September 26, but I suppose that’s too much to hope for.  Maybe I can just lose most of it by then.

I still hate mornings, though, and getting up at the ass-crack of dawn is sooooooooooo not my idea of a good time.  In fact, working out in general is not exactly my idea of a good time, in case you couldn’t tell.  I love riding my bike and going swimming and taking walks, but those are all rather difficult to do in the middle of winter.  Oh, sure, I could join a gym and do all of those things inside, but then there would be no mosquitoes to swat away, no sunburns to deal with, no bratty kids to shoo out of my way in the pool, no excess of heat and humidity…Why haven’t I joined a gym again yet?  Oh, right, because then I would miss out on enjoying nature.  Because I’m such the avid naturalist and all-around outdoorsy type.  Right.

Maybe in my dreams.

Rachael cracked me up this morning.  She came downstairs as I was about halfway through my half-hour of torture and sat down at the table to watch me, positively enthralled by what she saw.  Whether it was the idea of me working out or the fact that she had no idea what it was I was doing that kept her attention riveted on my ever-reddening face, I’m not sure.  “You look tired,” she said.  I gasped my agreement.  “I would be done now if that were me,” she continued.  I stared at her for a moment, not sure whether to laugh or cry, then told her to go play.  Greg told her that people don’t like to be observed while working out, which is true for me because I’m always afraid I’ll look like an idiot, even when I’m the only person around.  I asked him if he heard what she’d said and he replied that he hadn’t, so I told him.  He laughed.  Then he came out and said that I didn’t look as bad as he thought I would.  Apparently that’s supposed to mean that I’m in better shape than originally thought, despite the fact that I get winded running up the steps to the clerk’s office at the courthouse every day (I’ve been doing it for three years now, so you’d think I’d be used to it, but you would be wrong; and lest I make it seem like that’s a small amount of stairs, there are somewhere around two dozen steps just to get into the courthouse, then three more flights up to the clerk’s office).  I could probably have phrased all that better, but my brain seems to have fallen asleep from all that exercising I did this morning.

In other news, the sinus infection that’s been threatening for so long finally hit with a vengeance on Friday and I spent Saturday on the couch.  I spent most of Saturday morning asleep.  Yay sleep!  We went to Ankeny this weekend and did lots of wedding planningy type things, such as picking up my wedding dress.  YAY!!!!!!  Then I (accidentally) got super-drugged-up on cold medicine and Excedrin and felt like a space cadet all of Sunday.  A word to the wise: Don’t mix two NyQuil liqui-gels with three Excedrin and a muscle relaxer.  Bad things will happen.  It was much less fun to go shopping and try on pretty dresses in my drug-induced fog than I had originally anticipated.  But I still have to have it bustled and there are still other dresses to pick out, so I suppose I can deal with it.

Yay wedding dress! 🙂

I finally got around to sending my cell phone in to be fixed.  I guess I procrastinated a bit with that.  You would think I would have gotten it taken care of right away and I did try to do just that, but then I got lazy.  Now I have to wait four to six weeks for my pretty pink phone to be usable again.  Stupid phone breakage.

And in laptop news, we finally gave up on waiting for Dell to send the cds they promised to send.  They kept pushing back the ship date and when Greg called to find out why, they told him they had the cds in stock (and they weren’t on back-order like he’d been told before) and they didn’t know why they hadn’t been sent out.  *looking very earnest*  They promised to send them out right away, overnight even.  They still never arrived.  So we finally managed to get them to send us prepaid shipping labels and we shipped it back to them.  Once they’re satisfied, they’re supposed to send me a new one with the right operating system on it.  It will probably be another month at least before that happens.  Stupid Dell.  Their computers are great, but their customer service really sucks.

My God I’m tired!  I blame the early rising this morning, the muscle relaxer I took after my lovely warm shower, and the stupid sinus infection that won’t go away.  And by won’t go away, I mean that the two doses of antibiotic I’ve taken haven’t managed to banish it yet.  WORK FASTER, MEDICINE!  I WANT TO BREATHE!

*sigh*  In the meantime, I suppose I had better get back to work, although I’m really not sure what it is that I’ll do to pass the time and keep from falling asleep.  I felt rotten enough yesterday that I toyed with the idea of calling in sick today so that I could stay home and rest up from the weekend, but I’m a goody-goody, so here I am.  At work.  Where I’m supposed to be working but am blogging as a way to put off doing anything even remotely productive instead.

Happy Tuesday!

(c) 2009.  All rights reserved.

On cell phones and why I’m mad at them today

So today I went to enter an appointment in the calendar on my cell phone.  I would be so lost without it that it’s just plain ridiculous.  Anyway, I was halfway through typing in the appointment when my phone shut off.  Weird.  I’d had to turn it on when I dug it out of my purse because it was off then, too.  Double weird; I hardly ever turn my phone off.  I was in a hurry because I had to eat and run some errands, so I stuffed it in my purse and was on my way.  When I got to where I have lunch, I fiddled with it again and it just kept turning itself off.  Stupid phone.  By now I was super irritated, so I contented myself with ordering lunch and reading the new Catherine Anderson book I got last weekend, annoyed at the thought of having to cut my reading shorter than I wanted so that I could stop at the cell phone store.

After eating a very quick lunch, I headed to the post office to get something in the mail and then I hurried over to the local cell phone store.  Of course, they couldn’t really do anything to help me except suggest that I go back to the store where I bought the phone and see if they could do something with it.  I’ve only had the phone since the end of November; it’s brand new!  Apparently that’s one of its problems.  My phone had just come out in November or right around then and evidently, it had some issues at first, so either it’s that and they may have to exchange my phone, or it’s a software thing and it just needs to be updated.  I’m hoping for the software thing because they can’t switch text messages and I want to keep some of them, so I don’t want to have to turn my phone back in as part of an exchange.  So I guess I get to go to Waterloo tonight with the kids to see if I can get my phone situation taken care of.  It wouldn’t be quite so bad if it wasn’t my only phone…Okay, yes it would, but whatever.  At least if I had a land line I could still call people.  I hate being phoneless.

It’s funny how much cell phone malfunctions bother me.  It proves just exactly how dependant I am on my cell phone and when you really stop to think about it, that’s probably not a good thing.  Without my cell phone, it feels like I’m missing a limb or something, and it never used to be that way.  Then again, that was back before I had a cell phone and it’s getting harder and harder to remember those days.  The really sad thing is how I don’t know anyone’s phone number anymore.  I used to be a walking phone book, as I suspect we all were at one point.  Now, no one knows anyone’s phone number because all phone numbers are stored in our cell phones for easy, one-touch dialing.  It reminds me of what my dad always says about calculators: “That thing’ll make you stupid.”  And it’s true.  I rarely do mental math anymore because I’ve come to depend so much on my calculator’s ability to do it for me.  Any sort of addition or subtraction or anything, really, that involves carrying of numbers or anything with decimals or percents, I just can’t do without my calculator.  My brain has grown weak from lack of use.  It’s the same with phone numbers.  Unless you’re someone I talk to frequently on the phone or someone I’ve known forever and your number doesn’t change, chances are good that I no longer know your phone number.  It’s really quite sad.

But on the bright side, it’s Friday!  Hooray!  And I have a story idea!  Hooray!  And I have a book to read!  Hooray!  And possibly plans for the weekend!  Hooray! Plans that involve shopping!  Hooray!  Is anyone sick of all these exclamation marks and shouts of hooray yet?  Hooray!

🙂

I am so ready for the afternoon to be over.  Only one more hour and forty-five minutes!  Hooray!  I need to lie down…

(c) 2009.  All rights reserved.

Again with the snarkiness…

But this time it wasn’t mine.  Well, okay, it reminded me a lot of mine, but this time it wasn’t me, I swear.  This was an article from Wednesday’s Iowa Falls Times-Citizen, or rather, it was a letter to the editor of that newspaper.  Here is what Jory Rapp of Alden had to say:

It saddens me, as well as angers me, to think that it has become so “politically incorrect” to say, “Merry Christmas.”  We are so afraid of offending someone for one reason or another that stores won’t put Merry Christmas in their ads, school concerts are called “winter concerts,” and such ridiculous rot as that.  It seems like it’s wrong to offend everyone else; everyone, that is, except for the Christians.

If memory serves me right, wasn’t our country founded on Christian beliefs, values, and morals?  We trusted in God to establish, guide, and bless our country, yet now we spit in His face and are outraged at having Him be part of our country and its government.  Then we have the audacity to moan at the shape our country is in and ask why God allows certain things to happen.  If we would look to the Bible and the history of the Israelites, we would see what happens when people turn their backs on God, when they choose to worship other gods and idols.  We are headed down that path and if we continue to kick God out of everything, one day we will be standing in the midst of a disaster asking, “Where are you, God?” and His answer will be, “You didn’t want me around, so I left.”

This Christmas season, I will remind my children that we celebrate because God chose to send His Son to this earth as a baby to one day be the Savior of all mankind and that we are to share that gift with others.  I wish everyone a very blessed and “Merry Christmas.”

 I thought this was very well written and I pretty well agree with it.  If Ben Stein can stick up for “Merry Christmas” even though as a Jew, he doesn’t celebrate it, why can’t the rest of us?  “Season’s Greetings” has got to be about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.  The holiday is Christmas.  If you have a problem with that, go back to wherever you came from.  Or celebrate Festivus.

And now, on to snarkier matters…

It appears that the Idiot Brigade is back in full force.  I swear I got stuck behind every idiot driver in Grundy County Wednesday.  I was nearly hit by someone who decided to switch lanes without making sure there was no oncoming traffic and then again by someone who decided to take his half out of the middle while I was trying to pass him.  If he’d come any further into the left lane, he could have knocked me right off the road.  And then yesterday I was nearly run over by some idiot at a stop sign who was watching around the corner instead of right in front of him, where I happened to be walking.  Jerks.  What is it about winter that brings out the idiot in people?

On a more positive note, thank God it’s Friday!  I am so looking forward to the weekend.  No getting up for work and struggling to make it through the day, no idiots to deal with on the road because I fully intend to stay home and be exceedingly lazy, nothing but chick flicks and romance novels.  Oh, and Christmas present wrapping.  And Christmas card writing.  And maybe a little bit of 4-H paperwork.  Woo!  I love weekends!

Merry Christmas, y’all, and happy Friday!

(c) 2008.  All rights reserved.

Perhaps a little more snarkiness…

…After all, I was seriously upset last night.  I suppose it’s a stupid thing to be that upset over, but I think the reason it bothers me so much is that music has always been such a huge part of my life that it really irritated me to see a performance where it looked like nobody really cared.  They were shooting for mediocrity and barely achieved even that.  I was always taught to strive for excellence.  Those kids (the fourth graders in particular) had a serious problem with projection; we sat about as far away from the singers as you could possibly get and could hardly hear them most of the time.  At one point we couldn’t even understand what they were singing because they weren’t enunciating at all.  I remember quite vividly a lesson I received once on enunciation during kids’ choir practice at church.  Let me tell you, I enunciated perfectly after that.

It also really bothers me that in so many public places, we are encouraged not to say anything even resembling a remembrance of what Christmas is really all about.  Christmas is first and foremost about celebrating the birth of Christ and his life and works.  Secondly, it is about spending time with family and friends and thanking God for the blessings you have had and continue to receive.  It is not about shopping and buying and spending and receiving.  As a kid, I remember not really caring so much about the family part and the religion part.  But now that my mom and both my grandparents are gone, I really cherish the times that I can spend with my family all together.  Those times are few and far between.  And the older I get, the more I can appreciate what God has done for me in my life and the more I find myself…apparently forgetting to take my hot water out of the microwave so I can have some hot chocolate.  Excuse me.

Okay.  Yesterday I heated up some water twice in order to make a cup of hot chocolate and I forgot about it both times.  I think I remembered it as I was leaving work for the night.  Today I’ve only done it once so far.  Let’s see if I can remember to take it out of the microwave while it’s still hot this time.

Anyway, I think I’m a little calmer now.  I am just so sick to the teeth of all this stupid political correctness garbage.  Kids don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance in school anymore because “it might infringe on someone’s right not to believe in God.”  You can’t have the Ten Commandments in courthouses anymore.  Oh, and by the way, no Christmas carols in the annual Christmas concert because someone might be offended.  Really, how much farther are we going to let them take this?  If you don’t want to hear Christmas music, don’t go to the concert.  If you don’t want to say the Pledge of Allegiance because you don’t believe in it, don’t say it!  If you don’t like the way we do things in our country, go somewhere else.  Otherwise, shut your yaps and do like the rest of us.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the separation of Church and State, but I think in some cases we’ve taken it a bit too far and much farther than the Founding Fathers intended, Christmas concerts and prayer in school being prime examples.  I’m not saying I want to live in a religious state, but seriously, people, use some common sense.  By not allowing such expressions of faith as singing Silent Night in a school Christmas concert, we are effectively offending ourselves.  I’m offended that kids are not allowed to sing a religious Christmas song at the Christmas concert because it might offend someone else.  The community in which I live is predominantly, if not entirely, Christian, and I think it’s stupid that we are not allowed to sing Christian Christmas songs during the Christmas concert.

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t done being snarky.  I’m sure I probably just talked in circles around my main point of wow, we’re all being stupid here, folks, but oh well.  I guess I’d just like to know why what was okay for us to sing as kids in our Christmas concerts is suddenly not okay to sing now.  For crying out loud, they could have at least sung something like Silver Bells or Jingle Bell Rock or Let it Snow!  Let it Snow!  Let it Snow!  While these are all nice songs in their own way, they’re no Angels We Have Heard On High or O Holy Night, but they’re at least Christmas classics.  Where were they in the program?

Okay, okay, I promise I’ll get off my high horse now.  I’ve been looking at my archives list and I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for over a year!  I know, that’s not much for some people.  I have one friend who’s been at it regularly for the last five years.  But for me to actually keep something like this going this long is pretty cool, especially given that I haven’t been doing a whole lot of actual writing lately.  I so need a free time machine.

And in case you were wondering, yes, I remembered to retrieve my hot water from the microwave so that I can have some hot chocolate.  Yummy!

(c) 2008.  All rights reserved.