It's been too long!

So my last post was almost two months ago. Where does the time fly?? We've been fairly busy, and on weekends that we're not busy, I just want to lay around and do nothing. Which is easily accomplished.

Since I don't really recall details of the last two months, we'll go with something more recent for an update.

I got a sewing machine early in November, and have been playing around with that. I don't really know what I'm doing, but my Junior High Home Ec. class left enough in my memory that I could figure it out.

For Thanksgiving, Aaron and I had our friends Jamie & Karlie, Nathan, and David over for dinner. Aaron made a wonderful turkey, not too dry, and we still have leftover turkey meat in the freezer. We did everything from turkey lo mein, turkey stroganoff, and turkey fried rice for leftovers. Then we were turkied out. We had a great time, and it was our first official "dinner" at our new house. We had to buy a bigger table for the occasion, as our current one barely seats four people.

We've gotten quite a few Christmas and holiday cards in the mail, which has been great - we sent out our first official Rehm Family Christmas letter this year, which was fun to do.

We got a ton of snow for the holidays, which started this Wednesday, although we didn't get quite as much snow as everyone back home in South Dakota and Wyoming did (thankfully!). Aaron and I have been getting our workouts with daily shoveling. We got 4-5" on Wednesday night, another 3" during the day, and they had predicted another 5-7" for Friday night. Fortunately, we didn't get that much snow, but unfortunately, it was because it was a mix of rain and snow for the entire night, and we're now iced over. I had a hard time getting doors to open and close this morning on the house and garage, but we managed to get out and moving.

We also got an electric blanket a couple of weeks ago, which has probably been the best purchase of 2009 in my opinion. Nothing better than turning the blanket on about 10 minutes before bed time and crawling into a nice, warm bed when it's only 62 degrees in the house.

The first weekend in December, I flew to Denver, Colorado, where Ashley picked me up and drove us to Laramie, Wyoming, where she was graduating from college. Even though she still had an extra week of school, including finals, to do after walking across the stage. I got to meet Ashley's friends and her on again, off again boyfriend. I'm not entirely clear on their relationship status. Mom and Dad drove down as well, and started tearing apart the furniture in her apartment. Since she was graduating, she was going to be leaving Laramie and moving back home for a bit to save up some money and start figuring out her career choices. Ashley graduated with two degrees - a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, and one in Criminal Justice.

I stayed the first night, Thursday, at her apartment on the air mattress, and the second night with Mom and Dad in the Hilton hotel. Nicest, softest, comfiest hotel I have ever stayed in. Except maybe the lodge in Ely that Aaron and I stayed in for one night during our honeymoon, that one was really nice, too.

It was great to see everyone again, even though I hurt my neck really bad somehow on Thursday night/Friday morning while sleeping on the air mattress. Ashley's friend, who is going to be a registered nurse soon, suggested I go to the ER and get x-rays, but my health insurance sucks for stuff like that, so I skipped that, and just wandered around for three days without being able to turn or tilt my head. It got better before the rest of the weekend was out, and I'm glad I didn't go to the hospital.

For Christmas, we had Jamie & Karlie, Nathan, and David over for dinner again. This time was a pot roast, veggies, sweet potato souffle' (YUM!), green beans, and dinner rolls. No dessert this time, but Jamie & Karlie brought over some awesome cookies that Karlie's mom made and had sent them, as well as a big plate of cheese for cheese and crackers. It was a really good time.

We're thinking of painting the interior of our house next month, apparently that's a good Winter project. I want to start with the bathroom - nice big room, and I already have a color scheme picked out, then maybe we can do another room, and then another, and keep moving on every few weekends until the house is finished! I'm just tired of the tan and white. We're having a hard time picking out colors for the other rooms, because we don't have any rugs or artwork or style per se, to pull colors and ideas from. We'll figure something out. I'd like each room to have a different feel, but I want them to flow together well, because upstairs, there's a lot of rooms that aren't separated by doorways, so you have to figure out where one room ends and the other begins when you paint. Who knows what we'll come up with!

Got myself a new phone last month, or earlier this month, don't remember which. The Motorola CLIQ, it's an Android based phone that's connected to lots of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and whatnot, full QWERTY keyboard, touch screen. I've enjoyed it so far, and am just waiting for an updated version of the operating system so I can get turn-by-turn GPS on it, as well as some other neat features.

Skadi and Odin are still not BFFs, but sometimes they get along better than others. Mostly, it's Odin sporting the bad attitude, but I think she eggs him on. Soon enough, she'll be as big as he is, and able to really whomp on him, though.

And I've run out of things to talk about - so until next time!

Just another Sunday

I'm trying to post more regularly, but keep forgetting, sorry. Life back in the real world has been nice - it was good to get back into a routine again, and not have people all over the place. Although, for a while, I did kind of miss having something to do or plan, as it seemed like that was all we'd been doing for the last few months, and now what do we do?

I need to find a good knitting project to work on, now that it's getting cold outside. The only problem is, kitties like to play with yarn, and now that we have two kitties, we have twice the yarn attackers. Our new kitty's name has been changed from Suzie (that's what they called her at the shelter) to Skadi. Skadi is the Norse goddess of hunting and winter, and she is the second wife to the god Odin. Our Odin is much more accepting of her now that they've been together for a few weeks, although he still has his crabby-pants days where he hisses or swipes at her. I'm just glad they can sleep in the same bed without fighting in the middle of the night anymore. That got old quick.


We had a good time at Halloween, lots of costume parties to go to, treats to eat, and drinking. I was Velma from Scooby Doo, and Aaron was Old Man Johnson (dressed as a ghost) from Scooby Doo one night, and then a robot the next night. The robot costume is always a hit. We made a change this year, and added a battery-powered fan in the top of the costume, so he could wear it without overheating. However, Aaron got assigned the duty of Bartender for the evening, and couldn't fit behind the bar in the costume, so it spent most of the night in the corner, all lit up.





Last Monday night, Aaron and I went to the Guthrie art center to see Jonathan Coulton in concert. The first time I'd ever heard of him was on Rock Band 2, a song about an evil scientist who is in love with a girl, who doesn't reciprocate his feelings. He's got songs about zombies, software coding, vampires, etc. I've heard his genre of music is called "nerd folk" as it's nerdy and acoustic. Whatever you call it, it was hilarious. The whole night, we were laughing our heads off. And it was a LONG concert, almost 4 hours. Well worth it.





I got to go to my first ever Vikings game on the 18th with my friend Lori from work - her brother had tickets, and someone backed out, so I was invited. We had a ton of fun. We tailgated before the game, headed in (missed the first quarter because it took so long to get into the Metrodome), and got to sit near the endzone on the 2nd level. We witnessed a fight between a drunk fan and a police officer in the stands above us, who was handcuffed and escorted out of the Dome. We almost left, in the last few seconds, as the Ravens were going for a field goal, which would have won the game for them, but thank goodness they missed, and the Vikings ended up winning.



And now it's November, and there are two months left to the year. 2009 went way too fast for me.

long time comin'

It's been over a month since I last updated my blog. Last time I wrote here, I was worried that no one would RSVP to my wedding, that people wouldn't get fed, etc. Now the wedding has come and gone.

My good friend Lori from work threw me a bridal shower / bachelorette party, we invited all my girlfriends from the Cities (and Jill, too!). Lori cooked burgers and brats for us all, had made great cupcakes and taco salad, and had games for us to play, then we hit downtown for some bars to have a good night.

I was on a strict "no soda, no coffee" diet for the three weeks prior to the wedding - I had gone in for a fitting of my dress, and had to suck it in a little so the seamstress could zip it up. Yikes. Didn't want to have to worry about that on the wedding day! I even gave up my Friday Caribou Coffee that I had been getting for the last year or so.

I got sick the week before the wedding, could have been flu, could have just been a terrible cold. I had a fever of over 100 degrees for two days, and had to miss work Wednesday and Thursday of the week before I took two weeks off from work. I managed to make it into work that Friday to get as caught up as possible, and ended up working an extra hour that day.

Aaron got to have his bachelor party the weekend before the wedding, which was pretty low key and laid back, but he had a good time and didn't get too wild.

The week before the wedding, people started showing up to the Cities as early as Wednesday and Thursday. We were entertaining people for days, and had a constant stream of guests in our house. It was really a great time, and great seeing everyone again.

The day of the wedding flew by so fast. We got up, gathered our things, and Ashley, Jill, and I went to get our hair and makeup done, then we arrived at the Earle Brown Heritage Center with hours to spare. We got photos done by our good friend Jamie, which was great, because he didn't even have to act professional around us, because we're all practically like family now.

The ceremony had to be held inside instead of out on the green due to uncooperative weather. It never actually rained during the ceremony, but it was only about 50 degrees outside, and I didn't want everyone freezing their butts off, even though I felt perfectly fine in my 50 pound dress.

The reception was a BLAST. I was worried we wouldn't get people out on the dance floor after our first dance, but Henry made it happen, and he was out there all night, pulling people onto the floor. The meal was fabulous, the guests had a good time (I think!) and we had a great time. I have never danced so much in my life in one night. I went barefoot as soon as we got into the reception hall because my heels were killing me. Well, my feet were killing me the next day - I should have worn flip flops or something.

We didn't leave for our honeymoon until Tuesday. We headed up north to Duluth, the North Shore of Lake Superior, and Ely, Minnesota. We stayed at a mansion the first night at a bed and breakfast in Duluth, ate great elk burgers, and watched the Twins play through the 9th inning before leaving for bed. We stopped by Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Bay to see the lighthouse that used to run there until the 60s. We stayed in a little town called Silver Bay at a teeny little bed and breakfast above a gift shop/coffee shop and had AMAZING cranberry/orange scones the next morning. Then we headed to Ely and stayed in a huge lodge with a lakeside view. A different type of place every night - Aaron sure planned that well!

We headed home Friday morning, got home in the afternoon, and have been working on getting the house cleaned up and our lives back to normal again.

This morning, we headed out in search of a kitten for Odin. He needs some companionship, and we wanted to wait until after we'd gotten home from the honeymoon before getting one. We searched a couple of the Humane Society animal shelters in the area, and finally found a cute little kitten to take home. Her name is currently Suzie, she's 12 weeks old, and a calico. She is very sweet and snuggly. Odin isn't too pleased right now with her, they are currently in separate rooms with a door between them so no fights break out. Hopefully in the coming weeks, he'll learn to tolerate her, and she'll grow up big enough to fend for herself.

Monday starts the Real World again, which I am and am not looking forward to. I want to get back to my regular routine, but coming back to work after being gone for two weeks is going to be ROUGH.

So that's my last month in a nutshell. Now that we're not so busy every weekend, I'll try to keep the weekend updates coming along!

Frustrated

So I'm having some frustration with this whole wedding thing. It's in one month, almost exactly. We sent out invites well in advance. We sent RSVP cards to go with the invites. We even put postage stamps on the invites, so all anyone had to do was say "accepts" or "declines" and drop it in their mailbox. Of the 65 invites we sent out, we've only received 34 back. The "RSVP by" date was almost two weeks ago.

People need to get back to me on this, or I won't know how many people we're supposed to be feeding. If they want to show up without RSVPing, I hope they ate something before the wedding.

How am I supposed to plan something like this when I don't know how many people are going to show up? GAH! SO FRUSTRATED RIGHT NOW. Thank you to all who got your invites in right away. Even if you can't make it, TELL ME, y'know? I'll just assume you're not coming if I don't get one.

Sorry for venting, but I go by the P.O. Box every day to check, and most days, there's nothing. And time is running out. Four weeks. That's it. Holy crap.

First it was a year and a half. Then it was a year. Then six months. Three months, now...only one. Eeep.

very busy

Wow. We've been super busy the last couple of weekends! I rarely blog during the week, and usually save it for the weekend, but we've just packed so much into every day.

Last week, we started working on installing shelves in our bathroom closet. Spent tons of time and money at Lowe's, bought all our supplies, painted the boards, measured, cut, drilled, etc. Then we find that there's lath and plaster behind the paint, not drywall like we were anticipating. The screws we bought won't work. Crap.

We got new deadlocks and door handles for our exterior doors to match the rest of the house's colors (antique bronze). Had to take the deadlocks back because the guy at Lowe's who re-keyed them didn't tighten them up all the way, and we couldn't get the key to come out. Got that fixed pretty easily.

I really don't remember what all we did last weekend. This weekend we got a LOT accomplished. We interviewed a couple of reverends for the wedding and picked one out, and we almost have all of the ceremony figured out. We got our wedding bands ordered. We got rid of all the clothes that we won't wear anymore, which freed up a lot of space for storing seasonal clothes. We don't have any closets for coats in the front or back of the house, so we don't have a lot of extra storage space, except the basement.

We donated all of the old clothes, got them outta the house. That was great. We got the guest bedroom mostly cleared out. Which is good, because Aaron's folks are going to be visiting us this weekend, and they'll need a place to stay.

CatMonster developed a twitch. Aaron says he's noticed it since we moved into the house, but we just thought it was the crappy carpet in here and his claws were getting stuck in it. He would walk, shake his foot like something was stuck to it, and keep walking. Apparently he's been doing that for a while. I trimmed up his nails and took his harness off, and he seems better now, so hopefully nothing wrong there. Aaron had done some research, could be a neurological thing. Kitty brain surgery is expensive, no thanks.

Aaron got sick on Thursday, took a half day on Friday, and also broke one of his molars on Friday. He went to the dentist today, and it turns out he's going to need a root canal and some other work done. He'll get the first part done this Thursday, and then it takes four weeks to heal from (at that point, there will only be one week until the wedding), so he won't have any more work done on his mouth until after the wedding. Sheesh. That's going to be expensive.

And I think that's it for now. Hopefully next week we'll have more! With Aaron's folks in town, I think we're going to go to the Valley Fair - it'll be the first time for us. I bought some new sneakers this weekend because my old ones are about 10 years old and have obviously lost their spring. I'm thinking I'll definitely need those for the hours and hours of walking around at the fair. I can't wait to eat everything on the planet on a stick, deep fried.

My idea (and I don't know if this already exists, but it SHOULD) s'mores on a stick - a marshmallow dipped in milk chocolate, rolled in graham cracker crumbs, and deep fried. Mmmm, I would eat 10 of those.

Okay, really, that's it for now.

House update!

Alright, we are officially all out of the apartment, and all moved into the house as of July 30th! Two weeks into living here, and we aren't even CLOSE to having everything unpacked, but that's okay, because we only have eight weeks until the wedding, and have put off a lot of wedding-related tasks that need to be finished now.

I went in for my dress fitting on Thursday, and with my shoes, the hem is the perfect length, and nothing will need taken in or let out on the torso, thank goodness! All she did was get the bustle set up, and she'll steam it the Thursday before the wedding. I have one more fitting with her after the bustle is complete, and we're done with the dress!

Got Aaron measured for his tuxedo today, as well as got the tuxes rented for all the groomsmen and fathers this afternoon. Met up with our coordinator at the wedding venue and got a lot of details figured out, just a few left to do.

We (Aaron) realized there were a few more people that we'd like to invite to the wedding, so I had to make a quick trip to the paper store to get some more supplies for making a few more inserts for the wedding invites as, thankfully, we had more than enough envelopes. Just need those addresses!

Over the last couple of days, the garage had started smelling odd. Aaron had been doing some grilling, and thought maybe some fat from the beef or chicken had dripped into the coals and was making the smell. But it just got worse and worse and worse each day. I had stopped parking in the garage because I didn't want my car to start smelling. It smelled like sour garbage or something, but we literally only had our cars, the grill, and the lawnmower in the garage, so we weren't sure what it was.

So this morning, Aaron is getting ready to make some omelets for breakfast, and I notice that the light in the garage was on. The only reason I noticed this is because it was unusually dark outside for 10am. So I tell Aaron that I'm going to go out and turn the light off in the garage. And he says that since I'm going out there, we should try to find the source of the smell.

So he gets dressed and shoes on, and we head out there. And it's just awful. We open up both the big garage door, and the small door to let some light and fresh air in, and poke around. Neither of our cars are parked in there, so it made the search that much simpler. Aaron checked all over by his side of the garage with the grill and lawnmower, and I checked my side, which was empty, aside from a piece of plywood leaned up against the wall.

There was a nail sticking out of the plywood in the front, so I grabbed that (instead of wrapping my fingers around the top, in case there were spiders in there), and slowly start pulling it back. Nothing scuttles out at me, so I peek my head in over the edge of the board, and see the legs and tail of a cat! OMG. I drop the board and shriek, because I have apparently turned into a big GIRL.

Aaron comes over to me, and has me pull the board back again so he can see. Sure enough, a full-grown cat, not neutered, with no collar is back behind that board, DEAD. And apparently rotting. Who knows for how long! Aaron has me pull the board all the way away from the cat, and we can then see that rigor mortise has set in, there are maggots, and part of kitty's face was missing. Ick, ick, ick. I'm so glad we hadn't eaten breakfast at that point.

Now what? We need to come up with a plan. We go back in the house, grab a moving box, and tape it back together. And tape all the seams up really nice. And line it with a garbage bag. We brought another garbage bag out with us, grab a pole from a broken broom, and proceed to push kitty into the box. Aaron covers him with the second garbage bag, closes it up, and hums the funeral procession. We dump him in the city garbage bin for our property, toss the stick and the gloves, and go inside.

"Well, who's hungry for breakfast?!" Aaron asks. Ugh, no thanks. I go and shower, Aaron does so shortly after me, and we proceed to laze about for half an hour or so before commencing with breakfast.

The part where it was unusually dark this morning? Yeah, that comes into play later in the day. It rained half the day, on and off, which was kind of unusual in itself, mostly because even though while it was raining, it was still 90 degrees outside.

Aaron and I had gone out to the grocery store, and as soon as we stepped out of the house, it was like stepping into a bathroom where someone had been running hot shower water for half the day. You almost had to swim through the moisture in the air. It was unbearable. Just as we're leaving the grocery store parking lot, the sirens start going off. I look at the clock, it's 8:45pm. Normally the sirens go off at 9:00pm as a test. And they don't stop blaring. We park in front of the house, and the neighbors are all outside, doing Lord knows what, but definitely looking for a tornado.

Aaron had been looking at the radar on his cell phone's browser, but it must be slow, because by the time we parked, the direction of the storm shifted, and whatever was coming, was coming straight for us. Holy crap, I'm not ready for this!

So I start packing up stuff, candle, flashlight, laptop, blanket, pillows, phones, jackets, whatever, throwing it into a hamper. I get Odin into his cat carrier. I'm just getting ready to head downstairs and camp out in the basement with the spiders when the sirens stop howling.

And that's when the thunder and lightning hits. But it only lasted for 5 minutes, if that, and was gone. And I am not lying when I tell you it's still 90 degrees outside, and probably will be for the next three days. Ugh. And it's going to be so flipping humid. If I wanted weather like this, I would have moved to Louisiana.

And that's the most recent events in my recollection. More to come later, and some pictures of things when everything's unpacked and set up! I don't know where my camera is (I know it's in the camera case, but am not sure where THAT is), and it's a total disaster area in here, anyway.

Until next time!

busy weekend

Whew, we have been super busy! The seller agreed to let us start moving in on Thursday, even though they couldn't get us in for closing on the house until tomorrow. We started moving Thursday, and now have very little left in the apartment. It's basically the computers (no internet at the house yet), the TV, and the air mattress, along with a bunch of random crap that needs to find its way over to the house, like the feet to the furniture, fans, lamps, and little storage thingies.

One of my co-workers gave me a house-warming gift - a Scotts Classic reel lawnmower - no engine, just my feet! I thought about trying it out today on the lawn, but since we haven't closed yet, I don't want to do anything until I'm 100% sure the house is ours. It looks like it will work, even with the super long grass we currently have - just have to make a bunch of passes.

We moved Odin into the house today (Sunday). He was quite traumatized, and has mostly just been hiding under any piece of furniture he can fit. We've been gone most of the day, in and out of both the house and the apartment. Took us an hour to find him when we came back in the afternoon - he'd wedged himself under the ottoman in the basement while I was doing laundry earlier in the day.

We're going to sleep in the house for the first time tonight. We'd bought an air mattress to sleep on over the weekend (and now to use in the guest room since we don't have two beds at the moment), so this should be interesting. We spent the better part of yesterday vacuuming up spiders that had taken up residence in the corners while the house was vacant.

The closet in the master bedroom is odd. It's very deep, very tall, but has an angled side for some reason. We can't put a clothes hanger rod all the way across because of that angle, so Aaron came up with an idea to put a built-in closet from IKEA in there. So we headed over to IKEA and came up with a game plan for a built-in with multiple rods, drawers, and shelves that should work out well for the both of us.

We still have a lot to do, and it's going to take a lot of time, but I'm so excited to have our own place!

Also, we finally got some wedding registry stuff completed today and yesterday! People had been asking about it, and we didn't have anything up, so with not being able to do anything at the house, and being tired of sitting in the empty apartment, we got some stuff done. Still a few more things to take care of, but I feel like we have a good list set up for now.

here's what we know

Okay, after talking it over with our Realtor and the listing agent, we have come to a compromise. The listing agent and seller have agreed to let us move in this Thursday, the 23rd. We don't get to do the closing on the house until Monday, the 27th. The listing agent has guaranteed us that all the work will be done by today, except the wiring of the A/C, which will be completed tomorrow.

We just have to agree to not change anything on the house until AFTER the closing. So no painting, no ripping out walls, no tearing up the carpet, until we close. Should be pretty simple, as we weren't planning on doing any of that stuff yet, anyway.

We won't start moving in until after I get home from work, so hopefully the guy doing the A/C will have a chance to get it completed before we start going in and out of the house.

So, despite being super irritated and disappointed last night after the walk through, it's turned out pretty well in the end. So far. We'll see if they got everything accomplished tomorrow afternoon.

grrr

Another quick one. The final walk through on the house did not go as expected. Aaron said he was pretty sure it was going to happen, but I was pretty disappointed and irritated. Basically, we gave them a list of nine things to do, and they only got five of them fully completed. The rest were either half-done, or not done at all. I can't remember everything, but the air conditioning unit was not fully wired, the furnace was not fixed and cleaned out, the garage still had debris and the rotted sheet rock had not been pulled off the walls, and the washer and dryer were ALMOST ready to go, but the dryer was not fully hooked up to the gas, and there was no line leading to the outside of the home for venting purposes.

What does this mean for us? We can't do our closing today as we planned. We're going to try to push it back to Friday (our Realtor will let us know today if that's possible). It also means that we'll have to do one more final walk through before closing, which means I'll likely have to take more time off work than I would just for the closing to drive down to the house, back to work, and then go to the closing office (which happens to be in the same office complex that I work in, so that's good).

Well, they were close, but no cigar.

I'll let you know how Friday goes.

quick "hello"

Sorry for the lack of posts the last couple of weekends - we seem to be really busy all the way up through Sunday nights lately, and I haven't had time to recap the week.

We close on the house this Wednesday, the 22nd! I'm really excited, and can't wait to get everything in the house and out of the apartment. We've been really busy packing, and trying to hang out with friends as well, so not much time to blog.

I'll try to post more later, maybe after we move!

house, wedding, packing update

Well, this weekend has been VERY productive. We've got all of our seasonal clothing and coats packed, most of the kitchen packed, more living room stuff, and a little bit more bedroom and bathroom stuff packed away and in the garage. We still have four weeks left until we move, but I prefer the slow and steady pace to trying to pack up the entire apartment in a week before moving.

We got a lot of the house paperwork taken care of yesterday as well, and it just now needs to be sent off to our mortgage loan lady, which I'll do on Monday from work. We tried to do it from Aaron's work yesterday, but the scanner wasn't working right, and then we couldn't get into my work building on the weekends. Oh well.

Wedding invitations are almost done. I just have to print off directions, get a map back from a friend of Aaron's who offered to draw it up for us, print that out, and they're done! I'll be so happy to get them out of my hair! I don't know what I was thinking, needing to make them myself. But I guess it's given me a lot of time to figure out what kind of wording I want to use, as I just do one piece at a time. If I'd ordered invites, I would have had to figure out all the wording at once.

Today, we may spend some time cleaning behind the fridge and the stove. We'll have to do it SOMETIME, and Aaron figures doing it now once, and then going over it again right before we move out is the best way to go. Not as much elbow grease needed in the end.

Well, I'm out here in the living room, nursing a headache, and Aaron's in bed because he didn't come in to sleep until 1am or something like that, so it's probably going to be a slow start to the day. Which is fine with me...

Rock the Garden

This Saturday, Aaron, Bret, Jess, and I went to Rock the Garden at the Walker Art Center / Sculpture Gardens. It was SO MUCH FUN. The opening group was Solid Gold, a local group, then Yeasayer, a group out of Brooklyn, NY who have a very African tribal feeling to them, Calexico, a band from Phoenix, Arizona, who use a lot of horns and sound a little "south of the border," and then The Decemberists closed the set.

We arrived close to 4pm, with the first concert starting at 4:30. Everyone quickly grabbed their beer tickets, and I got me some cherry lemonade (since I don't drink beer). We found our spot on the lawn, set up camp, and the concert soon started. It was sunny and 85 degrees outside. We actually took the bus from Bret and Jess' house to the gardens so we wouldn't have to worry about parking.

Solid Gold is an interesting band - popular in Europe, but based out of the Twin Cities. We weren't sure how they'd translate from studio performance to live - but were pleasantly surprised! They were great! Yeasayer and Calexico were bands I'd only heard a couple of songs from on the radio, both were very good. Lastly were The Decemberists, performing their new CD, Hazards of Love, which is a concept album, all the songs go together to create a story. I'd only heard the whole album once, but it was great live, and I was happy they sang 4-5 other songs from their earlier CDs after the set. They ended with "Crazy on You" by Heart, because they have two female singers who were AMAZING. Very powerful vocals, and they were both able to pull of that song.

We walked downtown to have some drinks and food after the concert, and grabbed a cab back to Bret and Jess' to end the evening. I wore tons of sunscreen and was lucky to not get burned.

All in all, a very good, very long day. I am excited to see who they bring out next year!

Today is mostly a day of recovering from being out in the sun for 6-7 hours, working on wedding invites, and maybe we'll get around to doing some cleaning, too.

House!

On Monday, we made an offer on a house that we'd seen the week before. They countered, we countered, and they accepted, all within the span of three hours! I was so happy, I couldn't even concentrate on work for the rest of the afternoon.

So we had our inspection on the house on Friday, and things went very well. There are still a lot of things that need fixed up, especially in the basement and garage, but most of them are required by law to be done, and the sellers will be required to fix all of them before we move in.

I took a ton of pictures while we were doing the inspection, as the pictures aren't available on the realty website anymore. There are a lot of pictures of the basement, since I wanted to document the areas that needed to be fixed by the sellers. Here's the link, as I don't want to post them all on the blog right now.

Saturday, Aaron's company was having a "garage-less" garage sale of some old computer hardware, servers, etc. It started at 10am, ended at 2pm, and we saw all of two people come in the whole time. I brought the laptop with me, and the PSP to keep me entertained with some video games. We ate lunch, ran to IKEA to look at some window dressings and curtain rods, as each of the rooms in the house have two windows, and we're very close to the neighbors on the right. Then, one of my co-workers had a party at her house in a suburb of St. Paul, so Aaron and I went there for some drinks and tacos, schooled them all at Guitar Hero, World Tour, and headed to the Bret and Jess' house for dinner and Rock Band, drinking, and dice games. It was a fun time, we haven't done that in a while.

Today, we had planned on pulling out the stove and fridge and cleaning behind them, in preparation for moving out of here and into the house. Well, that never happened, but we did manage to go to the grocery store and get all of our laundry done for the week. I've been getting boxes for packing at work - mostly printer paper boxes, which are good because they're small, but sturdy, and you can't over pack them or make them too heavy. Others have been HUGE, and I have no idea what we're going to pack in them. Linens and pillows? I use the boxes at work and make forts at my desk, no stinky boys allowed, of course, and tear them down at the end of the day to take home. It keeps me and my co-workers quite entertained, that's for sure.

Well, I think that's it for my update, until next time!

what's going on?

Well, when my own MOTHER Tweets about me not updating my blog, that only means one thing: the world is coming to an end. I mean, I'd better update.

So apparently I haven't updated since we looked at the first house. Well, we've since looked at five other houses, and might be considering one of them, but would like to look around a bit more. The house is in a nice area, needs some TLC, and has cool personality, but has a railroad track just on the other side of the backyard fence, which I hear from EVERYONE will hurt the resale value when we're ready to leave it.

The next weekend, I don't really know what we did. The weekend of May 16th and 17th was spent hanging out with old friends from Spearfish, SD who came to Minneapolis for the graduation of another hometown friend. People came from Illinois, Iowa, Colorado, and South Dakota for the graduation. We ate out a lot, reminisced, watched funny videos, ran all over tarnation and back, and generally had a good time. Oh, and we saw our friend graduate college! It was a great time, and great to see everyone again. I wish we could do it again soon, but I think the next time that will happen will be in October for the wedding. Which is better than another year from now!

This last weekend was super busy! Aaron's parents showed up Friday evening, and my college roommate and maid of honor, Jill, showed up on Saturday. Jill got her bridesmaid dress ordered, we checked out some malls in the area, including the outlet mall in Albertville. We grilled out at the campground Aaron's folks were staying on Saturday and Sunday night, introduced Jill to some friends and Rock Band, Jill and I saw the Sculpture Garden in the downtown area on Monday, and all five of us went to the Twins vs Red Sox game at the Metrodome. Jill is a big Sox fan (booo!) and of course the rest of us rooted for the Twins. It was a fairly uneventful game until the bottom of the 9th inning when they finally brought Joe Mauer out to bat and he hit a two-run homer, which put us only a point behind with one out to go. Of course we didn't win because the next batter hit a pop fly right to center field, but it was still fun.

Back to work on Tuesday, which was very busy and a little chaotic near the end, which ended with me having to stay an extra half an hour before I left due to putting out some fires with some clients on the phone. Put me in a sour mood. But I got the bird crap washed off my car after work, and that perked me up a little.

So, there you have it. My last two to three weeks. Happy?

Weekend news

Had a pretty productive weekend. On Friday, Aaron and I went to look at a house w/ our Realtor...the price was right, and it was in a really nice neighborhood. Unfortunately, it had been severely neglected by the last tenants, who were probably college kids with smelly dogs, because the house reeked of dog urine, and had been completely gutted, there was only a skanky old fridge, a washer, and a dishwasher as far as appliances go. The main floor wasn't too bad, aside from the kitchen, the upper floor was weird, with two tiny rooms created, they were seriously the size of my cubicle at work, and the basement was horrendous. There was also an in-ground pool in the back yard that was in need of major repairs or just being torn out of the yard.

The house tour was Friday morning, by the time I made it back to work, it was already off the market. Aaron said that made the decision that much easier, because he didn't really want to waste a lot of money tearing out a pool, and the house, especially the kitchen and basement, needed a lot of work.

Friday night I was invited to play in a double-header softball game by one of my co-workers, so while I was doing that, Aaron went over to a friend's house to play some video games and have some drinks. He ended up spending the night, and once he got home on Saturday morning, we went to the Paper Depot to get the wedding envelopes cut out so I could get them all folded.

Saturday night we saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine with a couple of friends - great movie, I thought, but probably because I got to drool over Hugh Jackman for almost two hours.

Today has been mostly cleaning and laundry, as usual. Possibly some grocery shopping. And maybe some tacos for dinner. Mmm, tacos.

Fires

I forgot one thing about this weekend. As Aaron and I were driving home from Will's house on Saturday night, there was a firetruck hauling butt on the bridge at our exit, heading in the direction of our apartments. Then, as we got closer to our exit, as police car was hauling butt to get to our exit, and to also head towards our apartments. The air was thick with smoke, and smelled like burning rubber or plastic. Once we made it to our exit and over the bridge, we couldn't initially tell where the smoke or fire was coming from.

This all made me a bit anxious, because I can't imagine something much worse than coming home to find all of your possessions destroyed, and being homeless, because of someone else's carelessness. What really made me anxious was the thought of Odin still in the apartment. If our apartment was on fire, he'd have no way of escaping. Sure, if someone came into the apartment to check for people, he might run out into the hallway...but what if no one did? Ugh, it just made me sick thinking about it as we approached our turn. As we got closer, we realized that the fire was actually coming from across the street in a different apartment complex, and that it wasn't anywhere near our building. I felt much better after that, but still a little odd.

Aaron and I drove by that apartment complex this morning before we headed out for breakfast, checking the windows of all the rooms, and not finding anything. Aaron had seen flames when we turned on to our street. Then he noticed it: two silver cars, burnt and melted, from the inside out, in the parking lot of that apartment complex. We aren't sure what happened, but Aaron thinks one of the cars was being jump started, and something went terribly wrong.

more weekend adventures

So I never posted about last weekend when Aaron's folks were in town because we kept ourselves pretty busy that entire weekend. Friday the arrived and we ate a nice dinner, took a walk around our mile long path at the French park that Aaron and I had been to before, came home, then called it a night. On Saturday, we were up fairly early, and headed to downtown Minneapolis to go to the Mill Ruins Park in the old industrial area of downtown where a lot of flour mills used to be. It's right off the Mississippi River, and all in all, we walked around almost 6 miles that day. We stopped in the middle of our walk to get pizza at Punch. After that walk, I forget what we did for dinner, but I remember there was napping involved. We did watch the baseball game in the in-laws-to-be's hotel room, then headed home.

On Sunday, we drove around a bit to kill some time, got me some potting soil to plant my flower seeds, and went to the Twins vs Angels game (we won!). After the game, we had soup and sandwiches for Randy's birthday dinner, did some more hanging out, and then his folks left for the night, and left for South Dakota the next morning. They'll be back next month on Memorial Day weekend as they pass through the state again.

This weekend was not terribly exciting, as there was impending doom (see: rain) all day Saturday, and rain all day on Sunday.

Friday was pretty lame - Aaron ended up having to stay late at work because some crap was blowing up all day, and they got it mostly fixed by the end of the day, but as son as he got home, it started happening again, so he had to go back to work, and didn't get home until 2:30am. We hung out with some friends on Saturday night, after spending most of Saturday in Aaron's car, driving around. We ran a few errands, not really getting much, but we drove through quite a few neighborhoods, looking at houses and areas, seeing what we liked. We drove WAY out West of the cities, to a town called Mound, which is near all these lakes. Apparently there were some houses at a good price, but that would be a ridiculous commute.

Today was a rainy day - spent most of it cleaning the apartment, running a few errands, and going out for breakfast, something we haven't done since probably November when my parents were in town.

I planted my flower seeds and Odin's cat-grass on Tuesday after work - his grass is already about three inches high, and he LOVES it. My three flower pots each have a few teeny little sprouts! I'm very excited about those, can't wait to see all the different blooms that come from them. I've been keeping them inside the apartment for now, Aaron was worried the birds might come on the deck and eat the seeds, but I think I can start putting them on the deck now that they've sprouted.

We finally gave up on toilet training the cat. He gets upset when we have company over, and ever since Aaron's folks showed up, he's been pooping in the bath tub non-stop. So I've given up, he wins. He gets his covered litter box back. Dumb, stubborn cat.

And those are my last two weekends in a nutshell!

Walk

Went for a walk today with Aaron on a trail that goes by Medicine Lake, which is in the French Park off of Highway 9. I remembered to bring my camera this time!


Someone put a stuffed raccoon in a log - thought that was pretty cute

Things are just starting to bud and soon will bloom

Cat tails by Medicine Lake's shore

Me and Aaron

Interesting trees - wish they had leaves on them

Down the path we go

Aaron loves having his picture taken...or not.

Aaron dared me to lick it, but I didn't want poison ivy or something all over my tongue.

Hopefully we'll be able to go for a walk on the weekends out here this summer. I think admission to the park is free for now, but we may have to pay a season pass once it is officially opened. Not sure when that will be. And we can always go walking around at the bird sanctuary again, and you just have to pay for parking there.

Aaron's folks are going to be in town this coming weekend, so that's going to be fun. We'll be going to a baseball game on Sunday, and I don't really know what we have planned for the rest of the weekend. Now that we have our venue booked, I think it would be fun to take them INTO the Earle Brown Heritage Center and show them the room that we reserved.

Aaron bottled his beer this weekend - it's his first attempt at a recipe, not a kit, so there were LOTS of hops in the bottom of the beer keg when we were bottling - the tap got plugged up a couple of times, and we ended up bottling the last two by straining it through a cheese cloth, into a funnel, and then into the bottle. We'll see how those turn out! They'll be in the closet for another couple of weeks to a month, going through their second fermentation, and getting all bubbly.

Food Sampling

This evening, Aaron and I had scheduled a food sampling at the Earle Brown Heritage Center (EBHC), along with about 50-60 other people. It's something they do maybe once or twice a year, to give you an idea of the different foods they offer.

We arrived around 5pm, signed in, and found a table with room for 10, with a lone gentleman and possibly his mom. We sat down for a bit at the table, looked over the menu, which had appetizers, the main course, and dessert options, as well as the drinks that were offered. This was a very small selection of the actual menu that they have, but the gentleman who got on the microphone to start the evening said it was some of their more popular items for this year.

They had a LOT of very fancy sounding entrees that didn't taste too fancy, just good. Aaron took samples of everything I was too afraid of, such as the pasta salad, fennel and orange encrusted chicken breast, and walleye. I wasn't too scared to try the prime rib, but I'd ran out of room on my plate.

We shared some of our foods, and marked off the ones we did and did not like from the menu. We need to go through their full menu and figure out what we might like, as we will need to set up a time for a one-on-one tasting, with foods of our choice. I think that's how it works, anyway.

Dessert was good. I got a slice of chocolate mousse marble cake (which had the best icing EVER), and Aaron had a slice of the flourless chocolate cake, which was VERY rich. Between the two of us, we couldn't finish that.

It definitely gave us a good idea of what we'd like, and what we wouldn't like. For example, I was very excited for a certain dish, having seen it on the menu in the past, thinking it sounded good, but upon eating it; meh.

Oh, this weekend I got new frames and lenses for glasses. I'd been having problems with my contacts recently, and have just been hating them lately because they never stay comfortable through the whole day, I hate going out at night wearing them because they just kill my eyes, and they were a hassle. Aaron had gotten new specs a couple weeks before me, and the store was having a 50% off lenses sale, which was still going on last weekend when I got my glasses. They're super fun, a LOT chunkier than the other frames I had, so that's taking some getting used to, and they're heavier, too, which kind of makes the bridge of my nose hurt, but I think I got everything adjusted to a comfortable position. And I can see! My prescription in these lenses is much stronger than the one in my old glasses, and stronger than my contacts, which were only about 2 years old (the prescription, that is). Five years ago, my right eye had almost 20/20 vision, and my left was much worse. Today, my right eye is a bit worse than my left. Ugh, getting old sucks.

We were pre-approved for a home mortgage through a bank last week! I'm really excited, but the gentleman who we applied through wouldn't return Aaron's phone calls or emails, and seemed rather flighty. We'd get emails at 12:30 in the morning, or it would be a week or so before we'd get a reply. It's very odd, and I don't think we'll continue to do business with him. Once we found out that we were pre-approved, however, Aaron contacted a realtor who'd worked with one of his co-workers. We'll probably re-apply for the loan, just to make sure that it's okay, since we don't want to continue to do business with the first man.

We drove around and looked at some houses that were on the market in our area this weekend, and some of them were in some shady neighborhoods. Eeep! Hopefully we'll find something soon! Aaron's come up with another plan for saving money towards the house that will only work if we actually GET a house. Which apparently takes between 30 to 90 days from the time you REALLY start looking. So if we find a house we like that doesn't need any fixing up, we won't want to do anything until a few months from now, as we have the apartment lease until the end of August of September, and don't want to (or can't afford to) be paying double rent and mortgage loan payments. So we'll see. I'm really excited, though!

Most days I don't feel like an adult, but I think that owning a home will help remedy that. I realize that I'm 26 years old, and obviously not a child, or even a young lady anymore, but I don't feel like an adult. I have a good job, I work Monday through Fridays, I am making payments on a car, engaged, taking care of a cat...still hasn't clicked. But I'm sure after the wedding and a house, that'll change. Or it will never change, and I'll never grow up. Which might not be so bad, either.

catching up

Sorry about the lack of posts, we've been kind of busy, but in a good way. Hanging out with friends, being out and about during the nice days on the weekends, and whatnot.

I don't really remember what we did last weekend, except our friend Nathan had a party at his apartment. We helped with making dip, pinwheels, and pico, but only four people showed up in the end, so it was kind of a bust. Everyone who was there had a good time, we were just expecting more people, so we ended up making a LOT of stuff that didn't get eaten by the time we left.

On that Sunday, Aaron and I went for a one-mile walk around a trail near Medicine Lake because it was about 50 degrees outside, and perfect for getting out of the house and doing something healthy.

This weekend, we were quite the busy-bodies. Ran all over town and back for random things. Ended up getting a Wii Fit because I had been wanting one for quite a while, but we could never find one during the holidays. So far, for the two whole days I've had it, I really like it. Aaron had gotten new glasses last week, but the lady at Sam's Club who did his prescription (they were having a discounted eye exam there, I guess), made his right eye weaker than the left, so we had to get the prescription changed, then get a new lens from the eye frame place - so we got those taken care of this weekend, as well. Now Aaron looks all spiffy in his new glasses, AND he can see out of them! Always a bonus.

We got supplies to create our wedding invitations yesterday, which I was very happy about! We went to to the same place as before for the save the date cards, and were able to get all of the same colors. We have all of the supplies except for the paper for the envelopes, because it has to be cut by the Paper Depot place, then they'll call us. I'm really pleased with the way the mock-up turned out, and excited to get to work on them.

We applied for a mortgage loan maybe two weeks ago, and still haven't heard from the guy. He e-mailed Aaron at 12:30 in the morning the other day and said, "Sorry I missed you, when is a good time to call?" Aaron gave him a time, and the guy never called. We're going to give up on him pretty soon and start searching other banks, because this is weird. We have to put in two months' notice at the rental office here before we move out, or we lose our security deposit, or last months' rent, or something like that. So I'd like to know well in advance if we've gotten the loan or not.

Hoping the weather starts warming up soon. I'm down to four pair of work slacks plus one pair of jeans for Fridays for my work wardrobe. I need to be able to wear skirts soon!

Otherwise, I think that's about it for me! Until next time!

Employee Party

This weekend was the employee holiday party for Aaron's company. It started off with dinner at Spill the Wine, the restaurant below Aaron's office. I had a great steak and ice cream afterwards, and each course was served with a wine. I am not a wine person, and they didn't have hard cider, so Aaron ended up drinking all of my wine, plus his, and I had water. Then we headed out on a charter bus to Elsie's, a bar and bowling alley. We were split into teams, there were about 20 people or so in the lanes, and around 8pm, they turned on the black lights, which was a ton of fun.

I think I met almost everyone in Aaron's office, minus a person or two, plus all of their wives/husbands/fiancees. Had a great time, but I don't think I ever bowled over 100 in either game I played. Drinks were on the company, so everyone was drinking green beer by the pitcher.

Then we got back on the bus around 9pm, which was reserved until 11pm. So of course, we went bar hopping. First was a place where I don't remember the name, but the bar was in the center, with some tables along one long wall, and stools lined around the outside of the bar. Since it was the holiday before St. Patrick's day, everyone was celebrating by drinking the special - Green Meanies. I THINK they consisted of equal parts vodka & Sprite, with a bit of green food coloring, and some Kool Aid lime mix. They were TASTY! Dangerously so, that's for sure.

Then we went to Grumpy's North East, which was interesting, because the bar next to Aaron's work is Grumpys' Downtown. The NE location was quite a bit smaller, but their drink of the night was something called Dragon's Milk, which was a very dark beer that everyone had. We were there for a very short time - one drink, then gone, because it was getting close to 11pm, and we had to get back downtown.

Once downtown, we went to Grumpy's Downtown for some drinks and food, because we hadn't eaten since 5pm. It was packed, just like all the other bars we went to earlier in the night. There was a small room off to the side of the bar that had a few open tables. We snagged one, and then realized why no one was sitting there - at the other end of this narrow room, they had Rock Band set up, the whole band set, and then a large TV that projected the game screen so the "audience" could see, with a smaller screen for the band members to play off of. The first few bands we saw were pretty terrible, and a group from our employee party went up and did a Bon Jovi song - "Livin' on a Prayer", which was fun, and then Aaron signed us up to play Boston's "Foreplay / Long Time", so Bret, Aaron, me, and some random guy went up there. Aaron sang, Bret drummed, I guitared, and random dude bassed. AND WE ROCKED THE HOUSE. The start was rough, because the instruments weren't synced up with the screen right, so it took a while to get the hang of when to strum or hit the drum, but we got it after the first couple of measures. It was awesome - standing ovation. Okay, maybe not, but there was lots of whooping and hollering while we were playing, and no one threw beer bottles or rotten fruit at us.

And then we went home. Whew, what a night, but it was so much fun.

Today was clean the apartment day, and we rearranged some furniture in the living room, because I'd been wanting to do so for a while, and Aaron finally caved and helped me (mostly because stuff is heavy, and he's quicker at putting all the wires together for the TV and stereo and video consoles.

And that was our weekend!

We're trying some raw food stuffs for Odin that we picked up this weekend. You keep these little medallions of raw food in the freezer, then let one thaw out in the fridge overnight and give it to the kitty the next day - we'll see how he likes it - he was awful excited to sniff at it when I was transferring it to a dish to thaw in. Hopefully he'll like it.

Four Years

Today marks our four year anniversary - the day we met and started dating. It doesn't seem like it's been four years in some ways, and in some ways, it does. We started off living a block away from each other, and then five months later, Aaron moved in with me because my college roommate was moving out, and I couldn't afford rent by myself. Some people thought it was too soon to move in together, but at the time, it was my only option, and it worked out perfectly.

We lived together in Spearfish for a couple of years, and then moved out here to Minneapolis together when Aaron was offered a job. In April of 2008, we got engaged, and we're planning our wedding for October of 2009.

I doubt we have anything special happening for our four year anniversary - but that's okay. As long as I get to spend some time with him, and maybe eat a good dinner together, I will be happy. Aaron is my best friend, and I don't know what I'd do without him. He loves me for me, tolerates my quirks, embraces my weirdness, and has been nothing but supportive since I've known him. I couldn't ask for anything more. Except maybe a few more back rubs *smile*.

plasma

This weekend I decided (finally) that I was going to sell my plasma. I always say "donate", but I got $40 for it, and "selling plasma" sounds like I was doing it on the black market. Anyway, I have donated blood several times in the past, and have had very little problems before, aside from them piercing my vein once, and passing out a time or two. No big deal.

I made it down to the center early in the morning to be told I needed my Social Security card, a 2008 W-2, or a paystub within the last 30 days, along with my photo ID. Well, I don't happen to carry any of those with me, so I had to go home and get something and come back.

I filled out some paperwork, was asked to read something out loud to make sure I was literate, read some donor information, get weighed, do blood pressure, temperature, and iron testing, as well as a physical which included a urine analysis, lung sounds, and checking my veins and hands to make sure I am not a needle drug user, ha. Then I got my picture taken for my file, and they checked the veins in my arms to see which would be the best to use for donating. Once it was decided that they would only use my right arm for donating, and my left arm was for emergencies, I sat down and waited for a donor chair.

Sit in the chair for about 15 minutes before I actually get hooked up to my machine. By this point, I had drank a large glass of juice with breakfast, a bottle of water from the donor place, as well as a box of Hi-C fruit punch from the donor place (because of the urine analysis, and they want to make sure you're hydrated before donating). Well, I'll tell ya what, I was SUPER hydrated. But by the time that realization hit me, they were poking me with needles and hooking me up to the machine. "Just try not to think about it," the technician told me. Hmmm, okay!

So the way plasma donation works is they hook you up to a machine that draws the blood into a centrifuge, spins your blood away from your plasma, deposits the plasma into a container, and then returns your blood to you. The machine does this over and over again until the right amount of plasma has been obtained. It took me 5 cycles and 100 minutes to fill up my container. Most of the time, it takes someone 45-60 minutes, but there was a problem with my first return of blood where they had to switch needles to my other arm, and I almost passed out before they gave me my first bit of blood back.

Fortunately, when they got me hooked up in the other arm and returned my blood, I felt much better, and there were actually no problems in using my left arm, which they said was "only for emergencies." Well, I guess that counted as an emergency, and it worked.

When I was done, I got my $40 and was told the soonest I could come back is Tuesday (I went on Saturday). This whole process took 5 hours. I didn't leave until after 1:00pm, and I watched two entire movies on TBS (they had TVs in the lobby and donor area). I watched Legally Blonde 2 - Red, White, & Blonde, and Clueless. Both movies, all the way through, with commercial breaks, started and finished while I was there. They promised it won't take as long next time I donate because I won't have to go through the physical portion, just sign in, weight, temperature, blood pressure, and iron, then donate.

So it was a long day. But, I made $40, and my plasma can be used to help burn victims and can be used for vaccines. So that makes me feel good! Plus, I have to donate at least one more time, or they will have to destroy my first plasma donation. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'd better go in this week for another round. We'll see if it's worth the hassle to go in again after that.

meme

A) People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blog and replace any question that they dislike with a new, original question.

B) Tag eight people. Don't refuse to do that. Don't tag who tagged you.

1. Make a list of 5 things you can see without getting up:
Cat Monster
chapstick
closet
concert tickets
window


2. How do you style your hair?
either in a ponytail or down and straightened. *snore*

3. What are you wearing now?
Pajama bottoms, an old Corporate Games shirt from 2000, and warm socks

4. What's your occupation?
Desk Jockey

5. Do you nap a lot?
Only on the weekends

6. Who was the last person you hugged?
Most likely Aaron. He's one of the only people here in the Cities I'm on hugging terms with, and I see him every day.

7. What's your current fandom/obsession/addiction?
Can't think of anything right now...saving money for the wedding and searching out houses on the internet on a nightly basis are starting to come to mind, though...


8. What was the last thing you ate today?
Laffy Taffy, cherry flavored.

9. What was the last text message you received?
"Home!" from Mom, who, along with Dad, just got home from sunny Florida.

10. What websites do you always visit when you go online?
Gmail, Facebook, Myspace, Cute Overload, LOL Cats, Woot!, Netflix, Twitter, bank acct.

11. What was the last thing you bought?
a Cherry Coke from the vending machine at work. I was about to fall asleep at my desk at 2:30, and thought that would probably be bad.

12. What are you listening to right now?
The loudest computer fan EVER. Almost makes me want to never use this thing.

13. What do you think about before you go to bed at night?
"Ugh, I still have to go to work in the morning"

14. What was the last book you read?
The last full book I read was the last book in the Twilight series. I tried to start another murder mystery book, loaned to me by a co-worker, but I just can't get into it. I'll have to give it back to her.

15. What is your favourite weather, and why?
60 degrees, partly cloudy, with a slight breeze. I hate being cold, and I hate being hot. I want to be just right, and be able to wear shorts and short-sleeved shirts while doing so! Oh, and flip flops!

16. If you could play any musical instrument, which one would you play?
I tried to learn the guitar a few years ago, to no avail...but if I had to pick something different, I would like to learn to play cello again.

17. How are you?
I am ready for this week to be over with. I want it to be Friday so I can get my coffee at Caribou, I want it to be Saturday so I can sit around the apartment and do nothing and not have to think of work right now. I am tired and a little crabby today, and I'm not sure what's setting me off, which has been bugging me most of the day, and probably adding to my problem.

18. What's something you'd like to say to someone right now?
to the cat - "why don't you do anything I tell you to?!"

19. What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
African or European?

homeowners before the wedding?

Aaron has been looking at houses on the market for the last month or so. It started with normal house hunting, and then has moved to a few other options. The first was to buy a lot and build our own Tiny Home! Now, these are super cute, and very space efficient, but you buy the plans, and then build it (or have it contracted to be built). Aaron's not found too many lots for sale.

Then he started looking at remodeling a home. Apparently there is some remodeling loan that you can use to get your house all fixed up and stuff. It would add to the value of some old, dilapidated home, that is for sure. But then you couldn't live in it while it was being remodeled, so you'd be renting in your apartment and paying the mortgage at the same time. Yuck.

He was talking about a "green certified" remodeling, which would make the house more energy efficient, as well as get you some tax breaks. Things like solar panels, and who knows what else. I'm letting him do all the research and see if we can do all of this.

And now for some random fun:
Odin got into a bag of catnip this morning that I thought I had put away.

High as a kite, he is



OM NOM NOM NOM NOM



Showing off his stash


Rolling around in his 'nip



Now it's time for a nappy!

here's another one

Last night we had some friends over who we haven't seen in a long time, mostly due to lack of coordinating nights off during the weekend. Jamie and Karlie came over, we had some drinks, Aaron made stir fry / Kung Pao Chicken with rice, and we listened to old records, played laser beams with Odin, and sat around. It was a really good time.

Our friends Nathan and David came over just as we were finishing up dinner. Man, Odin REALLY hates Nathan, and we have no idea why. Nathan used to live with two cats, he's never been anything but nice to Odin, and as soon as Odin even gets close enough to smell Nathan, he'd start doing this weird growling thing as he tried to bite Nathan's hands. Bad kitty.

Eventually, we had to lock Odin in the bedroom in his bad kitty cage because he was just getting a little too wild and upset. I had set him up on the bookshelf, because he loves being up high, and then most people wouldn't be bothering him. It worked for a while, but Jamie had brought his camera over and wanted to get a picture of Odin for his Photo A Day blog. He got his picture, and now Odin is the feature for the day, but man, after about three snaps of the camera, Odin had enough of that!

Jamie told us about a wedding fair that he's going to have a booth at on Sunday (today), and that we should come. I'll be able to get some ideas on cakes and decorations, as I already have the dress, which is probably the FIRST biggest thing in weddings.

David sat in the chair and played Patapon with the big headphones on all night, so he was not so much the social butterfly, but I think he's just kind of a quiet guy.

The funny thing about the group in the apartment last night was that all of us lived in Spearfish, South Dakota at one time in our lives, many of us all at the same time. And now here we are, all in various suburbs of the Twin Cities. Small world, eh?

Odin is doing much better now, not so overstimulated, but he's still rotten to the core. To punish us for having other humans over, he pooped in the bath tub. Bad kitty. We're going to have to figure out a way to keep him from doing that. The other night, Odin had done the same thing, so that night, we filled the tub with about an inch of water, and then he used the toilet like he was supposed to. I guess we could just put water in the tub every day while we aren't actually using the shower. We'll need to get a different drain, because the one that came with the tub is very difficult to remove, which is why we never use it.

Work is still going well. They're really harping on us to have our tasks done within four business days / seven calendar days (whichever comes first), because we have such a low volume of work coming in right now. I'm thinking it's because people aren't opting for those elective procedures with the economy the way it is, and they are trying to stay at work as long as they can, for fear of not having a job to come back to when they are all healed up. I've seen it happen, and I can't imagine having to go through the same hardships and situations.

I have some new pictures of Odin that I need to load on the computer and post, but maybe another time!

Happy Valentine's Day

Even though Aaron and I aren't officially celebrating today (or traditionally celebrating), I wanted to wish everyone a happy day, and say that I am SO happy for a three day weekend!

Tonight Aaron and I are going over to Bret and Jess' for dinner - prime rib, roasted asparagus, fancy potatoes, and Aaron's making a garlic dip for crackers. Mmmm, the garlic just got out of the oven, and is wafting through the whole apartment. Smells great.

This week was a normal week, nothing super exciting going on. We got to wear jeans all week at work because the company was celebrating its 5th year of going public (I think that's when the company switched from one name to the one we currently use, but I wasn't around during that time, so I don't remember exactly).

We almost got our taxes done last weekend, but Aaron wanted to wait for some bill to pass regarding people who bought a new car in 2008 (which both of us did), but he just found out yesterday that it only pertains to new cars that were bought after November 12th, and ours were both prior to that. Oh well, never hurts to try to catch a break!

Aaron started looking at houses again this week - seems like there's a lot of houses in the area where the monthly payment would be less than what we pay in rental here for the apartment. Which would be GREAT. We'd have to put in two months' notice at the rental place, and our lease ends in September, so we'd have to notify them by June or July. Which seems fast, but I guess if we can pull it off, more power to us. I'm also worried that we wouldn't be able to plan our wedding and work on buying a home all in the next 4-8 months, but Aaron seems to think we could pull it off. I have no idea what he's basing this on, as neither of us have planned a wedding OR bought a house before...so...yeah. We'll see how long this lasts, because it was about this time last year that Aaron was looking at houses.

We have FINALLY moved on to Step Three of Odin's toilet training! Which is to cut a slightly bigger hole in the center of the litter trainer. We had been on the first small hole (and half of that hole for a while) for probably two months now. Each step is supposed to take a week, but he kept having accidents or pitching fits, or SOMETHING to extend each week out into another. He's finally had a couple of weeks of no accidents, and I'm ready for him to move on, and for our apartment to be litter free.

Odin has a vet appointment on Monday, since I had the day off, to get his distemper and rabies shots, as he is now a healthy kitty. Then we can finally get tags for his collar, and get him registered with the city! (Since we were supposed to do that a year ago when we got him. Whoops!)

Well, I guess that's it for now. Until next time, whenever that may be!

blurbs

Well, I forgot to post last weekend, so here goes a couple week's worth of updates (not that there will be a ton of writing, as I've likely forgotten most of last week anyway).

On the last Friday in January, I was invited to an 80s themed rollerskating party by one of my co-workers. It was probably the most fun I'd had in a long time. Pants rolled tight at the ankles, rolled up sleeves, side ponytail with crimpy hair, bright blue eye shadow, jelly bracelets, and pink lipstick. Man, it was awesome. I forgot to bring my camera, so I don't have pictures, but believe me, it was great.

The weekend was pretty chill, cleaning the apartment, groceries, all that jazz. Aaron and I even watched TWO movies, Pineapple Express and Step Brothers, which is pretty amazing, because Aaron has the attention span of a flea.

The week was pretty uneventful, as far as I can recall, except for a new discovery of Odin's ineptitude and badness. He got sick on the carpet a few times, and it was discovered that he had been eating my ponytail holders, and they were not sitting well with him after a few days. He even managed to poop one out. No wonder he hadn't pooped in a few days! So I guess I have to keep a better eye on those things when I take my hair down.

This weekend we hung out with Nathan again, but without getting pulled over this time. We also had dinner with our friends Bret and Jess and Will. Will just had double knee surgery, so we picked him up and headed out to Bret and Jess', where we had hamburgers, salad, fries, and played Rockband until 2am. Oof.

Work is going well. We've been super slow so far in 2009, so I've been able to stay caught up on my workflow and emails. Always a plus. We've been having all kinds of "stress relief" things at work, since the holidays plus tax season is always a little stressful, apparently. We do get tons of phone calls regarding W2s, but it hasn't been COMPLETELY stressful at work. But every Wednesday we get the Stress Cart, which is a cart filled with goodies that we get to pick from. There are games and puzzles in the break room that we can work on during lunch, as well as random theme days, like Country Western Day, Spanish theme, etc. Kind of a nice thing, but I think we're getting spoiled by the treat cart!

Tonight while Aaron was working on dinner, a bubble of butter that was in the pot exploded and hit him in the eye. Fortunately, he had his glasses on, but he did get a large splotch of it right under his eyebrow, which blistered and broke immediately. Sure hope it doesn't scar or scab up really bad - that would be terribly uncomfortable.

Then I think I shut Odin's tail in the closet door while I was getting some Neosporin to doctor up Aaron's eye. The boys are in bad shape tonight, that's for sure.

And I guess that's it for now!

Oh! Be sure to check out my poll on the left! <-------------

What a night!

Last night, we went to hang out with our friend Nathan, who recently moved back into town. We also went out to dinner with our friend Barbara and her boyfriend, Nick. After dinner, Nathan, Aaron, and I headed off to go back to Nathan's place, but not before a quick trip to the liquor store for the boys.

We're in Eden Prairie, a suburb I'm only familiar with because I worked there for three months in the mall. Aaron's giving me directions to the store, and saying I need to turn left, and I should have gotten in the other lane (which, if he'd told me that a few seconds earlier, I could have gotten in the left turn lane). Instead, I'm in a straight only lane. But Aaron still thinks I can turn left. After all, there's two lanes to turn into, and no oncoming traffic to collide with. So the light turns green, and we turn left. Nathan is in the back seat, looks behind us, and says, "Well, the car behind us turned left, too, so it must be okay!" So we're zipping along, and at the last second, Aaron tells me I need to get in the right turn lane, and follow this other car. I had to veer over there pretty quickly in order to make the turn, and as I turn onto the new road...red and blue lights start flashing behind me.

HooooooooBOY was I mad! I pull over immediately, and so does the cop. That car that turned left at the light behind me? The cop. He said he pulled me over for an illegal lane change at the light, as it was a straight lane, and something about me getting in the turning lane seemed a little off (in other words, I probably looked like a drunk driver). I explained that Aaron was giving me directions, and told me to turn at the last second. He takes my license and insurance - everything checks out, and he gives me a warning. While he's in his cruiser running everything, I start yelling at Aaron. He always gives me directions at the last second! I am constantly having to practically SWERVE to get into the next lane because of the last second directions. Drives me crazy.

Some days, he's really good. Most days, he's not paying attention. Sometimes when I ask if I need to turn or do this or that, he tells me no, I only need to turn when he tells me to turn, otherwise, go straight, which is what I was doing.

Oh, I was just so mad at him. I didn't get a ticket, thank goodness, and thank goodness I hadn't had anything to drink at dinner before we left. It was just stupid and irritating.

Aaron suggested maybe getting a GPS for me, but that seems to be helpful only when you know specific addresses, and for this situation, Aaron just knew where the place was, not the address.

I'm hoping this will get him paying attention more when we're driving. Yeah, I should know directions, too, but he's just better at it, and that's the way it's always been. Plus, I'd only been to that liquor store once, and it was likely over a year ago. No way I was going to remember how to get there.

So that is my rant for the night.

In other words, I am feeling better, physically, although I still have the horrible cough, and now some sinus issues, but I will definitely be ready for work tomorrow morning, and the rest of the week. Last week, we had Monday off for the holiday, I took Wednesday off, half of Thursday off, and all of Friday. I worked a total of 12 hours - no good. I'm going to be SO busy tomorrow. Ugh.

ugh.

This Saturday, we were invited to a party celebrating "155 Days Until Summer!" You had to have at least one summery article of clothing in order to get in. I went with a tank top, pants that were rolled up at the bottom to look like clam-diggers, flip flops, and a Hawaiian lei. Aaron went the short sleeved route, with a pair of shorts on over top of some long underwear. Perfect!

Aaron had developed a slight cough the day before, and woke up Sunday morning feeling absolutely wretched. He had a fever of 102.4 F at some point, was oscillating between burning up, and being freezing. He ended up staying home from work on Monday and Tuesday. I had Monday off, so there was an additional day that I spent with the sickie.

I went into work yesterday, with a nice wet, hacking cough and some body aches. To bed early for me, couldn't sleep to save my life last night. I was coughing, flopping all over, and roasting. I got up at 6am to start getting ready for work, and took my temperature - 100.1 F. Bleh. So I ended up saying home from work today, so hopefully I can make it into work for the rest of the week.

So here I am, at home, hacking up lung butter, roasting to death, and just taking it easy.

'Nother one for the day

Since my last post didn't have much news, I thought I'd make a new one. And I'm really bored this weekend because I was supposed to get a new movie in the mail from Netflix today, and nothing showed up. Grr.

So like the previous post noted, Aaron got his first batch of beer bottled today. That's pretty cool, and I'm interested to see how it turns out. I don't like beer and I won't try it, because it's a pale ale, and any beer I've REMOTELY thought was slightly drinkable is something really dark and thick, not a pale beer.

He's working on some bread and oatmeal raisin cookies right now. In the mood to bake and make, I suppose. I've been hanging out at the computer most of the day, except for the morning that we spent cleaning the apartment because it got totally trashed over the week.

Last night, one of our friends who used to live in the Cities, but moved back home for a semester, moved back in town. His folks were there to help cart all the stuff from South Dakota back to Minneapolis, so we all went out for dinner last night at Old Chicagos. I had the guacamole burger with bacon. Super yummy, but messy.

Odin started doing something weird today - he just wandered into his Bad Kitty Cage, laid down, and hung out for a while. All on his own. And he wasn't even being bad. Then he came and snuggled with me for a bit, then went back in his cage to chill. What a weirdo. We re-opened the hole in the bottom of his toilet trainer today - he's mad because it's broken again. The hole is smaller this time than last time, by about half, because we covered half of it with cardboard. Hopefully this will ease him into the process. Or something. Giving him his medicine is getting a little easier, he doesn't struggle as much, but he still hates it just as much.

Aaron's back is better than last weekend, but only because he has his steroids and muscle relaxers to numb the pain. He still gets sore if he stands too long, or is sitting weird. Hopefully it will go away on its own soon.

Tonight we are going over to some friends' house for dinner - they're making a pot roast, and we're going to bring some cookies that are in the oven right now. Mmm, mmm, good!

Picture time

I haven't posted any photos in a long time, and I had just started getting back into taking pictures recently, so I thought I would put some up. The first batch is from Aaron's first batch of home-made beer. He got a Mr. Beer brewing kit for Christmas from my sister, and it was ready to bottle today - I chronicled the procedure:

Here is the little "keg" that the first batch brewed in. It sat in the closet for a couple of weeks so the yeast could do its thing, and then sat on the counter for another week or so to settle down.


The supplies - cleaning solution, sugar for secondary fermentation in the bottle, caps, and the capper


Gotta make sure those bottles are clean!


Then you have to put the sugar in for fermenting and making the beer fizzy.


Fill'er up!


Cap it


And now you have tons of bottles of warm, flat beer!


They'll hang out in the closet for another couple of weeks, getting all fizzed up, then we can put them in the fridge, and Aaron will have plenty of beer to drink. I want to try making an apple cider next time. Mmmm!

As it's been getting colder and colder outside, I've been wanting to knit some more. For Christmas, I made Mom and Aaron scarves.

The first two are Mom's, just before I mailed them off to Wyoming:



The next is Aaron's scarf - it's wavy!



And next is the scarf I am currently working on for myself. It's a braided cable scarf, and I'm almost halfway done with it. Cabling is a lot of fun, and keeps you interested and paying attention to the pattern, but I make more mistakes while cabling than I do most things for just that reason.




And, just for fun, here's a couple of pictures of Odin, wedging himself under the laptop, as he loves to do.



That's it for now!

Trip to the vet

So we've had Odin for about a year now. When we got him, he was sick, and we got a free trip to the vet if we took him in within 2 weeks of adopting him. Well, it must be that time of year again, because he's sick again. He started sneezing yesterday, quite a bit. I knew it was time to take him into the vet soon, anyway, so this was probably the best time to do so.

I made an appointment this morning, and we were able to take him in this evening after work. Took him in, and met the vet tech and the veterinarian. They were both very nice ladies, and the vet tech even had a dog named Odin. He got his temperature taken, which he hated, and struggled for so long that we gave up. He had a little bit of a fever, and if we'd been able to get a full reading, it probably would have been higher.

Teeth and gums are healthy, weight is good, but probably has a virus. He got some medication for the virus, to be taken twice a day, orally. We tried it tonight - the first dose got mostly all over me, and the second was successful, after I got him wrapped up in a towel and a firm grip on him. He started coughing, but I think it just went down the wrong tube when he swallowed. He'll get used to it! Just like I say about everything that he hates. *smile*

Aaron and I bought some new games - as we get cabin fever in the winter time - less on television to keep me occupied, and Aaron's getting burned out on World of Warcraft, plus he can't spend a lot of time on the computer because of his back.

Speaking of which, he had his doctor's appointment, got some medications, and we'll see how that goes. Might have to do physical therapy, but hopefully it won't get that far. He seems to be doing much better today, after he took his pills. He doesn't shuffle around like an old man and moan out in pain every 10 minutes. It's a nice change.

That's about it for now. Adios!

New Year

Well, here we are, in January already. In 2009, no less. It seems the longer I'm out of school, the faster the years go by. I seem to measure my life in weeks now, instead of days, which is easier to do with a Monday through Friday work schedule, I guess. Live for the weekend, right?

I hope everyone had a good holiday weekend, for those of you who were lucky enough to have the weekend off, and even if you weren't, I hope you got to celebrate a little. We spent Wednesday night doing very little, watching television, playing some video games, dinking around on the computer. We were invited to a New Year's party in St. Paul by some friends, but declined going because we didn't want to have to worry about either finding a place to stay, or one of us being sober for the designated driver. I was asleep in my own bed by 11:30pm.

Thursday was kind of blah. I think we may have done some shopping? I don't really remember. Must not have been too important, then.

Aaron had to work on Friday, but got off about an hour early. We were invited to a friend's house for dinner, he made spicy curry for all of us, and we sat around and chatted for quite a while. It was a group of people we hadn't hung out with in a long time, so it was nice to see them again, and even meet a new person.

On Saturday, Aaron tweaked one of his lumbar vertebra after sitting on the floor in the living room and brushing Odin. He stood up, stretched, twisted, and has been in pain ever since. He ended up taking Monday off work, and was able to get a doctor's appointment for Tuesday morning. We've been alternating heat and ice, and he's been doing a lot of resting. Hopefully, he'll get some physical therapy and drugs prescribed, because it's hard to listen to him moaning and groaning in pain all the time. For two reasons - One, I hate seeing / hearing him in pain, and there's nothing I can do about it. Two, it's damn annoying listening to him. I know that sounds mean, but I know he's felt the same way about me in the past with my various ailments. Yeah, I feel bad for him, and I know he can't help it, but I don't want to listen to it all the time. Makes me frustrated that I can't do anything for him. Plus, he doesn't let me help him with anything, either.

We also went to get me some more yarn from the yarn shop in downtown Minneapolis, so I could start working on my braided cable scarf. I have some pictures taken, but not loaded onto the computer yet. Then we went to the Midwest Brewing supply store to get Aaron some bottles, caps, a capper, sanitizer, and cleaner. His pale ale is quietly brewing in the front closet, and will be ready to bottle next weekend.

We went to the grocery store on Sunday. Aaron was going to have me go by myself at first, but then decided he should get out of the house and move about to loosen up his back. Unfortunately, it didn't do him any good, and he wound up being much more sore after the store than before.

I think this has encouraged Aaron to get more fit. Something we both need to do. And it's not a New Year's resolution, it's just something that needs to be done. The fitness center at our apartment complex is always very crowded and has a limited selection of equipment, but it's free, and much nicer than the other fitness room before the remodel. It's hard to be motivated to go there after I get home from work, play with the cat, settle down, and flip on the television. If we could afford a gym membership easily, that would be good - just go straight there from work, don't get caught on the comfy couch and get lazy.

But, I bought a fitness ball for doing crunchies, push ups, and other exercises, and most stores are having sales on fitness equipment, to celebrate everyone's "Get Fit" resolution for 2009. We might have to get some weights and other things, and then encourage each other and help each other out. I'm more likely to be motivated if I have someone else to help with the motivating. We'll see how it goes. I wish we lived on the first floor, then I could start playing the Dance Dance Revolution fitness game without bothering someone living below me. Oh well.

Well, that's enough rambling out of me for the night. I guess when you have a long weekend, you have a lot more to blog about.

Until next time!