The Ungoverned Life of Heather

Someone Throw Me a Costume Party

2012-02-13T12:18:00.000-08:00

In the process of going through and packing our house in order to move, I've found that we have an awful lot of AWESOME COSTUMES that rarely, if ever, see the light of day except for maybe at Halloween. I'm also a pretty darn good costume make-up artist, if I do say so myself, and I am itching for a chance to hone those skills.

Really, I just want someone (or multiple people) to throw costume parties. PLEASE. It's almost my birthday and if it wasn't so close to us moving and me being out of town for two weeks for work then I would throw my own costume party.

Actually, now that I mention it I guess I should let you all know that you should be prepared that any time you receive an invitation to a party or get together it most likely will have a theme and will require a costume.

You have been warned.

Patience Is A Virtue That I'm Working Really Hard On

2012-02-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

We know I'm not the most patient person in the world. Once I get something in my head it's hard for me to contain my energy and I just have to get out there and start doing SOMETHING. This whole buying a house business has really tested my patience and I'm hoping that it will pay off soon!

This is hopefully the last week of waiting for us as the rest of our loan paperwork, etc comes through. We've been packing and organizing little by little and I think my labeling system is working out pretty well. All you have to do is look at the tape on the box to know what room it goes to! Way faster than having to read the labels (but yes, there ARE still labels). I haven't gotten to the kitchen yet, because we use it so frequently that it sort of doesn't make sense to pack it yet, but when I think about having to pack it up I get SO ANXIOUS. There's a lot of stuff in there! And we use 95% of it on a weekly basis.

The upside of this all is that I'm getting rid of things that I don't use or that I don't need any more. It's nice to purge and feel productive during this stressful time. I'm planning on going through my clothes (yet again) tonight/tomorrow and doing the same thing. I have also found that I need to plan in time to take a breather from life in my daily schedule. Things at work and in life got so stressful a couple weeks ago that I thought I was going to lose my mind! Instead of actually losing my mind I caught a little bit of a cold and my neck and shoulders got really stiff and sore and stayed that way for days. After that I made a promise to myself that despite what may go on in life, I need to slow down and give myself permission to relax. The universe decided to reinforce this idea and while looking through my work files at my desk a little massage gift card fell out (a holiday gift from a coworker I had forgotten about) as if to say, "Hey! Schedule this massage and you'll feel much better!", so that's what I'm going to do.

I had to laugh because Monday at work our GM announced that our department was moving offices- very exciting but also adding to the stress! We are slated to move the first week of March, which is when I will be out of town for a meeting... so my plan is to pack up 2 weeks early (oh yeah, because I'll be out the last week of February as well for meetings elsewhere!) and have it ready to be moved in my absence. It feels insane to have to move my personal life and my work life all at once! But I have an awesome new laptop bag and new carryon luggage that I can live out of for a couple of weeks while all of this happens.

Anyway, this week is all about the packing and scavenging for good, sturdy boxes at our local businesses. And about staying sane.

Wish us luck!

Time For Some Updates!

2012-02-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

It's the first day of February and it feels like January flew by! BF and I have tons going on and I cannot believe half of it. Here's what is going on with us:

House Stuff- so we found "The House", but until those keys are in my hand and our down payment check is in their hands, I don't want to think of it as "our" house- despite it being super close and like 95% ours (hey, you NEVER know what could happen). Because I'm such a planner I have lists and spreadsheets and room measurements and sketches as to what I'm going to do to this house to make it "ours". It has definitely grown since my last house update and now includes things like replacing all of the toilet seats, replacing a set of blinds in the extra bathroom upstairs, putting in new countertops in the kitchen, putting a new counter top in the master bathroom, replacing the filters in the furnace, etc.

Right now we are just awaiting our loan stuff to come back from our lender so we can get to closing on this house! We are hoping to start moving in the next 2 weeks, but we will see what happens. Today I'm going to see my insurance lady so we can get set up with Home Owners Insurance and I feel so grown up, and totally out of my league!

In other news I feel totally fat and gross. I'm not and I know that, but do you ever feel like you've been stuck in the same place with no movement for a while so you start not liking your results? That's how I feel. I need to renew my exercise program so I'm hoping to start scheduling a class or two a week into my routine to help spice things up a bit. Also, I feel like I've got to refocus on running. I got really good there for a while, but when everything got super stressful with house stuff and work stuff I totally let it slide. This week I'd love to get to a spinning or cardio kickboxing class.

Also, I feel SUPER OLD. Last week I was fighting off the nasty cold that everyone at work had. I didn't get the full-blown version, but I had a touch of the congestion, a tiny tickle in my throat and have been a bit achy. This week I feel much better, but my shoulders are so insanely sore and achy that it's giving me headaches! I started putting a heat-pack on my shoulders at night while we get ready for bed to help me relax. I love that thing and it seems to be helping, but I think I need to break down and get a massage to get any relief. I think it's a combination of stress and fighting off that cold. BF also got a bit of the same cold, but he seems to have bounced back a bit better than me. At least one of us feels 100%!

The puppies are getting so big! Nora and Rudy are two peas in a pod and are so entertaining. Nora is doing pretty well with house training and rarely had accidents; pretty good for 5 months old! We really have to work on their training- we let it slip with Rudy when we got Nora and now all he seems to remember is "Sit". Nora seems to be a bit too puppy-crazy to train yet, but I think we should start trying. I found a Puppy Training book while packing up our books so I left it out so I could start working on some things with them both. BF and I cannot wait to move so we have a dog door and don't have to wake up early to take them out every morning, 4am is insane.

Wedding planning is sort of taking a backseat right now to House Stuff, you know, since that happens this month and the wedding isn't until September. But I am feeling pretty comfortable with where we are in planning. A couple weekends ago we picked out two of the Bridesmaid dresses and so now we have 1 more to go!

Anyhow, that's what is new and hopefully I'll be able to share our move-in date and house-warming party date soon!

On the Problem with Being Good At Things

2012-01-25T10:48:00.000-08:00

... or proficiency begets efficiency begets promotions begets responsibility begets everyone and their mom putting things on my To Do list and it's driving me crazy.

Ok, this is not supposed to be a brag-fest about how awesome I am at stuff, which, obviously I AM, but you know. Mostly, I'm upset today and need to rant about how it is completely unfair for people that are responsible and accountable and get things done (and get them done well!) are constantly being asked to take on more things that are not their responsibility because the people that are supposed to be doing them are not... let's call it "competent"at their own jobs and don't get them done, or get the done but badly.

I have no issue with helping people out sometimes, but right now I feel like things are getting to the point where projects are being thrown my way and I'm just expected to take care of them. Not fun. I was lamenting to one of my managers about this earlier in the week and he pointed out that people know my reputation is to get things done well, quickly and correctly. That's how I operate in most areas of my life. I'm trying to set boundaries so that this doesn't keep happening, but boundary setting is not the most fun thing in the world and usually it upsets people (which is not preferable, but also I'm not opposed to having to upset them in order to set a healthy boundary).

Currently I'm working 4 large group trips for work, 1 large meeting that will be happening in March, 1 meeting that is happening tomorrow, and then my normal work stuff for my new manager which is getting a bit complicated because I'm still being shared by him and my old manager until they have the head count to get someone else in here. All of the aforementioned is my job, so no big deal, it's just a lot on it's own. Then we have a few of my new manager's team that keep asking me to help out with their team projects because "it used to the person's job who had your job before you to do it"- but the thing is that when I was promoted my new manager rewrote my job description. We even had a discussion about it during one of his team meetings to let his team know what it is I will be doing and what I DO and DO NOT handle. So they are aware of what I do, and there is someone whose new job it is to do all of the things that I don't handle because they reorganized the entire team for it to work that way.

... ugh... just having a tough time handling all of it on top of everything going on at home. Sorry, I totally feel like this is turning into a "ugh, my job" post, which it is not! Just to clarify, I LOVE my job and wouldn't trade it for the world and I absolutely love the team I work with. Transition is hard.

Speaking of everything else going on:

We had our house inspection yesterday and everything looked great! The inspector pointed out a few things he thinks we may want to "fix", but they were more suggestions for things like scraping off the old caulking on some of the exterior walls that surrounds some of the entry points for cable, etc because they may be getting a little too old. Ok, we can handle that! While we were there for the inspection, BF and I walked around and made a list of the things we needed to do so we know what sort of budget to set for some minor things we want to work on before moving in. I also measured the walls so I could calculate how much paint we needed to get to touch up some areas and to add color to our main living spaces. I'm starting to get SUPER EXCITED to get moving, but it's also stressing me out a little. We will get our appraisal later this week and hopefully land on a closing date!

Oh yeah, and wedding planning! We are definitely in the throes of WP, and I'm starting to freak out a little despite having most everything planned and done. For one, I did not realize how expensive photography is! We found someone we like and are hoping to be able to schedule, but we cannot meet with him until next month so we will see what happens. I am also still looking for a florist and a bakery to make a very small cake (since we don't really want cake but our parents have insisted that we need a cake to cut for photos and for the tradition). On Sunday I took my sister and BF's sister dress shopping and we found our Bridesmaid dresses! I placed the orders and sent our findings to my MOH in Utah so she could do a little shopping and find something that will match (ish, I don't need them to match exactly). I'm also on the lookout for cute table decor ideas and have found some good ideas I may use. I downloaded a pretty sweet App for my iPad that helps organize my wedding plans in one place, without paper, which is nice because now all I have to do is bring my iPad with me places and I've got all my plans and ideas there! I've also been perusing Pinterest for ideas which is awesome and very easy for me to get lost in!

Anyway, more house updates to come. I'm feeling much more Zen after ranting about work, so thank you!

I'm Adding One More Thing To Our To Do List... for the Love of Food

2012-01-20T15:42:00.000-08:00

... and it's making our own yogurt.

So here's my issue. I love yogurt and I love that it's pretty good for you, but when you really stop and read the labels I found that the companies that make the yogurt are adding some not-so-great-for-you ingredients to something that should be pretty healthy.

BF and I have been sampling different varieties trying to find ones we love that don't have all of the added icky ingredients (high fructose corn syrup, Red Dye, etc). We have found some good ones, but the ones we love had a ton of added sugar. I don't feel as bad since it's ACTUAL organic cane sugar, but added sugar isn't that great for you either. I've tried the plain, unsweetened varieties that sound good on paper, or rather sound good on the ingredient list, but they taste AWFUL! Some are super sour I don't know how people eat them and the less sour ones taste a little off... almost like vomity, if that makes sense. Anyway, I'm tired of trying to eat yogurt that I don't love... this whole thing has turned one of my favorite snacks into a snack I'm starting to avoid.

Anyway, so BF is so cute and looked up how to make your own yogurt and it is shockingly simple and that way we can make a big batch of it and put it into little containers to take to work and add our own stuff (fruit, honey, granola) to so we know exactly what goes into it!

I'll definitely document the process to let you know how it turns out!

Living the American Dream...

2012-01-20T10:08:00.000-08:00

... scares the crap out of me but is also very exciting.

So BF are going to be homeowners (barring the house passes inspection, which we think it will, fingers crossed) and I am so relieved and happy! When we started looking back in November I got a little down because I was hoping the Good Neighbor Next Door program house in Southeast would work out, but it wasn't meant to be. We looked at MANY homes, some good, some downright awful and then a few that we loved. We made an offer on one we adored a couple weeks ago, but it was a short sale so we knew that it may be months before we even heard anything.

From the get-go things seemed to be working for us as we heard the next day that our offer was accepted by the seller and given to their bank to review (again, necessary in a short sale). We were then told that it no one could guarantee when we'd hear back from the sellers or their bank and that the average wait time for these was close to 2 months. Luckily last week they updated us that things were moving along just fine and that we should be expecting the paperwork, etc from them shorty. This week we got the paperwork, sent it back and started scheduling our inspections and appraisals!

I have a really hard time being patient when I want something (which I've really tried to work on the past few years) so I had resolved that we may not have a house until late Spring/ early Summer and there was nothing I could do about that. Just when I was getting used to the idea of waiting, no more! I am so grateful for that blessing because Heaven knows I might have lost my mind.

BF and I have all of our decorating ideas noted and cannot wait to get started! What I am dreading is moving our stuff. I absolutely hate moving, but am willing to do it since it will be to a home that we OWN and will hopefully be in for a while.

So on our To Do List is:

1. Buy paint for the downstairs (right now every wall is white, so we want to paint before moving in).
2. Buy a dog door for the back door- no more taking the dogs out at 4 am!!!
3. Buy a medicine cabinet with mirror for the bathroom- BF loves them and the downstairs bathroom has no sort of storage in or near it.
4. Shop for a smaller dining room table- the one we have is pub height and much too large for this space (and our current space) but it can wait until we are settled and can shop for a cool used one or one we really love.
5. Get rid of things we don't need or use because I don't want to have to move them!
6. Start packing up the house!
7. Bookshelves- with our libraries combined, BF and I have a hefty collection that we don't have enough room for. I'll be trolling Goodwill and antique stores for used ones first since we do not have any built-in shelves in the new house and definitely want to keep all of the books we have and be able to find them easily.

I'm trying to devise a plan for packing and labeling so that things are easily moved and easy to locate and unpack. What I've landed on is colored tape. I will assign each room in the house it's own tape color and use that tape for the boxes. For example the Master Bedroom tape color will be Blue so that I don't even have to read the label on the box(but there WILL be labeled so when I unpack I know what is in each box) to know where it goes, I just know to pile it in the bedroom.

My color coding looks like this:

Master Bedroom: Blue
Kitchen: Yellow
Living Room/ Main areas: Green
Bathrooms: Purple
Office Stuff: Black
Necessary Items to Unpack FIRST: RED

I'm also trying to get everything packed up, taped and labeled first so we can put the boxes in the very front of the moving truck (by the cab, so I guess the back of it if you are looking from the back towards the front) and the furniture in last so that we unload the furniture first and then not have to try to move furniture in and around piles of boxes.

Any good tips or tricks you've found while moving?

And just for your reference we are definitely planning on having a House Warming Party so everyone can swing by and say hello!

Time is Moving Way Too Fast, But Also Way Too Slow!

2012-01-17T13:27:00.000-08:00

Oh, you guys, January is flying by and I feel a little like I'm drowning in a To Do list at work. But then again, BF and I are waiting to hear back from the bank regarding a short sale home we put an offer on, which could take a few weeks/months so at the same time every day feels like a week.

Also, I haven't really posted anything since that first week of January and there are definitely things to talk about!

So this is a short post letting you know that I'm still here and that my plans for this week are to dig myself out of my To Do List pit of despair at work and then to get caught up here on the old blog.

More to come soon!

So I've Been Reading A Lot and Thinking...

2012-01-05T16:09:00.000-08:00

Mostly a few Michael Pollan books. If you aren't familiar he's written a few little books like "The Omnivore's Dilemma", "In Defense of Food", and "Food Rules".

Let's go back a bit, though, to about 11/2-2 years ago when I decided that I was going to "clean up" how I was eating. I'd tried diets, etc before, but nothing really stuck or worked as well as I thought that it would. When I started out I just wanted to lose weight and feel more healthy. I started going to the gym and originally lost 20-25 lbs by using portion control and BF's knowledge of nutrition and fitness to tailor my eating/fitness routine. Typically it was more heavy in lean proteins and veggies with smaller portions of whole grains instead of white/refined ones. It worked well, but I've found it to be a boring routine with little room for introducing new things.

This past year I also worked on phasing out of home and personal cleansing products that are harmful to the environment and to me. We've replaced the majority of our household cleaning supplies with natural or homemade solutions or have found some great eco-friendly sustainable replacements (LOVING the BioKleen line of products) and have simplified my beauty routine to include only items that I know aren't harmful to my health and are sustainable and ecologically sound. We touched on doing the Nothing New challenge last year and are renewing it in full force for 2012. It only makes sense that I would find more to improve upon in my journey to better myself and that's where Michael Pollan's work comes into play.

Many of my friends and acquaintances have read at the very least "The Omnivore's Dilemma"and it wasn't anything that seemed to pique my interest terribly. I did some research regarding CSA's and I've always felt that eating organic and eating local are the best way to go when you can, but it wasn't a huge focus for a few reasons- partially financially, partially ease, and partially because I hadn't thought enough about the whole issue of food. Well, I had thought about it, just not as in depth as I recently have.

This past summer I started becoming more focused on buying organic and/or locally grown foods stemming from my motivation to eat healthful foods that aren't grown in a way that harms the earth and provides more nutrition for my body and also from sources that support the local economy. BF and I did a pretty good job picking organic and local when possible with our produce. It was this line of thinking that lead me to rethink reading some of Michael Pollan's books, so when I was out and about this past Fall I picked up a copy of his "Food Rules" and began thumbing through. I was enthralled.

What was shocking to me was that he wasn't trying to tell me EXACTLY what to eat and HOW to eat it for each meal to be healthy (most diets seem to be more of prescription saying "eat precisely this in this amount at this time"), he was using tried and true guidelines- the type my grandmother used to keep in mind when preparing meals and purchasing food- to help shape one's thinking about food and how/what to eat. Basically what it all boiled down to for me was that we aren't really eating food, we are eating products that imitate food and cause a myriad of issues when we could avoid almost all of them by just switching back to the actual foods. This lead me to read Michael's other two books which really solidified to me how much we have let companies, industries and the government dictate what we eat, how we eat, with whom we eat, and how much of eat we will eat.

BF and I decided that one of our commitments this year (and going forward) would be to eat as locally and organically as we can and to focus on purchasing ACTUAL FOOD- no processed foods, nothing containing high fructose corn syrup or preservatives or dyes, no foods with a list of ingredients we cannot pronounce and don't know the origin of, etc. We have switched to butter or olive oil instead of cooking sprays and "heart healthy" spreads (which probably aren't really that healthy), whole organic milk instead of skim organic milk, foods with ingredient labels that are few in ingredients in general (think no more than 6 for the most part), and more seasonal fare instead of whatever we are in the mood for.

The books detail the "whys" of this food attitude/culture adoption much better than I can, but briefly the things I learned and then examined and found myself agreeing with are:

1. We should eat more like other cultures (think Asian diet, French cuisine, Mediterranean)- other cultures have vastly different ideas regarding what REAL food is than Americans do. We tend to treat food as a necessary obligation that shouldn't involve pleasure, real fats and dairy products or social time. Not only do other cultures have a completely different attitude (which I will touch on in a minute) but they eat REAL FOOD- real butter and dairy and none of that non-fat/low-fat stuff, real meats with real animal fat instead of de-skinned white meat, hearty fresh baked breads and finally a nice glass of wine (or the like). Why is it that we seem to have such a huge issue with obesity when other places in the world eat butter and whole mike and pork belly and don't? And guess what! They enjoy doing it.

2. You should know your food chain- I feel like we are getting pretty far removed from our food sources. We go to the store and pick up what we need and we never meet the farmers who grew the produce or ranchers who raised the cattle for our steaks. Not only do I want to know where my food comes from, but I want to make sure that I am putting money into the local economy so that the little guys who are running their farms/ranches/fishing ventures responsibly and sustainably are able to continue to do so. I want to know that my beef was from cows that ate field grasses that their bodies were made to digest and are healthy. I want to eat an apple that was grown in the town next to mine and that wasn't sprayed with harsh chemicals and picked too early. The more you know about your food the more informed decisions you can make regarding them.

3. Our attitude about food- for whatever reason, we Americans have some odd attitudes about foods. Some of those include ideas like we need to eat "Good" foods and not eat "Bad" foods, but what really makes something good or bad? We also tend to be obsessed with nutrition and health, but at the same time we eat much larger portions than most other cultures. And we seem to be the only ones who has to have guidance from the government as to what and how much of a food we should be eating daily. I feel like I need to look at food as what it is- something that tastes excellent and should be fully enjoyed and just happens to nourish my body (a plus, really!) but also sets aside time in my day to be social with my friends and family. I don't need to rush to eat or cram as much food in my mouth as possible; I can just relax and take in the blessings that I have.

4. Industrial Agriculture, Ranching and Unsustainable Practices- I don't even want to open this can of worms, but I will touch on it briefly. We aren't being smart in these areas. We are putting chemicals and toxins into the earth and thus into our food chain. We are depleting resources while we build stock piles of commodities that aren't going to help us. We are processing things that do not need to be processed. It's all just so complicated. And cruel in the case of industrial live stock. Again, I want to know that what I'm eating was grown in an earth-friendly way and is full of actual nutrients and not just corn products and that it was well taken care of.

"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants," is the way Mr. Pollan summarizes (and simplifies) his thoughts and "rules". I fully agree.

If you haven't read any of his works, I highly recommend them!

Thanks for letting me get it out there!

2012: Big Plans

2012-01-02T15:46:00.000-08:00

As I've discussed a little on this blog, BF and I have a lot of plans in the works: Wedding, buying a house, etc. We thought it was important to sit down and draft a plan of what we wanted to achieve and how we were going to get there.

First we started with wedding stuff since we started that before any of the rest of the items, but that proved to be pretty easy. Here's what we have done for the wedding:

1. Dress- picked out, tried on, ordered and now stored safely in a secret location! Along with the veil, accessories, etc.
2. Location- Wedding rehearsal dinner, ceremony and reception locations are all picked and a down payment made.
3. Menu- picked, even though our picks aren't due until July. Hey, we know what we like!
4. Music- picked and put on a playlist! Ceremony, reception, etc.
5. Bridal party and Groomsmen- done and notified!
6. Guest List- mostly done, just verifying some family members.

Really the only few things left are:
1. Picking and officiant.
2. Picking a bakery for the SMALL cake- we don't want to feed everyone cake, but still need a little one for the cake cutting and pictures.
3. Bridesmaid dresses and groomsmen colors. Not that worried about it since they don't need them until September.
4. Invitations. Still, not worried since we won't be sending them out until late spring/early summer.
5. Flowers- but we really only want flowers for my bouquet, the bridesmaids bouquets and the grooms'/groomsmen's boutonnieres.
6. Photographer.

I'm hoping to get a bunch of this stuff figured out during the Bridal Show next weekend where I can meet vendors, etc.

The next thing we are working on is buying a house. Since the market is so low right now and paying a mortgage is about what we already pay for rent we figured it just made sense to do it now. We've currently viewed about 20 homes and made a few offers. I'm hoping we hear back from our favorite house soon and get things going!

We don't have a "to do" list for our home yet since we aren't sure which home we will end up with, however I've already gone paint shopping and picked out a palette that both BF and I like a lot for the main living spaces. We already know that no matter what house we get we will probably repaint the inside to our tastes.

Because we don't have the house yet, we have decided that this is the perfect time to start "Nothing New 2012" because it will deter us from buying things that we will just have to move to the new home anyway (we both HATE moving) and also help us save money for possible home projects (like paint or a backyard make over!). Here are our rules for Nothing New 2012:

If we think we need something, these are the questions we must first ask:

1. Can we borrow it from a friend/family member?
2. Can we get it used?
3. Is there a sustainable alternative?
4. Do we really NEED it? Or do we WANT it?
5. Does it have a home? Meaning does it have a place to be stored or be kept permanently if we do get it.

The items that we know we will be buying that are MOSTLY exempt:

1. Groceries
2. Toiletries/ household cleaning items
3. Dog food/treats/medications
4. Prescriptions/Vitamins/Supplements
5. Undergarments- you never realize how quickly men's undershirts wear completely out until he cannot find a suitable one to wear one day!
6. Experiences- travel or entertainment. You should spend money on fun memories that build your relationship rather than consumables and knick knacks.

The reason I qualified this list as MOSTLY exempt from the rules is that there are items that we buy regularly that I've been trying to phase out and replace with more sustainable ones and also items that I'm starting to question that we even need (ie. vitamins and supplements- they cannot hurt, but research shows that they don't really make you healthier, your food and lifestyle do that... which is a whole other post).

Once we have the house stuff settled and the remainder of the wedding expenses paid for we will continue the Nothing New because we feel that it's just a good practice. We don't need to fill our home with unnecessary stuff and we don't need to fill landfills with trash. As we go we will just start setting goals on what to save for next- a trip to Europe, a weekend kayaking excursion, cooking classes, etc.

Here's hoping we hear about the house soon and that 2012 will be an amazing year!

We're Getting Married, It's Almost Christmas, We Are House Hunting but None of that Stresses Me Out Like Finding a Gift for BF's Mom

2011-12-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

I'm totally serious, you guys.

I am in the midst of wedding planning, holiday decorating and baking, house hunting and figuring out home loan options, renewing our storage space lease since we know we won't be moving before January, coordinating facy dinners and meetings for work, getting my new boss organized, getting the dogs groomed and the little one trained, looking at interior design ideas for our new house when we get it, shopping for appliances that we will need for any new house we get since we don't own any appliances, wrapping presents (because I'm SO not the last minute person) and the only thing keeping me up at night is the fact that I have NO IDEA what to get BF's mom for Christmas. NO CLUE. Not even a tiny glimmer of an idea.

Why? Because she's the hardest person IN THE WORLD to shop for. I'm not even making this up. You should ask BF. This is the only thing I've been focusing on all week. I'm done with all of my other christmas shopping. Every time I have to run an errand or go to the store for anything I think to myself, "Maybe I will find the perfect gift for BF's Mom here!" and then end up leaving the shop disappointed and frustrated. I asked BF for ideas and he couldn't come up with anything either (for some of the reasons I'll list in a minute).

I sat down and wrote a list of things that she likes to help me think of something. Here's what that list looked like:

BF's Mom- Ideas on things she likes:

1. Reading- but mostly she gets books at the library and doesn't really buy them unless she finds a super good deal at Barnes and Noble, like when they do their summer clearance sale and you can get books for $1 or $2. But didn't we get her a giftcard for books last year? Did she spend it? I can't get her the same gift card again.

2. Gardening- maybe books on gardening? She's got a shelf full, and she has been doing it forever so doesn't need another book on it. Maybe gloves? Got them. Knee pads? She's got fancy rolling knee pad thing for working in the yard already. Beer for her slug traps? Ugh.

3. Crafty things, like scrapbooking- but those are sort of personal and she has a whole room with her scrapbooking and craft stuff so what else could I get her?

4. Walking- she likes to take walks, but she just got new walking shoes this past fall. What else do you need for walking?

5. Tea- she likes tea. I'm not even sure what kind. But I've seen her make it and drink it! Out of a tea kettle she already owns... and tea cups she already has... dang...

... and on and on.

So what are some of the hit gifts you've given your other's mother?

It Begins...

2011-12-15T10:13:00.000-08:00

Ok, so BF and I have launched our Wedding Website to keep everyone updated on plans. Please feel free to visit and check back often as we update it!

Our Wedding Site!

Eventful

2011-12-12T15:17:00.000-08:00

Boy has it ever been.

So you know that last week BF and I put a bid on a home in the Good Neighbor Next Door program that the government runs. We were waiting to hear back as the bidding period closed over the weekend and kept checking the website to see if anything new was happening.

Saturday went by with not much news. We went about our day as normal- went to the gym, cleaned up the house and started on the pile of laundry, etc. I poured over paint colors and budgeting out what it would cost to replace home items if we needed to... if we get the house.

Sunday BF went to help his parents find and cut down a Christmas tree. I did some more home chores and then decided to get out and get some more of my Christmas shopping done. The plan was for me to meet BF at his parents' house after the tree adventure for dinner. BF called me and told me that there was new about the house and it looked like it had been reopened for bidding for an additional week. I was super bummed because I was hoping we would just get it and be able to start planning! That was frustrating to hear, but not the end of the world. I was trying to get the gifts unloaded at my parents's house during this conversation and then get back home to let the dogs out before it got too cold.

Then in the middle of our phone conversation, BF sort of trailed off and stopped talking. I was trying to ask him what was going on and he just said, "Something's wrong with my dad". Apparently he very quickly started feeling awful and then got terrible stomach pains and started vomiting. They made a quick decision to take him to the ER so BF told me to meet them there, so ran to let the dogs out and then jumped in the car to get to St. Vincent's.

I arrived and totally had to lie to get back to BF's dad's room where they all were... they said only immediate family so I fudged a little bit and told them that BF and I were already married so I was the daughter in law... not such a huge lie really. I still felt a little guilty and told BF right away what I did. Anyway, so I went back and BFD was in bad shape (BF's Dad) and I just felt awful knowing that he was in such pain. The doctors thought it may be kidney stones so they were waiting for the pain and anti-nausea meds to kick in before they could get a scan (since he was moving around so much from the pain it would have been impossible). We waited around a while and ended up running to get dinner for ourselves, his sister and his mother.

A couple hours later they were able to do the scan and confirmed it was kidney stones, but because of the locations there wasn't much they could do so they sent BFD home with some anti-nausea meds and a couple pain pills to help until they pass. Terrible! Everyone that I know that has had kidney stones says it is the worst pain they've ever experience so I cannot imagine what that would even feel like!

We went to BF's parents house to wait for his dad to be released and to feed his parents' dogs. We watched a little football and let the dogs run around and play in the yard. As we were sitting on the couch the dogs came pealing into the house from the backyard. This is pretty normal because they chase each other around constantly so we thought nothing of it. And then I smelled it. It smelled like cow poop and it was STRONG. I jumped up and grabbed Rudy and realized that he was COVERED in leaves and poop. GROSS! So we tried to grab him to throw him into the bathtub, but just then the door opened and his parents were walking in. I yelled for Rudy to come so that he wouldn't jump his poop-covered self up onto BF's parents and ran to grab him. Nora peed on the floor at the same time from all of the excitement and BF managed to wrap Rudy in a towel and throw him into the bathroom before he did any damage. I quickly shut the bathroom door and started scrubbing Rudy and covering him with soap. I did get him clean, but I was so mad that he rolled around in poop!

BF and I ended up getting home around 10:30 or 11pm and sort of slumped into bed. Long Day.

Today BF and I found out that we weren't the only bidders on the house, so we were put into a lottery for it. We weren't selected in the lottery and I was so bummed when I found out, but then our broker told us that it didn't mean we won't get it. The other bidder's bid was selected in the lottery, but the bid has not yet been approved which means we may have a chance at this house anyway, but only if the current winning bidder doesn't get their stuff in correctly or if their bid isn't approved. It's such a weird process with these homes and super stressful! In the mean time we are looking at other homes, even though they will cost way more.

Now I'm off to get a filling. YAY!

The Waiting Game... and Looking at Interior Decorating Sites Because I'm Old Now

2011-12-08T10:49:00.000-08:00

So BF and I are waiting to hear back regarding the house. We probably won't hear a thing until Monday or Tuesday which is KILLING ME.

If we do get the house, we have to get an inspection, finalize the loan stuff and then figure out how we are going to replace the carpets and repaint some of the awful/half done paint that is currently in some of the rooms.

In order to occupy myself while we wait I've been busy looking at interior design sites and magazines to see what it is I like and how I want to redo our possible new home. I know what I like, but I also want our home to feel cohesive and not broken up into themed rooms, if that makes sense? Anyway, I'm just busily collecting pictures and paint samples and deciding what appliances would be necessary to replace.

Here's what I'm thinking:

1. Floors- the carpets NEED to be replaced. The house was a rental before it was put on the market and I'm pretty sure that they didn't clean/replace them because they knew they didn't need to impress anyone. I am debating on replacing the carpet or all out getting totally new floors... maybe wood or laminate wood or something.

2. Appliances- so the appliances in the home aren't terrible, but if it's going to be my home I want to update them with newer and more energy efficient ones. I'd like a french door refrigerator with the freezer on the bottom, an awesome dishwasher because I HATE doing the dishes, a more efficient water heater, and a better looking microwave. BF wants a new range as well, so there's one more. Again, I want them all to match so for the first time EVER I've been looking at Lowe's and Home Depot and Sears and Best Buy trying to find a good collection that I like. We also need to purchase a washer and dryer, but clearly they don't need to match the kitchen appliances so whatever we pick should be good.

3. Paint colors- I am SO TORN with paint. Some of the paint in the house I do like, but it needs to be touched up so I will have to find the matching paint to do so. Some of the rooms are just... gross. Who knows why people pick the colors they do. And some of the home just needs paint in general because it's worn completely off (like on the banister going upstairs). I'm wondering if I just wait to touch up the paint that I like and just go all out on the rooms and areas that really need it. Also, BF and I need to decide on colors and themes for the main rooms. The outside paint is ok, the house just needs a good spray down like any house does occasionally.

There's more on my list, but I'm trying not to invest TOO much time on the house until we know we've got it... but plan just enough so I'm not scrambling to figure out what we want if (when) we do get it.

Waiting takes forever.

Feeling Very Grown Up

2011-12-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

As I write this I'm looking at my "To Do" list from the weekend to see what I missed and besides NOT MISSING ANYTHING that I needed to get done, I also realized that I'm a Grown Up now.

What? When did this happen?

It happened when BF and I applied for a pre-approved home loan over the weekend because we are looking to get into a house.

HOLY CRAP.

I'm super nervous about the whole thing (because, you know... 30 year mortgage, purchasing appliances, property taxes, etc) but I'm also insanely excited! The thought of having a place of our own where we can let the puppies run around free in the yard and we can have a huge compost bin instead of having to throw our scraps away, and being able to PAINT and change anything I want is AWESOME. Also, a 2 car garage so we can both park inside on the cold, wet Oregon days is appealing.

We've found a house we LOVE and that is close to BF's school, so we are hoping to go see it, win the bid and get a loan ASAP so we can get this going.

The excitement is overwhelming, but I'm still stressing out until it's all worked out.

That Was November...

2011-11-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

Holy Cow, it's almost December. It seemed like it was just Halloween and I feel that I've almost completely forgotten about this blog and keeping up with everyone else's so I'm starting over this week.

Since I hardly said a thing during November, we'll do a quick catch up.

November:

BF and I got engaged, but I'm still calling him BF (see previous post). It was awesome and I'm so excited! We are in the midst of planning now and have set a date- September 28th, 2012. I already have my dress, we have a location, and now it's on to the details.

We got a new puppy! Her name is Nora and she is a Silky Terrier/Coton de Tulear mix and she is the sweetest thing you've ever seen. She runs the house... or more precisely, she runs Rudy. She is doing pretty well with "potty training" and Rudy and her are two peas in a pod. I'm so glad they keep each other entertained, especially since we are now in the rainy season and walks are less frequent.

Thanksgiving came and went and it was amazing. I took an extra day off of work so I had a 5 day weekend. Wednesday I got to sleep in and then we mostly cleaned and ran errands. Thursday we split Thanksgiving between my parents' house and BF's parents'. We got to my folks' around 12:30 and lounged around and ate sausage cheese balls while we were waiting on the turkey (as always). After we had stuffed ourselved we slowly made our way to BF's parents' house and promptly ate again (much less this time around, though). We also played some card games and watched the latest Pirates movie until we were so close to food comas we had to go home.

Now, I'm not really into the whole Black Friday shopping thing, despite working for a retail company. I don't like crowds and I hate feeling pressured to grab things for fear that they may run out if I don't purchase something now. Last year BF and I went to Best Buy and got an awesome deal on a television and also got a Wii for my mom for Christmas. The only reason we actually went shopping last year was because of the amazing deal that we couldn't have gotten later and we needed a tv for our living room. This year we didn't really need anything except for socks, underwear, undershirts and some better slippers for BF so after perusing the Black Friday ads I decided I would brave Fred Meyer at 5am. It's only a mile from our house so I didn't have to get up extra early to drive somewhere and find parking which was nice. And there wasn't much of a crowd. I arrived a few minutes before 5am and there were people in line waiting for the doors to open, but really it wasn't terrible because as soon as I walked up to the line they opened the doors and I walked right in.

I knew exactly what I was there for, so I was in and out in just 15 minutes and back home at 5:25am. I got BF some new white undershirts (buy one 3 pack get one 3 pack free, so 6 new shirts), some fuzzy lined Crocs (so he can take the dogs out and not get his feet wet), deoderant, lotion, and some baking items. I spent $40 which was the cost of the Crocs alone before the sales, etc so I think I did pretty well.

After my little shopping excursion I went back home and went to bed for a couple more hours. Friday, Saturday and Sunday we mostly ran errands for groceries, cleaned the house and then "Christmased" our house up for the holidays.

Which brings me to today. Today is my first day back at the office and it's awesome but awful at the same time. Getting up wasn't too bad this morning, however I'm definitely feeling more tired as the day goes on. I've got a busy week ahead of me full of work stuff and wedding planning and holiday parties so it's not all bad!

Is anyone else super psyched that it's almost Christmas? I gotta start collecting those Christmas lists and get shopping!

How BF Went From BF to F... ? Oh Heck, We're Engaged!

2011-11-14T10:56:00.000-08:00

The only stressful part about getting engaged is now I cannot call him BF anymore, and F is a little weird so I have to come up with something else. And even as I type this I'm realizing that I can continue to call him BF, but I'll explain that as well. Oh yeah, and now people are asking when we'll have kids. That's a little stressful to even start thinking about.

So the story... A few weeks ago BF said to me, "Why don't we go out to dinner or something for our November date? How about Rheinlander?" to which I quickly agreed because I LOVE the Rheinlander and dinner that I don't have to cook/ clean up after is always appreciated. Plus it was BF's month to plan our date. I didn't think much of it until the day before we were supposed to go to dinner.

November 3rd (Thursday) people started asking about weekend plans. When I brought up our dinner, some of my coworkers asked if I thought BF would be popping the question then. I thought about it, but talked myself out of it because I was sure he would do it during or closer to the holidays and would be planning something at a party or at super fancy restaurant. I wasn't expecting anything other than a nice dinner filled with breads and cheese and sausage, and that was fine with me.

November 4th after work I came home to find BF hanging out with the dog as I normally do. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary and mostly I was just excited that it was Friday and we were going to eat good food. After winding down for a few minutes we left for the restaurant. We were seated in "our" corner (the past few times we've been there for dinner we've been seated in the same little alcove) and ordered the usual fondue appetizer. It was a fabulous dinner and we were stuffed to the gills by the end of it. I desperately needed to wash the cheese off my hands and excused myself to the restroom. When I came back to the table BF kept glancing over at the accordian player which I assumed was because he wanted to ask the player to play something ridiculous, which is sort of what we do when we go there. Last time we requested the Beatles, Beyonce and a few others, ALL of which were in the players repretoire. Fabulous. Anyway, I didn't think much of BF's preoccupation and started gathering my things so we could head home and drift into food comas.

As I started to move to the edge of my seat BF reached across the table and held my hands. I stopped and thought that maybe he wanted to sit for a few more minutes before we left. He sort of looked a me for a minute and then down at my hands and said something like, "Your nails look very nice, but they would look nicer with something else..." and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a box. He said a few more sweet things but I don't really remember much of it because I was SHOCKED and time started moving quickly but slowly at the same time... that doesn't make much sense but that's how it felt. I started crying but then BF saw that I was crying and put the ring box to the side of the table and stopped his cute proposal and exclaimed, "You're crying!!!" and so I had to tell him to continue. I don't cry that often so BF was a little baffled, but it was a good cry.

Of course I said yes and then the table next to us congratulated us and sent us drinks and dessert. I was so stuffed/excited I couldn't even eat the dessert, but BF helped with that and ate a good chunk of it. We laughed and talked and finally headed home to tell the good news.

A few things that people have asked:

1. Did he get down on one knee? - No, because where we were seated there wasn't any room for him to do that, so he held my hands across the table which was super adorable.

2. Do you have a date?- Yes, September 28th, 2012. More details to come!

3. Are you going to change your name?- Yes. I'm a little traditional.

Also, I aluded to the fact that I can still call him BF, even though it no longer stands for Boyfriend. I'll explain that:

This past Friday night, BF and I decided to have a get together with our friends to celebrate our engagement. We had discussed that neither of us really like the word "fiance" because it just sounds... stupid. I don't know, sort of hoity toity. Anyway, I used to tease BF and quote Beyonce's song and tell him, "You liked it then you should've put a ring on it," before we were engaged, and then once we were he told everyone, "I liked it, so I put a ring on it!". On our way to our party on Friday night we brought up the Fiance word again and started joking around that we would instead call each other "Beyonce" and see if people would notice the difference. You know what? No one did. Not one person noticed that I said "Beyonce" all night instead of fiance. So instead of BF for Boyfriend it's BF for Beyonce Fiance.

Come on, it's just easier on me.

YAY! We're engaged!

He Liked It, So He Put A Ring On It!

2011-11-07T14:35:00.000-08:00

More details to come!

Canada, The Sickness, A New Job, BF Gets Old, Here Comes Halloween!

2011-10-26T15:40:00.000-07:00

So I went to Canada.

Here are some pics and it was AMAZING. Most of the trip was work stuff, but we also got to travel around and see fun Vancouver things like the Capilano Suspension Bridge, Granville Island and running at the butt-crack of dawn on the bay.

In Canada we ate and ate and ate and ate great food for 3 days straight. I felt like I was going to POP. And then I got home and started feeling under the weather and exhausted, but I figured it was from traveling and meetings so I thought nothing of it.

Friday last week I left work a little early, ran some errands and then came home and collapsed. We ate dinner at my parents house and then Saturday morning my mom and I ran errands together. I felt hot and sweaty and weird and thought I was running a fever, but when I got home I wasn't so I just took it easy the rest of the day. Saturday night BF and I went out for dinner because neither of us felt like cooking or doing dishes. I had an awesome roasted mushroom and veggie paninin and soup and I can't even tell you what BF had because I wasn't paying attention. And then we had dessert because why not? It was a black and tan brownie with fudge and caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream, YUM! We came home and vegged on the couch with the dog and went to bed pretty early because we are getting old.

I woke up at 2 in the morning because the dog needed to go out, so I slipped a jacket on and shoes and took Rudy out. I was outside for maybe 30 seconds before I started feeling really lightheaded and woozy. I thought it was from standing up too quickly to get the dog outside, but then realized that I felt like crap in general. Then I started to feel hot and sweaty and practically dragged Rudy back to the house because I knew I needed a bathroom quickly. NOT FUN. We all know how much I hate puke in general, and I hate puking even more. I don't know if I had a touch of the Flu or if I got food poisoning because I only threw up the once and then went back to bed (on the couch with a bucket just in case) and slept until 9am.

The rest of Sunday I just slept on the couch and watched movies. I was STARVING but afraid to eat anything just in case, so I munched on saltine crackers and ginger ale and water all day and finally made myself some chicken soup for dinner. Monday I was just fine and went to work, but my voice was all scratchy. At first I thought it may have been from throwing up, but it got worse as the day went on even though I wasn't talking a ton. Tuesday morning I woke up with a very hoarse voice and some congestion and then today I have practically no voice.

On top of that I have a new boss, who technically I worked for before but who wasn't my direct manager. So I'm moving on to support him but I'm also going to continue to support my old manager (which is AWESOME because I absolutely love him). I'm excited, but feeling a little busy and overwhelmed.

In other news, BF turns OLD this week (and by old I really mean 27). He's older than me, so I can call him old. We are celebrating on Friday with family and then celebrating with friends at Lazerport on Sunday. It's going to be awesome.

And then next week it's Halloween and I cannot even WAIT to put my costume on. Actually, I tried it on last night and walked around the house in it. Oh, there will be pics.

The Great White North

2011-10-18T14:55:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody! I'm posting from Canada today as I'm here most of the week for work. Can we say awesome? Indeed it is.

It is not, however, white. We've really lucked out and gotten some amazing weather- way awesomer than Portland weather this time of year. It's been in the upper 50's and mid 60's and sunny and the fall foliage is breathtaking. I'll be uploading pictures as soon as I get home (left my cable at home... sad).

Just so I don't forget, here's a list of things I LOVE about Canada:

1. Everything's in French and English.
2. Winter Tuke (sp?)- winter knit hats
3. the crazy accents that aren't even close to French Canadian or just Canadian
4. The close ties to Scotland and Ireland
5. Maple candy
6. Friendliness- Canadians are so polite!
7. Asian restaurants- there are TONS and they are good!
8. Salmon, we have it at home but it's everywhere here.
9. First passport stamp

I'm happy to be here, but also happy I get to go home soon. I'm missing Rudy and the BF.

Oh, I'm Still Here

2011-10-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

I definitely didn't fall off the face of the earth, but it feels like I did when I look at my poor neglected blog!

The past month has been busier than ever at work and it's been meeting after meeting after meeting. I'll bring you up to speed:

September-

We had our huge annual work conference and I ran around from the week before until the week after setting things up and then tying up loose ends. It was fun, but always a TON of work.

During all of the actual meeting stuff I've been busy planning upcoming meetings as well. Next week I go to Canada for one of those, the week after it's here locally (but still a ton to do), and a ton of on-campus meetings.

I also on-boarded a new Admin to take my old job! YAY! But of course as soon as that was announced I got more added to my To Do list because I was free now, right? Right...

October-

It was BF's and my 2 year anniversary! We celebrated by going to Corvallis for "Blocktoberfest" with some friends. It was fun for the first half of the trip and not the second. I will spare you details but it involved something I absolutely HATE. BF gets a re-do.

It's also my sister's birthday this week and BF's birthday at the end of the month and Halloween. I decorated the house yesterday and it's spectacular... or should I say SPOOK-tacular (I had to)!

For a make-up anniversary this past weekend, BF and I took Rudy to Beverly Beach and stayed in a yurt. After all of the craziness of the past few weeks I decided to take a long weekend and catch up on my rest and family time. My parents met us down there on Saturday to spend some time at the coast and we lucked out and got some great weather. Rudy ran himself ragged on the beach, so slept most of the afternoon on Sunday and a good part of Monday.

Like I said, I took a long weekend, so I had Friday off last week and I had Monday off this week. We got back from yurt-camping on Sunday afternoon and after thoroughly cleaning ourselves, our stuff and Rudy we vegged out at home and then ate a wonderful Vietnamese dinner with BF's dad and sister at Pho Tango. I absolutely love that place.

Monday I sort of slept in (still got up when BF got up to go to work), ate breakfast while I watched the Today show- which I never get to do!- and then took a nice run. After my run I cleaned the house and did some organizing of our junk in the extra room. I leisurely ran errands and bought groceries and then busted out my Halloween decorations. My. Favorite. Thing. To. Do. Then I spent a couple hours looking at cool Halloween decorations and party ideas online.

So there it is and here I am, again. This week will be full of catching up and also trying to get ahead of a few things, but it should be fun.

Last night we watched Hocus Pocus, and I think Casper should follow this evening.

A Roller Coaster Week- Also, Autumn Is Upon Us

2011-09-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

Man, this week has been challenging in so many ways! I'm so thankful that I have a job, one that I love, but sometimes one can't always be in love with what they are doing and I'm totally feeling that right now.

It's just that it's a crazy busy time of year at work because we have all of these big meetings planned and then we head straight into the madness of the holiday season with no time to breathe. None of this stuff is even happening yet and I'm feeling like I could drown in the amount of "stuff". Part of my issue is that I'm such a planner and scheduler that when new things pop up I get a little angry- angry that people didn't tell me earlier so I could add what needed to get done in to my already full schedule, angry that I have to rearrange my plans, angry that I have yet another thing or things added to my to do list, and angry that I'm angry and frustrated. I just want some peace, or as one of my favorite television characters would say, "Serenity now!". I'm already looking into escaping for a few days at some point in October just so I don't completely lose my sanity.

I'm thinking I need to start meditating on my lunch breaks.

Also, if you live in the Pacific Northwest you may have noticed that summer died on Sunday and we awoke on Monday to Autumn, in all of it's cooler-weather, leaf-falling, foggy morning and cloudy day glory. I have such mixed feelings about this because I love Fall, but we had the shortest summer ever.

On a related note our Halloween costumes are purchased and I only have to find footwear for mine. And it's Friday.

Sigh.

In Remembrance

2011-09-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

10 years ago I was a Junior in high school. My day started like most other school days: I got up around 5:20, made some tea and got dressed and made the brisk walk to my school. I always arrived earlier than I needed to because I like my time alone in the morning to prepare for the day. I sat in the Music hallway floor just before 7am, put my headphones on and pulled out some homework that I still needed to work on. As I worked I got restless and moved myself out to the common area of the school to find a seat to continue working. A TV had been set up for something that was going on earlier in the week and some of the students and teachers that were at school for "Zero period" (the class period that starts before school officially starts) had turned it on to watch the morning shows. I pulled my headphones off so I could hear the news while I worked. A few minutes passed before the news show changed to the National news morning show on that station, nothing out of the ordinary yet.

I remember hearing about a plane crash that caught my attention. What was being described was a horrific accident in NY, so I listened for a moment before returning to my work. I packed up my stuff and headed to my first class, worrying slightly about the people in NY that had been in the plane and in the building hit but wasn't overly concerned. As usual, I was one of the first to my morning class. I remember sitting down and spacing out as my classmates wandered in and found their seats. Our teacher had not yet arrived and the din of morning chatter started to grow. The bell rang and our teacher walked in and wanted us to come out into the common area with her to see the news. We were a little excited to be getting out of class work and followed her down the hallway into the main common area.

As I watched, the crowd grew and my head was spinning with the details, trying to grasp what was happening. I was seeing the plane I heard about earlier and where it crashed into one of the towers, but then I was seeing a second plane crash into it's twin tower next door. The news reporters were speculating an attack while reports of a hijacked plane in Pennsylvania and a crash at the Pentagon poured in. Live shots of NY alternated with shots of Washington DC. Our supervising teachers were trying to keep people calm and telling us to not worry until we knew more details. We watched flames and debris in the towers burst and fall, we watched the black smoke billow from the Pentagon, we watched little dots fall from the towers as if propelled from within... those little dots, I think, were people. We watched the top of the tower fall and the dust and smoke billow around the streets of NY.

Time seemed to stop and then fast forward in short bursts the rest of the day. No one really attended classes and a few of my friends went home early because their parents came to pull them out of school. By the end of my school day (2 hours before most because I had an honors pass and early release) I was more confused and a little scared about what these attacks meant, who was "attacking" us, what was my country going to do.

I went home and immediately turned the television on. I called my mom at work to make sure that none of our family on the East coast had been in NY for any reason that day. I said little prayers for the people affected all while watching replays of the morning's coverage.

For days afterwards I was confused, I think the whole United States was. I didn't understand what was happening or why someone would do this. I watched the heartbreaking pleas on tv of people trying to find their lost loved ones in the hysteria and destruction of the city. I watched people debate terrorism and new wars and military action. Mostly what I felt was sadness and lost. I didn't lose anyone personally, but collectively we lost a lot as a country. It was a shared pain that seemed oddly deep to me. Maybe it was because I felt so confident that I lived in a safe and free nation and that feeling had never been shaken; my resolve had never been tested. It was very unsettling, that feeling of being ambushed and being unprepared.

Ten years later I still sometimes feel that loss and pain. I feel now that some of that was me grieving human lives lost and part of it was me grieving the loss of my feelings of security and strength. As time has passed and more stories of that day are shared, I'm grateful to the folks who tried their hardest to keep this country safe and derail plots against us. I'm grateful to the service people of our country to who searched for the lost and hurt, who cared for the injured and grieving and gave their lives to save others. I'm grateful that I had many chances to help as well and did what I could to aid those in need because it probably helped me more than it helped them. I'm thankful that September 11, though an awful event, brought people together in the end. I can look back and see how we've grown a little closer because of it.

In remembrance of all those who lost their lives and loved ones; I will never forget.

And She Squealed with Delight!

2011-09-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

OMG, have you been to a store recently? Besides "Back to School" stuff, do you know what is creeping into the seasonal aisles of my favorite places?

HALLOWEEN!

Every year I about hyperventilate when I find Autumn decorations and Halloween stuff popping up in stores. I LOVE FALL. Everything about it. I love warm days and cool crisp nights, I love hot cocoa and cider in the evening, I love the colors of the changing leaves, I love fall-harvest produce, I love wearings jeans and boots and sweaters, I love handing out candy and getting cutesy decorations, I love dressing up!

I mean, I love all holidays, but for some reason Halloween has a special place in my heart.

I ventured to Joann's the other day with BF to find a few crafty items for his classroom when lo-and-behold! Halloween and Fall decorations greeted me as I entered and I was in heaven. BF lost me for a while as I roamed the aisles and I immediately picked out a cute Autumn themed welcome sign to hang in our entry way. I made notes of the decorations I needed to go back and look out without BF because I don't think he'd appreciate spending massive amounts of time there the way I do.

Anyhow, so more errand running later and I had to go to Petsmart to get some things for Rudy when I found the seasonal pet item aisle. I didn't buy him any fall or halloween themed toys because most of them have squeakers in them or are made of materials that Rudy would eat pretty quickly, but I did find an ADORABLE line of pet Halloween costumes and I needed no persuading. I picked out a good one (one that I think Rudy wouldn't mind too much) that glows in the dark. I took pictures of Rudy in it when I got home- you know, just to be sure it fit, but I'll wait to post those until closer to Halloween.

Also, in my travels around town I noticed that Martha Stewart makes a damn good line of products. At the craft store I was instantly drawn to her Autumn themed decorations and at Petsmart I fell in love with her pet products. I mean, I've always loved the woman, I feel like we are very similar, but it's like she read my mind when creating some of these things. Like the pet-grooming caddy. Right now we currently store Rudy's grooming items in a bucket so they are all together, but I have to dig for items frequently. I'm so tempted to buy that caddy so everything has it's own place (nothing will get lost) and it's cute.

Oh yeah, and today is the first day of school here in Portland. BF and I spent countless hours coloring and cutting and getting organized for the first week of school (did you know some curiculum comes in black and white and you have to color and put it together yourself? LAME). BF was so excited and nervous yesterday, but I'm sure that today is going to go well. He's teaching 1st Grade this year and I think it's going to be so much fun! I'm hoping I get to chaperone some of the field trips!

I'm also sure that parents are excited for their kids to be occupied for a good part of the day now. I was at Target the other day and I felt bad for this poor lady- she had 4 kids between the ages of 2 and 12 and I could tell she was just done. They were shopping for school supplies and one of the middle kids kept poking the little one in the cart to make her cry and the older one was asking for EVERYTHING in the store and the other middle one was running to and fro down the aisle leaving bottles of Elmer's glue and pink erasers in his wake. I love kids, but I also love not having them yet. My trips to the store are much less stressful.

Anyhow, I'm beyond excited that Fall is on it's way. Not that we had too much of a summer, but I cannot help it that I love this time of year.

Speaking of summer... what's with the heat this week? I mean, NOW we have to start using the AC? It's freakin' September!

Don't Rub My Feet! Why Are My Dreams So Weird?

2011-08-31T11:54:00.000-07:00

No, but seriously.

Last night I had a dream about this guy I know from high school. We were hanging out and I was asking about his wife and family and he made me sit in an office chair and take my shoes off. Then he told me he was going to give me a foot massage and I pulled my feet up underneath me and said ,"No thank you!!" but he kept insisting. I finally put my feet down hoping that he'd just get it over with and he started to rub my feet and then pushed them away.

As I looked dow at him he gave me the most disgusted look EVER and said, "Your feet are so dry and gross! Why don't you use lotion?" I was so embarrassed, but also so mad at him!

I woke up shortly after that and I was still thinking, "Well, you are the one that wanted to rub my feet!".

What a strange dream. The funny part is, I haven't thought much about this person and there's no reason why I would be dreaming about them. Also, not that I want a foot massage from this person, but in real life I LOVE getting my feet massaged- something about it makes me feel like my whole body was massaged and relaxed. Also, I definitely do use lotion and keep my feet as clean and pretty as I possibly can.

I've gotta look this one up.

Weekend In Review

2011-08-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

Here it is in short points and I will elaborate later:

- Laundry
- Storage Space
- Gym
- Dog Walk
- Sellwood wandering
- Grand Central Bakery Lunch
- Gym
- Baseball Game
- Hot Dogs
- 1:10am wake up call
- Early Morning Police Call
- Clean House
- Church League Softball
- Heat
- Family Dinner
- Desserts
- Dog Puke

** Updated! **

Now here are my elaborations as promised:

Friday night I started on what turned out to be a weekend full of laundry, which was actually ok. Sometimes it's nice to have clean everything, including clothes and linens. With the disappointment of last week (BF did NOT get the full time kindergarten classroom he was hoping for) we didn't have much in the way of weekend plans. We did finally get a storage space for our seasonal items and large items that don't fit into our house. We went to the gym as usual and just hung out and watched 127 Hours in the evening (which I highly recommend).

Saturday we woke up bright and early so we could help out at BF's elementary school clean up. I packed water and a snack and my leather work gloves expecting to have to pull weeds and spread barkdust but as we drove past the street that the school is located on, BF and I made the decision that we did not, in fact, want to spend our Saturday morning doing any of that and that the school would be just fine with the million community members that showed up to help. Instead we parked and wandered around the Sellwood neighborhoods looking at homes for sale and for rent because we would LOVE to live down there. It'd be convenient for BF since that's where he currently works and it's just the cutest dang town ever. After our wander, we decided to eat at Grand Central Bakery since it's delicious and BF happened to have a couple of gift cards there to use. I had the Sausage Cheese Biscuit and BF had an awesome turkey sandwich. We lucked out and beat the early lunch crowd by minutes and had our order in before the line stretched out the door.

We headed home and decided that the gym was a must after such a hearty breakfast. After lunch I did more laundry and we hung out with Rudy until it was time to head to Keizer for the Volcanos baseball game. BF's parents got tickets so it was a fun family outing. BF and I ate Volcano Dogs for our "snack" which were absolutely delicous. Something about a hot dog/polish dog at a sporting event is much more satisfying than one at home. When we went home I was so tired and happy from all the good food that I didn't care if I made it to the bed or not, I could have fallen asleep anywhere.

At around 1:10am I woke up out of a dead sleep to an awful screaming rant which I thought was only going to last a minute, but after a 5 minute reprieve it started again. I cannot tell you how horrifying this screaming was. At first, before I started listening and while I was only half aware while still waking up, I thought someone was being murdered. But then I realized that this person was screaming a rage-filled rant to someone else who was only somewhat yelling back. I opened the blinds since it sounded like it was right outside of our window but didn't see anyone and then I realized it was coming from one of the 3rd floor folks who had their windows WIDE OPEN. After a few minutes of trying to decipher what was going on, I slipped my flip flops on and walked outside where I met one of our other neighbors trying to figure out who and what had woken him up so horribly. Apparently a couple was having some sort of issue at 1 in the morning and the best way for them to resolve it was by waking up the whole complex. I tried to go back to bed, but the screaming and door slamming persisted so I called the non-emergency police line to report a domestic dispute. The police were there in no time to help sort out the situation and luckily they only called me to verify the address as they were pulling up and I had no further involvement. The worse part of the whole thing is that there are small children in that apartment. I don't care what you do to yourself, but when you act like an asshole in front of your child I have to draw the line and call for back up.

It took a while for me to settle back down and go to sleep, and even then I only slept restlessly.

Sunday morning was a "rest" day so no gym, but I was in a hyper-motivated state of mind and cleaned the whole house so thoroughly you could have declared it a Clean Room and manufactured chips in it (totally dorky Intel reference). Seriously, every single thing we owned got cleaned. I did some more laundry and then we headed out in the heat of the day to play on my parents' church league co-ed softball team. BF played and I was there for support (I don't really play softball). It didn't feel so bad in the shade, but as the sun moved, my shade disappeared and we were red hot by the end of the game and ready to be back inside.

After softball we had to cool off and change before heading to Chevy's for a dinner with part of BF's extended family. More food! It was delicious as always (wish I could make that salsa!) and afterwards we went to BF's parents house to socialize more with the fam and eat some homemade treats. We went home to rescue the dog from boredom after a while. He got so excited that we were home that he ran circles around us when we walked in the door, drank entirely too much water, and then jumped up on the couch and puked on my sweater and on the couch while I was reading.

I was out cold a few minutes after getting into bed and didn't even wake up to move until this morning.

It's going to be a busy week, I can tell, but probably a good one.

Excuse This "Type A Personality" Rant for a Moment

2011-08-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, but I've got to get it off my chest...

Dear Coworkers and Peers,

If you haven't noticed by now, I do not get paid your salary on top of mine which means that I do NOT do your job, even if you ask nicely. Even if you don't know how to do it. Even if your boss asks me (because they aren't my boss). I know that I do a lot of things and you may be confused to my actual role, but I'm not confused and neither are my managers and I can say no. Oh wait, that's right, I can say no to the things you are asking me to do because I have my own job and my own schedule to keep.

You may also think that some of my job duties are performed well by me and that it would be easy for me to do a similar thing for you. But again, not the case. If something in your department/geography/group needs to be done it's your responsibility to do it. I know I've coordinated similar events to the ones you are supposed to be doing and they were successful, but that doesn't mean that I am responsible for ALL events- only the ones in my department/geography/group.

I try to anticipate what questions you may have and information you may need and neatly compile links, resources and How To's frequently for you to keep and reference so that when it's your turn to do something similar you don't have to start from scratch. I do not have to do this, I'm doing it to be helpful so you don't spend hours researching something the way I had to. I would appreciate it if you actually looked at and read those resources/links/How To's so you don't call or email me incessantly when you are trying to get your projects together and have "Urgent Questions". Again, about 99% of the time your questions have already been answered in one of my communications that you forgot about or deleted.

Another thing that I've not been appreciating is the idea you have about dictating my schedule. A few times recently I have found notes or emails regarding trainings and conference calls that you've volunteered me to lead. I have my own schedule to keep and you do not know it so the hour notice for a training you set up that I'm expected to execute is just plain rude. If there is a need and you all feel that I am the one to lead the charge on a training, etc then how about partnering with me on it and we can collaborate to figure out trainings, times and calls the suite everyone's schedules.

It all boils down to the following:

1. I am not your mom.
2. I cannot read minds.
3. I don't get paid to do your job, you do.
4. Work together and share.
5. If you're not organized it's not my problem. You're an adult.

Regards,

Heather

What Happens in Vegas...

2011-08-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

...happens because of the Food Network.

I'm in sunny Vegas this week for work! Yay, I get to see some summer weather this year, although it's not in Oregon. This week has been pretty packed with meetings so far, but last night we split up into groups by work territory and went to dinner. My group picked Tao, to my delight, for dinner. I had first heard about Tao on the Food Network show, "Best Thing I Ever Ate...". That particular episode featured the Chilean Sea Bass over asparagus from Tao and ever since I've wanted to go. Lucky for me my work peers wanted to go as well.

It was a pretty interesting night because Tao also has an adjoining nightclub so the mix of people there was kind of funny. We were seated and instead of ordering separate dishes, we decided to do a family style 3 course meal. It. Was. Fabulous. Everything we ate I absolutely loved. It was also SPENDY. I will not tell you how much it cost for a group of 7 to eat dinner, but it was almost my 2 week paycheck.

Giant Buddha in the center of the restuarant

Since it was a group dinner we decided to have the dinner served family style in 3 courses instead of everyone ordering separate dishes. The first course was a Kobe beef tartar, a Tuna tartar, and a chicken potsticker. I was hesitant to try to Kobe beef since it is RAW MEAT, however I was pleasantly surprised and truly enjoyed it. The flavor was akin to a very rare steak instead of the bloody-iron taste I exptected. The potstickers and the tuna were excellent as well.

The second course was a sushi and sashimi course. They brought Kobe beef and avocado rolls, and Surf and Turf roll with Kobe beef and assorted fish, and then a shrimp roll with fish. All were fabulous and I would have been happy to eat more of the same for the main course.

The main course was immense. I wasn't expecting that much food and was already pretty full when it came. We were served thinly sliced marinated Kobe beef (I think it was just seared) with shitake mushrooms, pork fried rice, Kung Pao chicken, Thai chicken, Chinese sausage fried rice and Chilean Sea Bass over asparagus. I was in absolute heaven. That Chilean sea bass was like butter. No joke. Every single dish was amazing.

I pulled the waiter aside at one point and let him know that we were also celebrating the promotion of my NEW BOSS, Ryan, and I wanted to have a little something special sent to him at the end of our meal. The wait staff blew me away and brought Ryan a chocolate pudding parfait and a huge tray of special desserts for the table to share, free of charge. There was a giant fortune cookie filled with vanilla and chocolate mousse, coconut ice cream and a fortune for each person at the table, little milk/dark/white chocolate Buddhas, chocolate ganache filled "spring rolls" with citrus dipping sauce and a few other little cookie and chocolate items that I couldn't identify.

I would definitely go back, but I think I can only afford the Chilean Sea Bass and one other item... but totally worth it.

Mini chocolate Buddha... too cute!

The Rudy has The Fleas

2011-08-11T10:30:00.000-07:00

Oh. My. Goodness.

I'm feeling totally guilty and negligent about our little puppy this week because the poor guy has fleas. This is a tragedy and also sending me into panic mode... I all but bug-bombed our home last night.

It started as a typical Wednesday night. BF and I finished eating dinner and sat down on the couch to watch some tv with Rudy before heading to the gym. The dog had been acting super jumpy and aggitated but we couldn't figure out what was going on. Rudy had climbed in between BF and I on the couch and rolled over to have his "tummy rubs" that he loves so much. As we were petting his stomach I noticed a single black dot that started to move. I tried to pinch it out of Rudy's fur, but it was too quick. I quickly jumped up and grabbed a flea comb from Rudy's box of stuff (more on that later) and ran back to comb through his fur. Sure enough I found 3 live fleas! BF told me that Rudy had been scratching his hind-end a lot earlier that morning but he didn't think much of it since we bathe him pretty regularly and give him monthly Frontline treatments from the vet.

We figured that Rudy must have got it from playing in fields of tall grass that we walk through on our evening walks with him. Like I said, he's bathed regularly and given monthly flea treatments. None of the other dogs he plays with have them either, but I still cannot help but feel responsible. He's itchy and uncomfortable and I just feel bad for him.

I immediately ran to the store and bought flea wash and spray for Rudy and carpet and upholstry spray for the house- who KNEW what had been infected. And who knew that flea shampoo, spray and carpet spray would set me back about $40! But I figure it was necessary. We promptly threw Rudy into the tub and soaped him up generously. As he was drying I took the carpet/upholstry flea spray and sprayed Rudy's bed, the couch, all of the areas Rudy like to hang out in and then under our bed because Rudy frequently crawls under there to sleep when he's tired of his own bed.

Rudy getting a bath. This wasn't from last night, but the only pathetic bath picture of him we have during a weekly bathing session.

It became a cleaning frenzy and I stripped our bed and washed all of our sheets, blankets, pillows and comforter with HOT water and a little bleach just in case any had found their way to our bed (even though Rudy is not allowed on the bed you never know... plus, like I said he's frequently under it). Then I started pulling stuff out of corners in our room and dusting/vacuuming EVERTHING. Once I was done with the bedroom and main living areas I took some bug spray and sprayed the perimeter of our place, our porch and around all of our windows (outside, of course).

BF continued on to the gym, but I stayed behind and cleaned... once I get going on a project it's hard for me to break away until I finish! I then moved on to the extra bedroom and started packing up items that BF and I are going to store (seasonal things that are taking up space but that we want to keep for holidays and for winter/cold months).

By the time BF got home I felt much better about our situation. Rudy was still a little itchy but I think all of the fleas are gone or on their death bed.

Rose City 'Till I Die

2011-08-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

BF and I on the Budweiser Balcony with Timber Joey

AHHHHHHH!

Last night I had the wonderful opportunity to take myself and BF to the Portland Timbers vs. LA Galaxy game. Though I support my team through and through, I was a little nervous about how we'd perform against the number one ranked MLS team.

We got to sit in the Budweiser Balcony, which was fully catered so all we had to do was show up with our Timbers pride and enjoy the evening. Before the game and after finding a pretty convenient parking spot, I hit up the Timbers Army merch van to buy a crest shirt since they aren't branded (meaning I will NOT wear an Adi shirt, even if it is to support my favorite team) and since I recently joined the TA and the 107ist organization I figured I sort of needed one anyway. We headed into Jeld Wen stadium to find our seats.

Once we were settled we dug into a barbeque dinner (chicken breast, pulled pork, cole slaw, the works!) and enjoyed the sun, although it did get a bit warm. Once the game started the air was electric and we were lucky enough to be right next to the Timbers Army seating so we could participate in all of the cheers and chants.

About 26 minutes in we scored. It took me a second to realize that we had actually done it! A few minutes later we scored again and then I got so nervous ( I don't know why, it's not like I was playing). I didn't want to be overly confident that we had this game nailed, but it was so hard not to be ecstatic. Our boys did an amazing job and were super aggressive. We had a few more great shots, but nothing else until the second half. We scored again in the 2nd half and I just couldn't believe it; we were 3-0 against the best team in the league! With confidence and energy the Timbers held the Galaxy off and even managed a few more great shots before the game was over.

The crowd was deafening and I was thoroughly enjoying the evening. BF and I stayed and watched Timber Joey give the chainsawed rounds to the scoring members of the team and present them to the crowd. It was a fantastic evening and I am totally addicted to these games!

Nehalem, Pizza and the Importance of a Pillow

2011-08-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

Oregon is beautiful right now. In a way, I'm sort of glad that summer was a little slow to start because usually we are in the middle of heat waves and the only time I feel comfortable is when I'm in a cold shower or in my air conditioned car... but this year not so much.

Over the weekend BF and I took Rudy to Nehalem Bay to camp. We only stayed 1 night, but Rudy had a blast exploring the campsite and running wild on the beach.

Beach Rudy!

He ran himself ragged, which was good because when we got home he was super mellow and just napped the rest of the evening.

We honestly didn't do much in Nehalem. BF and I had decided ahead of time that we didn't want to cook our dinner the first night since it was "cheat meal" night, so we did a little research and landed on a pizza place in Seaside (only 25 miles away) called Angelina's. We called ahead and told them where we were driving from so they wouldn't sit there waiting for us to arrive. It was hands down, the best pizza I've eaten in a long time. Not that I eat a lot of pizza, but you know, DARN GOOD.

The one thing that went awry on our little getaway was that we forgot to bring our pillows. I always forget how important a good pillow is for a good night's sleep. Needless to say we didn't get a lot of restful sleep and woke up with slightly sore/stiff necks and shoulders.

This week should be nice and easy because almost everyone is on vacation until next week. Can we say awesome?

Sometimes Thursday Should Be Friday

2011-07-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

I've been terrible at keeping track of the days this week. Tuesday I thought it was Wednesday for half of the day, and yesterday felt like it should have been a Friday; today, even more so, feels like it should be the end of the work week. I think it's because the summer weather has finally appeared and it feels like it should in July.

I think I'm just anxious to get out of town for some camping. This weekend BF, Rudy and I are heading to Nehalem for a little overnight camp trip. It's not that far and we are only staying one night but it's nice to get out of the house and out of town just for a little while.

Also, I'm not diabetic or pre-diabetic. Thanks to my eye exam we know that now. It wasn't really a concern of mine even though it does run in the family (mom's side is Native American, but I'm convinced that it's not genetic with them but a symptom of their eating habits). Randomly during my eye exam last week the student doing my exam (I usually go to Pacific University's eye clinic) asked if she could test my blood sugar for a research project they are doing in one of her classes. She asked a few questions (like when and what did I eat last, if diabetes ran in the family, took my blood pressure, etc) and then pricked me and my sugar level about 2 hours after eating lunch was a 116. The "normal" blood sugar range for someone without diabetes should be <140, so I think I'm good. I meant to look up the normal range for these things last week after my actual appointment, but kept forgetting. I'd like to thank my mom for not introducing us to sweets and treats until we were out of our toddler years and for always providing healthy foods for us to eat for my good results. Oh, and BF for helping me put together a great nutritional plan a few years ago that included whole grains and less processed food.

Let's hope when I get home today that BF has great news about winning the lottery.

HOT BOX!

2011-07-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

BF and I watched "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and it is now my favorite and most quotable movie. It's pretty safe to say that if it's a Wes Anderson film, I'll like it. It's based off of the lovely Roald Dahl children's book "Fantastic Mr. Fox". I also LOVE Roald Dahl. Very fond childhood memories of reading his books. If you haven't seen or read it, I suggest doing both. It's also a kid-friendly movie other than a little bit of violence (PG rating).

So this week I feel like an absolute bonehead. At work I'm keeping up with the manic pace of things just fine, but at home I'm completely lacking my usual motivation and organizational gusto. I haven't vacuumed, I haven't done any cleaning other than daily dishes (with BF's help, mostly) and I left a load of wet clothes in the wash completely forgotten. When I did remember it (2 days later) I opened the lid cautiously, knowing that I would find a wet mildewy heap of clothes to rewash and that's exactly what I found. I had to rewash the load, on hot with a drop or two of bleach to kill the moldy mess. Lukily, my clothes weren't ruined.

I also did another awesome thing where I miscounted days on the calendar and stopped my birth control almost a FULL WEEK before I was supposed to (how long have I been doing this whole lady-days thing?) so I spent a couple days feeling like complete ass because my body was all "Hormones... what???" until my period finally started. I know that's probably WAY too much information, but that's my week.

Really looking forward to camping this weekend!

The Benefits of Mini Vacation

2011-07-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

As I said I would, I took a few days off of work. BF and I didn't really go anywhere or do much, but it was nice to have a few days to sleep in and not answer phone calls or emails.

We kicked off my mini vacation by seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II on Friday morning at 12:01am. It. Was. Awesome. They gave us 3D glasses shaped like Harry Potter's glasses to keep! It was adorable. I'm a little sad that it was the end to such a great series of movies, but I cannot wait to own it and watch it whenever I want! Sort of like the books... sometimes I'll just pick one up and start reading all over again.

Anyway...

It was really hard the first day of no work (last Friday) to turn off my "work" self; I was buzzing around the house getting irritated that I wasn't getting everything done. Then I sort of chilled out, got my house clean, didn't drink anything caffeinated and felt more relaxed- a clean house seems to have that effect.

Friday night was softball as usual and then the weekend was pretty much a blur. At one point we had a BBQ at our place with BF's parents and sister and my parents. It was a tight fit in our small place, but the food was excellent and the company was nice, too.

We also went to Corvallis to see a Corvallis Knights baseball game. Our friend Sean is on the team and it happened to be his birthday so we watched the game, ate hotdogs, got gelato and then ate burgers afterwards to celebrate. Because it was his birthday, we let Sean pick where to eat and he DID NOT pick Block 15 so BF and I were a little sad, but the food we did have was pretty good so really no complaints there. We'll just have to go back to Block 15 another time.

Monday I had an eye appointment and found out that my prescription has stayed the same for 3 years now... that's pretty incredible! No new glasses since mine are serving me well, but I may go back and pick out a pair to have as back up since my back up pair are getting a little beat up from travel.

Yesterday BF and I saw a movie IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY with all of the old retired folks. It's funny to see what type of people are seeing movies at noon on a Wednesday. We saw "Horrible Bosses" and it was us and two other older couples in the theater. I forgot they were there half the time and was laughing loudly- Charlie Day is one of my favorite people.

Today was my first day back at work and I even got there early in anticipation of the pile of stuff waiting for me, but it wasn't that bad. I got yelled at when I ran a quick errand by a crazy old European man in an Adidas soccer jersey for getting a plastic bag for my purchase. I told him thank you for the unsolicited comment regarding my purchase and that I would be reusing the bag at home (which I frequently do when I RARELY get a plastic bag)* and that he could take a plastic bag and put it somewhere unmentionable. I really do hate it when people think they know better than me and I know I was a bit rude, but I made the checkout lady laugh and I felt much better. Reminder to all: you may mean well, but sometimes you have NO IDEA what other people are doing so you should just stay out of it. That's my PSA for the week.

Anyway, it's great having a super short work week (tomorrow's Friday!) and I'm already looking forward to the weekend again.

*For future reference, BF and I rarely get plastic bags at the grocery store preferring to use our reusable fabric bags instead. When we do get a plastic bag, we keep it for future use or we return them to the recycling container at our local grocery store set up specifically to collect these bags.

What's Another Word for Overwhelmed?

2011-07-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

It's about all I can do to make it through a work day this week. I'm freakin' sad about losing my boss to the dark side (as I call them), but it's a good promotion for her. I've got a to-do list several miles long and I don't have the energy to tackle half of it. I feel mean because people keep asking me to do extra stuff and I just don't have time to be my nice, normal, accomodating self. Maybe I'm just biding my time until Thursday when I start my mini- vacation.

People keep asking how I'm doing and I feel like I'm on repeat saying, "Overwhelmed!", but that's truly how I feel right now.

We needed to have hired my replacement 2 weeks ago because it's to the point now where I won't even have time to train this person when we do hire them.

Enough complaining.

I've got Friday through next Wednesday off and I'm TURNING OFF my email and work phone. I started sending advanced warning that I would be out of the office "so don't call me or email me because I WILL NOT get back to you until next Thursday", but we know how much attention people pay to anything so that's why I'm literally not opening my work email at all and I'm putting a greeting on my phone that says "I'm gone for a few days so only leave a message if it's important and not an emergency... if it's an emergency call 911 because I will not be checking my messages". I have to be that blunt sometimes.

It'll be lovely not to have to respond to anything for a few days.

It gets even better because BF bought us pre-sale tickets to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II in 3D!!!! So I'm kicking off my vacation by taking our friends Kyle and Kate shopping at the employee store and then watching HP at 12:01 on Friday morning. Then I'll sleep in, go to a nice lunch with our Admin Group from work and eat some Mexican food. Friday night will be softball as always and then Saturday is sleeping in, haircut and a baseball adventure.

So I'm not totally into baseball because no one gets in bloody fights and it's sort of slow to watch, however one of the boys from BF's softball team was contracted to play with the Corvallis Knights this summer. We are headed down to Corvallis on Saturday afternoon with a lot of the guys on BF's current softball team to watch a Knights game. And then we are eating at Block 15 which is BF and my favorite place to eat of all time.

Sunday we are planning on having the family over for a BBQ, so I have to figure out how everyone will fit in our little apartment, but I'm sure we'll make it work.

I have no plans for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday so I think I'll end up doing stuff around the house and maybe finding a storage space for our extra stuff that doesn't have a home in our apartment. It's all useful stuff, but seasonal things I'd like to keep can't be displayed all year, and definitely can't be taking up our extra bedroom/office space either. All that clutter and boxes stresses me out.

Is it Thursday yet?

More Like May, Really...

2011-07-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

What in the world is happening? Is it climate change? Where has my summer gone?

So it's the second week of July and the weather here is more like end-of-May weather meaning mid seventies and partly cloudy. We had a few good days of 80+ degrees and sun, but only a few and it's JULY. If I didn't love Portland so much, I'd move.

Yes, it's July, which means I had a full weekend of Mom's birthday stuff and Independence Day celebrations, sans BF. BF was in Oklahoma attending a family reunion with his parents and sister- one that I was invited to but didn't attend since there's no way I could get away with missing my mother's birthday... which, coincidentally is on the 4th of July.

Friday was nice because we got to sleep in, so sleep in we did. When I finally did get up I think we went to the gym but I don't remember. Then we cleaned and ran errands and went to BF's softball game. Saturday we got up sort of early since BF had to finish packing and get to the airport. Once he left, I went back to bed! Once I was ready to be up and active, I packed up the dog and headed to my parents' house. We wandered down to the Saturday Market in Hillsboro where my dad has a booth selling hand carved wood items. We hung out there and snacked on some awesomely sweet fresh local strawberries and my mother bought fruit, bee pollen and hand-dipped candies. We mostly hung around on Saturday afternoon and played with Rudy- he had a blast.

Sunday I got up early and went to church with my mom since my dad was at another market and couldn't go with her. It was a great service with a special guest musician who was amazing. After that I took Rudy to my parent's and took my mom shopping for her birthday. We headed to Woodburn and it was PACKED. There was hardly a place to park in the overflow lots, and I should have realized it was going to be super busy since there were some crazy Independence Day weekend sales. We didn't get anything super exciting- I stocked up on underwear and socks (WOOHOO!) and my mom bought some pajamas. We are so wild!

Monday was the big day, so we hung out with my mom, ate an awesome grilled dinner and headed downtown to see the fireworks at the waterfront. I love fireworks, but I hate it when the general public has access to them... there seemed to be so many accidents and fires that night! I was nervous about how Rudy would do since he's never been around fireworks and we didn't get any puppy sedatives for him, but he did ok.

We left him at home as usual but I put his comfy bed in his kennel so he could hide in there if he got too scared and we shut the doors so he couldn't escape the yard if he got really freaked out- I know that sometimes pets run away during the 4th because they are so afraid of the commotion! When we got home he was nowhere to be found, I was calling and calling him and finally he crawled out from behind my parents couch! I didn't think he could fit back there, but he did! He wasn't shaking and seemed to have been asleep so I think he was ok. He really likes small, dark, cozy areas (like under our bed which is only a few inches off the ground) so I'm not surprised that he found little spot at my parents house.

Tuesday it was back to work, which isn't bad but really I should have taken a week of vacation instead. But since I didn't I've been at the office all week trying to do my old job (until we get a replacement hired) AND my new job which is starting to stress me out a bit. I left work yesterday with a terrible migraine which I can only attribute to stress because my neck and shoulders were SO TIGHT that by lunch time I didn't think I would make it home. I've requested a week off starting at the end of next week after the Harry Potter premiere so that will help.

Anyway, BF came back from Oklahoma on Wednesday at 2am. I was worried that he wouldn't make it back to Portland at all because they had a layover in Phoenix and there was a 70 mile wide dust storm there! The airport shut down for a few hours to let the storm pass and the dust settle (literally) and then they were off.

This weekend BF's softball team has a tournament to play and our friends Brad and Nicole are coming up from Corvallis- which means I need to rush home and clean up the extra bedroom! It should be a fun weekend and I'm planning on lots of picture taking.

Wednesday Catch Up, and Oil Oil Everywhere

2011-06-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

What happened to me?

It seems like meetings and events all happen in waves at work so I have a couple of weeks to recover before the next wave hits!

Two weeks ago we had a whole slew of folks in town from some of our new stores for training, so that week was a beast and last week we had an offsite meeting at the Oregon coast! I'm definitely not complaining because we lucked out and got some fantastic weather and it's way better than being in my office all week (although, I have a pretty nice office so I can't complain there either).

Last week one of my groups traveled to Cannon Beach where we had 3 days of meetings and stayed at the Surfsand Resort and Hotel. Here is the view from my hotel-room front porch (really, it was more like a little apartment than a hotel room).

It looks a little gray, but it was every morning and it always brightened up just after breakfast.

After our meetings were done, I stayed on the coast and BF brought Rudy and we went camping at Cape Lookout. I was too occupied trying to fit my work stuff AND camping stuff in the car and forgot to bring my good camera, so I only took a few pics with my phone. Total fail, but next time I'll bring it!

We met down at Cape Lookout State Park on Friday afternoon and set up camp. When I arrived (BF beat me because I got stuck in Hwy 101 construction traffic) BF and Rudy were sitting in the sun reading (and Rudy was napping, of course) and poor BF was red as a lobster. 1 hour in the sun and he was burnt! Lesson learned; BF needs sunscreen before he goes outside. Anyway, we set up camp and grilled some burgers before we took a leisurely walk on the beach. My parents met us there as well and camped a couple spots down the way from us and it was so nice to have them there!

Saturday BF and I woke up early and had some breakfast, and then climbed right back into the tent and slept some more. It was so nice to not have to do anything. When we did finally wake up we decided to walk some of the trails in the state park. We walked down the North Trail of Cape Lookout SP which is about 2.5 miles up this ridge, about halfway to the tip of the cape. Part way up the ridge we saw what looked to be a paraglider coming right for us. Really he wasn't, but he was so close just drifting next to the ridge... it was so cool. We used BF's phone to snap a couple pics that I'll have to get and post. The rest of the day was really laid back and we just hung around the campsite and ate. I highly recommend it.

Sunday we had to pack up and head home since I had work on Monday and BF is working at a week-long school camp as a teacher. I forgot how exhausting camping can be! All I wanted to do was nap when we got home, but really we cleaned and did laundry and went grocery shopping, then gave our stinky beach dog a bath. We didn't get too all of our chores, but by 9pm we didn't have the energy to finish anything else.

This week I've been playing catch-up at work and also working on plans for a few upcoming meetings.

We have one meeting in August that will be in Las Vegas. BF has never been to Vegas, so I'm hoping to fly him out after the meeting is over and we can spend a day or two there just exploring and experiencing it. It's going to be HOT, but luckily Nevada is all about AC.

I am also starting plans for a meeting this fall in Victoria, BC! I LOVE Canada and am so excited to be able to (hopefully) go there for a few days with work. I think we'll only be there 2.5 days, but still. Awesome.

Besides all of that I have to figure out how to get olive oil out of my carpet. Ugh. Can I just say that I'm not really a fan of carpet outside of the bedroom anyway? If I had my way the whole house would have wood and tile floors (when BF and I get a house it will have wood and tile floors... and if it doesn't, it will quickly be remedied).

Anyway, last night BF came home with a migraine and took a nap and then went to bed. Since I knew we weren't going to be hanging out, I used the time to get some errands taken care of and some home stuff done. I ran to Home Depot and bought myself an awesome Ryobi 12V electric cordless drill/driver. It's freaking awesome. I've been asking for power tools for years now for Christmas and my birthday but I don't think people were taking me seriously, so in the midst of trying to install our window AC unit, I realized I needed a bracket and also a DRILL! I came home and was finishing up all of my little projects and then decided around 10pm that I should call it a day and go to bed. I went into the kitchen to put some things away and when I reached into our pantry to put the huge bag of baking soda back where it belongs I accidentally knocked a completely FULL, new bottle of olive oil off the shelf and onto the carpet. At first I didn't think much of it because... CARPET! Is SOFT! Right? No, that bottle shattered and sent tiny glass shards not only all over the carpet in the dining room but into the kitchen as well. Trying not to impale myself on any of them, I jumped over the mess to grab some shoes before I started cleaning up.

We were on our LAST roll of paper towels (I've vowed to try and be as paperless as possible) so I used that to blot up as much of the oil as possible from the carpet. I was lucky that about half of the bottle spilled into the kitchen where there is laminate flooring, not carpet so only about 1/2 of the bottle went into the carpet. I went about blotting and picking out pieces of glass for about 30 minutes. Once I got up as much oil as I could I Googled "How to clean olive oil out of carpet effectively" and the advice I got was to blot up as much as possible with paper products (newspaper, paper bags, etc), then use corn starch to absorb what I couldn't get, and then use dawn dish soap and warm water to scrub the area and blot until I got it all up.

I'm still at the "blot it up with paper stage". I blotted and blotted and blotted (we always save our paper bags to reuse, so that was lucky as well) and finally went to bed around 11pm with the last of the paper towels and paper bags in layers over the area with a heavy box on top to help it absorb oil. I changed the papers twice before leaving for work this morning and I'm sure I'll be blotting more when I get home. Then I'll have to dish soap it (but I have to go buy dish soap since BF and I use castile soap and soaps made from veggie oils and essential oils that don't always cut through greasey, oily messes) and blot it until I feel I can let it go. This may be the ONE case in which I regret buying something in a glass container! The upside is that my hands are so soft today!

Happy End of June! It's almost July 4th!

How To Be Good At Life

2011-06-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

1. Be Organized.
2. Be Honest
3. Be Punctual
4. Be Polite
5. Work Hard
6. Play Hard

I'm going to go back to school and get a PhD and teach college courses on how to not fail at life.

I think this needs to happen. If you've had the week I've had (and it's only Tuesday) you may experience that about 50%* of Americans aren't very good at life and I don't know how they survive.

I'll explain later.

*I made that statistic up, but it's my opinion.

... And We'll Travel the Countryside and Sing in a Family Band...

2011-06-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

OOOOHHHHH my goodness, I've found a television show that I now am so completely addicted to it's insane- and I'm not much of an avid TV watcher. I sometimes like the news on for background noise in the morning so I can hear the weather and traffic, but I get a little antsy sitting too long in front of the TV.

Anyway, last night BF and I were just exhausted. He's in the last few days of teaching 1st grade and the end of the school year is hectic. I've had busy times at work and things are just ramping up as we continue through June. We didn't feel very motivated to get out and do much or go to the gym, so we ran our necessary errands and plopped down on the couch with the dog to veg out.

Flipping through the channels I saw a word that caught my eye and without reading the rest of the title or any of the show info I selected it. That word was "Gypsy" and if you've been living under a rock like I have (or just not a big television watcher) you may have missed a little show called "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding". It's a show from the UK and it's enthralling.

I cannot even describe to you what happens in this show because it SO MUCH MORE than wedding stuff. It's a peek into the lives of a group of people I didn't even know existed in the world anymore. There's really no politically correct way to explain them, so here's my attempt at describing this show and this group - my apologies if anyone is offended, NOT my intentions at all.

Here in the United States we are familiar with "white trash". We are also familiar with all of the culturally diverse groups that have immigrated here over the years. Then we have a phenomenon in which older, usually retired couples purchase RV's and travel around the USA staying in State Parks and campgrounds. Take all these groups, put them in a blender, add some hard to decipher accents and you've got this show. At first glance, the "travellers" remind me of what some may call "white trash"; they have flashy, not always matching taste in clothing, cars, hairstyles, furniture yet they don't live in traditional home. Most live in trailers and RV's or mobile homes but I don't really understand the land-ownership thing. Some say they own the land they live on, but then it's confusing because how can the towns/villages/cities kick them off of land that they rightfully own? There may be zoning laws, etc that I have no idea about that are involved... sorry for the sidetrack. To summarize, a lot of the "Travellers" or "Gypsy" settlements get buldozed down if the people don't vacate them. They (the travellers) say it's because they aren't liked and understood... I didn't hear any reasoning from the other side...

Anyway, so you have these folks running around with prom dresses and mullets and neon high heels on in hot pink limosines but the surprising thing about them is how religiously/morally conservative they are. A lot them are Catholic in some respect and they don't curse (one girl on the show was adamant that she would NEVER EVER curse in front of a man because it was so vulgar), they don't believe in pre-marital sex or living together before marriage, they take part in first communion, they reference prayer and the like in most conversations, etc. It feels a little bipolar- what I mean is that I find it odd that they take part in first communion and then all of the little girls are dressed up in bright, flashy, sometimes and revealing dresses at age 6 or 8 and have a party the likes of a rave, dancing around like adult pop stars. Not that I'm judging... just trying to paint a picture for you.

Apart from all of the big weddings, parties, etc (they do EVERYTHING big, like Texas) I was really interested in their actual day to day activities. The men work, usually very hard in trade work and the likes and the women usually stay home and keep house. Most of the living spaces were immaculately kept and the amount of effort they put into things was amazing- you could see that they truly cared about their kids, family and community.

I was most excited by one wedding in particular where the Bride and Groom hired an owl handler to have his owl swoop down during the ceremony and deliver the rings! You now know what I'm going to do because it was SO AWESOME.

So we watched this show for a few hours (thank you TV marathons) learning about this community of people and the way they live. I'll definitely be watching more.

Friday Last...

2011-06-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

What I've Been Up To

2011-05-31T11:30:00.000-07:00

It seems like I haven't had a second to collect my thoughts for a coherent post lately. And I think today will be the only day that I have the time and mind-space to do so this week.

Last week was work-busy and life-busy as we had all sorts of things going on (in both departments). At work I found out that I will be taking over partial duties and my job is being hybridized to include this partial job, along with completely new duties that have yet to be hammered out so I'm not 100% clear on what I'll be doing going forward other than what I'm already doing. On that note, we decided that since I'll be taking on more at work, some of my other duties should be handled by someone other than me and that I can just manage those duties through another admin. I'm now actively looking for someone to take over these duties permanently, so it's nice to know that soon I'll have a more manageable To Do list at work... once we find and hire the right person! Not only is that going on but I've got 3 BIG meetings this week, 1 big one to plan at the end of the month, and 2 relatively large conference to plan, coordinate, etc later this summer (but that I know if I don't start now I'll be behind when they come around).

At home we've got the dog, upcoming travel and camping trips and concerts to prepare for and the usual diet-exercise routine that takes up our time.

This past Friday I took my good friend Mark to lunch before I made him sit through 4 hours of boredom and trivia while I sweated and clenched my jaw in pain- he was a trooper. He also photo- documented most of the afternoon, which was awesome. What was I doing for 4 hours? I'll show you later tonight via Mark's awesome photo diary of the day.

Saturday was awesome since we got to sleep in. BF went to the gym while I thoroughly cleaned the whole house. I cannot tell you how much I LOVE a clean house. Even if it wasn't that messy to begin with, just knowing it's all freshly washed and waxed and dusted and vacuumed is amazing. We had a lazy day and hung out watching movies and playing with the dog the rest of the day.

Oh, then there was Sunday. It wasn't a bad day, it was just that we had to get up the same time we do for WORK. But for good reason. BF's little sister graduated from Linfield with her BSN! So awesome. So we packed up for the day, dropped Rudy off at my parents' house, picked up BF's sister's BF and headed to McMinnville. The forecast was sunny and warm so I wore a sundress and sweater and called it good. The graduation was outside and although the weather was ok, it was a little too cold and I ended up walking back to the car and grabbing our picnic blanket from the back and wrapping myself in it.

You guys, graduations are boring. Everyone and their mom has some sort of speech to give and they all allude to how they know we hate having to sit through them, but they continue to talk... and talk and talk and talk. Really all we want to see is our friend/sibling/family member, etc walk across the stage and get their hard earned degree. It's even longer for a BSN because after the graduation ceremony there's a pinning ceremony where you watch the BSN Recipients get their nursing pins- which is AWESOME, but also means MORE lame speeches and more time sitting and wondering when you'll eat next and if your foot always falls asleep when your legs are crossed or if you never noticed because you never sit for this long and maybe you'll die like this because this dang speech keeps going and did anyone ever actually die from boredom?

I digress. Anyway, we are so proud of BF's little sister who is applying for a few jobs and a few hospital internships in the Portland area so fingers crossed for her! She'll make a great nurse.

We did get to go out for a lovely lunch and I had a western omlette that about killed me it was so great- why don't I make awesome omlettes at home like that?

Sunday night we had dinner at my parents' house since my sister just moved back from Colorado (yay!). We had bbq ribs, pasta salad, corn on the cob and grilled veggies. I could hardly move afterwards so I took a food coma nap on the couch.

Yesterday was Memorial Day and we did pretty much nothing. We did go to BF's parents' house for an awesome steak dinner and watched the Da Vinci Code. And of course I ran to REI with my 20% coupon and bought BF and I a new tent (click here if you want to see it in all of it's glory!).

So that was my weekend in a pretty big nutshell.

I'm around but I'm not sure what this week's going to look like once things start going today so who knows when you'll hear from me again...

Music So Good You Can't NOT Listen to It

2011-05-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

It feels like genuinely good art, music, films, etc are few and far between these days. I sometimes wax poetic about my middle and high school days when I would buy a album and listen to the whole thing, start to finish, for days on end until I knew every line in every song. Fond memories of the days when I could listen to an entire album without skipping a single song are recurrent in my mind these days because I'm not sure why I compulsively hit the forward button on my iPod and skip a song (or multiple) on most albums. It begs the questions- 1) Are bands losing sight of what good music is and what makes up a complete album? 2) Have we become so ADD that we cannot wait it out and see if a song it good?

No and No are my answers. It seems that while the answers in some band's and people's cases may be Yes, in general no. This revelation came to me a couple weeks ago when the Foo Fighters released their newest album, Wasting Light.

I can't even begin to describe how this album made me feel; song after song I was lifted closer and closer to my utopian remembrance of what a "good album" is. I didn't skip any songs; I find each one has it's own likeability and qualities that make them listenable.

I should stop here and say that if you aren't a fan of this type of music, you probably won't get what I'm saying or like the album at all. So there's my caveat.

But really, this album brought me back to all that is good in my mind. There are a range of songs on here, from the throaty yells and driving tempos that Dave Grohl is famous for to the melodious ballads you want to slow dance to with your prom date. Seriously, it gives me those fuzzy-framed flashbacks when I listen to it. The lyrics are genuine and unpretentious and relatable. The music pulls you in and makes you feel the lyrics. Also, you can sing along to most of the songs, even if you are a little tone deaf.

So despite being INSANELY busy at work and in life right now, I'm enjoying this album daily.

It's Finally Here!

2011-05-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

Spring has finally decided to arrive in Oregon and it is beautiful. Last week I was freezing and cold and wet and this week I'm wearing skirts and sandals- huzzah!

I'm having a difficult time working and staying inside; but I'm also still having a difficult time with allergies so I'm torn about being outdoors. As of yesterday I have a lovely rash on my face that looks like little pimples. It's awesome... but I'm not going to complain becuase it's in the 70's! And I don't have to wear a coat! And I can open the windows and get fresh air in the house!

This week has gone by pretty fast (can't believe it's Thursday!) and I'm hoping the weekend isn't so fast so I can enjoy it. It's my month to plan BF's and my date so we are having it this Saturday. I would tell you what it is but then it will spoil the surprise for BF.

I also get to see my lovely friend Dani this week! She lives in Utah so we don't get to see each other or talk as often as we'd like to. I'm excited to see what she's been up to and how her travels to Brazil were.

I'm off to plan some outdoor adventures!

Update

2011-05-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

There are SO MANY things going on I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll make a list:

1. My allergies are trying to kill me. Seriously. They are SO BAD this year I have an almost constant sinus headache/itchy nose/runny nose/etc. The Zyrtec is not working so I'm going to switch back to the Claritin. We'll see what happens. I'm doing the Neti pot, but that doesn't help with the itchy eyes and eczema. I need a bubble to live in for a while.

2. Last week we had meetings for work, most of which I facilitated/ran so it was a BUSY week. I didn't get much sleep so on Friday I woke up and felt like death and only worked at the office for 3 hours before coming home with my laptop and taking a nap while somewhat monitoring work email. Hey, it still counts as work if I'm responding to emails. I still feel like I'm catching up on sleep.

3. I have about a bajillion meetings coming up that I need to plan and organize. I should just be a meeting planner, really. Who knows when I'm going to have time to get this done. It'll get done, it just may be closer to the actual meeting dates than I would like.

4. I'm trying to get organized for the garage sale. The more I think about it, the more I tempted to just dump it all off at Goodwill. Is it worth spending a day sitting outside selling and haggling over stuff? Maybe, maybe not.

5. Purging forgotten areas of the house. Each day or two I find a new place in the house to organize. I've been neglecting the hall closet and extra bathroom because I have a couple boxes of beauty products that I don't use and that I just need to get rid of- but I don't want to sit and go through them all, and I NEED to. Do I need 50 shades of nail polish? No because really I only use the same 4 colors regularly if I have my fingers/toes done at all. Seriously, it all needs to go.

6. Still having crazy dreams. The last one involved an alligator playing with one of Rudy's chew toys.

So now that those are out of the way...

What's going on with our crap weather? Where the heck is Spring? I feel completely jipped, this is March weather, not middle of May weather. I demand a refund!

Still daydreaming about camping and hiking until it dries out and we can get outside.

Apparently I'm Great With a Sword

2011-05-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

I've been having some strange dreams lately, an no, I'm not eating before I go to bed.

I have a past of strange, vivid dreams and even dreams that almost exactly lay out a future day or event that I will live. I've gotten used to it, but I've gone through a pretty long run without these dreams.

I woke up on Saturday after having quite the gruesome dream involving myself, a sword and a nasty ex relative of mine. Here's what happened (WARNING, it's violent):

For some reason my mom and I went back to NY to visit family. We were staying in what was supposed to be my grandparents house (but it's not because it looked nothing like it). Anyway, we took my grandparents out for dinner and shopping and when we returned we noticed that the house and been broken into and a few things stolen. We were in the process of cleaning it all up when my mom, grandma and I heard a noise coming from the other end of the house. I walked through the mostly dark living room and started entering a hallway when I noticed this figure slowly walking towards me. The figure came into the dim light of the living room and I recognized a former uncle of mine (not blood related, but related by marriage, and then they got a divorce). As he was moving towards me I noticed that he had a fire poker in his hand from the fireplace set. I turned and ran as fast as I could to the kitchen and yelled for my mom and grandma to run outside and call for help. Quickly I grabbed at the knife block for any available knife and headed back to the living room. On the way I noticed a decorative sword on a plaque and heaved it off of it's setting just in case I needed more than the kitchen knife (Let's pause here- a decorative sword at one of my relatives' house is really not out of place if you know them). I reached where the man stood waiting for me and waited for him to do something, anything. I few seconds passed as he looked at me creepily and then he swung the poker in my direction. He missed and I took the opportunity to jab at him with the kitchen knife. I realized in that second that the sword would serve me better, so I let the knife fall and began swinging away with the dull sword. I knicked the man a couple times and finally landed a good blow across his chest. As he was reacting I drew the blade across his neck. The cut was shallow, my mind screamed at me to finish him before he could finish me so I did. I plunged the sword directly into his throat and wrenched it sideways. His eyes bulged and flashed wildly around for a second before he fell to the ground. I ran back to the kitchen and out the back door to find my mom and grandma. Then I woke up.

Here's what I find so odd about this dream:

1. I haven't thought of this uncle in ages. Since he's no longer part of the family we don't talk to him or even about him.

2. Usually in dreams I don't feel so in control or capable of doing much. It's that slow dream-run and weak punches that are the norm in my dreams so running so quickly and landing such effective, powerful strikes against someone felt strange. Good, but still foreign.

3. It's so violent. I don't watch a lot of violent or scary films and I definitely don't have a lot (or really any) violence in my life.

Of course, when things are odd I try to research them. A lot of times "they" say that objects and events in your dreams are symbolic so I looked up a couple of the key objects online and in my dream dictionary and here is what I found:

A). Sword- To dream that you are wielding a sword, represents your strength, ambition, competitive nature decisiveness and willpower. You are looking to hold a position of prestige, authority, and distinction. Alternatively, the sword may be seen as a phallic symbol and thus represent masculine power. (taken from DreamMoods.com)

B). Killing- To dream that you kill someone, indicates that you are on the verge of losing your temper and self-control. Consider the person you have killed and ask yourself if you feel any rage towards him or her in your waking life. Your dream may be expressing some hidden anger. Alternatively, you may be trying to kill an aspect of yourself that is represented by the person killed. Identify the characteristics of this person and ask yourself which of these qualities you are trying to put an end to.

I also looked this one up in my dream dictionary and it said close to the same thing.

I'm pondering over this and I have no idea.

I've Got a Fever...

2011-05-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

.. and the only prescription is more cowbell... or getting outdoors. Either way. Some call it Spring Fever.

Oh you guys, with everything that's been going on, I just want to take a week off of work and go hiking and camping. The weather's starting to get nice and I'm visitng REI.com and the brick and mortar REI by our house as often as possible. I currently have my REI wish list open in another tab. If I bought everything at once from my wish list without coupons or using my dividend it would cost me a whopping $1,084.40. I'm glad I don't have their credit card because boy howdy would I spend that, no joke.

A HUGE "Thank You" goes out to a wonderful friend who sent me an REI giftcard for my birthday/thank you gift so I used it towards the purchase of some new Keen hiking boots (click here if you want to see which ones). I like 'em lightweight and these babies are perfect. I've already been wearing them on long walks with the puppy and BF to break them in.

The weather has been downright pleasant, but today took a turn back toward winter (rain, wind, cooler temps) which has put me in a bad mood. I'm so over it, I would do almost anything for some sun and NO RAIN.

After cleaning out old stuff from storage I realized that I had some items that I didn't want to donate, but that I no longer need so I'm planning on having a garage sale in combination with my parents- as they, too, have an abundance of nicer but not needed items. I'm planning on using the earnings from that towards the purchase of a new tent and some new camping/hiking/backpacking supplies.

I don't know if I can hold out until then, but I'm feeling sort of torn because this kinda goes against my "nothing new" challenge... but then again, it's for camping/hiking/backpacking experiences that we will have as a family (BF, Rudy, parents, etc).

Quite the conundrum (not really).

Keeping my fingers crossed that the forecast is wrong and that we get more days like yesterday in the coming week!

Just Tell Me Yogurt Is Good For My Hair...

2011-04-26T09:41:00.000-07:00

It's going to be a day (or week, depending on how you look at it).

Besides fighting the PMS Monster (which is a hefty task in itself) I've got a metric ton of stuff on my shoulders to take care of this week. I won't bore you with the details, but I'll be at work early and staying late pretty much each day this week.

I got upset this morning, and I totally blame the PMS-M and my To Do List anxiety, because I didn't want to take the dog out because I was running a bit late. I feel like an ass, and BF, being the good BF he is, took the dog out before he left so I wouldn't have to. I had to leave a few minutes early so I could stop by the store and get sodas for a work lunch today, and then I had to lug said beverages from the parking lot into the building and wind my way around the halls to the conference room... all the while cutting off circulation to my hand because the bag of 4 liters of soda was a little heavy. My feet hurt, my sinuses are plugged up and I'm itchy everywhere because the pollen is out and drifting around.

After getting all sweaty bringing stuff inside the office this morning, I sat down at my desk to realize that a package I was supposed to get yesterday had NEVER ARRIVED. It had slipped my mind to check on it before I left because I was busy worrying about today. The problem is, the package contains booklets I had made up for a presentation TODAY so I need them, you guessed it, TODAY! So I'm trying to track down that package, which, according to the tracking number I was given, has already been delivered. I can tell you that it is not so.

While getting some work done at my computer I decided it was time for my morning snack so I opened my daily yogurt and dug in. A moment later I felt something slimy by my collar bone and looked down. Somehow I had managed to drip cherry yogurt into my hair. Not a little drip, but a giant blob. I quickly tried to tissue it out of my hair but because there was so much of it I ended up dabbing what I could and hoping that the wet hair would dry quickly. It did, but it's sort of crunchy now. I'm futily trying to comb it out. Perhaps yogurt is good for your hair, like bananas or avocado?

Please just say yes.

Why BF Will Never Marry Me, I Think

2011-04-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

It was a pretty typical weekend: 5K race, house warming party for friends, errands and grocery shopping, house cleaning and laundry, Easter meal with family and naps. It was pretty fantastic. I shaved almost 4 minutes off of my 5K time, and I think last weekend's 8k helped with that. It makes me want to keep racing!

During the course of the weekend we were entrapped into multiple conversations regarding nuptials between BF and myself. I've mentioned this before but I think people assume that we will get married because we live together and bought a dog together (which I guess is almost like having a child together- or at least almost as expensive). Not to say that it isn't the long term plan with us, because I'm pretty sure it is, but you know, it's not on our radar at this very second (mostly because our radar is filled up with finding BF a permanent classroom teaching job for next year and also getting our hiking/camping gear ready to go for the summer and also what we are going to eat each week). Anyway, our good friend K&K got married a few weeks ago so it's on their minds and I'm of the school of thought that like begets like therefore our married friends want all of their friends to get married, too, if they aren't yet. It's just what happens. So our weekend conversations started with topics like "How was the honeymoon", "Your pictures were gorgeous", "Really nice weather we're having" and moved to "BF, when you are shopping for rings you should shop around but go to Kasab Jewelers because they have the best selections and also they have more options for the guys"...

...

Ok. BF and I just sort of blinked and changed the subject, but inevitably the conversation would land back at, "when you guys get married..."

Grandparents don't always (EVER) censor themselves and so we ended up in a similar situation on Sunday for Easter dinner. BF's grandfather, in the middle of a conversation about what the rest of the family was up to, looked at my hand and interrupted the conversation with this, "H, I don't see a RING on your finger. What's going on there?"

To which BF gave a nervous laugh and Grandma chimed in with, "When there's news I'm sure we'll hear about it, right?"

Awesome.

BF is adorable and assured me that there wasn't really a hesitation with ME, just with timing right now, which I haven't questioned up to this point because I feel pretty secure in our relationship and I'm happy. But then we were sitting on the couch watching a movie, hanging out with the dog last night when BF glanced over at my laptop screen. I was ordering some lady supplies and started explaining A) that I was ordering feminine supplies B) why I was ordering them online C) that they were washable, reusable lady supplies (Luna Pads for when I don't want to use my Diva Cup) and D) why that was important to me. I then launched into a short explanation of why it's frustrating to me that they don't carry entire lines of this stuff at the stores, only a few select varieties and that you cannot get them at just ANY store because most stores carry what's easy and not what's best.

I looked over to a blank stare. So THIS is why guys are hesitant to commit to this for a lifetime.

But really, I know that BF loves me and I love him.

BF- I promise to stop talking to you about feminine products. I'm glad that you put up with me, and I'm glad you can handle all of the silly questions people ask you and the pressure they can sometimes make you feel. Just know that I'm not worried and I love every single moment we spend together.

Heavy

2011-04-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

After I ran the Bridge to Brews 8k last weekend, I found out some sad news. My uncle (mom's side) was in the hospital in a medically induced coma.

It wasn't a shock that he was in the hospital at all because he's been struggling with health problems the past few years anyway, but the prognosis didn't look great at that moment and it was the start of a very long week.

A little background may be in order.

My mom comes from a very large family, I believe it's something like 12 children total, umpteen grandchildren from them, and I think around 17 great grand children for my grandparents. My mom grew up in upstate NY, near Buffalo. Every sibling is COMPLETELY different and so going back to visit is always a trip. Most of them live in that area still, but my mom lives here in the Pacific NW, and so does one of her older brothers, Jim, who lives about an hour and a half South of us in the Sweet Home/Albany area. She also has one sister who lives in Oklahoma.

Jim is the uncle/brother that lives up here near us. He is one of the sweetest, gentlest people you have ever met with a heart of pure gold. He will help out anyone in need and I've never heard him say a mean or harsh word in my life. He has a great sense of humor and is always laughing about something. A few years back he was having trouble with his lungs. He got it checked out but found out that he had a condition in which the sacs in your lungs gradually harden so they no longer hold or release air the way they should (the name escapes me right now). The doctors told him that depending on how the diseased progressed, he probably didn't have very long. That was almost 6 years ago.

Last year things started turning for the worse and they had to put him on constant oxygen, so he has to carry around a little oxygen tank 24-7 with those tubes that you put under your nose. He was getting weaker so they told him to take it easy. Last month he got dizzy and fell while he was cleaning his oxygen face mask and broke his leg. Everything looked alright, but they knew it would be slow healing for him. Last week they found a blood clot from his leg had traveled up to his lungs and was causing tremendous pain and difficulty. He had a coughing fit and just couldn't stop coughing so his wife took him back to the hospital where they sedated him into a coma (on purpose) so he could rest. They had to put him on a ventilator as well so that he would continue to breathe.

That's where we are now. They were going to take the ventilator out, but decided they should decrease his oxygen levels to make him work harder and work back up to breathing on his own. That could take a while, so he is still in the hospital. He is stable now, but that changes very quickly, so we have been on high alert since the weekend. We don't know if he will ever be able to breathe on his own again, which leads to some very difficult decisions for the family.

Of course my extended family wanted to come out and visit him, so we've had people coming and going all week. I took some time off of work to venture down and see him with my grandma, aunt and parents. We stayed most of Tuesday, just hanging out in the ICU waiting room trying to occupy ourselves and catching up with some of our other relatives.

We haven't been doing much of anything from our normal schedule. I'm back at work, but you know how that is. I haven't been focusing on my diet or exercise or reading my books or getting my house projects done... we just hang out and wait to hear things, and pick up our visiting family members and take them to the hospital, and then we wait around some more, then we take people back home or to the airport and wait again.

It has been such a long, stressful week. I know there is nothing I can do to help or to change things- that whatever is going to happen will happen- but just waiting around is hard and tiring. I want to crawl into bed and stay there for days.

I just feel heavy this week.

So What... Maybe I Am a 12 Year Old

2011-04-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

O. M. G. you guys. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out on DVD/BluRay on Friday and I just about died.

I was out running errands for work (for reals... had to buy supplies that are no longer available on our supply ordering catalog, WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?) so I figured I'd run into Fred Meyer and snag a DVD since I was so close to it anyway.

Friday night we went to BF's parents' house for some freaking awesome burritos and the watching of HPDHP1.

Something that we saw in the previews piqued my interest: There is an APP call HP Spells and it's FREE. And you learn and cast spells! And you can DUEL each other.

Hells yes.

I downloaded that in 2 seconds flat.

And what do I do when I'm sitting around at home and bored (Which doesn't happen too often)? That's right, I'm learning and practicing my spell casting because I'll be damned if I'm not the best at spells.

Should I really be sharing this? Probably not. Do I care? Not really because I LOVE Harry Potter.

I'm planning BF's and my next vacation at Universal Studios in Orlando Florida because that's where the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is.

Up... As Well As a Million Other Directions

2011-04-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

I love me some projects. There is nothing better, to me, than thinking up things to do and creating every little part of it and then at the end going ,"Ta-Daa! Look what I did!".

This is why I love my job. Besides the normal officey things that I need to do, I get to create ENTIRE meetings and events for my team and department many times a year... from small 10 people meetings to huge, 250 attendee meetings in a different part of the country where we run around the city and see sporting events AND still get work done. My awesome managers know that we have to have meetings at certain points in the year for certain things and so they tell me, "Hey, we have to have a meeting around such and such a date and so and so should attend; maybe we also want to incorporate something fun on that trip as well". So I set my little brain to work and come up with where we are going to stay, where our meeting will be, what are we going to eat the whole time, what fun things we can do where we will be and the travel/transportation for it all. In the end I love it when I get comments like, "That was the best meeting EVER... how are we going to top that?".

But work is not my only creative outlet. I'm constantly coming up with life projects and home projects. I think that this works out well for me because it keeps me moving forward in my life. If I get stuck in one area, I know I have a project waiting to be tackled in another.

Here are just a few of the projects I've got going on now:

WORK:
1. RTD Meeting next week
2. Department offsite meeting next week
3. HC Summit meeting the last week of April.
4. DSD Summit meeting the second week of May.
5. Bus Tour with business parters the 4th week of May.
6. June District Meeting on the Oregon Coast.
7. Realigning work goals, cadences and priorities for the next fiscal year.

HOME:
1. Ridding our household of unnecessary clutter- clothes, shoes, purses, home goods that we don't need or use.
2. Ridding our household of toxic products and replacing with greener, safer, more sustainable items- platics replaced with glass and safe metals, etc.
3. Organizing some of our keepsake items- putting photos into albums and scrapbooks so we can get them out of the millions of shoe boxes and folders they are currently living in.
4. Composting- figuring it out in a small space.

SELF:
1. Ridding daily routine of toxic products- some I've already changed, some I'm still working on like lotion, make up, etc.
2. Starting up a journal- we type so much these days that handwriting is becoming illegible! Plus it'd be nice to have a volume of journals for my kids and grandkids to read.
3. Eating more organically and locally.

Sometimes I have too many of these projects going on and I feel overwhelmed, but then I remember to take a step back and know that I am always learning, always progressing and always making my life better.

Today I had to write it out because yesterday I was feeling overwhelmed with my life (even though it's not bad at all), but this morning I woke up and remembered why I have so much going on and that I really am getting it all done.

Today was my day to say, "Ta- Daa! Look what I did! Look what I'm doing! Look where I'll be soon!".

Zombie-licious, and Indian Beach

2011-04-13T13:56:00.000-07:00

My friend from work, R, had a birthday party and instead of having your average "everyone go out for food and drinks" birthday party she decided it needed to be a Zombie Bowling Birthday Party which was awesome.

I spent a few days last week tracking down stores that carried Halloween makeup and fake blood in the area (shock: there are TONS of places that carry these things on the regular and not just for Halloween, who knew?). Once I amassed my supplies I tested out the makeup on my arm for two reasons:

1. I wanted to make sure I wasn't allergic to it.
2. I wanted to see if I could make some realistic looking zombie skin and what not.

Saturday came and we took Rudy to the beach since it was so wonderfully beautifully Spring-y outside early in the day.

We got home in the early afternoon, took leisurely naps and then awoke to transform ourselves from this:

to this:

Basically I bought some "gray" toned base make up in the costume section of the party supply store and covered our faces and necks in it so we didn't look so "alive".

Then I created bruised and decayed spots mixing and blending black, red, green, blue and yellow face paints. You have to do it in layers or else it turns into a funny looking brown or gray spot on (learned that from testing on the arm). I wanted our eyes to look a little dark and sunken in so I added a lot of shading and bruising there.

You cannot really see it in these pictures because of the flash, but I also added bluish-purple and greenish tinted vein marks on our faces and necks- sort of like dead bodies on TV have.

Next we smeared and sponged on blood to make it look like we were
A). injured and also
B). brain-hungry and chowing down on human flesh.

Here are some better views of handiwork:

I'm laughing in the last one because I had posed really well and even made Zombie sound effects for the picture, but BF started laughing which made me laugh really hard as well. Even Zombies have a sense of humor I guess.

I really hate zombie movies, but can I just say that I LOVED dressing up like one. We got all sorts of funny stares and comments downtown.

R's birthday bash was at Grand Central Bowling, so we bowled a couple games, ate and drank and had a general good time before heading off to find a place to hang out for a while. We ended up at Ringlers on Burnside.

Before the party BF and I scared a couple of little kids without meaning to. They were walking down the sidewalk with their mother and looked at us. The mom had a good sense of humor about it and said, "Looks like they've had quite the day!". While we were driving downtown I kept wanting to press my face against the window and stare at the passengers in other cars, but we didn't really hit much traffic so I didn't get much of a chance.

Mostly people thought it was pretty funny, as did we.

Here's to more theme parties that involve out of the ordinary dressing up!

Weekend Preview

2011-04-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

Our Awesome Weekend Activities...

This is all I'm going to leave you with for now. My camera cable should be coming later today and I can post more about what we did over the weekend.

Minimalistic, Animalistic, Going Balistic

2011-04-07T17:02:00.000-07:00

I've been slowly (and sometimes quickly) purging my home and life of unnecessary clutter. I'm talking about nic knacks, old clothes, old shoes, old boxes of paper things that I have no idea why I have in the first place, broken household items, you name it- I've got it and I'm getting rid of it.

I guess one day I woke up and thought to myself, "Why in the world do I have so much stuff and what good is it doing me?"

There are about a million reasons why someone would collect stuff. We are told to be sentimental, to be prepared, to not be "without"... but then when you really think about it if we are trying to do all of that we may get caught in the "keep everything" trap. I'm not and nor was I ever a hoarder. I'm a fairly clean person and I love it when things are organized and in their proper place, but there comes a point where not everything can have a place and that started to bug me.

When BF and I moved in together I took it as an opportunity to go through my stuff and get rid of anything that I no longer deemed "necessary". I thought I did a pretty bang up job because I made about 5 trips to Goodwill during and shortly after our move to donate clothing, shoes, purses, bags, kitchen stuff, furniture, etc. ad nauseum. Since that initial purge I've slowly gotten rid of more stuff because really, why do I need a sweater from high school when I have a drawer of sweaters that are newer and nicer? I think about every other month I make another trip to donate items that I just don't need. And then I started working out and focusing on getting in shape and I had to get rid of even more stuff because why keep clothes that don't fit (especially if I don't want to "grow" back into them)?

Anyhow, it's felt really good but as I evaluate my life I realize that I am still holding onto things that I probably don't need and I have space that I could probably use more effectively.

Part of the issue, I think, is that I like to have a certain amount of "blank space" around me... I like enough waltz around a room and around each piece of furniture if I want to... but we live in an apartment so I have to be a bit more realistic about that. I think BF feels the same because we both start daydreaming about buying houses and everytime we take a drive or go for a walk we pick out houses that we like or find houses and speculate on what we would have to do to fix it up. I think that means we need to find us a little house, but all in due time (plus a yard for the pup would be nice).

So I'm stuck for a bit with my home goods purging because I have to keep the necessary stuff even though it's a bit cramped (a couch is mostly necessary in the living room, right? I mean, I'd be ok with floor cushions).

I am NOT so stuck with my other purging. I'm still getting rid of clothes/shoes/bags and in the process I've decided that since I am a responsible adult (thankyouverymuch) I should probably dress like one more often and have a personal "style".

After this spark of inspiration I did a little poking around on the interwebs and found that there are, in fact, articles of clothing/shoes/accessories that are considered "essential" to a lady's wardrobe. These items are items that will "cripple" one if they do not have them because they are that necessary. I decided that using a list for reference I should inventory what I had and maybe that would help me get rid of the extraneous items taking up hanger space. Plus, I figured if I took the time to really think about what I was wearing I'd feel a bit more put together and my wardrobe would probably start to become a bit more timeless.

More or less, here are the basic items on the list of Essential Wardrobe Pieces:

Tops:
Neutral Tank Tops/Camisoles (White, Black, Nude and your base colors for your skin tone).
Neutral T Shirts (" ")
White dress shirt or blouse
Cardigan

Bottoms:
dark wash jean
dress pant in neutral or dark color- (slim cut or trouser cut are the most versatile)
leggings
black or dark work appropriate skirt

Other:
Little Black Dress

Outerwear:
Blazer in a dark color
light weight cropped or spring jacket
tailored trench in neutral or black
parka/rain coat
wool dress coat (like a pea coat)
wool or mix scarf
knit hat
gloves

Shoes:
rainboots
neutral nice sneakers
black dress pumps
dress boots (wedge or heel) in dark color
ballet flats or dressy flats
dressy summer shoe (like a neutral leather sandal or wedge)

Accessories:
Small clutch
Medium sized handbag
Large tote
Black Sunglasses

So that's pretty much the BASIC list. Obviously there are things that I would add to that list like 1 good pair of sweatpants, 1 zip up hoodie, and a black v neck t shirt (has been my favorite article of clothing since sophomore year of high school).

I dug through my closets and found that I had most of the stuff on these lists. I'm now working on revising my list to include the items that I find necessary ( I definitely don't need a summer wedge, but there'll be hell to pay if I don't have a nice zip up hoodie). I'm already finding that I need to update some of my essential pieces- like a trench I threw away because it had an unreparable rip in the fabric which I couldn't recycle because of the waterproof coating on it. I'm also finding that I bought into some trends that weren't really me and now I'm stuck with the leftover clutter.

Another road block: I have a hard time letting go of certain things like SHOES. I love me some shoes. Heck, I work for a company that started it's business with only shoes so there you have it. I can get pretty snappy if you threaten to take away my shoes, sort of like Rudy when we take away his teething toys.

So right now I'm still in the midst of my de-cluttering mayhem, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I know that each day I'm going to feel lighter and better without all of the STUFF around me.

Here's to Spring!

Weekend Business and Rudy Lost Some Marbles

2011-04-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

It was a pretty awesome but very short weekend (as most good ones seem to be).

Friday afternoon we picked up our little Rudy from the Vet after his "procedure". He was a little tired, but mostly his normal self. The staff took a picture of him and posted it on their clinic's Facebook page and it is ADORABLE, but I'm biased.

Anyhow, we were told we'd probably have a lethargic puppy on our hands, but we did not ever get to see any of that. He was back to normal Saturday morning and didn't even really act like he needed his pain meds- but we gave them to him anyway just in case. He did tire out more quickly than normal, but after a couple 20 minute naps here and there he was his energetic, affectionate self. No cone needed since he wasn't licking, but we have to watch him because he's not supposed to run or jump or be wild for 10 days. That's impossible. He was jumping on Friday night. He doesn't care if the stitches will come out, but I sure do. I'm trying to keep him from potentially ripping himself back open. It's a full time job.

So back to Friday night. We got to hang out with my good friend Matt who I've known since high school and who continually entertains me. We always talk about the most ridiculous things and I love every minute of it. BF, Matt and I drove over to Helvetia tavern for some lovely burgers, onion rings, sandwiches and beer. We even sat OUTSIDE because Friday was downright pleasant as far as Oregon weather goes.

Saturday I tried to get as many of our errands and cleaning done as possible because I knew I wouldn't want to do any of it come Sunday. We got groceries, did laundry, the usual and then we got ready to go to Kyle and Kate's wedding! We ate a quick dinner and headed over to the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse. Their wedding was inside the Octagonal Barn and was absolutely beautiful.

We lucked out and arrived around the same time as most of BF's old cohort from Lewis and Clark so we all sat together. It was a short, but not too short, cute ceremony complete with crying ring bearers (who threw their ring pillows towards the alter instead of actually walking the short distance to the front which was hysterical). After the ceremony we ate and drank and danced and had a wonderful time. It was so nice to see everyone and just be able to catch up and hang out.

Sunday morning we slept in, hard core. It was awesome. I got up and did more cleaning and laundry while I waited for BF to be ready to start the day. We had a couples massage at Dosha Hawthorne that was divine. We headed over for a nice southern meal at my parents' house afterwards and took a nice walk through the neighborhood after dinner.

I woke up today and wanted one more day of weekend so I could sleep in and watch movies. That's what I wanted to do had I had the time, but life happens and you do what you gotta do (although a wedding and drinks with friends was WAY better than watching movies at home in my pj's... for the most part).

I'm waiting for the end of this week when the weather is supposed to change and resemble Spring. I cannot wait. I've already pulled my cute skirts and sandals out.

Ready, Set, Launch!

2011-03-31T11:22:00.000-07:00

I did it.

I created a new blog that I will launch later today dedicated to chronicling my efforts, research and struggles with "going greener". You can get there by clicking HERE.

If you want to join my blog, let me know! The more we share, the better I say.

Topics I will be covering include, but aren't limited to:

1. Reducing Waste
2. Recycling
3. Natural Products
4. Local Resources

... and of course many others.

Again, I will be launching the site later today. Happy Thursday!

Nothing New Updates- And Going Green-er

2011-03-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

So I've had to make some concessions with my challenge, but I some of them HAD to be done in order for me to reach my other goals this year of changing my lifestyle to have a lower carbon footprint.

1. I HAD to buy some new pants and shirts. I've lost almost 20 pounds since January and my clothes were starting to look terrible and WAY TOO BIG on me. I weighed the options of buying gently used clothing, but I settled on picking out 2 pair of new jeans that are nicer so I won't feel like a slob at work and then digging out my old clothes that I was saving for when I lost weight (high school pants!). I kept a ton of clothes from when I was smaller so I've had some items to work with so I didn't have to buy new everything. I bought a handful of new shirts, but I'm looking for organic cottons and recycle fabrics when I do. I've donated bags upon bags of my old clothing since I'd taken really good care of them and most of them look new for others to benefit from. I'm decluttering my closets and drawers and it feels great.

2. I've had to buy the puppy stuff- grooming items (brush, deshedding tool, toothbrush), food, training treats and toys but BF and I have made a concerted effort to buy top quality, all natural ingredients with as little packaging as possible. Oh yeah, and I bought some dog clothing, but you know... Rudy didn't want to get wet and they were ON SALE for super cheap since it was the end of the season. Also, no packaging and the tags were recyclable.

3. I bought a new car because mine was on it's last leg and I had already planned for that. The plus side is that this car rates pretty well on the emissions scale (much better than the old car) and gets much better gas mileage than the Subaru.

4. I bought reusable shopping bags, sandwich bags and cleaning cloths. I hated getting plastic bags when I was shopping to put my produce in, so one day while at Fred Meyer I spotted these reusable mesh bags that come in threes. I bought 2 packs of them so now I use those instead of plastic bags and if they get dirty I just rinse them off in the sink and hang to dry so I can reuse again. They are also nice because your produce doesn't get all slimy in the drawers with condensation since the bags are mesh and let air through.

I also bought some Snack Taxi bags for our lunches. I'm refusing to use plastic sandwich bags anymore so we are using the last of ours now (which I also rinse out and reuse when I can) and are starting to use these awesome little reusable, washable pouches for our snacks and sandwiches. We try to use glass and ceramics as much as possible, but they aren't always practical when you tote your lunch to and from work every day.

The cleaning cloths are to replace paper towel use. I found some awesome micro fiber cloths (they come in 3 packs and 6 packs) at Bed, Bath and Beyond and they come in different shades of green so you can assign a cloth to each room in the house where they will be used. Our dark one is in the bathroom for cleaning, the medium green shade is my dust rag for the living/dining room areas, and the light green one is the kitchen cleaning rag. We just throw them in the wash every few days with our regular laundry to clean them. We still use paper towels for cleaning up specific things (like the ever so rare dog mess), but we have switched to using the recycled paper towels for that.

5. And I almost forgot I bought a mini Kitchenaid food processor with my slot machine winnings because the blender does NOT work for everything and I don't have 2 hours each night to chop stuff up for dinner. WORTH IT.

So that is pretty much it. I think those few things (one of which was planned before I decided to do the challenge) were worth buying and will help us save in the future. Plus, I don't know how to sew snazzy outfits from my drapes like Maria (Sound of Music reference) so new clothes were in order.

Going forward I think it will be easier to not buy new stuff. We don't really need anything new and most of the shopping we do now is for groceries and dog food anyway. I think the only other thing we are looking to replace are our plastic cups, but I have been keeping an eye out for glass and stainless steel ones at thrift stores so we'll see what I find.

Rudy Becomes a "Nothing", And A New Blog Idea

2011-03-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

Rudy, our awesome puppy, will be neutered on Friday. I'm happy about this, but also sad. Is that weird? On one hand we won't have to worry about him impregnating any lady dogs, but on the other hand he will not really have much of a gender anymore... or does it matter to a dog? I don't know.

We're supposed to stop feeding him around 7 the night before and then drop him off on Friday morning for the procedure. The vet is awesome and his staff are super friendly so I'm not worried about Rudy at all. They are even going to cleen his teeth and clip his little doggy nails while he is out! We will then pick him up around 3pm or so and take his groggy little self home.

I'm hoping that everything goes smoothly and that he recovers quickly.

I was thinking about what I was going to post this week when I got the idea to start a new blog where I can post about the changes we have been making to become more "green" in our household, the things we have tried that have and have not worked for us, and places/products/etc that we like. I would like to open it up to anyone that wants to contribute, that way there is one place for everyone to have discussion over these things if they want or to just update us on what they are trying, etc.

What do you think?

New York Doesn't Mean New York City, Ya'll. Also, Portland is the Best.

2011-03-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know why people automatically assume that when someone says New York they mean New York City. That is not always the case, and you know what they say about assuming...

Anyway, as I've mentioned before (like two weeks ago) I went to New York State for Spring Break. Not specifically for vacation, but to visit family and take care of some business with the Seneca Nation... like getting my official Seneca Nation of Indians identification card and getting thumb-printed. Exciting. We flew in on Wednesday evening and visited with family and friends for a few days. The weather was a lovely 60 and partly sunny which is better than what we were expecting: 45 and rainy just like Portland.

It was nice to see everyone and all of the new babies in the family- seriously everyone but my sister and I has kids now- and to get to visit with my grandparents. We went to the casino a few times for meals because old people LOVE casinos. That was pretty funny. I won $30 by randomly playing a slot machine for giggles, so I called it good and quit playing! I ate a lot of shrimp as well since everything else was soaked in butter or battered and fried.

My mom and I visited the Seneca Museum in Salamanca, NY which was awesome, but we weren't allowed to take pictures so I have none to share :-( It was really awesome to see all of the artwork, statues and recreations.

Also there was a visit to the largest Walmart in the world. It's somewhere in the middle of nowhere upstate NY. It looks like the White House with huge columns. I tried to get a picture, but it was so large it wouldn't fit in a single frame... so I tried to do it in two or three and it was still too large. I'm not a huge Walmart shopper (actually I prefer buying what I need from local sources if possible) but this place was impressive.

We left on the following Wednesday, but it snowed... and I mean SNOWED... so our flight and many others were delayed and we got rerouted ALL OVER THE UNITED STATES. We were supposed to fly from Buffalo to Chicago, then Chicago to Portland, however within 30 minutes we had been rerouted twice and then didn't even make those flights because of the delays. My mom and I waited around for a few hours before getting a flight to Las Vegas, and then hopping a flight to San Jose. Luckily we had a layover in San Jose so we could eat a super late lunch (4pm is still lunch, right?) and we were so happy because we hadn't eaten since 7am! I was so hangry (angry + hungry) I almost got in a fight with a gate agent. Not my finest moment, but to my credit that lady was a few cents short of a dollar if you know what I mean.

We finally landed in Portland 10 hours after we were supposed to be there, but we had no luggage (who knows where they sent it). The airline said they would track it down and call us, and two hours after we got home they located it. I picked it up on Thursday and my poor mother's stuff was completely soaked. I have no idea what they did with her stuff but I think they owe her a free ticket to anywhere she wants to go for that.

The rest of the week I spent recouperating from our journey and working out like a mad woman since I didn't really get to in NY.

It's so nice to be home. Every time I go somewhere else it reinforces why I love Portland, OR so much. I can find the foods I like and the stores I like to shop in. The roads are on a better grid- the East Coast is so confusing because that was before city planners were a thing and they just paved a bunch of the trails and called them roads. Also, people are a lot nicer on the West Coast in general.

Coming up this week:

1. Rudy gets neutered.
2. Heather gets abs of steel
3. Updates into my "Nothing New" challenge and natural cleansing routine

Birthday and Road Trips and Races

2011-03-14T16:47:00.000-07:00

Friday was my actual 26th birthday, 23 hours ahead of my friend Brad's birthday so we were invited to celebrate it together in Corvallis.

Friday started well enough with birthday cards and balloons and a nice lunch from my coworkers, plus flowers and a spa gift certificate from my awesome boss. I got to leave early which was nice since we were heading down to Corvallis anyway and wanted to beat traffic.

BF and I dropped Rudy off at my mother's and were on our way. I slept almost the whole way there because I was exhausted from a busy week and had a little headache. We arrived a few minutes late (still hit a little traffic) to dinner with Brad and his GF, Nicole along with some other friends. We ate and sang and were merry and then the waiter brought Brad and I two sombreros to wear and we were sang to/at and embarrased. There are pictures and maybe some video but I'm not sharing that here, thankyouverymuch.

After dinner we headed to get some gelato.

It was so delicious, but WAY too much.

Saturday my mom took me to get a mani/pedi which was much needed. I don't know why, but I do the same thing to my toes and they definitely don't look that good when I'm done with them.

We had pizza for dinner because I wanted to "carb up" for the Shamrock Run ( I know... it's only 3 miles, but hey, I rarely eat pizza and it was my birthday).

We woke up bright and early (and I do mean early, thank you daylight savings) on Sunday to get downtown for the Shamrock Run and boy was it nasty out.

The day started a little cold and drizzly and was drippy, wet and windy shortly after we got downtown. The team met up at a nearby coffee shop so we didn't have to stand outside and wait for our races to start in the rain.

I ran the 5K, along with BF and his dad and sister. It was a good run and I felt I could have run it harder and faster had I been paying attention, but mostly I was trying not to run people over. There were SO MANY people; 11,000 running in the 5K event. I didn't even see a mile marker until I was at the 3 mile mark because I couldn't see the sides of the street for the other runners around me. It was still a great run and I wasn't cold or uncomfortable until after I had stopped running and was wating at the finish line for BF. I waited and waited and waited, then I waited some more and he never came. The bad part was that he had left his phone in my car so I couldn't call him to see where he was. I was worried he had slipped and been injured during the race and couldn't get a hold of me. After 2 HOURS of waiting around in the cold yucky rain I got a call from a random Portland number so I answered and it was BF and Quizno's up the street. I was relieved but also royally pissed off that I had been standing in the rain for 2 hours when I didn't need to. Turns out BF finished the race 3 minutes after me and had been standing further down the finish line looking for me as well, but then decided he needed to track down a phone so walked up the way from where we parked to call me.

We went home and took the hottest showers we could stand and made potato bacon soup to warm us up. I then took a 2 hour nap and we cleaned the house and did laundry the rest of the evening. FUN. But it felt good to start the week with a clean house and clean laundry.

This week is a short one for me since I'm leaving for NY on Wednesday morning. SPRING BREAK! I've got some packing to do... and I'm sad about it since I will be packing pretty much what I've been wearing here all winter since NY is not expecting the end of winter just yet.

It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To... or Sleep If I Want To

2011-03-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

I had forgotten about my own rule that my birthday is a weeklong celebration because I've been too busy to even think about it really.

This Friday I will turn 26. I've gotten old. How that happened I will never know, but it is what it is. And it's not all bad.

Before I remembered it was my birthday week I was having kind of a crappy time because I feel so busy with stuff I don't really feel like I'm enjoying much in my day. Then BF took me to a concert as an early birthday present. We saw New Politics who were amazing, however they were on the same concert bill as two other bands that I have no interest in whatsoever.

The show was at the Hawthorne Theater in SE, so Tuesday night we made our way down Hawthorne, found nearby parking in a cute little neighborhood and stood in the cool night air until they opened the doors. The crowd that these bands drew was nothing akin to crowds BF and myself would fit into as we are not between the ages of 13-16 and we also aren't "stoners", at all. The first group came to see the opening band, a high-school aged 311/Sublime-esque beachy rock type of band that made me want to plunge steak knives into my earholes. I will not name this band because that would be embarrasing for them. And Portland is not the best place to play "Southern Cal" jams... we aren't a bronzed, laid back, surf community so we don't get that "vibe". We also don't get why you need to be shirtless on stage when it wasn't warm at all inside (we kept our jackets on the whole concert!).

New Politics played second and it totally made up for the crappy first band. It OBLITERATED the first band, really. The lead singer had the best dance moves and even ran up the wall and did a flip. Now that's entertainment. They played quite a good set and then BF and I got to meet them! BF bought me a shirt and we got our ticket stubs signed for the scrapbook. It made my night. It was also sort of funny because most people were there either for the first band or the headlining band (the Dirty Heads... ugh) and had no interest in NP. They were extremely nice and talked to us for a few minutes and thanked us for coming to see them. I don't think they believed that we actually came to see them and not the Dirty Heads. We got sweaty European hugs from them and then swiftly left because I did NOT want to stay and be part of the stoney mayhem that was sure to arise. We were already starting to get a bit buzzed from the drifting smoke plumes surrounding us.

After that excitement I realized that it was, in fact, my birthday week, and that I did need to allow myself to have a good time.

Having said that to myself didn't really make it so as I've had to continue the wake up, work, work out, go to bed routine. And I haven't been sleeping that well this week.

Rudy has decided that after 2 months of sleeping through the night he now wants us to wake up, take him out and play with him at 3 in the morning. Last night was the 3rd night of it in a row so BF and I decided that tonight Rudy will sleep in the crate with a toy like he used to so he doesn't come bug us at 3am again. Also, no water after 9pm because I'm not taking that dog out in the middle of the night anymore... even though BF usually does it, it still wakes me up.

Anyway, besides Rudy the rain and wind has been crazy at night (better at night than during the day). Last night after Rudy woke us up the rain poured down and the wind beat the bushes against the walls and all I could hear was the deafening "drop drop drop" sounds of the water hitting a huge puddle outside of our bedroom window. BF got up and selpt on the couch. I took a Benadryl. I don't think I got more than an hour and a half of uniterrupted sleep.

To top it off I worked out a little too hard yesterday evening and felt ill shortly after coming home from the gym- to the point where no position I sat in was comfortable and my WHOLE BODY hurt- not in an achy or muscley way if that makes sense, but just a hurt everywhere. I drank a bunch of water thinking maybe I was dehydrated and got a snack but still I felt like poop. I feel better today, just tired.

Speaking of poop, Rudy's been eating it. I know, totally gross. I did some research because I was thinking our dog was a little mentally ill if he was eating poop (we've always had dogs and they've NEVER done that before) but turns out a lot of dogs do it. Apparently dogs don't have as refined tastebuds as we do and mostly they like things for the texture. Also, poop has a lot of information in it for dogs about the animal it came from so it's almost like they are reading a note or journal entry from that animal. Either way, it's GROSS so BF and I have been extra diligent when we take him out so that he doesn't sneak one. I also bought him a doggy toothbrush and toothpaste. It's peanut flavored so Rudy thinks it's a treat and I think he liked getting his little doggy mouth brushed because he didn't fuss at all once I got the bristles in his mouth- it probably felt good on his gums since he's teething.

Tomorrow, being my actual day of birth, I've requested pancakes and sausage for breakfast. I'm also leaving work early to go to Corvallis to celebrate our friend Brad's birthday as well and eat at Block 15- our most favorite place to eat, EVER. I'm totally eating my weight in fries. And then gelato.

Saturday I'm sleeping in and then getting my nails did with my mommy. I also want to go to OMSI to see the new Egypt exhibit (I don't remember the name of it) because it looks awesome. Then it's pizza time so I can get some good carbs in me before the Shamrock Run on Sunday morning.

Easy Awesome Meal

2011-03-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

Last week I was wracking my brain for dinner ideas. It seems like BF and I eat the same things over and over again, just in a different order each week. Not that we eat badly, it's all really good food but our classic dishes were getting a bit stale.

Who knows where the idea came from, but while I was working away at my desk a thought poppped into my head, "Fish tacos". My second thought was, "I have never made fish tacos and I also don't want to fry anything or use heavy, expensive ingredients that I have to buy".

I put the idea away and assumed I'd figure something out for dinner later. When I got home I rummaged through the refrigerator and cabinets to see what we had on hand and I ended up coming up with a pretty easy recipe for fresh fish tacos.

Here are the ingredients you will need for everything I made:

2-4 cod fillets (frozen or fresh are fine, or substitute a white fish you like)
lemon- large
lime- large
cilantro- chopped
spring onion or red onion
yellow sweet onion
red bell pepper (or any other color
green bell pepper
2 roma tomato
cumin
crushed or minced garlic
sea salt
pepper
avocado
light or fat free sour cream
mayo
red pepper powder or chile powder
1 can of pinto or black beans
tortillas (we use whole wheat)
shredded cheese- optional

Here is how to prepare:

Combine the juice of 1/2 a lemon and 1/2 a lime, 1-2 teaspoons of minced garlic, 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh cilantro and 1 tablespoon of finely chopped spring or red onion (both work well). Pour over your cod filets and let marinate for about 30 minutes.

After marinating, strain fish from marinade and sprinkle lightly with cumin (I like to use a lot since I like that warm heat).

Cook your filets over medium heat in a non-stick saute pan. I usually add a little of the marinade solids to the pan as well so the fish cook in more of the flavor- just use a teaspoon to scoop out some of the garlic and cilantro and add that to the pan.

The juice wasn't added, it's just what's coming out of the fish from marinating

While your fish cook, cook your canned beans (pinto are my favorites, but BF love black beans) on medium low in a small sauce pan.

I make two toppings for this dish, a homemade pico and a tangy avocado cream dressing.

I start with the pico; you can use a food processor, but I just chop mine up by hand. Chop 1/4 of a yellow onion, 1/4 of a green bell pepper, 1/4 of a red bell pepper, 2 roma tomatoes and 1-2 tablespoon of fresh chopped cilantro. I mix it all up and then let it sit while I prepare the rest of the meal so that the flavors meld but are still fresh.

My homemade Pico

Then I mix up a tangy avocado dressing. Scoop out 1 large avocado and put into a blender or food processor. Add juice from the remainder of your lemon and remainder of your lime. Add about 1 teaspoon of minced garlic, a pinch of pepper, a tiny sprinkling of red pepper powder or chile powder, 1 dollop (maybe about 2 teaspoons) of mayo and 4 or so ounces of non fat or light sour cream. Blend well until you have a creamy, fluffy light green mixture.

Once the fish and beans are done, you are ready to go! Just build your taco however you like.

Besides the avocado dressing and the pico, I add a tiny sprinkling of shredded skim cheese.

I don't think it takes me more than 25 minutes to make the dish since I usually defrost and marinate the fish earlier in the day. You can also substitute the fish with chicken breast as the same spices and marinade works well with both!

PAM- Someone Got Paid for That?

2011-03-07T10:08:00.000-08:00

On Friday night BF and I went to the Portland Art Museum and met up with my friend Dani for her birthday. It was wet and gross outside and a perfect night to be inside.

I hadn't been to the art museum since high school so I was excited to see it again. I dressed all smart and sassy, put on my amazing BCBG silver-gray boots and BF and I headed out. Traffic was horrible, but we eventually made it. We walked the museum and I was quite enthralled until we came upon this:

Apparently this painting had taken the artist a long time to research in order to get the proper balance of the exact colors in order to make the viewer "calm". Are you joking? This did the EXACT OPPOSITE to me as I looked on in shock. Someone actually paid money for this? If this is the way to make money, buy me some canvas and paints and let me at it! I honestly don't understand this type of "art". But there were plenty of other fine paitings, sculpture, etc. on display that I did enjoy.

This last painting reminded me of that odd actor, Harlan Williams, so I had to take a picture.

Also, this just in, you can now take pictures at the art museum. I remember they used to come and scold you for that, which I just never understood.

We had a wonderful time although my feet were KILLING ME by the end (damn you, good looking boots!). I think BF and I are planning on going back, in more comfortable shoes, to explore more and maybe even pop in next door and see the modern art as well.

I Said I'd Never...

2011-03-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

... but little did I know.

I've always been one of those people that balks at the pet owners who find it necessary to dress their dogs and cats in human-like clothing; items that animals aren't suited for wearing like hats, sweaters and scarves. I mean, if you do that sort of thing it's your own business but I just don't see the point.

But then we got Rudy; the cutest, sweetest, smartest dog EVER. And Rudy has an... aversion, we'll call it, to rain. Not the normal sprinkles and drizzle we normally have- he could care less about that- but when we have a full on RAIN like we've had here the past few days in Oregon, Rudy doesn't even want to be outside to potty. That's a problem. When he does go outside it's as quickly as possible to get the job done and he still comes inside soaking wet, trailing drops through the house and wet paw prints as he goes. We usually keep a towel by the door to dry him off with when he comes back inside, but sometimes it's hard to wrangle him and he just wants to play with the towel and not be dried by it.

My solution was a rain coat, so I started looking online for reviews of pet rain gear. I quickly dove into the world of pet apparel and was shocked at what I found (do a Google image search and you will find the items that made me laugh 'til I peed). Was I really this crazed pet owner now diligently searching for apparel for my puppy? Sort of, maybe.

After work I had to stop at the store to pick up some grocery items, so I figured I would also stop at the pet store and see if they had any of the rain apparel that I had seen online. And found apparel I did. Apparently it's not just the beginning of a people apparel season, it's the beginning of the spring and summer pet apparel season. There were beach hats and doggles and bathing suits galore! I laughed to myself, feeling a little hypocritical but still letting the internal dialogue continue- really, I wasn't there to buy a non-functional piece of clothing, what I was buying had PURPOSE, FUNCTION, and would also be cute. Gah!

Lucky for me, the Fall and Winter apparel items were being marked down so I found a great yellow rain slicker and an amazing reversible jacket/vest for Rudy to keep the rain at bay.

Rudy in his very Portland reversible vest. The reverse is a green plaid.

I also found some other awesome gems. I didn't want to buy him actual doggy rain boots so I found these smart little disposable booties called Nooby's Disposable Booties. We have yet to use them and I reserving them for when it gets muddy.

It gets even better! Last night BF and I were sitting on the couch watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince while I perused REI.com for camping gear that we may need for this spring and summer. I was happily adding things to our wish list (FYI, if we get married we are TOTALLY registering at REI) when I noticed a link at the bottom of the page that simply said "Pets". One click later and I was in hog heaven. Dog tents, sleeping pads, hiking packs... anything a pet would need for an awesome adventure! I was giggling with delight.

It's official, I'm that crazy dog owner now. There will still not be any bathing suits or Ed Hardy shirts for Rudy.

San Diego, And All That

2011-02-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

I'm finally home and mostly alive. I don't know why, but traveling for work always takes a major toll on me.

Monday morning I got up at 3:15am so I could be at the airport at 5am to catch my flight to San Diego. I had spent most of my weekend prepping and packing so I felt like it was a complete waste of a weekend. I arrived in San Diego and the drama started.

A few of my coworkers' travel was cancelled, unbeknownst to them, and they arrived at the airport only to be sent back home. Frantic calls with our work's travel department to fix the issues, a few lost then found bags, and they were all once again on their way. My boss and I visited one of our stores in SD and then headed to our meeting space at our hotel to rehearse the week's presentations. After our rehearsal we had a welcome reception for all of our meeting attendees. I made the rounds and then headed to the hotel fitness center to get a work out in. I ended up going to bed around 10pm (long day) and then got up at 5am on Tuesday to prepare for our day of meetings.

Tuesday was all day meetings and then we walked around down town San Diego- the Gaslamp District to be more precise- to catch up with groups we had sent out to do group activities. Boy did we get a good workout just walking around. I should have taken a picture of the massive mountain of stairs we had to climb twice to get to the boardwalk and beach front.

Wednesday and Thursday were more meetings and I didn't manage to get a good workout in either day, but I figured with all of the walking around I was ok... and the food wasn't too unheathly either.

While walking one day we ran into Lee DeWyze from American Idol and got a pic with him so that was pretty awesome.

We flew home Thursday night after waiting all day to hear if our flight would go from being "delayed" to being cancelled. We lucked out and the snow wasn't as bad in Portland as they thought it would be so we made it home around 10pm and I literally walked in the door at 11pm and about died from exhaustion.

I slept until 9 on Friday morning, got up and ate breakfast and then went back to bed for a few more hours. Saturday we slept in again and then did more of the same on Sunday. Sunday was the first day I felt rested and normal.

Now I'm trying to get back into the work groove and I need to take measurements for my girls on the WMM blog since I was MIA for the last one!

Good news: got rid of a TON of clothes that are now WAY too big. A shopping trip will be in order soon!

Dear Dani,

2011-02-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

I heard you were sick, and no, I have NO IDEA where the phrase "sicker than a dog" came from and it doesn't even make sense. I hope you are feeling better soon.

Your UA workout pants are ruined because they are Under Armour. I will send you some snazzy replacements that are NOT UA. I'm sorry, but we cannot be friends if you are wearing that. Well, ok, we can be friends, but I'm not going to let you where UA in public or around me.

Sometimes things just suck. I miss you too. But then all of a suddent things get better, so there's always that to look forward to.

Come to Oregon.

Sincerely,

Heather

The List Revisited

2011-02-17T15:35:00.000-08:00

Hey... remember that list from last week of all the stuff I wanted to get to before I go to the meetings in San Diego next week? See below:

1. Get my nails done. Ideally before the meeting so I don't look like a complete ruffian.

2. Get a hair cut- see above for reasonining.

3. Make my eye appointment and get contacts.

~~4. Get prescription sunglasses repaired so I have sunglasses while I don't have contacts.~~

~~5. Take old clothes and shoes and household items that have already been sorted out of house to donate.~~

6. Take boxes of "keep" house stuff to parents house to store.

7. Go through boxes of purses and shoes and donate what I haven't used in the last year.

~~8. Consolidate boxes of stuff that are half empty to take up less space.~~

9. Make dental appointment for later this spring.

~~10. Make vet appointment for Rudy's neuter procedure.~~

~~11. Vaccuum the house.~~

12. Dust the entire house and wax furniture.

13. Clean out extra bedroom.

14. Start planning my birthday.

~~15. Ask for some days off of work.~~

16. Return movies to the store that are duplicates of what we already have

I realize I've only gotten a few things done, but I have a nail and hair appointment for this weekend so that's two more down after Sunday! And I'm planning on getting to the dusting and extra bedroom cleaning this evening.

I feel like I can do nothing but WORK until these meetings. I also planned a trip to New York over Spring Break, so I'll be off of work for 2 weeks! AWESOME! We're only going to be in New york for a week, but I sure could use that extra time to just hang out.

There are a few things I'd like to add to the list, but I'm going to wait until I get back next week.

Team Captain

2011-02-15T11:36:00.000-08:00

A lot of people said that they wanted to do it, but didn't want to do it alone. I heard this a LOT from people at work that I normally do fun runs/walks with. So I took the plunge and became a Shamrock Run team captain!

The Shamrock Run 2011 is on March 13, 2011 this year in Portland. I'm running the 5K event, however there is also a 5k walk, an 8K run, and 15K run.

There are quite a few advantages of being on a team, but I think the best are that 1) you get a discounted entry fee and 2) you have people to walk or run with you.

I don't think I'm going to be super fast this race because I've been focusing on weights and core exercises and haven't been out running much, but it'll be nice to get out there and kick off the racing season.

If you want to join a team let me know! The deadline to register for a team is February 25th.

The List of My "To Do's" That May or May Not Get Done

2011-02-10T09:44:00.000-08:00

I've got a lot going on.

I have a massive meeting for work happening in San Diego that I'm coordinating and managing. I LOVE this sort of thing because I'm definitely a "details" girl and I love wowing other people with events, however it's always a bit stressful leading up to the meetings and there are always a million little last minute things that need to be done or 20 things that pop up unexpectedly that are "urgent".

I have a puppy. I need to get on his training. I mean, he's house trained and leash trained and crate trained, but I need him to be better with obedience and with fun tricks! Teach while they're small! He's a handful sometimes as he gets into things that we forget to put away or digs into the laundry basket looking for clothes to drag away and make a bed out of. And then the walks. We take him out about every 1.5-2 hours since he's young and cannot hold it very long, so I'm hoping we can start stretching that out to every 2.5-3 hours.

I'm on this workout and eat healthy schedule. It's not hard to do at 6 weeks in, I've got the hang of it. It's the prep time for the food and the evening time going to the gym when I have a list of household chores that still need to be done that's hard for me. I'm a pretty scheduled person, but with the lack of calories and increase in exercise I feel like my body and brain aren't always running on all cylinders and I don't have the energy to get normal stuff done (like dusting the whole house).

So here's my list of things that I'd like to get to in the next week but that may not happen unless I take a couple days off after I return from San Diego.

1. Get my nails done. Ideally before the meeting so I don't look like a complete ruffian.
2. Get a hair cut- see above for reasonining.
3. Make my eye appointment and get contacts.
4. Get prescription sunglasses repaired so I have sunglasses while I don't have contacts.
5. Take old clothes and shoes and household items that have already been sorted out of house to donate.
6. Take boxes of "keep" house stuff to parents house to store.
7. Go through boxes of purses and shoes and donate what I haven't used in the last year.
8. Consolidate boxes of stuff that are half empty to take up less space.
9. Make dental appointment for later this spring.
10. Make vet appointment for Rudy's neuter procedure.
11. Vaccuum the house.
12. Dust the entire house and wax furniture.
13. Clean out extra bedroom.
14. Start planning my birthday.
15. Ask for some days off of work.
16. Return movies to the store that are duplicates of what we already have.

Karmic Balance

2011-02-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

Like I mentioned, I got my new car! I left work a little early because I couldn't handle just sitting and waiting any longer. I headed to the dealership, signed my name, grabbed the keys while tossing the Subaru keys at them and drove away a very happy girl.

I went home and danced around and ran some errands with BF just so I could drive some more. I let BF drive home from the store so he could experience the AMAZINGNESS of the new car as well. It was awesome.

We got home after running errands and I went to go put sweats on so we could lounge around and watch a movie when I heard BF exclaim, "RUDY! What did you do?"

I came out of the bedroom and found BF standing in the hallway with one foot raised looking at a wet spot on the carpet. We were both shocked because Rudy hasn't had an accident on the carpet in a while. Then I noticed that there were more dark areas on the carpet, so I stepped closer to inspect them when my feet got soaked. You could hear an audible "SQUISH" as water oozed up from the carpet and out over my feet.

We then realized that the WHOLE HALLWAY was soaking wet in front of the laundry closet. I opened the laundry closet doors and saw standing water all around the washing machine and dryer. We ran for towels and started sopping up as much of the water as we could. I looked all around for the source of the leak, but I'm pretty sure it's from within the washing machine since the pipes in the wall were dry.

We were unsucessful at getting the water out of the carpet with towels alone so we drove to my parents' house to borrow their shop-vac to suck up the rest. BF took Rudy for a walk (because if there's one thing Rudy doesn't like it's vaccuums... thusly bigger, louder ones are probably not welcome either) while I diligently ran the shop-vac hose over the hall carpet. 25 minutes later the carpet felt only marginally drier (but I'd gotten about a gallon of water out of it) so we found some fans and set them in the hallway to help dry it out overnight.

BF called the maintenance people and left a messsage, so I'm hoping they drop off the new washer today and take the old one away. I do not have the time for them to sit around while they try to fix the thing.

It's all Universal Balance I guess... one good thing happens while a not so good one happens.

BUT, I have a new car!

Superbowl Weekend, Or Super-Crappy Game, Poop, and Baths

2011-02-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

It was Superbowl weekend, as you may have heard, this past weekend. Friday I was so excited and couldn't wait until Sunday.

Friday night BF and I went to Ruby Tuesday for dinner because he conveniently had a giftcard so it cost us a whole $10 for a very nice meal ($5 of it was for tip, so really $5 for the meal).

Saturday we hung out at BF's parents and had dinner and played games and I got a new car.

...

What?

Yes, I got a new car!

I got a metallic blue Nissan Versa hatchback and I'm SO FREAKIN' HAPPY! This is the first truly new car I've ever owned. No one else had owned it, it is perfect and unblemished (for now, ah life) and it's not the Subaru! I didn't get to drive it home because the options I wanted weren't in any cars on the lot so they had to get the car from another dealer. I get to pick it up after work today! I'll definitely post some pictures.

Anyway, the "big day" was Sunday and it was also my "cheat meal" day so I was happy as a clam (side note- why are clams happy?). I cleaned the house thoroughly on Sunday morning while BF was at the gym ( I took a rest day). I got the bathrooms cleaned, the kitchen completely cleaned, dishes done, clutter picked up from around the house and 3 loads of laundry done. I was waiting to vaccuum the floors until BF got home so he could take Rudy on a walk- Rudy doesn't like the vaccuum cleaner at all. BF came home and sat on the floor playing with the dog while I was putting clean dishes away. He asked," What's this?" in a disgusted tone and I looked over in horror as I realized that BF had stepped in dog poop and ground it into the carpet as he was playing with Rudy. It wasn't Rudy's mess, it was some other dog's mess that BF had stepped in outside and then tracked all over the carpet into my clean house! He definitely felt terrible about it, but what can you do? New rule- take your shoes off at the door!

I scrubbed the carpets, I scrubbed BF's shoe, I scrubbed myself.

Once the house was finally back in order we headed to my parents' house with Rudy in tow for the game. Rudy was so happy to run around in their spacious backyard while we watched a horrendous game and munched on some really awesome food.

We had sausage cheese balls, pita chips and garlic hummus for appetizers and we had stuffed shells for the main course. It was delicious! For a grand finale we had homemade apple pie and molten chocolate cake for dessert with ice cream. I about died.

During the game it had started raining pretty hard outside and we didn't really think about it until we had a wet/muddy little puppy. We headed home after the festivities and promptly threw Rudy in the bathtub for a good scrubbing. Again, I had just cleaned that bathroom... ugh.

But now we have a clean and happpy puppy, a clean and happy home and a clean and happy girl with a brand new car!

Happy Monday!

BTW- why is it called the "Superbowl"? It should be called the "America Bowl".

Pee in My Pants and a Booger On My Lip

2011-02-02T08:44:00.000-08:00

I forgot to tell you something. Something that happened on Monday that was so funny but also very upsetting.

Rudy peed on me.

He's totally house-broken now and we don't really have accidents because if he has to "go" he will go sit by the sliding door and wait.

This time we weren't at home.

After my migraine-nap filled afternoon on Monday, BF and I went to his parents' house for dinner. After dinner we were sitting in the living room hanging out and BF was playing with Rudy and his parents' dogs. They were playing a game of chase and Rudy leapt up onto the couch where I was sitting and sat on my lap. He was "hiding" from BF and BF came running into the room and towered over Rudy and I sitting on the couch. I guess it intimidated Rudy a little too much because he cowered on my lap and peed! I felt my lap instantly get warm and I knew what had happened.

I've been peed on before, a lot, by babies, puppies, kittens, lizards, chincillas and hamsters. I've never had another being pee directly onto my crotch to where it looked like I had peed myself. And it wasn't a little sprinkle either, it was a full on bladder release. My pants were soaked, my underwear was soaked and I couldn't stop laughing because really? I had pants full of pee that wasn't my own.

I guess these are the sorts of things I can look forward to when having my own children. Rudy is just our warm up!

Also, I told you how I got bopped on the lip the other day so I have a fat lip thing going on. Well, it got really swollen the other night and then split a little while I was sleeping so I've been keeping ointment on it so it doesn't dry out and split more. It was "scabbing" over a bit last night, although lips don't really scab as much as they do form a funny gooey barrier since they are moist. This morning I woke up to find that all of the swelling had gone down but it looks like I have a big booger stuck to my lip because of the gooey scab. Awesome.

No workouts at all yet this week with all of the sickness. We'll see what happens.

Bluesy Tuesday

2011-02-01T13:13:00.000-08:00

BF stayed home from work sick today. That is totally unlike him. Usually he takes a nap and wakes up feeling 100% better when I take a week or two to get over a cold. Not this time. I feel so bad for him.

My friend Dani posted something funny about how Tuesdays are the worst day of the week because they aren't close enough to coming off of the previous weekend and are so far from the next upcoming weekend and the other days have better attributes. I think she is right. There's not a lot that is good about Tuesday.

I left work early yesterday because I had a crazy migraine- the kind where lights hurt my eyes and sounds that I usually tune out or don't notice seemed to be echoing at 140 decibals around the office. I had to get out of there fast once people starting eating their lunches- the food smells made me so nauseous I thought I was going to lose my breakfast at my desk. I went home and Rudy let me take a 1.5 hour nap before he decided that I'd rested enough and that it was time for me to be awake. Just like a kid.

Today I feel much better, but as I mentioned now BF has the death-flu '11 thing. I still woke up with a headache, but today is much more manageable than yesterday.

Anyhow, here's a list of things that I'm occupying myself with on this particular Tuesday:

1. Test Driving Cars- I need to go trade mine in before I drive it off of a cliff so I'm hoping we can get out and test drive cars this coming weekend. I want to test out a Honda Fit, a Nissan Versa, a Nissan Juke and a Mini just to do it. I'll probably end up testing out some others along the way.

2. Making Valentine's Day goodies- BF works at an elementary school and I work in an office and it's always nice when people bring treats for the holidays, so I'm wanting to do the same. Not sure what I'll end up making, but you bet it's going to be pink, red, white and have sprinkles.

3. Exploring iPhone Apps- because I have no idea the extent of applications there are for my new phone. Some of them are probably useful... I've already discovered Angry Birds. Awesomeness.

4. Harry Potter- I want to sit down and watch them all again soon. I love those movies and I love those books. Why aren't there are series of books that captivate me like that right now? I need that desperately.

5. How can I make $1 Million by doing nothing? I don't know. I'd like to do that on top of my real job so I have the satisfaction of working, but so I can also take on-the-whim trips to fun places. Especially right now, because I'm so tired of being cold and damp.

What A Weekend

2011-01-31T11:42:00.000-08:00

I needed a cheat meal SO BAD last week, so Friday night BF and I went to Chevy's and I had some amazing mexican food. After our lovely dinner we met up with friends at Big Al's and played arcade games and cashed our tickets in on some funny things. It was a much needed fun night and the perfect ending was the waffle cone of birthday cake ice cream, complete with sprinkles and ribbons of blue frosting mixed in. I was in heaven.

Saturday morning came and BF still was not feeling well- he hasn't been feeling up to par for about 2 weeks. I think I fought off this cold-thing two weeks ago while BF's kind of hung around. His throat has been bothering him, but he's not running a fever so we know it's not strep. We ran errands and sort of cleaned around the house. The dog jumped on my face (not intentionally) and gave me a fat lip, so I look ridiculous right now because the swelling hasn't completely gone down. When BF and I sat down for dinner I got a text message from my mom asking me if I would go to the ER with her. I HATE it when she does that! If there's an emergency I want a call, not a freaking text message, but oh well.

Anyhow, so we raced around the house and packed an emergency bag with snacks, books, etc as we didn't know what was going on and I called my mom back. They thought my dad was having some heart problems so the doctor advised them to go to the hospital immediately to have an EKG and labs done.

We picked up my mom (my dad got an abulance ride) and rode out to Clackamas. It was nerve-wracking AND boring, (if that's possible) to wait in the ER waiting room. We were only there for a few hours but being there at all was mostly crappy. Turns out my dad tore a muscle in his back, but the pain was in an area that they use as a red flag for heart attacks, etc. I'm glad they took the precaution and did their due diligence at the hospital to see what was going on, but I'm mostly glad my dad is ok and it's just a muscle tear, not a more serious problem.

After that drama BF and I went home and crashed! Sunday was a boring catch up day for laundry and what not. BF is feeling much better, my lip swelling is going down and I'm down a total of 8 lbs since the beginning of the year! That averages to about 2 lbs per week which is just right. I am aiming to get to an intensive cardio class this week so hopefully that will help with a few extra lbs!

Dear Dani,

2011-01-28T14:51:00.000-08:00

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

I cannot freakin post a comment on your blog (even though I try to comment on EVERY POST, EVERY TIME, WITHOUT FAIL) but whatever.

So I'm posting what I would've commented on your blog as a post on my own blog- that's how much I like you.

I agree with your whole post. ALL of it. I feel exactly the same way and it's super frustrating. We are starting an annonymous blog that you can use to rant and rave and complain about people and things as much as you want- and by "you can use" I mean we all can use, just annonymously.

Also, I love my puppy too and we need to have a puppy play date.

You should call me or I should call you. We alway say that but we NEVER do it mostly because we are old and lame these days, but that will change when I get my iPhone this weekend.

Now to start brainstorming names for our burn blog or whatever we want to call it. It's like therapy in blog form.

Somebody Send Me This

2011-01-28T10:48:00.000-08:00

I was at home being lazy the other night watching MTV's Cribs. That show is pretty dang lame, but this particular episode featured The Flaming Lips' frontman, Wayne Coyne.

If you know nothing of the Flaming Lips I emplore you to google them. They sing that song, "Do You Realize" that was popular back around 2005.

Anyhow, so they show his ridiculous house (in an awesome nerdy "ridiculous" way), but the best part of the whole home-tour was what he was wearing. A red Christmas sweater with SKULLS on it. I immediately starting searching for one to buy BF. He would TOTALLY wear it all the time. To school to teach the childrens, even.

The problem is that I cannot find one, or even one similar to what I want.

Here's a clip of Wayne talking about some ornament thingy they had for sale a year or so ago, but he is wearing that totally amazing sweater so you can kind of see it:

A. MA. ZING.

I found these:

The last one is a kid's sweater, but you get the idea.

Anyhow, if anyone can knit a sweater similar to what I want, I will totally trade you something super awesome for it. Or if you find a really cool sweater similar to what I'm looking for tell me about it ASAP and where you found it so I can figure out how to procure one for BF to wear the rest of the winter... and maybe one for me.

And Then My Head Exploded!!!

2011-01-27T10:27:00.000-08:00

You guys... I am SO EMOTIONAL and AGRESSIVE this week. What is up? I feel like I'm on the 'roids or something (I'm not, don't worry). It's insane.

BF says that this means I'm doing the diet and exercise thing correctly. It's "80% mental right now", he says, so here's to my mental fortitude and hoping that it lasts until March.

Yesterday seemed to be the height of my craziness. Everything pissed me of and I felt all worn out and cruddy and I had virtually no energy for anything other than sitting and staring off into space. It was also a very odd day because there were a few medical emergencies at work (none of which had anything to do with me) so the mood was just off and somber. I didn't get a lot of anything useful done and then I went home and crashed on the couch for like an hour and a half. I woke up to BF making dinner, which strangely upset me a little because dinner is my job, darn it! But I caught myself being stupid and upset before I said anything to BF so that was good.

After dinner we went to the gym and something horrendous was happening. The women's locker room had flooded. I am assuming it was because they had replaced some of the facets on the sinks and something must have gone wrong- I assume this because we have had 2 broken faucets for the past couple weeks in there. Anyhow, so they had a big sign as you walk in the gym saying , "Caution, Women's Locker Room is Flooded". They weren't joking. Every inch of the floor was soaking wet so I went into the bathroom part to change instead of the carpeted area with the lockers. Also, there were GUYS in the ladies locker room! They couldn't find a lady that could run a shop vac and suck up the water? COME ON! So even if I wanted to change in the regular area, I couldn't. It was pretty dang uncomfortable.

Also, I felt like people were looking at me strangely while I was working out. I was probably being paranoid. But then there is a middle aged lady at the gym that sometimes "follows" me when I work out and will blatantly wait to use machines right after I use them. One day I was running on the treadmill and she came upstairs and got on the treadmill RIGHT NEXT TO ME, even though there were only 2 other occupied treadmills with plenty of open machines all over. During my interval run I noticed that she kept looking over to my machine and then changing hers depending on why mine was doing. It was super annoying. Anyway, that lady was there last night so I felt like I was hiding from her going all over to different parts of the gym so she wouldn't see me and follow me again.

Here's where you realize that I am crazy. Go ahead, I already know this.

So to deal with my crazy feelings of agitation and hatred I decided that I would try to wear myself out while doing cardio so that I would be too tired to be mad anymore. And that's when my body told me that it was too tired to go as fast and I know I can go. My legs just wouldn't move the way I wanted them to! Which, of course made me even more upset. I tried talking myself out of being so upset, thinking things like, "You don't hate other people, you are just tired and hungry". When we went home I was completely exhausted and felt sick. We went to bed after watching I Used to Be Fat (which is a great show) and I was so upset about being upset and tired.

BF did a pretty good job of trying to make me feel better. He just let me talk about how I was feeling and he listened. He also knows how I feel because of his body building stuff.

Today I feel better, but I'm still super tired. I wanted to take a sick day and just stay home, but I have to get a few things done at work so I didn't.

On a side note, I'm awesome and found some workout DVD's that I want at FYE that were USED so I am sticking to my "Nothing New" strategy pretty well! Only new stuff so far this year are dog things (because they were necessary since we previously didn't have any dog stuff) and freebies I got from work which I didn't have to purchase, so no money was spent.

I'm worried about how long my clothes are going to make it. I'm wearing pants that were tight a few weeks ago that now no longer stay up without a belt. I haven't weighed myself this week, but BF says I'm noticeably smaller.

Here's to being happy and stable!

Going Backwards...

2011-01-25T13:50:00.000-08:00

In a sense.

Today I popped my headphones in and listened to my iPod on shuffle to see what came up. I have quite a mix of music and it's been years since I listened to Death Cab for Cutie in large doses, but after hearing the song "Title and Registration" I had to switch from shuffle so I could hear the rest of DCFC's "Transatlanticism" album.

It was like going back five or six years. I wanted to sing out loud to almost all of the songs and when I was done I continued on and refreshed myself with some Nada Surf.

Oh you guys, I just love it when I remember music I loved so much at one time. It brings back all of the feelings and memories from the first go-round.

Also, why don't I play my guitar anymore? That's going to start happening again. Fo' sho.

I shall continue my journey backwards as the week progresses just to see what I find.

Too Big is Better Than Too Small, Right?

2011-01-24T09:23:00.000-08:00

I bought a really nice pair of jeans online this past fall. I knew they'd be a little tight but I also knew I was going to start getting back in shape and lose a few pounds. When they arrived I tried them on and they fit in length and waist, but the legs were SUPER TIGHT and the behind was a little snug. I was sad, but since they were so nice I figured I'd keep them instead of returning them.

Today I decided that I would try those nice jeans on since I've lost som weight and tightened up. They totally fit in the legs and butt! However, now the waist is a little to big.

I feel like this happens a lot, I find jeans I like, try them on and find that the cut is just no made for my body type. I've tried many different styles and cuts of pants, but the only things that seem to fit me well are old lady jeans and I hate that. I think it's because I'm curvy but modest. The super low rise jeans fit me well, but I don't want to have to worry about what's showing when I bend down . I also have an irregular length- 33", so regular length pants are usually just slightly too short while the long lenghts are just a tad too long (because I've found that most inseams are 31-32" for regulars and 34"-35" for longs).

So today I'm wearing a longer shirt to hide that my awesome jeans are too big in the waist, but they look really nice everywhere else.

If anyone has a favorite brand that fits them well, let me know! I'm game to try anything.

I won't be buying any new jeans yet (until I reach the goal weight), but it doesn't hurt to start looking and planning ahead!