Brrr, it’s cold in here…

February 8, 2011March 8, 20122 Comments

I got this email from my hubby last night. He got it from someone and made me read it, so I made him forward it to me and then I sent it to all my friends because it’s funny. It’s also true.

Cold is a relative thing. At 65° above zero, people in Florida turn on the heat. People in Iowa plant gardens.

At 60° above zero, people in California shiver uncontrollably. People in Iowa sunbathe.

At 50° above zero, Italian and English cars won’t start. People in Iowa drive with the windows down.

At 40° above zero, people in Georgia don coats, thermal underwear, gloves, and wool hats. People in Iowa throw on a flannel shirt.

At 35° above zero, New York landlords finally turn up the heat. People in Iowa have the last cookout before it gets cold.

At 20° above zero, people in Miami all die. People in Iowa close the windows.

At 0°, people in Arizona fly away to Mexico. People in Iowa get out their winter coats.

At 10° below zero, Hollywood disintegrates. Girl Scouts in Iowa are selling cookies door to door.

At 20° below zero, Washington, D.C. runs out of hot air. People in Iowa let the dogs sleep indoors.

At 30° below zero, Santa Claus abandons the North Pole. Iowans get upset because they can’t start the snowmobile.

At 40° below zero, Hell freezes over. Iowa public schools will be open two hours late.

I’ve seen something similar regarding Minnesota, but this is funnier because I live in Iowa, not Minnesota. This morning it was -9° when I left for work. By the time I got to work, the temperature had dropped to -12°. I found this little gem especially appropriate this morning.

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It finally happened…

July 28, 2009March 8, 20125 Comments

…I finally found a book that, upon rereading, disappointed me. I just finished Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn, which I probably read sometime in late elementary school or early middle school (I don’t remember exactly, because it was a long time ago, so give me a break). At any rate, I think I must have read it when I was at an age to identify with some of the characters. There’s Molly, who is 12; her younger brother, Michael, who is 10; her mother, Jean; her stepfather, Dave; and her step-sister, Heather, who is 7. They move from Baltimore to this little country church, complete with graveyard, where Heather happens to befriend the ghost of a little girl who was just her age and even had the same initials. Both their mothers had died in fires and they became fast friends. Heather was not overly accepting of her father moving on with another woman, let alone of the woman herself (or Michael or Molly). Half the book involved Molly, Michael, and Heather fighting and then their parents ended up fighting. Molly felt like no one believed her because Dave and Jean (especially Dave) always took Heather’s side and after a while, this kind of got on my nerves, but not nearly as much as Dave himself did. He was always making excuses for Heather’s bad behavior, saying things like, “Well, she’s just an unusually sensitive little girl,” or, “She’s suffered a loss and just needs love and understanding.” Well, yes, but that only takes you so far in life. I guess that’s the part that bothered me: no matter what she did that was wrong (and plenty of it was horrible), he was always making excuses for her and he seemed completely blind to the fact that he was being played, that she wasn’t nearly as innocent as he thought. Now yes, she is just a little girl and yes, this is just a story, but it reminded me of one too many people I know in real life who have that same attitude of, “Well, I’ve suffered a loss, so you all should feel sorry for me and let me have my way” and blah blah blah…Apparently I couldn’t identify with anyone in the story this time around and I actually found myself growing mildly offended. Isn’t it funny how our perceptions of things change over time?

In other news, we’re off to the courthouse this afternoon to get our marriage license. Yay! My aunt is going to meet us there and be our witness and then we’re all going out for supper afterwards. Her mother-in-law is in town visiting and I’m really looking forward to having supper with her. She and her husband were like second grandparents to me growing up and I haven’t seen her in a long time, so I hope we’ll have a good visit. Evidently she was under the mistaken impression, though, that supper tonight was supposed to be in celebration of my engagement and she didn’t want to intrude, so my aunt had to convince her that she was invited and that she wasn’t intruding on anything. Besides, anything to celebrate our engagement would have been done a long time ago, like right after we got engaged. I don’t want her to feel like she’s not welcome because she was the reason I suggested going out for supper in the first place, so I hope she’ll have fun.

Oh, I need some more medicine! I woke up with a killer headache this morning and it just won’t go away. I need a pop. For the headache. Yes, that’s it, for the headache…

Sixty days till September 26…

I’ve got sunshine…

May 14, 2009March 8, 2012Leave a comment

…because it’s not cloudy for once. Woo!

Still feeling rather blah today. My head finally stopped hurting, thank God, but I’ve been so tired all day that I nearly dropped off at work this morning. I’ve spent the day gettin’ jacked up on caffeine, so I hope I can sleep tonight. I can’t wait to watch Bones later, so I don’t know which will keep me awake longer, the caffeine or the lovely t.v. that I’ve been anxiously awaiting ever since I saw the preview last week. I don’t remember the last time I got this excited over a t.v. show. Oh, wait, yes I do. It was back when Voyager was still on. That’s right. 🙂

Speaking of Star Trek, I was rather disappointed with the new movie. I loved Chris Pine; I thought he was an excellent Captain Kirk. And when I finally figured out that it was Jennifer Morrison who played his mom (and not just some unknown Kirsten Dunst lookalike-wannabe), then I was tickled pink. I kind of found myself wishing she’d been in it more because I really like her. However, I was more than a little disturbed when they blew up Vulcan and after that, I just couldn’t get into it. I kept waiting for a Year of Hell-type fix at the end where the timeline was restored and everything goes back to normal – I could have lived with that, even though it would be a cheap fix to a bad plotline – but it never came, and that was incredibly irksome. Yes, irksome. Because I can’t think of an adequate swear word. Also because I apparently write in sentence fragments now. And the whole thing where they completely rewrote how Captain Pike ended up in the wheelchair and lost command of the Enterprise? No. Just no. I’ll take The Cage any day, thank you.

And honestly, the Romulans? I was disappointed. They looked nothing like the Romulans I’ve seen. Okay, so I haven’t seen all of the original series or even most of The Next Generation (that I remember), but even in Deep Space Nine and Voyager, the Romulans looked a lot more Vulcan than they did in this movie. These new future-y Romulans looked like normal guys with tattoos on their faces. I found it very distracting.

All that said, though, the movie had its moments. Karl Urban was great as Dr. McCoy. One of my favorite parts was where he kept giving Jim shots and Jim finally had enough and started yelling at him to stop it. That was great. I also enjoyed the part with the Spock, Leonard Nimoy, although I must admit that I had flashbacks of Futurama and the episode they did where Melllvar held them hostage on a forbidden planet and held a Star Trek convention. That was a funny episode.

Okay, so actual work interrupted the posting of this post. Perhaps that’s a little redundant, but I just finished watching that episode of Bones that I had so been looking forward to. And now I’m pissed. I avoided spoilers like the plague for the last six months because after I looked at the story that was in TV Guide – and I shouldn’t have – I wanted to save myself for the episode so that I could fully enjoy it. Boy, did I not enjoy it. I mean, I liked – okay, loved – the whole Booth and Brennan together thing. I loved Caroline being in it because she’s awesome. The woman can deliver a line like nobody’s business. And Sweets was pretty good with his little band; the tie-in to Gormogon was kinda funny. It was obvious that the whole thing was some sort of dream sequence, but when he said, “Who are you?” Oh, man, if looks could kill, my t.v. would no longer be working. I think I even startled Greg a bit because he paused the show just before the dreaded words and he said he thought I was going to give birth for a minute. I didn’t say a thing, but the look on my face was all, “Don’t do that!!!” And then Booth spoke and I decided I had some writers to kill. Well, first I need to find out whose idea it was to blow up Vulcan and hurt them and then I need to find out whose idea it was to give Booth amnesia and hurt them. You can’t fuck with Booth and Brennan, people, it’s sacrilege! This is even worse than blowing up Vulcan!

*hiss*

I have a feeling I’ll be ranting about this for a good long time. Like, all summer until the new season starts. And by God, they’d better fix it. Or else. Grrrr…

Mid-week blahs

May 13, 2009March 8, 2012Leave a comment

Am feeling rather blah today. I think it started yesterday, actually. Or maybe it was Monday night. I got this really bad headache, you see, and it’s never really gone away, but what is has done is left me feeling tired and rather blah. That might explain the suspicious lack of blogging all week.

That, and the workload at work. Yep, you guessed it, I’ve had actual work to keep me busy! It’s wonderful! Monday I was on my own and the work got stacked up clear up to my ears. Yesterday was catch-up day. And today I’m catching up from catching up, but it’s not quite so busy as the last couple of days have been. Perhaps I’ll actually be able to look up those lower-body strength-training exercises I’ve been meaning to look up ever since I bought a pair of dumb bells Sunday night.

Ha.

Anyway, it’s misty and gloomy outside today. The trees have turned a lovely shade of mint-frosted chocolate and there are remnants of pink snow blanketing the sidewalks all around the square. The one walk was pink sandwiched between layers of green and it looked really pretty. Till I walked right down the middle of it, crushing the wilted blooms into the concrete as I pretended I was walking down the aisle, that is. The air out there is so thick I bet you could cut it; it’s super humid today with all the rain around.

Hmmm. My tummy seems to be not very happy with me. My head feels that way, too, but it’s been acting up all week. Methinks going home and lying down on the couch for the rest of the night sounds like a good idea. Now if only it would hurry up and be five o’clock so I could do just that…

Perhaps I will write more when I feel better.

Everything you ever wanted to know about running a garage sale

May 9, 2009March 8, 20123 Comments

Today was the annual City-Wide Garage Sale in Reinbeck. We had one. Needless to say, it was a long week. We got the garage swept out last Sunday, carried things into the garage Wednesday night, set things up Thursday night, and priced everything last night. We were up till after 11:00 p.m. every night this week and then I had to crawl out of my nice warm bed at 6:00 a.m. this morning to get the signs put up so people would know we were having a sale. The city always puts out a map of people having sales and then they have the maps at Casey’s and Trunck’s. It costs $5 to have your name put on the map, but it’s worth it because then people know where all the sales are. We paid our $5 and when Greg went to Casey’s this morning to get some pop and a couple of the maps, he discovered that they had left our house off. So we paid $5 for nothing. I guess it’s a good thing my signs held up…

So this is how my morning went:

7:32 – I would much rather be going around town checking out garage sales than sitting out here in the blistering cold running my own garage sale.
7:34 – And by blistering cold, I am, of course, referring to the parts of me not right in front of the heater.
8:02 – Come on, people, BUY MY STUFF!!! See? Three exclamation marks. Just buy it. You know you want to.
8:05 – My policy should be, “If you look at it, you buy it.” Then maybe I’d get done in time to do some shopping myself.
8:06 – I should have brought my computer out with me. Then I would be entertained and my lap would be warm. Yay warm!
8:28 – Hooray! A sale of some consequence at long last! Woo!
8:35 – It’s always nice to get repeat customers!
8:56 – Have officially given up all hope of keeping track of items sold. Managed to get two items on the list before giving up.
8:57 – Am now channeling Bridget Jones. Must lose weight. Must also try to forget about yummy Daniel Cleaver.
9:18 – I should have a no smoking sign up. Someone came in with a lit cigarette. Yuck!
10:01 – There be donuts in the house. Why is it that everything yummy is so bad for you?
10:45 – Okay, so it’s not winter-coat-and-coveralls cold anymore, but it’s still darn chilly. And the lovely heater is making me sleepy.
12:25 – Our heaters died. 😦 Apparently we blew a fuse. But then it was Greg to the rescue and now the heat has been restored! YAY!! 🙂
12:26 – My jaw hurts.
12:29 – With my trusty heater by my side, I’ll never be cold again! I sorta feel like I’m camping, but without the s’mores.
12:33 – You know, s’mores sound good. I need s’mores. Where are all the s’mores when you really need them?
1:01 – Have you ever been high as a kite and then gone garage saling? Well, my neighbor sure seems to enjoy it!
1:27 – Please, dear high-as-a-kite neighbor lady, don’t come back till you’ve sobered up. You digging through my knives makes me nervous!
1:39 – Tick, tock, tick, tock…Come on, two o’clock, hurry up and get here so I can close up and do something fun!

It’s amazing what brings out the kooks in town. There’s an apartment complex next door to our house and one of the tenants came over to see what we had for sale. “Whoa, it’s like a little store!” she exclaimed upon entering, holding a glass of questionable contents (orange juice for sure, but Lord only knows what else). “Oh, I love your lamp! I want this lamp. I’ll be back for it. You guys have exactly what I need, I swear. You really do. You have everything I need. I’ll be back. Oh, I love this lamp! I want your lamp.” After several painful minutes of her seriously disorganized (I can’t think of the word I want, sorry) rambling, she finally left, only to return about a half hour later with her rather annoying (and awfully overweight) dog in tow. She wasn’t quite as high when she came back, thankfully, but still, when she went pawing through the box of miscellaneous knives, Teresa and I got a little nervous (Greg’s mom came up for the weekend and sat with me through most of the sale). This time, psycho neighbor lady picked up one of a two-pot set (she only wanted the one – they were a buck for the pair), a handful of knives, and a can opener, set them down near the check-out, and went to let her dog relieve itself (hopefully in someone else’s yard). “But I’ll be right back. And I really want that lamp, but if you sell it to someone else, you go right ahead, it’s okay. But if you don’t, I’ll take it.” Gee, lady, thanks; I’m so glad I have your permission to sell my lamp. *sigh* Some people. While she was amusing in her own “special” way, I wasn’t too disappointed that she completely forgot about coming back to our garage sale.

Greg had to work today, so he didn’t get to enjoy watching the people come and go. He did, however, rig something up so that we could still run the heaters after we blew a fuse in the garage. He grabbed his heavy-duty extension cord and plugged it in at the house, then rolled it out to the garage to plug in one of the two heaters we’d been using. That was nice. But apparently we must have blown another one in the house because when I sat down to count the take in the dining room, the light wouldn’t turn on. There’s no way we blew out nine lightbulbs at once, so we must have blown another fuse running that heater. *sigh* Oh, well. At least we were warm.

There weren’t many people out today for the garage sales, not that you would know it from talking to Greg. Every time I talked to him, he told me about the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Randall Street. Trouble is, we’re not on Randall Street! My theory is that people started up on Valley Drive and out in Eastgate and over on Hillcrest and Ridge Streets and then by the time they got done with all the rich people’s houses, they were too tired, too broke, or too tired and too broke to come over to the west side of town and visit our lowly establishment. For Pete’s sake, we had good stuff, dammit! It’s not like we’re in the poorhouse.

Okay, end rant. I just was not real patient with people this morning. I mean, I was, it’s just that I was dissatisfied with how long they were taking to get out to our house. Our biggest crowd consisted of four people who happened to wander in at the same time. And then there was one lady who came in with her kids and her son was just a terror! He was tearing things apart all over the place and she really wasn’t a lot better, but then she was just like, “Well, come on, we’re going,” and didn’t reprimand him once or tell him to behave and keep his hands to himself or anything. And then he wanted a toy and she wouldn’t buy it for him because it was part of a bag and he only wanted the one, so he threw a temper tantrum, clearly expecting it to work. If I’d behaved like that, my mother would have given me the spanking of a lifetime when we got home. She didn’t buy him the toy, at least, and I was glad when they were gone.

There were a couple people that came in like that, who were worse-behaved than the kids. That always gets me. This one gal came in with her sister and they were looking at Greg’s Jeff Gordon jacket. The one woman ended up buying it, but her sister was trying to talk her out of it. She used the very tips of her fingers to pick it up and look at it quick, and then she asked if we had any hand sanitizer she could use. She dropped the jacket in a heap on the table and then brushed her hands together, as if the jacket was filthy and she couldn’t stand the thought of being contaminated by it. She said if it had been a Dale Earnhardt, Jr. jacket, she would have been all over it like white on rice and I thought, “Gee, lady, aren’t you a little old to be acting like a middle schooler?”

Hmm, it seems that the battery in my laptop is about to go dead, so I should probably wrap this up. I have a headache anyway and need to go take some more something for it. Some food, perhaps; all I’ve had today were a handful of Mike & Ike’s and a few slices of summer sausage, washed down with a lovely bottle of Dr. Pepper, because clearly, I’m a health food junkie.

Oh, and happy Mother’s Day!

So…

April 16, 2009March 8, 20122 Comments

So basically, I’ve been atrocious about posting this month. Sorry. As I just finished telling my bridesmaids, the procrastination bug has bitten quite hard lately. There are a million things I should be doing and yet…none of them are getting done. I can’t even blame Facebook this time! I’ve been playing Bloodlines on MySpace and have become rather addicted. It’s pure boredom, I think, that’s stimulating my fascination with the game. So much for having outgrown my interest in vampires…

I really can’t say that there’s much going on around here because really, there isn’t. My hands have finally recovered from raking leaves last week; I got off work early Friday and spent the rest of the afternoon raking the yard. Yecchh. We have a pretty big yard and lots of leaf-bearing trees, so raking is a huge chore. Plus, Greg and the kids raked all the leaves up last fall and pushed them out to the curb for the City to pick up and then they never came, so when the snow began to fly and the plows began to plow, they pushed all those leaves right back into the yard. Jerks. Their leaf-collecting machine broke, so rather than reschedule the leaf pick-up, they just didn’t do it. Raking wet leaves really, really sucks. You might say it sucks brass monkey balls.

*sigh* Have had it with working. Am more than ready to go home for the day. Really looking forward to the RCIA potluck tonight and the yummy, yummy deviled eggs that will be going with us. Have decided to channel Bridget Jones with my writing style for this paragraph. Am super excited that tax season is officially over. Must now lose weight.

In other news, Twitter is being irritating. While it is rather awesome, it’s also rather a pain. The jury is out on this, too. I suppose now it’s cooperating, I don’t dislike it quite as much as I did a few minutes ago, but that may change. I suppose I alternately love/hate it, much like the Twitter widget in my sidebar that doesn’t update in real time.

I think that’s it for the day.

If only…

April 13, 2009March 8, 20123 Comments

If only I had that much energy today, or any day, really. How nice that would be!

In case I didn’t make it obvious enough, I’m super tired today. It was definitely one of your longer weekends. Saturday was spent running errands and running around and then scrambling to put the house in order before the soon-to-be-in-laws arrived. Then we all stayed up till sometime after midnight so we could go to the Easter vigil at church. I was confirmed and had my first communion as a brand-new Catholic. I think I like the grape juice and bread cubes the Presbyterians serve better than the cardboard wafers and wine. At any rate, there was a reception after the service (which started at 8:15 p.m. and ended shortly before 11:00 p.m.) and then after indulging in cake and coffee and juice, we all went home and indulged in strawberry pie with cool whip, courtesy of Ginny. Yummy! Yesterday brought a way-too-early wake-up call at 7:00 a.m. to see what goodies the Easter bunny delivered and then a trip to Gladbrook before an even bigger trip to Elkader to visit Greg’s family. By the time we got home and watched a movie and went to bed, it was somewhere around 10:30 p.m. I’m functioning solely on caffeine today, and not very well at that. Yeesh! Hopefully it will kick in soon.

*sigh* Too tired…Must catch Z’s…

I suppose I had better get back to work, since I have a desk full of it and the tax deadline is only two days away. Hasta la vista…baby!

No news

April 7, 2009March 8, 20128 Comments

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.

So proud!

April 3, 2009March 8, 2012Leave a comment

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…

Modern torture devices

February 24, 2009March 8, 20124 Comments

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!