10 things I wish everyone would realize about traveling

1. You know those little boxes at the gate that show you how big your carry-on can be to fit in the overhead bin? They are not a joke. Your bag really won't fit if it's bigger than that box. Save us all some time and stop trying.

2. If you cannot lift your bag over your head, you will not be able to put it in the overhead bin. You should not expect anyone else to help you with this. You should CHECK YOUR BAG.

3. Guess what? You can even beat the system and gate-check your bag. You still don't pay, and the rest of us won't have violent thoughts when you're holding up the line trying to cram your oversized, overweight "carry-on" into the bin. This will also save those of us who always sit on the aisle a lot of stress, as we won't have to worry about your bag falling out and giving us concussions. And if that doesn't happen, there's no chance we'll sue you! See, everybody wins!

4. Check-in counter and gate agents should really have the authority, ability and initiative to make you gate-check your bag if it is going to make the rest of the plane's passengers feel in a way similar to that described in #3. Only once have I ever seen a gate agent actually come around and tag carry-ons whether you liked it or not. That person was one of the heroes, people.

5. If you go to LAX and I go to LAX, you will always be the one to see the famous person. I have the worst luck with that!

6. My bag has a bright pink handle cover on it. I have never seen any other luggage with bright pink covers on the handle. The reason I have the bright pink handle cover is so I can recognize my bag, and you can recognize that it's NOT your bag. So...hands off my luggage.

7. No matter how comfy the hotel bed is, it is never as comfy as your bed at home. Never. I wish the hotels would stop trying to convince me otherwise.

8. Room service is never as good as it sounds on the menu. It is convenience food. But it definitely beats sitting in a restaurant alone. Some people don't mind that, and good for them, but I hate it!

9. I get to go to a lot of "cool" places for my job, but I never get to do any of the "cool" stuff there. Business travel is really not all that fun, exciting or glamorous. That's why it's work. The best business travel is...effective. Woo! Effective!

10. Life would be better if every rental car came standard with satellite radio and a GPS. You'd know how to get where you were going, you could find a gas station close to the airport, and you would never be faced with choosing between the best of three different local country stations.

Relaxing :)

In a rare twist, I get to be home for this whole entire week. Also, after working on my budget until 10:30 Sunday night, I have not worked at home the last two evenings. I made dinner two nights in a row. Last night, B and I watched a movie (Get Smart - hilarious if you were a fan of the TV show, and probably not that interesting if you weren't). I've gotten to pick the kid up from school two days in a row. I ate an ice cream sandwich after dinner. Now I'm sitting on the couch doing not much, thinking not much and feeling really happy about it.

Simple pleasures. :)

I am just like everyone else

So, I finally joined Facebook. If you know my real name, you can find me there. :)

I've been resisting for probably a year...but I finally hit the point where I figured there were lots of conversations going on out there that I wasn't part of, and that started to get annoying. So, even though this officially makes me just like a couple hundred million other people, I guess it also makes me cooler. I was starting to sound a bit like some cranky old lady with my opposition to joining Facebook ("I don't need one more thing to maintain, sonny!"). *chuckle*

So far it's kind of fun, anyway...although I find myself getting incredibly impatient with it because I really don't feel like figuring out how everything works. However, now that I've taken the plunge, I will persevere! It is amazing - and ridiculous - how engrossed you can get in reading the details of other people's lives...

Unmotivated

I did not realize it's been almost a month since I posted anything! Ah, I am a bad blogger. But really, I've been so unmotivated about just about everything "usual" lately that I guess I just didn't think about it.

Usually I use this space to whine about school, but I haven't been thinking much about school. I don't blog in any detail about work, which has consumed a huge portion of life lately with travel and then the inevitable, all-consuming aftermath of travel, where you try to get all the work done that piled up while you were traveling. And I've been totally slacking and using the little free time I do have as actual free time, and doing stuff like reading books (instead of homework), hanging out with family, celebrating Brock's birthday with a fun day in the city, etc.

So other than reading two really good books lately (The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin and The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir - I am in a historical fiction mood), I don't have much to report.

I am taking a day off work next week to knock out my final papers for school, since for the first time in my life I have been actively choosing not to do my school work. I just can't get into it, and I haven't been forcing myself. I have a theory that because I will soon be 2/3 done (yippee), and because neither of my classes requires a great amount of thought or effort, I have hit a wall. Brock says I'm turning normal, and starting to act like a regular student, but it's weird for me. You'd think I would be more concerned, but I'm not. I just hope I can push through it before I start my summer class, because from here on out I don't think my classes will be easy at all. So I'm enjoying coasting for this semester, and I'm going to have to buckle down from here on out.

So yeah, I'm just kinda boring right now. That's okay.

Travel day

I am in California right now for work. I left our house at 10:15 this morning and got to my hotel around 6:20 Pacific time, roughly 10 hours later. It was a long day. Hannah was mad at me for leaving and almost refused to hug me goodbye, and then she didn' t want to talk to me on the phone. That made me very sad, but I understand. She doesn't get why I had to leave and I'd be mad, too. Besides, I don't like it, either. However, California is sunny and has palm trees, and even if I am here for work, there are worse places you can be forced to go (Exhibit A: St. Louis, which is my least favorite city I've ever visited, with apologies to the people who live there and actually like it).

Anyway, here are some amusing/interesting things that happened today.

• My flight landed at LAX 20 minutes EARLY, which I was sure meant I was in the Twilight Zone. But then my connecting flight was 30 minutes late, so the space/time continuum must have righted itself.
• I noticed that many women travelers at LAX were wearing heels. High ones. I cannot figure out why.
• I heard a girl having a VERY LOUD conversation on her cell phone where she was apparently telling a friend that her boyfriend had finally said, "I love you" for the first time. I resisted the urge to congratulate her.
• I ate peanut butter pretzels, which was a treat since we don't have peanut butter at home.
• I had a fish taco for dinner that was awesome. The shrimp taco, not so much.
• My rental car is a bright, electric blue PT Cruiser. At first I thought it was the dumbest car ever - I actually laughed out loud in the rental parking lot - but after I got in I decided it was SO CUTE and I've now fallen in love with it. I am certain I have the most unique rental car of any of my coworkers. Even the dashboard is electric blue. I have to remember not to speed.
• My plane was full of little kids, who were all pretty well-behaved, actually. I had a horrible stab of homesickness because the little girl in front of me was watching The Backyardigans on her portable DVD player.
• I actually did homework on the plane and worked till my laptop battery almost ran down. It was a bit tough to do anything without internet access, but I got a pretty good outline of my thoughts. It helped that the in-flight movie was dumb so I didn't want to watch it. (I can't remember what it was, but it had Keanu Reeves in it, which should explain well enough. It even looked stupid with no sound, which is never a good sign.)
• I bought a new book, A Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin, to read at LAX because my laptop battery was almost dead and I'd read both my magazines, and I had a long layover. It's very good and will probably keep me from doing any more homework on any more planes. :)

And now, to bed - because I have to be ready to leave at 7:15 to drive the Electric Blue Love Bug (which we've already christened my rental car) to get to work!

Housekeeping

I spent some time reworking the categories for my blog this evening...I decided the "random" category was getting a bit too random, so I tried to clean it up a bit. I've added "deep thoughts" to capture those posts where I am waxing philosophical about something, and probably will segment out a bit more as things occur to me.

For anyone else who reads this and has a blog, how do you decide which categories you want to include? I hate having categories with just one thing in them...which is a personal thing, and also probably why my "random" category is so scattered.

For instance, I had to put this one in random. Mmph.

I made something!

Today, I conquered sewing. Allow me to explain.

Yesterday, we went shopping to buy Hannah the few school supplies that she needed to start preschool tomorrow. Because she's still little, she didn't need the standard supplies like pencil boxes and glue; instead, she needed a small travel-sized pillow and a blanket for naptime. We found the pillow (after a great deal of searching), but we couldn't find any pillowcases to fit it.

"Well," I said, "I could probably make a pillowcase if I put my mind to it."

See, I have a sewing machine. I even made something on it once, about six years ago, during a brief period in between jobs. And then I put it away. It's been in a closet in our spare room since we moved into our house five years ago. But I reasoned that I could probably remember how to use it well enough to make a pillowcase, which is, let's face it, comprised entirely of a few straight lines. So this morning, Hannah and I went to the fabric store so she could pick out exactly which fabric she wanted for her special school pillowcase. She quickly and forcefully chose purple (her favorite color) with butterflies.

It turned out that the hardest part was figuring out how to wind the bobbin. My sewing machine has a helpful diagram on the front telling you how to thread it, but it doesn't have a similar diagram for winding a bobbin, and that's what I really needed. I called my mom. She said every machine is different, so she wasn't sure how to do it on mine. She suggested I look in the manual, but considering the various supplies I needed for sewing were scattered all over the house anyway, the chances of finding the manual were (and remain) extremely slim. No help was available online (amazingly). Brock finally messed with enough stuff that he figured it out, which was a little funny.

And soon, I was off and running:


And, only two hours and three calls to Mom after I started, I was finished:


Hannah was really excited about her new pillowcase. She was "breaking it in" this evening by lying on it. And I don't mind saying I was pretty proud of myself for making something for her, even if it was very simple. I remembered why I bought the sewing machine in the first place: it is a great sense of accomplishment to make something yourself.

Of course, I have no free time usually, so the chances I'll be making anything else again soon (besides, maybe, a spare pillowcase for school) are not great. Still, today I made something for my kid. Hooray for me! :)

Happy 2009! Last year's results & this year's goals

Happy New Year! As I said last year, I do like New Year's a lot. And I still do, especially this year, when 2008 had a lot of crummy stuff in it (financial crisis, corrupt governor of Illinois, blah, blah, blah). However, there were some very high points in 2008. Hannah is potty trained and Barack Obama won the election - these are equally important in my book. I turned 30 and had a very fun party. One of my best friends got pregnant after years of trying, and is expecting a little girl just about any minute. Another of my friends had her first baby. My kid is awesome. My husband is awesome. I got all A's. I got a promotion. So even though times are tough, I am trying to stay "up" as much as possible, because there are lots of good things to over-balance the bad.

Still, I thought it would be fun to revisit my goals from last New Year's, and see how I did. Since I didn't really look at them - ever - after I wrote them, I found the exercise of recording my "progress" to be quite humorous. (Below is an abbreviated version of the goals. For the full missive, go here.)

What I Said I Would Do in 2008, & Whether or Not I Really Did It:

• Give more to charity. RESULTS: I don't actually handle this; Brock does. I think we did okay. :)
  
• As an addendum to the above, I would like to find a good place to donate Hannah's used toys. RESULTS: Still no luck. Not even the homeless shelter near work takes used toys. Bah.
  
• Get more organized. RESULTS: Ummm, I DID clean my desk on New Year's Eve...does that count?
  
• Try to cook from scratch a little more often. RESULTS: I'm happy I put the "a little more often" qualifier on this one. I probably did.
  
• Encourage more of my faraway friends to start blogs. RESULTS: No luck with this. Everyone's on Facebook and I'm not. My own fault, I know.
  
• Try not to be so snarky. RESULTS: I've learned that I gotta be me. And I'm snarky. This was a misguided goal. *chuckle*
  
• Try to finish praying before I actually fall asleep at night. RESULTS: Yeah, not doing so well on this one.
  
• Remember to use my new reusable grocery bag. RESULTS: Not only am I now remembering to use them, I've got like 8 in my car...
  
• Remember to use our new cloth napkins. RESULTS: We do remember to use them, when they are actually clean. Getting them washed in a timely fashion is much harder.
  
• Remember to water my plants (when it's actually summer, that is). RESULTS: It rained a lot this summer. Hooray!
  
• Potty train Hannah. RESULTS: Done and done.
  
• Take another family vacation. RESULTS: Stupid economy. Nope.
  
• Try not to freak out too much about turning 30. RESULTS: Mmmm, sorta.
  
• Actually join LinkedIn. RESULTS: I did it. I've never completed my profile and I don't maintain it at all, but I did join.
  
• Figure out a really great birthday or Christmas present to get for Brock. RESULTS: We bought ourselves a TV this year. That's the best I can do.
  
• Continue not eating cabbage. Or carrots. Or haggis. RESULTS: Total success.
  
• Eat more dark chocolate. It's good for me! RESULTS: Totally.
  
• Enjoy the knowledge that this will, without question, be the last year we have to endure George W. Bush in office. RESULTS: Wahoo!
  
• Vote well in the presidential election. RESULTS: You know it!
  
• Hope others vote well in the presidential election. RESULTS: Well done, people of America.
  
• Listen, and laugh, and love...a lot. :) RESULTS: Yep, did this. Good for me! :)
  

And, Here's What I Want to Do This Year:

• Get through Hannah's first day of preschool without crying in front of her. (It's Monday.) I am so proud and excited for her...but I'm struggling with the fact that she's so big and grown up now!
• Help Hannah learn to read and write.
• Get through 5 more classes for school, so that 2010 will be rockin' with just one left!
• Join Facebook. I'm starting to feel it's inevitable. Like I can't fight the movement.
  
• Get through a very long business trip in March without anyone in my family, including me, having a nervous breakdown.
  
• Be more thankful for the following: fuzzy socks, my daughter's smile, my husband's laugh, chocolate, cheese, friends and family, cars that give you directions, my job, my husband's job, Mario Kart for the Wii, Rock Band 2 for Xbox 360, plus our health and happiness and all that jazz.
• Get a tattoo. (Sorry, parents. I really think I'm going to do it...someday...I promise it will be very small and you'll never have to even see it or know it's there.)
• Sell our house and buy a new one. This is my stretch goal.
• Get new bedroom furniture, because we gave ours away in August and now we don't have any. And our bedroom looks like a dorm room. *chuckle*
• Have a garage sale.
• Figure out how to have or attend more parties. I learned this year that I like having parties.
  
• Really take a family vacation. Somewhere.

Next year, I'll let you know how I did.

All a-twitter

So, you might have noticed something new along the right-hand side of your screen, here: Twitter Updates.

Yeah, I got a Twitter account today. Feel free to follow my every move; I'm highly interesting. *chuckle*

So...can Facebook really be far behind? I've been resisting, but I'm starting to think resistance is futile... :)

A success!

The baby shower went great! Dinner was ready on time...people had fun...Jen got lots of great presents...and Hannah had a terrific time entertaining everyone. Everyone fit in the house, and we had plenty of food. And it's only 10:30 and I have all the dishes done, and everything cleaned up. I am rather proud I pulled it off. :)

La di da di, we likes to party

I can't remember what song that's from, but it seems to me it's from sometime in the 80s. *chuckle*

Anyway, tomorrow is a big day at our house because I am hosting a baby shower for my friend Jen, who is due to have a baby girl in January. I really love my friend Jen, and when she told me she was pregnant one of the first things I said was, "I want to host a baby shower for you at my house." See, we work together, and I thought it would be nice to have all the women we work with over for dinner - which is a bit nicer than standing around our office just eating cake.

So, 25 people are coming over tomorrow. I think our house can handle it, but it's a bit bigger crowd than I originally anticipated when I had this brilliant idea. ;)

Also, I am cooking. I wanted to cook from the beginning, because I like cooking - especially for parties. I think good food is one of the great uniting forces in the world. But I've also never cooked for 25 people before, so hopefully we don't run out. We're having a pasta bar (two kinds of pasta, two kinds of sauce, veggies, chicken and shrimp) and then people are bringing bunches of desserts and appetizers (I made one of each, but I'm not crazy enough to try to do all the desserts and appetizers by myself, too). Tonight I made more pasta sauce than I have ever made in my life. Our refrigerator is literally full of pasta sauce...to the point where, when I was looking for something in the fridge this evening, Brock said, "It's behind the sauce," and we both cracked up. I also made apple pie, garlic onion dip, cooked 2.75 lbs. of chicken and chopped a LOT of vegetables.

I'm very excited to have this party, though - I think it will be really fun, and as long as everyone fits in the house and we don't run out of food, I'll be happy. :)

And now, as it is midnight and I have to get up and go to work early in the morning to get ready for 5 1/2 straight hours of meetings...I am going to bed.

Note, if you are coming to the shower: I didn't get around to sweeping the porch. So that's just too bad. Try not to notice the leaves and cobwebs. Also, I think I got the chicken a bit dry, but if you put a lot of sauce on it, I'm sure it will be fine. :)

7 things about me

Thanks to Vic for tagging me! Here are 7 things about me you probably don't know:

1) One of the reasons I'm glad Vic tagged me is that I like talking about myself. I know that's supposed to be a bad thing, but it's true. I like talking to other people about themselves, too...but I am a sucker for those emails where you fill out four jobs you've had or what you eat for breakfast or whatever, and then send it on to all your friends. I know no one cares what I eat for breakfast, but there's something fun about writing down things like that. (For the record, this morning I had oatmeal mixed with granola, brown sugar, cinnamon and dried cranberries - a concoction of my own creation that I call "oatnola.")

2) I do not keep liquor in my house. This is because I like it very much, especially vodka, and I am concerned about the possibilities if I had easy access to it all the time. Because I am a comfort eater, I think it stands to reason I would be a comfort drinker, so it's just better not to tempt myself.

3) The top 4 days in my life have been the day I got engaged, my wedding, the birth of my daughter, and when the Indianapolis Colts won the Super Bowl. The 5th best day in my life will be when Barack Obama wins the presidency. I'm excited for that.

4) I harbor a secret desire to be a stand-up comedian. I won't ever, ever do it, and in fact have never tried, but it's the fantasy job I go to in my mind when my real job really gets on my nerves. Of course, since this is not grounded in reality, in my daydreams I am already wildly successful as a comedian and also never have to travel. :)

5) I think I might only want one kid. I am just so incredibly happy with the amazing one I have, and I really, right now, feel absolutely no desire to expand our family further. (Sorry, parents.) Also, I strongly doubt my ability to handle any more kids - it would require seriously compromising the attention I can give to my husband and my career, and I'm really not thrilled about that prospect. The poor cats are already getting the shaft. This is not to say that I wouldn't adapt if modern medicine should happen to fail me.

6) I have devolved in my organizational skills. I used to be hyper-organized. Now I can't really face filing. Brock does all of it at home, and at work I only do it when the piles of paper on my desk get to the point where I can't remember what's in them. I also haven't balanced our checkbook in approximately 4 years, or maybe more, because banking online is awesome. But Brock handles that too. I never keep receipts. My email inboxes (both personal and work) are muddled disasters of old messages that I will never use, but they're so out of control that it would take too much time to clean them up. I hate this about myself. But I also have to let some stuff go.

7) I am really proud that we moved out of Indiana and are making a life for ourselves here. I will always love the place I grew up, but I really love my home now, too. And when I think about the fact that we moved here when we were 22 and didn't know anybody at all, I am amazed at what we've done since then. I can't believe it never occurred to me to be nervous about moving away from everyone we knew. Now I would be absolutely terrified to move, but I can't really think of anywhere I'd rather live, either.

That's it from me. Now, I tag Robin and Brock to talk about themselves on their blogs, too! This is fun!

OhmyGodyouguysNKOTBwasAWESOME!

I wrote the title of the post that way in hopes you would read it really fast and squealy, kind of like a preteen girl would say it. Because that's totally how I was feeling on Saturday night at the New Kids on the Block concert.

In short: I screamed my fool head off and had a fantastic time. My friend Lisa came up from Indiana for the show and spent two hours laughing at me screaming my fool head off, especially when I yelled, "I love you, Joey!" at the top of my lungs. But I meant it. And I'm sure he heard me. Besides, we went with three other girls, and at least one of them was screaming her fool head off, too. So it wasn't just me.

They sounded good. They looked great. Our seats were perfect. And I had a completely crappy week at work, so I needed something ridiculous and fun, and finding out I remembered every lyric to songs I hadn't even heard in almost 20 years was just what the doctor ordered. :)

Seriously...who can't get into some Hangin' Tough? Who doesn't want to scream like a maniac when their favorite group from childhood is on stage and actually sounding good, and dancing just like they did in 1990 (hello, penguin dance from The Right Stuff!)? Who doesn't think Joey McIntyre is SMOKIN' HOT?

I had the BEST time. I was a little hoarse after the concert and I didn't care. I laughed. I swooned. I danced. I waved my hands in the air like I just didn't care. I sang every word to every song at the top of my lungs. And I wasn't even drunk (unlike this girl in front of us, who came back after last call going, "You guys, THERE IS NO MORE ALCOHOL. THERE IS NO MORE ALCOHOL"...something that certainly did not happen the last time I saw NKOTB...)!

Here are some photo highlights.

Here is my ticket (that lovely background is one of our placemats...I could have cropped it out but just didn't feel like it):

This is a blurry camera phone picture of the main stage. They're singing and dancing there, but you can't see them because stage lighting is not nice to camera phones:


And this is a blurry camera phone picture of when they were on their "second stage," which was a little turntable thing in the middle of the crowd. If I had been next to them, I think I would have peed my pants. Or perhaps I would have tried to grope Joey McIntyre:

NKOTB forever, baby. I wish I could have gone back again the next night to see them. LOVE THEM.

Don't rain on my nostalgia parade, either. I won't have it. Any malicious comments will not be approved. But I can totally take good-natured teasing. I probably deserve it. :)

Okay, fine, I admit it

I am totally psyched for the New Kids on the Block concert on Saturday. I am. I can't wait. I know I am being a total dork, and that I am not 10 anymore, but neither are these guys:Quite simply, they are hot. And we're all legal now, which makes loving them rather odd - unlike when I was actually 10, and the furthest my imagination would stretch was holding hands, perhaps kissing on the beach, and then having an amazingly extravagant wedding at which all my friends would be jealous that I was marrying Joey and they weren't. And then I would go on tour with NKOTB as their bass guitarist, and all the screaming fans would be jealous that I was married to Joey and they weren't, and I would have to have private security because of all the death threats. Nevermind that I was 10, don't like the beach, and also never learned to play the bass guitar. And didn't have a chance of marrying Joey McIntyre. (Note to Brock: I think things turned out okay anyway.)

I have been listening to their new CD, The Block, in the car on a continuous loop for about three weeks. That is, when Hannah's not in the car, because these are not the NKOTB of yore - most of the song themes are not kid-friendly. This is because the Kids are not kids anymore, either...and I daresay their imaginations grew up the same way mine did. I, however, would not sing about some of this stuff on a CD my mom was probably going to listen to. Or I would just tell her not to listen to it. There's really no bad language, but I also don't want my three-year-old singing this, either.

Anyway, I am in no position to judge whether the CD is any good. I enjoy it, and only have to skip a couple of songs (I know we're all adults now, but there are just some things I cannot listen to my beloved New Kids sing. I have my limits, and I need to preserve a little bit of the innocent puppy love I had for them ca. 1988). I thought I would try to critically evaluate the songs, but the fact is that it just takes me back to a much simpler time in my life, before I realized that it does no good to dream of marrying Joey McIntyre, and I would have probably loved listening to the CD even if it was terrible. (For the record, I think it's actually pretty good. I just don't know if I'm objective enough to state that it is pretty good.)

So I am totally going to see them in concert on Saturday night. Unlike when I was 11, I will drive myself to the concert, and I will be meeting up with some girlfriends at a bar beforehand (don't worry, I will drink responsibly). Also unlike when I was 11, my friend Julie's mom will not have made sandwiches for us all to eat after the show (big shout out to Julie's mom, who deserves some kind of award for taking a bunch of insane preteens to a New Kids concert - especially when we had lawn seats and had to get there hours early to wait in line). However, just like when I was 11, I will probably scream myself hoarse.

Unlike when I was 11, my husband will be waiting to laugh at me when I come home. :)

I hate sand flies

Last week, I attended my company's annual sales meeting on a lovely island on the Gulf side of Florida. There were palm trees, and thankfully no hurricanes. Despite the warning signs posted all over the place we were staying, I did not encounter any alligators. And they have lizards the way we have squirrels here in the upper Midwest, which was kind of a fun change. I like lizards.

But they have sand flies, also called no-see-ums, also called by me the Most Evil Insects on the Planet, and that's coming from someone who is allergic to mosquito bites and has often said that the question of their existence would be the most important question I could ask God.

I have now had dozens and dozens of sand fly bites for more than a week. They have not changed at all in this time. They look the same as they did when I got them. They are as itchy as they were when I got them. And I'm starting to worry about the effect of what I feel is probably an unreasonable amount of Benadryl accumulating in my system. Benadryl is the only thing that makes them bearable, so I have been taking two to three pills every single day for a week (I didn't have any Benadryl with me on the trip and no way to get any, or I would have started popping antihistamines even sooner).

So...if anybody has any ideas for what to do to make these horrible things go away - or any convenient excuses I can give the next time someone tells me I have to travel anywhere near a beach - please let me know. Itchy legs make me really cranky. And I have enough other stuff going on in my life to make me cranky (like the homework I am not doing while I write this post), so eliminating even one source of crankiness would be most welcome.

File this under "that figures"

On Monday, I bought myself flowers for the first time ever.

On Tuesday, buckets of dozens of free bouquets of cutflowers showed up where I work.

Not that I'm really complaining...I just find it funny.

Flowers

One more thing - to combat my crabbiness, I bought myself flowers for the first time ever today. I happen to live with a lovely person who quite often buys/sends me flowers - much more often than my friends' husbands seem to send them flowers. And he usually sends them to me at work, where I have to pick them up from the reception desk and then carry them all through the building back to my desk, while people stop me and ask me who sent me flowers and why, and comment about how pretty the flowers are and that their husbands/partners/significant others never send them flowers. This, overall, makes me feel even more loved and spoiled than one might typically feel when receiving flowers.

However, today I bought a $5 bouquet of the sunniest, cheeriest yellow cut mums at Target all for myself, and I would highly recommend it. I totally cheered up just looking at their happy yellow color. Than Hannah and I brought them home and I cut the stems way down and stuffed them in this cool purple vase that I have, and the combo of the bright yellow flowers bursting out of the purple vase was somehow even cheerier.

I got my money's worth. :)

I HATE storms

Hate them, hate them, hate them. I don't care how old I get, I have come to terms with the fact that I will always be terrified of bad storms. Last year's almost-tornado experience didn't help this; in fact, I think it probably made it worse, because now I kind of know what I'm really up against. And tonight we've had bad storms.

So tonight, Brock is stuck in D.C. because his flight home to Chicago was canceled (see: bad storms above). And we've had tornado warnings and sirens going off and everything, and it's just me and Hannah. And when the most calm person in your house is the 3-year-old, you have a problem.

I have to say I think I did a pretty good job faking calm. We just went and played in the basement for an hour or so, and Hannah had a delightful time. She just kept saying, "Wow, it's pretty stormy outside, huh?" She totally didn't care at all. Why can't I be like that? I was a basket case. I'm quite impressed with her.

Despite my inner panic, I'm actually pretty impressed with me, too. I don't think Hannah had any idea how scared I was when the sirens went off.

I HATE storms. Hate them. I hope they're done for the night. We're down to a "severe thunderstorm watch" now, so hopefully things will calm down some.

KO, baby

We played Wii Boxing tonight...and I doled out two straight knock-outs to Brock. I am the boxing champion of our household! Woo hoo! All I need now is a big gold belt.

I think it was all my kickboxing training. :)

Let's not talk about my bowling, though...I was doing really well, on my way to pro status, and then I bowled three crummy games in a row. Besides, I think Hannah's gotten the highest score of all of us, anyway...

Wii!

We finally got one! Wahoo!

So far we've only played Wii Sports. Hannah's pretty good at bowling. :) I think I'm best at baseball and worst at tennis...Brock seems to be best at golf and bowling.

As soon as my shoulder fully recovers from the rotator cuff injury I suffered last weekend playing boxing on our friend's Wii, I am totally going to use boxing as my new stress relief. It was a better workout than the lame kickboxing class I tried earlier in the summer.

This thing is awesome.