I'll be that girl

Thrown to the sharks

2010-07-31T22:56:00.000-05:00

Finally settling into a pattern at work in the new department. They started training me on the phones around the 18th of July, I had one week of training by sitting with someone while they took calls, and then by having them sit with me while I took calls. Then on Monday the 26th, I was left to my own devices with only a schedule to follow - Answer phones from 7am to 3:40pm, and take lunch at 11:30am. It was like being thrown to the sharks in a manner of speaking. Those sharks being angry customers whose dental benefits have not been paid due to some contract regulation they were never made aware of...allegedly. "Well, no one TOLD me I could only get a filling once every three years." Didja read your contract? No? Then shaddup.

Next week, the first week of August, I start my brand new schedule of working four 10-hour days with Mondays off. Three-day weekends every weekend? I can totally handle that. The 10-hour days? I'm not too sure about. I'll be working 'til 7pm every day except Fridays, when I'll be working 'til 6pm. I've been so used to getting off work at 3:30pm every day, this is going to be a huge change for me.

Home life is pretty uneventful right now. I definitely have some projects I want to work on around the house on Mondays while I'm off work, mostly to do with sewing or organizing. Aaron's parents are coming to town on Wednesday and staying through Sunday, so we're going to be pretty busy, along with a concert and a wedding to go to during that time, as well.

The weather's been very typical of summer lately - hot and muggy, with rain storms every few days. Grass is still growing like mad in the backyard, which is a good sign - means the sod they put in last summer is probably going to do well, I think. If only we could finally get gutters up on the house (we have estimates from three places, just need to call them) and have the tree trimmed down (the low-hanging branches are really close to the power wires that run to our house and the neighbor's house).

Last weekend I got a Barnes & Noble Nook, their e-reader, and I am loving it. I think it'll realy come in handy at work on breaks, and it allows me to multi-task - I can read my books and knit at the same time! I do have a ton of paperback books left to read, including the entire Dune series, and I need to finish off the last couple of books in the Ender's Game series.

Guess that's about it for now!

It takes a lot more effort to be miserable than it does to be happy

2010-07-18T15:57:00.000-05:00

So over these past few months, I've done a lot of complaining about my job. Complaining that it was too hard to do both Disability and Dental in the same day and be expected to get anything done. Complaining that I had been switched do Dental for an indefinite amount of time. Complaining when I learned that my position in Disability had been eliminated, and that I was going to be transferred to the Dental office permanently. And complaining about the horrible hours I'm going to have to work starting in August when the call center is required to be open until 7pm.

And then on my way home from work on Friday, I realized that it has been taking me more time and energy to be upset and complain about this whole thing than it would to just suck it up and deal. I've been over in the Dental office now for two weeks. Everyone over there is really nice, really happy to have me over here. It's pretty quiet over there, as most of the employees work from home now, and only about a third work in the office. One of my friends from Disability is going to be moving over to Dental soon, and I'll have someone I know.

It takes a lot less of my energy, and let's face it, makes my husband a lot less miserable to hear about it, when I don't complain and whine about the current position I've been placed in. I have a job, I work with good people for a pretty good company. I still have benefits and health insurance, vacation, and the option for a more flexible schedule (I'll be working four 10-hour days beginning in August, with Mondays off, so I'll always have at least a three-day weekend). I have a wonderful husband, a roof over my head, a car to get me to and from work, and family who cares about us. I'd say I have it pretty good right now, even if it's not "perfect" as far as work is concerned.

But you know what? Even if it's not an ideal situation right now, I have plenty of time in my life to find something better, something that works for us, and something that makes me happy. This is only going to be a very small part of what goes on in our lives, and it probably won't last for that long. It'll be okay.

Holiday Weekend & Then Some

2010-07-05T22:02:00.000-05:00

So, they moved me over to the Dental office for work on Friday morning - I was informed of this on Thursday during a meeting with my new supervisor and office manager. A co-worker of mine in my former department is going to be transferred over the first of August, so I was hoping that they were going to keep me over on the Disability side of the department until they moved her over, too, that way we could move together and go through training together. But that will not be the case.

I got moved over Friday morning, bright and early, before a lot of people in Dental had arrived. It took three trips to get all of my stuff moved across the hall, four trips if you count my computer and whatnot that our IT person brought over for me to get set up. I put up all my decorations and bobblies and doo-dads right away, because 1) they would be all over my desk and in the way if I didn't, and 2), it just makes it feel more homey when it's all decorated.

My new desk is a little smaller, and has less storage space than the old one - fortunately across the hall, everything is done either electronically or by scanned image - there is not much actual paper that I will be working with, so no need for the bigger desk or more storage. Everyone seems really excited about us moving over to help out and whatnot, and everyone is really nice. They seem to have a really fun attitude over there, so I'm hoping that will help out during this whole transition. It's really overwhelming and kinda makes me nervous.

This weekend was really good. Three day weekends are awesome in two ways. First, THREE DAY WEEKEND, duh! Second, the next week at work is only four days! Doesn't get much better than that. On Saturday, we lazed about, got some stuff done as far as running errands and getting plans ready for the rest of the week.

We were busiest on Sunday. We had a baseball game to go to at Target Field at 1pm, Twins versus the Rays. It was the LONGEST game evar in only nine innings. Three hours and 10 minutes. So it probably wasn't the longest game evar, but things stopped going well for the Twins in the 5th inning, and all the innings were incredibly long. It was a warm day, but we were in a shaded area, and it was cloudy for most of the day. Somehow, I still managed to get a sunburn...yeah, that's how white I am.

Afterwards, we ran back home to rest up before the fireworks. We went to St. Louis Park with Nathan and Megan. The fireworks were about 40 minutes long, and pretty good, we were RIGHT under them. Lots of fun, minus the ridiculous people to our right who were loud and obnoxious on purpose. On the way back to my car, there were mobs and mobs of people walking back to their cars, as well. Somehow, Nathan found a cell phone on the sidewalk and picked it up. This was the biggest mistake ever. The phone rang right away, and it was the owner, hoping to find us among the crowd. She had no idea where anything was as far as streets, so trying to find her in the neighborhood was not going to work. We agreed to meet at the nearby Knollwood Mall in front of Kohls. She called another couple of times, saying, "Uh, there's a lot of traffic here, can you just stop and we'll come find you?" Nope, not doin' it. Not turning around, not stopping, not parking. We'll meet you at Kohl's as planned. We ended up taking a wrong turn and had to loop around in the traffic-clogged streets again before getting out of the neighborhood to the mall. We still ended up waiting around for the girl and her boyfriend for about 10 minutes once we'd parked. She called the phone several times, and texted it a few more, although I think the last text was from her boyfriend, because it was rather coherent and thanked us for all of our help. We'd seriously considered leaving the phone somewhere and sending them a text message saying where it was, but we followed through, and she got her phone back before the night was over. Nathan will never pick up another stray phone again.

Today was fairly relaxing, we ran some more errands and got the lawn mowed finally - it had been about two weeks since we last mowed, and it was starting to look jungely again. Odin has been sitting outside on his leash most days while we're home because it makes him so happy that he gets to sit outside in the sun, watch the birds, and eat the grass. We set him outside after mowing the lawn, and he looked around, then looked at us like, "Hey! Where'd all my grass go?!"

It's been SO HOT out here this weekend that Aaron and I haven't been able to go take any walks. We were doing really well last week, walking about every other day, 3-4 miles each walk. Feels good to get out of the house and go do something good for us, that doesn't cost anything. Except it might cost me a new pair of shoes, my feet get pretty tender near the last mile or so.

Tomorrow I start my contract training at work, and then I will start training on the phones. It's basically a call center for members or dentist's offices to ask questions about what their plan covers and why was this or that denied. Phones aren't my favorite things. I'd really just rather process the claims and not do phones, but I know that's not an option because they need phone coverage. Starting the first of August, the phones have to be covered from 7am to 7pm, and I will have to be on the schedule until 7pm. That really really sucks. I am currently working 7am to 3:30pm, and LOVE getting off work early and having the rest of the day to go do stuff or stay at home, or whatever. Seems as though that's not going to be an option anymore, which seems really unfair to me. But I know that they had to have several people in the Dental office re-arrange their schedules so that the phones were covered until 7pm, because previously, they were only covered until 5:30pm, so there was no need for anyone to stay later. It just sucks.

One of the things that I always did in the Disability department was to put up a bit of trivia or "this day in history" on this company whiteboard that was hanging up on someone's cube wall, but never being used. I've been doing this for over a year, and people at work look forward to reading it every day. I'll have to come over at lunch or at the end of each day and put up some trivia for them so they know I'm still around :). I also bought myself a fancy schmancy dry erase board to go up on my desk at work so I can put up trivia over in Dental, too :) That made me feel a lot better about this whole transition.

So, that's that. Tomorrow is a new day!

Summer Time

2010-06-27T17:30:00.003-05:00

Summer has officially arrived, and we have been some busy bees lately! During the middle of June, my mom, dad, and sister came out for a visit - they hadn't been up to see us since the wedding in October last year. It was really great to see everyone again, and we were pretty busy the entire trip. The family showed up Sunday night after a 12-hour drive across South Dakota and most of Minnesota. Monday was the Mall of America for Mom, Ashley, and I, while Aaron and Dad stayed home to do some manly stuff and get supplies for brewing beer. Aaron got a fruit wine started, which is fermenting (or whatever wines do) under the kitchen sink. Ashley and Mom bought tons of shoes at the mall, and I found a cool billfold from Fossil to replace my old wallet.

It should probably be mentioned that when the folks were coming to visit, they had barelyenough room left over in the Subaru for an additional passenger - this room was necessary, because at the end of the week, Mom's sister was flying in from Florida to Minneapolis, and would drive back to Wyoming with them on Saturday morning. The purchase of additional shoes put the vehicle on the verge of being too full. This was to be dealt with later in the week.

We also had a BBQ on Monday, and met up with Randy and Joan, who drove in separately from my family. We had bought tickets to three MN Twins games for this week, and wanted to hand off the tickets to Randy and Joan, as we were pretty sure we wouldn't see them except during games.

Tuesday was fairly relaxing if I recall, and there was a late start to the day. We wanted to get to Target Field early on Tuesday because it was the first of three games, and the first time anyone but Aaron and I had been to the new field. We even got to see some batting practice from the opposing team, the Colorado Rockies. I stood in the Home Run Porch bleachers, hoping for a ball, but none came my way. Maybe next time!

On Wednesday, Mom, Ashley, and I headed off to ValleyFair for some roller coaster action. I made the mistake of letting Mom and Ashley spray me down with sunscreen, as I ended up fairly burnt by the end of the day, but had a great time otherwise! While us girls were gone, Aaron and Dad went in search of a luggage rack to stick on top of the Subaru, because they probably weren't going to be able to fit everyone and their luggage in after a few days of shopping. Dad and Aaron also patched up the hole in the roof where water's been leaking in during really heavy rains, and put a cap on our chimney.

We had our 2nd baseball game of the week that evening, as well. When Aaron and I got back to my car, the key fob wouldn't unlock the car. Had to unlock it manually, and the lock switch on my door wouldn't work. This is the first time I've had a car with so many electronic features, my two previous cars had to be unlocked with the key, and the passenger doors were unlocked manually, as well. It took me a while to realize that I'd left the lights on in the car (it was really loud in the parking garage, and I didn't hear the dummy buzzer dinging at me to tell me I'd left them on), and the battery died. Had to call Mom and Dad to rescue us. They didn't have jumper cables, but Randy and Joan did - fortunately, the four of them had parked close to each other, and it was easy for Mom and Dad to get the jumper cables from Randy and Joan. The next part was not so easy, as they were on the floor below us. They had to exit the parking garage, get back on the Interstate, loop around, and get back in. Took quite a while for them to get back to us, but fortunately, the car started up right away with the first turn of the key.

On Thursday, the baseball game was during the day, and we had seats in the sun for the whole game. I ended up burning the tops of my knees because I didn't put sunscreen on them, and the right one is FINALLY starting to feel better - I could hardly walk on it earlier this week. After the game, we headed home to shower and change clothes, and then headed up to Maple Grove to have dinner at The Claddaugh Irish Pub. Every Thursday night, they have team trivia at 7:30, with the first three places winning gift certificates to the restaurant. We ended up in 2nd place, winning a $25 gift certificate - It was a ton of fun.

Friday was pretty laid back, also. Ashley wanted to do some yarn shopping to find some super soft yard to crochet a new blanket. We went to a few "luxury" yarn stores, but everything was either too expensive, not soft enough, or not the colors she was hoping for. We ended up going to JoAnn Fabrics, which is where I like to get my yarn when I'm on a budget. Afterwards, we killed some time at the nearby mall, then headed to the airport to pick up Mom's sister. While we were out, Dad and Aaron fixed the loose tiles in the bathroom floor.

Everyone left super early on Saturday morning, and that left Aaron and I with the weekend to ourselves to relax and wind down before going back to work again on Monday.

This week's been pretty interesting, as well. We've had a couple of big rain storms come through, and during the first one, we had a power outage. Power wasn't anticipated to be restored until nearly 9pm, so we went out in search of food. We stopped by this new little diner called Granny's Kitchen in New Hope, MN, not too far from where we live. It was really quiet in there, with one other table sat to eat, and a lot of staff wandering around. The other table left, and then it was just me and Aaron, and the diner was closing up, but we hadn't gotten our food yet, as Aaron had ordered steak, and everything was cooked to order. It was well worth the wait, though, as both of our meals were delicious. You could tell they put a lot of work into the meals.

Over their speakers, they were playing a CD called "Punk Goes Pop" - a compilation of pop songs covered by punk groups. The first song was a Backstreet Boys song, then Michelle Branch, some Madonna, etc. It was fairly awesome, and as we were being rung up at the register, I said to the guy, "Man, I really kinda want this CD!" And he says "Oh yeah? Hang on, I'll be right back." He goes back into the kitchen, takes the CD out of the player, comes back, and hands it to me. I mean, seriously, how cool is that? It was a burned CD, not the original, but still. Very awesome. I think the next time we go back there, I'm going to burn them a copy of my Punk Tribute to Weezer CD - I'm sure they would enjoy that!

One last thing before I sign off for the next month or so. In my last post, I'd talked about work and being switched from Disability to Dental for an indefinite amount of time - well, that has officially been changed to me moving to Dental permanently. I'm not sure when I'll be moving across the hall to that department, but I should know more this coming week. It's not ideal, but maybe in a few months, I'll be able to work from home, then I won't have to bother with the commute anymore.

So I guess that's it for now. Until next time!

I thought this was supposed to be temporary?

2010-04-29T16:40:00.003-05:00

Last year our company decided to use our available employees in Disability Claims to work Dental Claims for the first quarter of the year. I had volunteered, thinking it would be interesting to see another side of the company, and to change things up a bit with my work. I wasn't picked last year because I was too "green" at my current job, and my supervisor wanted me to focus on my Disability work.

The reason they did this was because at the beginning of each year, there is an influx of Dental claims, and instead of hiring new or temporary employees for the three or so months that there are too many claims, and not enough Dental employees. Instead, someone determined that the Disability department was overstaffed, and pulled two people to work half days on Dental from Disability. At the end of March, those two people were done.

This year was the same story. They needed two people to work half days from January through March. I volunteered again, even though the people who did that volunteer work last year had complained about it and how unorganized the whole thing was. I thought they were exaggerating. Turns out they weren't exaggerating, not even a teeny bit.

Training started off rocky, when we were set loose on our own, we had more questions than it seemed were possible, and it was tough. But we managed. And just when we finally got used to that, they changed the work we were doing, and it all started over.

Then they announced (with only two days of warning), that we would no longer be doing Dental half days - they were so far behind, that they would need us to do Dental full days, and it wasn't just through March anymore, it was through April, as well. Then we would go back to doing Disability claims again, just like normal.

Then today, with one more day left on my countdown calendar, which I'd been carefully "X"ing off each day that passed, a bomb was dropped on me. I was called into my supervisor's office, expecting to hear something about "thanks for all your hard work in Dental these past four months, here's how things are going to go on Monday when you start doing Disability again." Instead, it was more like, "So, your last day of Dental will not be tomorrow."

Me: You're joking, right?
Supv: No, I'm afraid I'm not.
Me: This is a REALLY bad joke.
Supv: I wish it was a joke, I'm sorry.

So not only is my last day of Dental not tomorrow, but the duration of Dental is indefinite. The Dental department is currently understaffed and not hiring, and the Disability department is currently overstaffed - so of course it makes sense to take people from the overstaffed department and have them work in the understaffed department, especially if they're already trained to do the work.

I suppose I should mention that this is mind-numbingly boring work, and the constant data-entry (about 5x more than when doing Disability) is wreaking havoc on my shoulder due to repetitive motion strain. I am getting an ergonomic chair at work and a slide out keyboard tray, which should help out. Since I don't know how long I'll be doing this now, I'm working on keeping the pain to a minimum. Before, it was "oh, I'll be done in two months, so I'll just suffer through it, and it'll go away when I start Disability again."

We'd planned a Happy Hour at one of the local bars tomorrow. It's still on, even though it could be considered an Un-Happy Hour. Either way, I'm drinkin'.

Yeah, this was a big bitch-fest, but I needed to get it off my chest and complain about it. Because there's nothing I can do that's going to change it, aside from finding a new job at this point, and I'm just not ready to do that right now. I just have to hope that it doesn't last too much longer, and deal with it.

Wrong Number

2010-04-19T20:19:00.003-05:00

My phone rarely rings. I don't even know why I have a phone most of the time. If I could have something that just sends out text and picture messages and surf the internet, I'd be fairly happy, I think.

So when my phone does ring, I usually need to answer it, and it's usually someone I know. That's why normally I don't answer my phone if I don't recognize the number.

This weekend I had a missed call from a St. Paul area code - they didn't leave a message, so I didn't call back. Today, while I was waiting for my car to get its tires rotated and oil changed at the dealership, I got a call from that same number, so I answered it. Some kid, who asked, "Uhh, who is this?" Well, you called me, kid, you should probably have a good idea of who you're calling.

Then I get another call tonight from an unrecognized, but local number. What the heck? I'll answer it, it could be something important, right? Nope.
Me: Hello?
Kid: Mom?
Me: Nope, you've got the wrong number, sorry.

So, do I go back to only answering my phone if the person calling is in my phonebook, and therefore, a recognized number? Or do I answer the phone every single time, when 90% of my incoming calls are wrong numbers because people forget that there are more than two area codes in the Twin Cities?

April Showers

2010-04-18T21:10:00.002-05:00

Quite a bit has happened since I last logged in here. We'd had an issue with our youngest cat, Skadi, the weekend before Easter. She'd been throwing up Sunday afternoon, all day Monday, and Tuesday morning. I made an appointment to take her to the vet Tuesday morning, and after doing some x-rays, they found that she had eaten several of my ponytail holders. The doctor recommended surgery right away to get those out, as they were obviously impairing her ability to eat. She'd lost a pound in the last couple of months, so she wasn't getting enough food. Unfortunately, my vet's office didn't have a surgeon available for Tuesday, and since all the ponytail holders were currently in Skadi's stomach, and not trying to float their way down her intestines, the vet suggested that I go to an emergency / referral vet about 20 minutes away.

So Skadi and I went down to the emergency vet and waited around about 2 hours before they took her in, as there were other animals in surgery at the time. The surgeon only had to do a scope to get everything out of Skadi's stomach, and didn't have to open her up (thank goodness, because that would have cost 2x as much), and they were able to get everything out of her stomach.

I felt so terrible, because I know this was my fault. I try to be really good about putting away my ponytail holders after I've taken them out of my hair, but apparently I wasn't. So I promptly got a hair cut that weekend which is easier to manage when I wear it down, but I can still pull it back in a ponytail if need be, like on the weekends when we're painting.

Since we spent a small fortune on Skadi that week, it was hard to justify spending more money going to Kansas City to see the Twins play at Kaufmann Stadium, so we canceled the trip and got our deposit back. Next weekend will just be another 3-day weekend for us so we can get more painting done. We've finished nearly everything upstairs now - the bedroom, bathroom, Aaron's office, and guest room are complete, along with the kitchen. The dining room is ALMOST done, save for half a wall that needs to be smoothed out yet before we paint it. Aaron's still working on that part.

On Easter weekend, we had that Friday off, which was the Twins vs Cardinals exhibition game at the new Target Field. Aaron and I went to that game, which was fun, even though the Twins lost. We'd already been to the stadium once before, so we knew where everything was, and didn't have to spend too much time lollygagging around, like most everyone else there did. One of the great things about the new stadium is that you can bring your own food and drink in, as long as you don't take it to any of the food-serving establishments. Which is great - bring an empty water bottle and fill it up at the drinking fountain, or bring your own peanuts, sunflower seeds, or sandwiches, and don't spend a fortune on concessions. Of course, there is some great food at Target Field to try out, but once the novelty has worn off, bringing your own food in is awesome.

We're going to a game this coming Wednesday, Twins vs Indians - should be fun. Our seats aren't awesomely close or anything like that, but there really are no bad seats, anyway.

For Saturday and Sunday of Easter weekend, Aaron and I headed to Brookings, SD, to spend Easter with Aaron's brother Eric, and Eric's son. Aaron's folks came out as well, and we had a really nice time. I loved the fact that Eric lived a few miles out of town on the country roads, so it was nice and quiet, you could see the stars, and kinda remember what it was like to be back home.

We're finally getting around to doing some yard work, as it's been consistently warm recently. Aaron's working on getting some grass seed down on some bare spots on the front lawn, and I planted some flowers via seed roll in front of the house. It's a hummingbird / butterfly mix, so I hope they come up - the flowers all looked really pretty on the packaging.

Went to the doctor's on Friday this week for a routine physical / check up, and ended up getting a tetanus shot while I was there. I guess you get a booster every 10 years, and the last time I'd had a shot was about 10 years ago, give or take a year on either end, when I'd stepped on a nail and had to go in to the ER to have it cleaned. Now my arm is super sore, and feels like someone wailed on it with their fists or a hammer or something. Ugh, no fun.

Otherwise, cats are good, family's good, everything's good. Just waiting for summer to get into full swing, and to be done working on the house so we can start enjoying these weekends!

Baseball!

2010-03-28T12:00:00.002-05:00

Hooray, it's almost time for regular-season baseball! Aaron and I have been gearing up for this season, and are really excited for it to start. We managed to get tickets to the exhibition game on Friday, April 2nd, where the Twins will play the St. Louis Cardinals, and we've got two other games to go to in April and May at the new Target Field.

Aaron and I showed up to Target Field the weekend before last when single-game tickets went on sale. We'd already bought out tickets for single games at home, rather than standing in line outside in the cold, but we went after the crowds died down to check it out. You couldn't go into the stadium, but you could see all the concessions that they had, go into the gear shop to check out shirts, hoodies, hats, etc, and that was about it. It was fun, but you couldn't even see the field from the closed gates.

This June, my folks and some family friends are coming out, and we're going to see the 3-game series of Twins versus Rockies. I'm super excited for all those games, and we have seats in a lot of different places in the stadium.

This weekend, we got to go inside the stadium and check out the whole thing. The MN Gophers played LA Tech Bulldogs, as the first game in Target Field. The game didn't start 'til 1pm, but gates opened at 9am, letting anyone who bought tickets, just $2 each, a chance to check out the entire stadium, including club houses, and other rooms that only certain members would normally be privileged to, such as season ticket holders, and Legends Club members.

It was a really cool experience. We went into every club room, checked out all the pubs and bars and concession stand that there was. We sat in all of our seats that we'll be sitting in for future games this season, to see what our views would be like. I can tell you this: there is not a bad seat in the house. The stadium is so much better than the Metrodome because it is MADE for baseball. All of the seats angle in towards home plate, there are so many different levels, and you feel close to the field no matter where you are sitting. It is amazing that the new Target Field holds less seats than the old Metrodome, and yet it seem so much larger.

A few days ago, Target Field said that they had already sold 2.5 million tickets for the 2010 season, compared to the 2.4 million tickets that were sold for all of 2009. This is going to be a great year, I'm so excited!

So that's kinda what we've been up to lately, along with more painting. We got the front entry finished (green), and the kitchen finished (orange) this weekend. We still have the office and the bathroom to accomplish upstairs, as well as the stairwell and wall leading downstairs, and all of the basement to finish. We're making pretty good progress, and we have a couple of 3-day weekends to work on it. We'd taken four 3-day weekends off in March and April, but for two of them, we won't be home. Over Easter weekend, we are going to Brookings, SD to visit Aaron's brother, and his folks are going to be there, as well. Then, the last weekend in April that we have a 3-day weekend, we are going to Kansas City, MO to see the Twins play the KC Royals on a bus tour with a bunch of others.

That's it for me this time!

February Update

2010-02-28T18:34:00.002-06:00

Well, we've finally started painting in the house! We finished the guest bedroom, a very nice shade of blue, and the dining room is almost finished - one accent wall with a deep purple color, and a sage green on the rest of the walls. We even bought curtain rods for all of the windows, and as soon as we finish each room, the rods go up, and I make curtain panels for them.

I'm not very good at it yet, and am not even finished with the first panel because I messed up (again), and need to rip out some seams. Currently, bedsheets are going to have to work for now until I get this thing figured out.

We're working on painting the bedroom right now, but ran out of paint to get all of the coats up, so we stopped today after one coat and will pick up more paint this week.

Jill is coming up for her first visit since the wedding, so that should be fun. Not quite sure what we're going to do yet, other than do some shopping at eat Thai food, as Jill's never had any before! Guess that's what happens when you live in North Dakota for too long :).

The weather is finally warming up around here - hoping for it to do so slowly, so all of the snow melting doesn't come pouring into our house through the basement window and behind the fuse box. I'll just be happy that the ruts in the alley will be gone so I can finally get into the garage with some ease.

Needless to say, we've been really busy over the weekends with moving furniture, priming, and painting everything. We finally got to go over to some friends' house this weekend, so it was nice to get out of the house for a bit. Had some great lasagna, played some Rock Band, and managed to get out of their place before 1am. Aaron had a wicked craving for some White Castle, which is on the way home, so we picked up some sliders and a chicken ring (think onion ring, but chicken...) sandwich. It was the first time I'd had White Castle, and while it was OK, I can see how it would be super awesome when you are drunk.

We've got a jam-packed spring and summer coming up - going to baseball games in April and June, one of them will be a bus trip to Kansas City, Missouri, and a Barenaked Ladies concert in May. We're hoping to get tickets to the season opener and the exhibition game. I know it's going to be damn cold, but new baseball field!!! That's exciting enough to keep me warm for a few hours.

So that's what's been going on this month. Until next time!

I'm Bad At This

2010-01-15T21:30:00.002-06:00

Here we go again, almost another month where I haven't blogged. I used to do this almost daily, then weekly, now monthly. Just been busy. And some days, it just feels like there's nothing to blog about now that there's Facebook and Twitter. When something happens, I get it on the internet right away, as it's happening, in under 140 characters.

Been pretty busy around here. We've had friends over for dinner parties, we'll have friends over this weekend to help us out with some painting / design ideas - we'd like to start painting rooms in the house this winter - Aaron thinks it will be a good winter-time project. Me? Not so sure, but I am tired of tan walls and tan carpet, so a change is good.

Got Aaron to go to a movie theater a few weeks ago, we saw Sherlock Holmes in this new theater with VIP seating, 21+ only, full bar and restaurant. Very awesome, and I think we'll be going to more movies. before noon, in the regular seating, for any movie, only $5.00. Can't go wrong there!

I've pretty much run out of things to say...

It's been too long!

2009-12-26T21:18:00.003-06:00

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

2009-11-01T10:57:00.005-06:00

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'

2009-10-10T15:01:00.003-05:00

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

2009-09-04T20:16:00.002-05:00

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

2009-08-25T18:21:00.002-05:00

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!

2009-08-08T21:40:00.002-05:00

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

2009-07-26T20:09:00.002-05:00

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

2009-07-22T18:27:00.002-05:00

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

2009-07-22T06:19:00.003-05:00

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"

2009-07-20T06:35:00.002-05:00

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

2009-06-28T07:33:00.003-05:00

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

2009-06-21T14:28:00.002-05:00

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!

2009-06-14T20:08:00.002-05:00

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?

2009-05-26T17:51:00.002-05:00

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

2009-05-03T16:04:00.003-05:00

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

2009-04-26T21:29:00.002-05:00

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

2009-04-26T20:32:00.002-05:00

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

2009-04-12T15:38:00.002-05:00

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

2009-04-07T18:29:00.002-05:00

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

2009-03-29T21:02:00.002-05:00

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

2009-03-15T19:30:00.003-05:00

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

2009-03-09T17:26:00.003-05:00

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

2009-03-08T19:44:00.002-05:00

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

2009-03-04T17:35:00.002-06:00

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?

2009-02-25T19:21:00.003-06:00

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

2009-02-22T10:25:00.002-06:00

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

2009-02-14T14:56:00.002-06:00

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

2009-02-08T19:25:00.003-06:00

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!

2009-01-25T18:40:00.002-06:00

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.

2009-01-21T11:18:00.003-06:00

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

2009-01-10T17:00:00.003-06:00

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

2009-01-10T14:56:00.002-06:00

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

2009-01-06T17:44:00.002-06:00

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

2009-01-05T20:53:00.004-06:00

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!

Christmas Weekend

2008-12-28T17:38:00.001-06:00

Ahhhhh, a nice four-day weekend! Finally! We had a very nice Christmas weekend. Our friends Jay and Anne invited us and a few others over to their house for dinner with their family. There were lots of goodies to munch on before dinner, lasagna, mashed potatoes, salad, and garlic bread for dinner, and random goodies for dessert.

Anne had me bring over some scraps of paper for my save the date cards to test and see if her paper cutter would work on it - it worked great, and then she gave me a present - a brand new paper cutter just like hers! It was great! We were able to get all the paper cut up just right, printed, and put together. We mailed off a good chunk of the cards, to everyone we had addresses for. Still need to get a few addresses, and people keep getting added to the list, so we might need to buy some more paper and envelope for the cards.

The day after Christmas, Aaron and I headed out for some good sales! Well, only just slightly I wanted to stop by Bath and Bodyworks because they ALWAYS have stuff on sale, and we were getting low on hand soap. We also picked up a felt tip pen from an art supply store, for addressing the envelopes. Picked out some cute heart stamps at the Post Office, and mailed off Mom's scarf that I made her for Christmas.

On Saturday, Aaron and I ran into IKEA to grab Ashley a birthday gift - she'd been wanting a nice down-alternative comforter for winter, and a duvet to go along with it, as white is boring. Aaron and I had recently got a new comforter/duvet set from IKEA, and really like it, so I think Ashley will like hers, too. I just have to get it shipped off in the mail this week. It's going to be an early present, as her birthday is not until February, but it will make up for her late Christmas present, which isn't due to arrive until January 2nd.

I've been working some more on Aaron's scarf. It's not really a Christmas present, but winter is a good season for knitting. I'm almost finished with it, and he'll be able to wear it to work this week.

I've been plowing through the "Twilight" series of books this weekend - I'd finished the first one a while ago, but never got around to buying the others, because I have friends who own them, and thought it would be most cost effective to borrow them. Our friend Vandi stopped by last Tuesday to drop of some yummy home-baked cookies, as well as the three remaining books in the series.

We moved on to the next step in toilet training Odin with the CitiKitty - it involves cutting a small hole, smaller than a fist, in the center of the training pan, that rests on the rim, over the bowl of the toilet. This is to get the cat used to less litter, a hole which he will eventually start using instead of litter, and balancing on the seat, instead of in the litter. Odin does not like it one bit. He cried for half an hour last night before finally pooping on the rug next to the toilet. No punishment for him, though, don't want to scare him off from being in the bathroom. We'll see how it goes today.

Aaron's making Chex Mix right now - I can smell it coming from the oven. Mmm, mmm, mmm!

I think that's about it for our weekend. If I think of anything else, I'll be sure to post. Another short, three-day work week ahead for me, then Thursday and Friday off again for New Years. Aaron gets Thursday off, but may take Friday off, too, if he can. If he can't, that's okay, we've been hanging out together WAY too much this weekend! Only kidding, but it is nice to have some alone time, and just veg out in front of the TV with some silly shows or movies.

Until next time!

so warm...

2008-12-21T18:06:00.001-06:00

So our heater has been broken for the last two weeks. It's only really bad when it gets below -10 outside - that's when we start to feel it in the apartment. We kind of ignored it at first, which was probably not the best thing to do, since the apartment is heated with hot water, and last winter, it got so cold outside, the pipes froze, and the apartments on the first floor flooded.

It was negative 12 today, and the apartment was REALLY feeling cold, so we finally bucked up and called the rental office maintenance emergency line. A guy came over about an hour later, wasn't familiar with our apartment building, or our type of heater. He ended up getting in touch with our usual maintenance person, who just started a few weeks ago. They wandered up to the apartment above us, because it is vacant, to see if it was having the same problem. Nope. Came back down, fiddled around, banged on some stuff, then went to get a defroster thinger.

They came back, plugged it in, started defrosting our frozen pipes, and then the fuse in it blew. They ran off to the car parts place to get another one, came back, started it up again, and tripped the breaker twice. We had to turn off all the lights and unplug the big appliances while it was running.

They left the building, said that it needed to run for half an hour, came back an hour later. It was starting to smell, so we turned it off after about 40 minutes.

Now it's nice and toasty warm in the apartment. Almost TOO toasty warm, if you ask me. Guess we don't have to worry about freezing to death in the middle of the night!

We braved the horrible roads and snow yesterday to do some shopping. Looking for a Wii Fit, couldn't find one. Got paper to make our Save the Date cards, as we finally have our wedding venue and date booked. Wandered around a bit until we finally retreated home to safety.

Today, I did laundry, cleaned the apartment, sat around for hours while our heater got fixed, watched Supernatural, and Aaron and I baked cookies. A good winter day, if you ask me!

We've finally done it!

2008-12-20T09:36:00.000-06:00

Well, we finally booked our wedding venue this week! Which also means we finally have a wedding date! We have booked October 3, 2009 for the ceremony and reception at the Earle Brown Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center, MN. *sigh* What a relief! Now I can start working on things again! I want to start making Save the Date cards as soon as possible, so now is the mad hunt for finding addresses!

On an un-wedding related note, we are still toilet training the cat. His trainer is up ON the toilet now, where it should be, instead of on the floor. We'd gone over a week with it on the floor with no accidents, so this weekend, it has been moved to its proper toilet training place. Hopefully Odin doesn't have too much of a hissy fit about it.

We're set to get quite a bit of snow this weekend. It started snowing early this morning, and is still lightly coming down. The roads aren't completely covered, but aren't completely clear, either. I'd like to get out of the apartment and do some stuff today.

Thursday night, Lori, one of my co-workers, and I went to the Holidazzle, which is like a parade of lights, in downtown Minneapolis. We did a happy hour before that at a pub called The Local, which is really cool, and then walked down to the Hot Seats (bleachers set up under a tent with a clear front) and got hot cocoa. Mmm, mmm, good! The parade was really cute, and fun. We couldn't hear most of the music because of being in the tent, but that's okay. All the floats and people on the floats were covered in colored lights, very festive.

Aaron and I have just a tiny bit of Christmas shopping left to do, and then we're done! Thank goodness. I don't think we've even stepped foot inside a store to do any of our shopping, which is always nice, because I hate crowded malls filled with people milling about, in my way. Ugh. Drives me crazy.

We have two short weeks in a row at work, for Christmas and New Years, so that will be nice, because it means two 4-day weekends in a row! Aaron and I don't have any plans, but we've been invited to a friend's house for dinner on Christmas, which will be nice if we go. Nice to get out of the place, because I know otherwise, we would just sit in the apartment all four days, staring at each other blankly, slowly going insane. Two weekends in a row. *shudder*

Only kidding!

Well, I am off to figure out what we are going to do for the day. Adios!

Here we go again

2008-12-14T20:45:00.001-06:00

Alright, another request to update my blog. Such needy readers!

Let's see. The toilet training is going slowly. We started with it up on the toilet, like it's supposed to be, but Odin sure had a hard time getting used to that. So, after a mistake, we had to put it down on the floor, where his old litter box used to be. We'll just give him time to get comfortable with it there, then move it again. I think it's just much smaller than what he's used to, for starters. We'll get there! I have faith in him!

My wedding dress came in! I wasn't expecting it until February, but it got here over Thanksgiving. I went and tried it on this Friday. It's great, and I love the burnt orange color! I think we are finally going to reserve the wedding venue for next fall.

Some other exciting wedding news: my college roommate, Jill got engaged! I'm so happy for her, and now I have someone to talk to about wedding stuff! And we won't get tired of listening to each other! Hahaha. Once we get the place booked, then I can start making wedding invitations, and I'll start needing to get addresses. That'll be a chore.

Work's been busy. Not as bad as it was in September, when I was up to my eyeballs in claims, but I am finally at a comfortable level, and getting caught up with past-due tasks! Year-end will be looking good for me.

I put up Christmas lights last night, and they blink. Odin went bonkers! He's adjusted to them now, but last night was pretty darn funny. They're up high enough that I don't have to worry about him knocking them down and chewing on them. Although he would get a nice little ZAP if he chewed on them. Hehehehe.

Well, we got rain all weekend, it was in the 30's - highest it's been in a long time. And now the high for tomorrow is going to be -6. The ride into work is going to be AWESOMELY SLOW. It's like people around here have never driven in this crap before. Hopefully the salt trucks are out in full force tonight.

Well, that's it for me now. Adios!

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Good weekend so far

2008-12-06T21:18:00.001-06:00

So this weekend, one of our friends had his birthday party, and it wasn't scheduled until late, so a few of us went out for dinner beforehand. Our friends Bret and Jess have been going to this bar for a few years, which also has a sushi bar. They started eating there, and have become good friends with the head sushi chef. And this is where we went for dinner last night. I've always wanted to try sushi before, but I wanted it to be at a very good place, not something that'd been sitting in the grocery store deli for a while.

And let me tell you, it was GREAT! The chef knew it was my first time trying sushi, so the first roll, he went easy on us. Yum. He made up a plate with all kinds of raw fish, tuna, mackerel, and some octopus limbs, thinly slice. The octopus was surprisingly delicious. I can't even count how many different rolls he made up for us. We didn't order off the menu, the sushi chef just started making rolls as we were eating. Everything was great. There were a few rolls with roe on top - orange eggs were "regular" and the green ones were wasabi flavored. I had tried a bit of wasabi paste earlier, and decided I didn't much care for it, so we tried to scrape most of the green ones off, but it was still pretty spicy. But the regular eggs were fun. Not a lot of flavor, but they POP! every time you bite down on one. Like a little party in your mouth. Mmm. He even made us a dessert roll, with sliced up strawberries, rice, sweet soft shell crab, and it was deep fried. Nice and sweet and good. All in all, a great experience for my first time (and hopefully not last) eating sushi. I will definitely have it again.

We went to the birthday party right after, which was a lot of fun. I didn't know most of the people there, but a good time was had by all. I gave one of our friends, Anna, my camera, because she said she likes to take pictures when she's been drinking, so that was good, because I got a bunch of pictures of people I don't even know, but some of people I do know, always a plus.

Odin's CitiKitty toilet training kit came in the mail today! I'm glad it came on the weekend so I can be home for it for a few days. It's got a shallow pan that fits over the rim of the toilet, and you put your seat down over that to hold it in place. Then you pour some litter in, and train the cat to get used to using the litter box up on the toilet seat. Then, as he successfully uses the litter box for one week, you start removing from the center rings, which allow some litter to fall in the toilet, and as you remove more, the cat gets used to supporting himself on the seat. Eventually, you take away the whole contraption, once all the rings have been removed, and ta-dah! A toilet trained cat! No more litter again!! Hopefully it will only take a couple of months to train him, because we only have the one bathroom, so we have to take the kit off every time Aaron or I want to use the toilet.

That's about it for now!

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It's about damn time!

2008-12-04T20:49:00.002-06:00

So I have had a few complaints from my readers that I have not updated my blog since Halloween, or something crazy like that. Well, that's not completely true - I did update a couple of weeks into November, but it was ABOUT Halloween.

So, since we last were here, what's been going on in my life? Oh, not too much. We've been spending time with some friends, playing with their babies, working, and staying fairly busy. Work is less hectic now that the new guy has started working on claims The end of the year is approaching shortly, and I can tell it's going to be a little chaotic. I have done 11 month-ends at work, but not year-end. I wonder if it's any different?

Speaking of 2008 ending soon, WOW! I cannot believe how fast this year has gone by! In January I got a new job and we got Odin, in April, Aaron and I got engaged, Aaron's parents visited us, we went to our first baseball games, Saw Mason Jennings in concert, two of our friends had children and their families have grown And now it's almost 2009. Which also means that Winter is officially almost over (only a few more weeks!!), and I can stop driving to and from work in the dark within a month. I hope.

On to more recent news. For Thanksgiving, all of our friends were either working or leaving town to spend time with family, so Aaron and I had four days off together, to just sit around and do nothing. And that's exactly what we did. No Black Friday shopping crap, just hanging out, not working. It was really nice and relaxing. Aaron and I had fajitas for Thanksgiving dinner. Mmm, mmm, good!

I got a cold this last week. It started out pretty innocent, and I actually thought it was going to go away fairly quickly. Boy, was I wrong. Now, it's not the most horrible cold I have had, and thank goodness it's not the horrible crap that some co-workers and Jill got last week where they spent most of their Thanksgiving weekend hovering in the bathroom around a toilet, just your regular head cold.

I started looking for a second job this week at the mall across from where I work currently - nights and weekends, part time. I walked into the Bath and Body Works, and as I was picking up the application, the manager of the store approached me, asked me what I was doing at 6, and let me know they were having a group interview at that time, and I should come. She's hoping to have some people hired by this Saturday. It's Thursday, and I haven't heard from her, but who knows. I think I am also going to start donating plasma, there is a place near us that compensates for the donation. I figure all the extra money will go towards saving for the wedding.

A couple days ago, I ordered the CitiKitty, a toilet training kit for cats. I am so sick and tired of the litter box, in our one bedroom apartment, being in the bathroom, with bits of litter everywhere. It's driving me nuts. If we had a basement or extra bedroom, it wouldn't be so bad, but we just don't. Hopefully within a couple of months, we'll have him all trained up, and bye bye litter box! I'll let you know how it goes. Possibly pictures to come.

Our company had their Christmas party this afternoon at a location away from work. It was Hawaiian-themed, and a lot of fun. Games, trivia, prizes, and good pork barbecue. I got second place in the beanbag toss, but didn't manage to get my raffle ticket pulled for any of the other prizes. I never win those things.

So, that's about it, everything that's happened in the last three weeks or so, that I can think of that is worth blogging about! Sorry to keep you waiting so long!

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Updates

2008-11-12T17:40:00.003-06:00

Alrighty. Time for another update, this time, with pictures!

First off are some pictures of Aaron's Halloween costume, as a robot:

My folks came out this weekend for their first visit since they had helped us move out in the Fall of 2007. I had my camera with me everywhere we went, but there never seemed to be any photo opportunities, but I did manage to get a few at home. They were planning on coming out on Friday evening, but due to the blizzard that hit the Black Hills a few days prior, the roads in most of South Dakota were still closed, so they postponed their trip by one day, and stayed an extra day.

Dad and Odin spent most of the time tormenting each other. Sometimes I felt bad for Odin, but I stopped feeling bad for him once I realized that he just kept coming back for more, again and again.

We visited a natural history museum on the U of M campus on Sunday. We also went to a beer brewing supply store so Dad could pick up some stuff for his brewing at home. We ate a LOT! Some days, I felt like that was all we did. And drove around a lot, kind of giving my folks the tour of the city. On Monday we visited the Mall of America, my folks had never been there before. That was okay, and took up a lot of the morning and some of the afternoon. We managed to find a nice light jacket for Aaron for 75% off at Eddie Bauer, so that was pretty cool. On Tuesday, Aaron had to work, so we ran some errands, and Mom needed new windshield wipers for her car.

All in all, a good weekend, sad that it had to end, but dealing with the 3 day work week pretty well, haha.

Getting back to work sucked! It was like Monday, with three times the work load, voice messages, and emails. I had 20 new voicemails this morning, and 23 new emails. Holy crap. It took me past lunch time to return all the voicemails! I even explicitly said on my voice greeting that I would be gone on Monday and Tuesday, and back on Wednesday. Some people kept calling and calling and leaving message after message. "I've been trying to get a hold of you! Maybe you're on vacation?" Well, if you would take the time to listen to the message, maybe you would figure that out on your own. Sheesh.

Whew.

Winter's Coming

2008-11-07T06:09:00.001-06:00

So back home (in Spearfish, my second home), they got a few feet of snow over the last couple of days, and roads have shut down, no traveling. My folks were supposed to come out today to visit for a long weekend, but ended up having to postpone their trip by one day (hopefully only one day!), so we don't get to see them until tomorrow night. Bummer. But, that gives us extra time to get the apartment cleaned up! Yay!

I'm so glad that we did not get the feet and feet of snow here! To be perfectly honest, I am kind of scared of driving my new car in the snow. I got it in the spring/summer, and I haven't driven a manual transmission in over 5 years. I sometimes squeak the tires just driving on rain-slicked roads, going from a stop to a start. I am just going to have to drive extra super careful right away until I get used to how it handles.

I'm excited for my folks to come out! This will be the first time they've visited us since they initially helped us move all of our stuff out here in the Uhaul and Dad's truck. And it will be the first time I've gotten to see them since we went back home for a week in June. I think we're going to do a tour of a beer brewery, find Dad some beer brewing supplies, go to the infamous Mall of America (on a weekday, NOT the weekend), maybe the Minnesota Zoo.

Work is starting to get better. The new guy started this Monday, but of course is still in training, and will be for an additional two weeks. Once training is over, then he will get his own caseload. My caseload was decreased a teeny bit when some of my groups were given to a co-worker, and it has helped out tremendously. I'm still not caught up to where I want to be, but I feel like I can breathe again when I look at what work I have to do for the day.

Sorry about no pictures yet of the Halloween costumes. I have a couple of Aaron's robot costume on my camera that I have yet to load onto the computer, as well as one picture of the two of us at my co-worker's party that she took. Just need to get them on the computer so I can link them on here. It's about 6am right now, and I was just quick posting before I had to start getting ready for work!

Have a great weekend!

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Halloween 2008

2008-11-02T06:00:00.001-06:00

Whew, what a weekend (and it's not even 6am on Sunday). On Friday, we got to dress up at work (as long as it was appropriate attire), and there was a costume contest, a candy game, and good times over all. I went as a mad scientist, Dr. Horrible, from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog by Joss Whedon. It wasn't a perfect likeness, so I mostly was just a mad scientist with a freeze ray gun, and fuzzy, purple hair.

One of my co-workers invited me to her Halloween party that was on Saturday night. We had to find a costume for Aaron, which was proving to be hard, after visiting a few costume stores. I just didn't like any of them, and neither did he. Then on Thursday, he sends me a message while I'm at work that he wants to be a box-robot! How fun! I was still searching for stuff for my costume, so I went to one of our favorite little stores, Ax-Man. It's a surplus store - everything that was ever in a junk drawer at home? This is where it comes from. I got boxes, reflectors, LED lights, mailbox flags with reflectors, and an old-style oven timer. This was going to be so cool!

It took us most of the afternoon on Saturday to complete the costume. A lot of the initial time was spent waiting for glue to dry. It was a very intricate suit - with a speaker in the front for listening to music, two bottles on little shelves in the inside corners of the suit, hooked up to funnels on the outside for drinking - one for beer, one for liquor. Straws attached to those so Aaron could drink without leaving the costume. LED lights diffused by wax paper for eyes, and dryer tubing, that aluminum looking stuff, for his arms. We plastered the whole thing in aluminum, and were set!

Odin had a blast the whole time, ever since I brought the boxes home on Thursday. He would climb up them and in them, loved the LED lights and the noise of the aluminum foil when we were putting it all together. We will definitely have to store the robot in the garage for next year, that way he doesn't destroy it (and I don't know where we'd keep it in the apartment, anyway!)

He was an instant hit at the party. We explained it to a lot of people. Most people wondered how he was going to pee, as we had not created any sort of hatch in the front or back. The costume was like a little oven, so he ended up having to take it off several times throughout the night to cool down. I only knew a couple of people at the party, my co-worker Lori, and her roommate whom I'd met a couple of times before. Everyone else was new to us.

There were tons of people, good music, TONS of good food, tippy cup and beer pong to play down stairs, and just a good party atmosphere. Until Aaron got pushed up the stairs by some drunk guy, and he's not sure exactly what happened, but I think the oven timer fell out of the front of the costume, and then broke. He had to throw it away. Then he came and told me about it, which sucked. I'm sure the guy was probably drunk and did not mean to do so, but c'mon. He's a giant box robot - he can't just hop up those steps real quick. So, we hung around a bit longer, then said goodbye and headed home. It was a lot of fun, up until the end.

Amazingly, we were home right around midnight, which isn't too terribly late. I was, however, up at 6am today because I never sleep well after I've been drinking. Oh well.

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Dentist

2008-10-21T16:37:00.001-05:00

Just got back from the dentist's office this afternoon. It was my first visit with that dentist (and my first visit in about three years). I have perfectly healthy teeth and gums!! But, I have a pretty severe TMJ problem, just like my sister (only I'm taking care of mine sooner than she did, so hopefully I won't have the same problems and expenses as Ashley).

No cleaning for this appointment, just x-rays and poking around. I have an appointment in a couple of weeks to have my teeth cleaned and impressions made for a splint. After the splint is fabricated, we'll see where my jaw WANTS to be, and not where my teeth are making it go. Hopefully it doesn't move too far and I don't end up needing ortho work (again!). Hopefully the splint will just fix everything and I won't even have to be referred to a TMJ specialist!

I had originally made an appointment to see a dentist because my jaw was giving me lots of problems. Couldn't chew on the right side of my mouth without the left side of my jaw hurting, I think I was grinding my jaw during work (high stress right now, as my workload tripled a month ago), and possibly during sleep. Also, I couldn't even bite down all the way - my molars wouldn't touch each other. By the time I made it into the dentist today, that had gone away, but it's still sore, and I'm still getting headaches. Hopefully we can put an end to it soon, and I think my dental insurance will cover most of this!

Not much else to say at this point. Kinda nice to get off work after only five hours AND feel like I accomplished more today than I did yesterday in eight hours of work!

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Concert weekend

2008-10-19T08:57:00.002-05:00

Aaron and I got to go see Mason Jennings in concert at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Minneapolis last night, thanks to my dad (a birthday present). The concert was great! I was worried I wouldn't know many of the songs, because I don't have a full album of his work, not even one, I have just downloaded songs from the internet, and kept the ones I liked. Fortunately, I had downloaded fairly popular songs!

The opening act was Zach Gill, from California. He sang witty songs, clever lines, and made the audience laugh. He reminded me of a non-country Jalan Crossland, for those of you who know who he is. Then Mason Jennings came out, and had Zach Gill on keyboard for most of the show, except for the songs that didn't require keyboard, or the songs that Mason himself played keyboard. I have some pictures from the concert that were fairly decent, considering we weren't close enough that a flash bulb would do any good, and I had to take a bunch with different ISO and exposure settings to get it just right.

We weren't terribly close, but it was a small theater, with good sound, and no one was sitting in front of us, so that always helps :)

Here are some videos I found on YouTube, as well.

I could only find a couple that I could link from YouTube that weren't live (just doesn't sound as good). Oh well. Enjoy! I know I did!

Ooofta

2008-10-12T12:22:00.001-05:00

It's been a while since I last posted, sorry. Work has been crazy-busy with my full caseload, and usually when I get home, I don't feel like recapping my day. Last weekend Aaron and I didn't do anything, which was nice. This weekend, we drove to Hudson, Wisconsin for a wedding - one of Aaron's co-workers got married. It was a lot of fun.

There was a long Catholic mass/ceremony, and you could tell that not many of their friends and family were Catholic, as they didn't know when to stand or sit, or what words to say or sing. I was able to help Aaron and the other people around us to know when to stand, and when to shake hands and say "Peace be with you." I think the last time I was at mass was during another wedding, back in 2006, I think. Needless to say, I was a little rusty, but it was all very familiar, and kind of like riding a bike - you just never forget.

The weather was beautiful, the trees in Hudson are great oranges and reds, just the way I like 'em.

I got to see Jess and Bret's baby for the first time - he's four weeks old now. What a cutie. I was holding him and burping him, and he just wasn't burping or anything, and then all of the sudden, he turns his head and spews all down the side of my shirt. Oh well, it dried up pretty quick, and didn't leave any stains. I knew what I was getting into when I got him.

The leaves out here are starting to drop rapidly - I'm watching them shower off the trees in the back yard through the window right now. So we definitely want to plan the wedding for before the leaves all drop.

Well, that's about it for me. Two weeks' worth, and barely a full post.

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What a week

2008-09-28T19:31:00.001-05:00

Man, it's been a long week. I'm starting to get used to being busy all the time at work - it's a little hard, as I was used to having some free time to talk to people and take some breaks. I'm ready for a three-day weekend, that's for sure.

Our city is doing an inspection of the apartment complex tomorrow, so we had to get the apartment all spiffed up for that - they are doing random inspections of apartments, so you don't know if they're going to show up, and of course, we're both at work tomorrow, so we can't be there.

I got to go to my first hockey game this week, too! One of my co-workers has season tickets, but couldn't make it to the game, so she offered the pair of tickets to another co-worker, who then called me to see if I had any plans for the evening. It's rare that we do have plans, so I was able to go. It was a fun time! I'd never been to the Xcel center before, and I'd never seen a hockey game before, not even high school or college league. I'm really glad I got to go, it was an awesome time (and you can't beat free tickets!!). So thanks to Karolyn and Lori for that.

I've been slacking on my working out. When the softball games started, it interrupted me being able to go work out every day during the work week, which threw me all off. Then, it got really popular after about 5pm, and I usually get home around 4:30pm, so I have to get home and change as soon as I'm home (which keeps me from sitting in front of the TV and not going at all...), but it feels rushed. I might start going into work half an hour early, and then leaving at 3:30pm, so I can be home by around 4pm, and not have to worry about the rush.

Well, I guess that's it for me, just wanted to do an update since I hadn't done one in a while.

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Alrighty

2008-09-20T21:38:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I updated, so I thought I'd add some pictures and just general stuff in this post.

I have a full caseload at work now - I've been very blessed that the first eight months at the company that I have had a relatively small caseload, in order to get used to the system, the rules, and to find my own way of managing all of this. One of my co-workers is moving from the short term disability department over to long term disability, so I have taken on all of her groups, as well as the ones I was already managing. So instead of getting one to two new claims every couple of days, I'm getting four to seven new claims each day. I am busy, that's for sure, but before, I didn't really have a lot to do, and was constantly looking for other things to keep me busy throughout the day. So this will be a nice, brisk change of pace that I am looking forward to. This all started on Monday the 15th, so this was my first week with the full caseload. Whew. I made it through alive.

I found out about a company called the Paper Depot through a co-worker of Aaron's. They specialize in creating your own invitations, for anything from parties, to weddings. They have tons of samples of other works that have been done there, they have workshops, and all the supplies you could ever need to make your own wedding invitations. Paper punches, stamps, embossing powder, glue, envelopes, all kinds of paper, etc. It was very cool. I stopped by there after work some time this week, and played with a bunch of the paper punches that they had - they have sample paper that you can use to test out the punches, which I thought was really cool. Here's some of the ones I liked the best:

Those are not the colors I would choose, but I just picked out the red as a sharp contrast to the off-white colored scrap paper they provided. I was thinking more orange and brown or green for the invitations, or all three. And maybe red. Who knows.

Then, this morning Aaron and I had an appointment at the Earle Brown Heritage Center to view the rooms to be rented and the grounds. We'd already been to the grounds when Aaron's folks were in town a couple of weeks ago. I never put pictures up because I just was too tired after that weekend, and was still recovering from my cold. When I took the outdoor pictures, there weren't any fall colors yet, but there are a few starting to show up now.

The indoor pictures were taken today. It's a nice room, with a lot of history. Not sure if the tapestry and case with old horse equipment is going to go with the theme, but we can work around that, and cover it up, if need be. We just can't take it down.

The woman who gave us the tour was nice, but didn't have a lot of information for us as far as renting went, which was fine, because it was nice to not be pressured into picking a date or anything like that right away. I still want to talk it all over with Aaron this weekend, but I think that's the place for us.

And then here are some new pictures of Odin, playing with his new catnip-stuffed toy I made for him this evening. He was drooling all over it once I finally finished it and let him play.

Oh, and on Monday this week, I met up with a florist - I work with her mom at the insurance company. The three of us had lunch, and I showed her pictures of the flowers I am thinking of using for the wedding. I want flowers that aren't "traditional" and that have lots of texture and personality. She agreed that a lot of the flowers that I picked out were great for the time of year, and that we could do a lot of fun things with them, so that was exciting. Every time I go into the grocery store, I wander by the floral department, and usually have my camera in my purse, so I've been trying to get some pictures of them, even though I might not know the names of them, a florist would. I'll post pictures later, maybe.

That's it for now!

I think we've got it figured out

2008-09-14T08:37:00.001-05:00

Alright, I think we have our wedding venue picked out! I told Aaron earlier in the week that I wanted to have a venue picked out by the end of the month, because there's only about a year to go until the wedding. We still don't have an exact date, but I want it to be during the fall colors. They are just starting to show up on some of the maple trees.

Anyway, I really liked both Centennial Lakes Park in Edina, and the Earle Brown Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center. Aaron hadn't seen the Centennial Lakes Park because I went there after work one day and took pictures, and all I could find was a small tri-fold with information about renting. I had contacted the Earle Brown Heritage center via email and requested a rental information packet from them, and received a very nice one, which had information about all the food and drink they serve, detailed pictures of the rooms and layouts of them, etc. Aaron didn't want to waste time going down to Edina yesterday to look - he said we should just go with the Earle Brown because the costs seem very reasonable, and it's VERY close to where we live.

So we started breaking everything down, and I think we can definitely do something VERY nice that is within our budget. I'm really excited. I sent an email to the woman who sent me the package (since it was Saturday, after all), and let her know we were interested in a certain time frame, and asked when we might be able to go and visit. Hopefully I will hear back from her early in the week.

Aaron and I have really been enjoying our weekend so far - all we've done is some grocery shopping as far as getting out of the apartment. We did some cleaning, as we hadn't really done that since BEFORE the boys showed up for Labor Day Weekend.

We're going to reinstate Game Night on Wednesday nights - we played cribbage for the first time in a LONG time last night. Aaron figured the reason Game Night disappeared during the summer was from a multitude of things. Being busy, it just being unreasonably hot in the apartment, Aaron starting to play World of Warcraft again. So it'll be nice to have our Game Night back!

That's about it for now. Until next time!

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Tooth Dream

2008-09-11T06:13:00.001-05:00

I had a dream this morning that my bottom molars on the right side were coming loose, but just the tops of them, not the whole tooth. I needed to get to a dentist, and I was in this overly large office building of some sort that had every kind of store, office, shop imaginable, but it was so big that I couldn't find the dentist.

Plus, I had been wandering around trying to find Aaron, and I found him on a deck/porch with a bunch of friends, smoking a cigarette with them! I was SO mad. He hadn't smoked in at least two years, and there he was, doing it again. I stormed off, still in the pursuit of a dentist.

I ended up finding a bathroom to check out my teeth in. The tops were so loose, I just pulled them all off, so I wouldn't accidentally bite down on them and break something. I wrapped them in a paper towel, to save for later, but underneath the tops of my teeth were wires, sprouting everywhere! They were the nerve endings. I had to be careful not to bite down on them, either, and I couldn't move them around easily, there were so many, and they sprouted up so tall. How could all of those fit under my tooth??

And that's it...so strange. I seem to be having a lot of tooth dreams lately.

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dreams

2008-09-06T07:38:00.001-05:00

I kept having these dreams last night / this morning. I was back home in Gillette, at my parents' house, and you could see lots of airplanes in the sky (which isn't unusual here in Minneapolis, but back home, it was, especially flying this low). Occasionally, you would see a plane dip beyond the horizon, and could hear it crash. We lived in a little valley, so there were lots of horizons around us. Eventually, a plane crashed right in our neighbor's yard, almost hitting his house. I couldn't tell if there was even anyone in the plane, there didn't seem to be. As we were getting closer, ANOTHER plane crashed on top of that one!

Just about that time, Aaron was coming to bed. I had to wake myself up to stop dreaming about airplane crashes, it was awful. I fell back asleep again, and started dreaming about it again. Only this time, whenever a plane crashed, it unleashed some horrible monster that was eating people.

What the heck??

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testing

2008-09-03T19:42:00.001-05:00

Testing

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One Year

2008-09-01T11:08:00.004-05:00

Today, September 1st, 2008, marks my one year anniversary in Minneapolis. I can't believe it's been 12 months already since my parents helped me pack up the U-haul, drive 13 hours across two states, and unpack into our tiny apartment (which we've managed to fill with even more junk in those 12 months). Here's a run-down of my first year in Minneapolis:

September:
Getting used to city traffic was easier than I thought. Easier than finding a job, that's for sure. I started job hunting right away, but couldn't find anything. We went to a wedding, Aaron got kidney stones, and had to go to the hospital, we had a huge storm, lost power, and almost set the place on fire because Aaron leaves things on the stove, and we didn't turn the electric burner off when we lost power.

October:
Aaron's parents come out for a visit, and they are the first in our families to see the apartment all set up. I was still looking for a job, and had a couple of interviews. A friend heard about an opening at a clothing store, so I interviewed twice, and was offered the job. Didn't start until the end of the month, but finally, after two months of searching and filling out applications, I had a job, even though it was a 30 minute commute without traffic. I'd also applied at an insurance company that I knew had an opening through one of Aaron's co-workers.

We saw the leaves change colors in Stillwater and Taylor's Falls with Aaron's folks, Aaron suffered a head wound due to not paying attention to where he was walking (no scar on his forehead...amazing!), Halloween costume party at a friend's house, and we started looking at puppies and kitties on the weekends at the animal shelter. We also ended up in two or three different garages in that period because they kept giving me a garage that someone ELSE already had. Jill came out for a visit, we carved pumpkins, and made pork pot stickers. Mmm. I started working at Von Maur near the end of the month.

November:
I interviewed at the insurance company this month, but never heard back from them. I had to go through the hassle of getting Minnesota license plates for my car, as the Wyoming ones were expired. Trouble was this: the registration I had was in my dad's name, the title to my car that was in my name was in Wyoming, and my parents were in Australia. We found a temporary fix that allowed me to get my plates, but more problems arose from that later on, which lasted for six months.

December:
Second interview at the insurance place - my first one was for long term disability, my second one for short term disability. I hear back from them right around New Years that I got the job and can start in January. Aaron and I try to become vegetarians (with the exception that we are allowed to eat fish, like during Lent), and I get my new Nokia 6120 Classic smart phone, straight from Singapore. Work at Von Maur is very busy, as Christmas is almost upon us. We can't make it home for Christmas, as I can't get the time off, and we couldn't afford to fly, and didn't want to drive back there in the winter. We had ham dinner with Jamie and Karlie, which was most excellent, and employed "Game Night" on Wednesday nights, so Aaron and I wouldn't be ignoring each other all night long.

January:
Two weeks left at Von Maur before I start training at the insurance company. Inventory happened after Christmas, which was the longest day of my life - we had to scan every item in the entire store with little hand scanners and it was just long and terrible, and they didn't even play music on the overhead speakers. Lame. I started training at the insurance company, which lasted a total of three weeks before I started working on some stuff on my own. It was exhausting - my brain has never been so tired. I have my first office job, my first desk, and I almost feel like a grown up. Almost.

We also adopted "Juno" from the animal shelter, to be renamed later as Odin. He was a sickly little guy when we got him, so sweet and snuggly. That was all about to change after a trip to the vet and some medicine.

February:
We ordered SoftPaws for Odin because he likes to use our furniture as scratching stations, and I don't believe in declawing a cat. Odin's energy levels increase exponentially after he gets better from his cold - he starts howling at night and bothering us at 2am. There will not be a sound night of sleep for us until July. Our dishwasher has sucked since day one of moving into the apartments, and no matter how many times the handyman comes over and runs dishwasher cleaner through it, it still sucks. Odin thinks it would be fun to eat the soap-covered crumbs out of the bottom of the dishwasher, and then start foaming at the mouth. Mmm, Mmm, Good! Total lunar eclipse occurred this month, and I got to see my junior high friend, Brittany again for the first time in years - she happens to live about 10 miles from me. Crazy.

March:
We found out that Aaron's parents had to put their dog, Buffy, to sleep. He was 18 years old, and having lots of problems. Very sweet dog, I miss him when we visit back home. We took Odin for his first car ride, to see how he would fare - we wanted to take him back home with us when we went out in June to see our families again. Aaron and I celebrated 3 years together this month. Aaron's car is giving him problems continuously, and he starts researching for a new car. Aaron wanted a hatchback, and we test drove a lot of cars. The Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, Kia Spectra, etc. Aaron finally decides on the Mazda 3 5-door hatch in Galaxy Gray. Very nice. We went to a beagle's 4th birthday party, as well. Interesting, but fun.

For Easter, we spent it with Nathan, his now ex-girlfriend Natalie, and Nathan's family - not before indulging in a night of drinking before going back to Nathan's apartment. Our friend Brandon joined us from Iowa, and a good ol' time was had.

April:
Aaron's folks come out for another visit. We get to go to our first baseball game ever! After that, we instantly become Minnesota Twins fans. The best part about this month: Aaron proposes to me. Not in the most romantic fashion, but I got the titanium ring of my liking, and am a happy girl. We also got Aaron sized for a ring, but haven't purchased anything for him to date.

May:
I cut Aaron's hair (or anyone's hair aside from my own) for the first time - he didn't end up with a bald spot - go me! Our bath tub gets clogged and we have to bring in the handyman to fix it because we can't do it on our own, and Odin gets his first ever bath, and becomes somewhat of a hit on YouTube. Aaron and I see our first movie in the movie theater in TWO YEARS - Iron Man. Odin gets a kitty carrier in preparation for our trip next month to South Dakota and Wyoming.

June:
Aaron and I go to the Department of Motor Vehicles on a Tuesday (after taking the day off) to get Minnesota driver's licenses. I barely passed mine, Aaron just failed his. He was quite frustrated, and I don't blame him. Someone had repeatedly backed into our garage door, and now it doesn't open easily. I attempt to give blood for the first time in four years, which doesn't go over well with the vein they pierced...a ginormous bruise is my only souvenir.

We drive out home and spend a week in South Dakota and Wyoming, visiting friends and family, barbecuing, and spending most nights in Spearfish at the local Irish pub. Good times, good times. Odin does fairly well on his first big car trip, but was happy to be back home, and not sharing a house with another cat.

July:
Aaron and I go see fireworks, and I got some pretty good pictures, if I do say so myself. We make plans to go visit Jill in Fargo for the first time since moving out here. Ashley starts bothering me about wedding planning, stating if I have it during the school year, she might not be able to come because she would have to miss school. She'll find a way out here. We plan for August/September. Aaron begins to threaten to get rid of the cat. He hasn't gotten a full night's sleep since we got him in January, and he can't continue like this. I come up with some suggestions - wearing him out before bed - works for one night. Then we decide to start kenneling him - which has been working great. Full eight hours of sleep!!

I start working out, needing to get in shape and lose some weight for the wedding. I have a year to do it, but I don't want to try to put a lot of pressure on myself to get it done in the last few months, so I start as soon as we get back from Fargo.

August:
My company has a fall softball league that I joined. We haven't won a single game yet, but we did tie one! The month has gone by pretty quickly. Aaron and I start looking for wedding venues, and start thinking September/October for the wedding - cooler outside. I find out about a trunk show for wedding dresses by a designer I like, and pick out my gown! Only 20 weeks until it comes in! The Minnesota Renaissance Festival is in full swing, and we have three guys staying in our one bedroom apartment over the weekend. Our air conditioner has never been busier.

And that's my year in Minneapolis. Whew.

Day Two

2008-09-01T11:06:00.001-05:00

Day two, Sunday, began a little later than day one - we'd all had a long night, and needed to catch up on some sleep before heading out for another day in the sun. We finally arrived around 11am, wandered around a bit, and headed to the court for Vilification Tennis, so we could see Karlie. Karlie had to work that afternoon, and we didn't get to see her the day before, nor would we get to see her the day after, so this was our only shot, and we only had a window of about 45 minutes before she had to leave.

More wandering around on day two. It felt much warmer than the previous day, and possibly a little more humid. There was more cloud cover yesterday, which helped, and we got to sit down for the insult wars, so I wasn't on my feet as much all day yesterday. I think that helped me be a trouper and not want to go home so early. I'm such a wuss. I just get so used to not being on my feet all day, that when I'm forced to wander around aimlessly for 7 hours at a time, I get a little whiny.

I had myself a giant turkey leg for lunch at the fair. It was very good, not a ton of flavor - I probably should have put some salt and pepper on it, but oh well. I ate almost the whole thing before giving up. That was around 1pm, and I didn't eat again until 1am...and I still wasn't THAT hungry at 1am!

The reason why we were eating at one in the morning is the next part of day two. There was a Finnish metal band playing downtown in Minneapolis called Finntroll, who sing in Swedish because apparently it sounds more troll-like than Finnish. Austin is a fan, and Q had got tickets for us all. We waited in line for a good half hour or longer, apparently one of the opening acts' bus broke down in Wisconsin earlier in the day, so they were late.

Now, I've been to a Swedish metal concert before, which was actually quite enjoyable, but it was pure metal, fantasy-like songs, and I could actually understand the lyrics. The concert last night was quite different. I was obviously very out of place, wearing my brown t-shirt with pink ponies on it. Apparently that is not as metal as black shirts with crazy fonts on them for the band names that you can't read unless you stare at it for about a minute and concentrate really hard. Oof. There were three opening acts, and they progressively got better. Then Finntroll came on, and they were three times louder than any of the other acts. Near the end, Aaron got some toilet paper from the bathroom to stuff in my ears because I didn't have ear plugs. Needless to say, it was intense.

We left fairly late, stopped at the Cub grocery store on the way home, picked up sandwiches, sushi, and chips, and headed back to our place to eat dinner before crashing. Which was around 1am.

Aaron and I opted not to go to the Renaissance Festival today, two days was enough for me, that's for sure. I'm wiped out from being in the sun for two days in a row (I should have a decent tan in about a week, after the pink goes away), and tired of walking around aimlessly on lumpy ground that hurts my ankles. The boys are headed out there right now, ready for another day of mead, expensive food, and cleavage. Hope they have a good time!

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too funny

2008-08-30T20:21:00.002-05:00

I found this video on Cuteoverload.com this afternoon...the first part is kinda weird, but wait for the cats...I was giggling the whole time.

MEG - Precious @ Yahoo! Video

Day one

2008-08-30T20:11:00.001-05:00

Well, the first day of the three day weekend started off with a bang. Well, let me back up to Friday, first. Our tickets that I ordered through Craigslist never showed up in Spearfish, Henry checked back at the old apartment for us, and they still haven't made it back to the guy who sent them to us. I think they should be back to Minnesota by now!

The gents showed up around 10 PM or so, we went off to Applebee's for some food, as we were all a little hungry, minus Q who had to go to his brother's house, lest he not have a place to stay for the evening, as they were locking up for the night.

Another night of eating greasy food late at night, then going to sleep soon after. Not good for the stomach.

Got up early today, Q and Jamie stopped by, and we piled into two cars and headed off to the land of the Renaissance Festival. It was a nice, cool morning to start with, but slowly warmed up throughout the day. There is so much to see. So many shops, acts, and people, wandering about. There were definitely more people dressed up than not, but I definitely didn't feel like a fish out of water in my plain ol' clothes.

Shows don't start until noon or so, so we did a lot of wandering around. There was a quest for the perfect mug for Henry, and for sandals for Thomas and Austin, who were monks, and their Nikes didn't go well with their robes.

Food and drink are expensive, but the gyro I had for lunch was amazingly good. Either that, or I was amazingly hungry, but mostly, I think it was really good. We watched some fun shows, including belly dancing, fire manipulators, and vilification tennis (an insult war).

I lasted about seven hours before giving up. I was getting hot, and my ankles and feet hurt. I'd twisted my ankles several times during our softball game on Thursday, because the infield dirt was packed hard, and I have week ankles. They're still tender from that, apparently.

I did leave with one souvenir - a sun burn. I am sporting a pretty good farmer's tan at this point. I don't think the burn will be bad enough to peel, but I'm definitely going to find some sunscreen for when we go tomorrow.

All in all, a good time. It was different than what I expected, but better, also. There was plenty of shade, but lots of people. As soon as we got home, I collapsed into bed and slept for about 3 hours. Mmm, felt so good. Now we are trying to figure out what to do for dinner!

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I cannot believe this...

2008-08-26T18:39:00.001-05:00

So we have four friends that are coming up this weekend for the Renaissance Festival. This will be my first time going, as well as a couple of other people's first time. I'm pretty excited. We got discounted tickets through work, and I found someone on Craigslist who was selling them dirt cheap. I ordered 10 of them (the majority) from the guy on Craigslist, along with a few more from work. The ones from work showed up within a couple of days. The ones from Craigslist still haven't shown up.

I emailed the guy I bought them from, asking when he'd dropped them off in the mail, he responded back that he'd dropped them on the 19th or 20th (it's now the 26th), and that they should be arriving soon. Then he confirmed the address. The address from Spearfish, South Dakota.

HOLY. CRAP.

I never changed my address on Paypal when I updated the account! I could have sworn I did, because I added a new bank account, the one from here in Minneapolis.

So I warned my friend Henry that I might need his assistance, after I left a voicemail for the rental office at the Spearfish apartment. I don't know when I'll hear back from them, but Henry has graciously agreed to run down to our old apartment and see if our tickets are still there. Hopefully they're either still there, or they put Return To Sender on the envelope, and they'll be back in Minneapolis soon.

Man, I feel like such a dummy!

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Dream

2008-08-26T06:13:00.001-05:00

I had a dream this morning that we were flat broke, but I had seen some infomercial in TV about custom embroidery, but it was really expensive. So I went to a store that did custom embroidery, instead of ordering off the TV, and was going to get a musical note embroidered on the sleeve of a jacket, or something like that. When she told me the price, I thought it was only $3.45, but it was actually $345. I put it on my credit card.

Then, my credit card seemed to be more of a debit card, because I realized that there was only $50 in it, and I'd over charged. Crap!

************

Then I had another dream that I couldn't find anything to wear to work, even though I'd just done laundry - my closet was bare. I had mannequins laying down on the shelf in my closet, all wearing clothes, but they were either old and didn't fit right, or they were sweaters, and it's still August, so I didn't want to wear that.

I ended up going with an old pink t-shirt that was too short for me. Attractive.

***********

What's with all these dreams of not having anything to wear to work lately? I know I have plenty.

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OMG wedding dresses!

2008-08-22T20:04:00.002-05:00

First of all, let me tell you, I had NO IDEA wedding dresses weighed 50 pounds. Goodness, those things are heavy!

Having gotten that out of the way. The appointment in the evening was perfect. It was just me and Anne, my friend, and the lady who owned the store. I assume she owned the store, she seemed like it, anyway. The woman grabbed a catalog, had me point to the dresses I liked, she wrote down their numbers, grabbed them and others that looked similar, and then we were off!
First was this one:

The back was really itchy on this one:

I wasn't a HUGE fan of the halter top, but that's because my shoulders are too big for it.

This one was pretty, but I think I wasn't a fan of the modified sweetheart neckline

This one was just plain awful - the colored ribbon falls ACROSS the bust, instead of under it, and it was too lacy. Yuck.

Too lacy, and the store model, like this one, had white as the color accent. Blah. And I don't look good in white, ivory is better for my pasty skin.

This one was really pretty, I think it was one of the first ones I tried on.

And my favorite. I wouldn't get it in red, it's a little too much. The burnt orange looks really nice on it, though.

In that last dress, the one I really like, she had me sit down, to see how that felt. There was no way I could bend at the waist, so I had REALLY good posture. She had me bend over, nothing bad happened, and had me walk down the "aisle" along the wall of mirrors, so I could see how my guests would see me. Quite lovely, I must say.

So I made an appointment at 10 tomorrow morning to try the four I liked the best on again. Aaron is coming with me so I can get his opinion on them. I know that's not traditional for the groom to be to see the dress, but we're not very traditional people, so it's okay with me. I'd like his input.

She wouldn't let us take pictures, which is fine - I still need to lose some weight before I want to have my bare back and shoulders in a picture, but I had fun! What more can you ask??

too much fun

2008-08-21T20:14:00.001-05:00

So tonight was our second set of softball games - our first double header. It was a ton of fun, but pretty hot at the beginning. I had a lot of good hits, made it on base every at bat except one. Much improved from the previous week! I was at second base for one inning, and then in the outfield for the rest. Didn't really contribute TOO much out in the field, but that's okay. I'm always scared of screwing up in the infield.

Both of our games ended early - stupid mercy rule. We just got murdered both of our games. They're supposed to last 55 minutes each, give or take. Our second game only lasted 20 minutes!
We did get a couple of home runs in our last game, but it just wasn't enough. Oh well! At least I made it there on time (early, even!) for this game!

You have NO idea how excited I am for tomorrow! I have obviously never tried on wedding dresses before, so I have no idea what it's going to be like, but I can't wait. Eeeep! Hopefully they'll let us take pictures!

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Possible wedding venues

2008-08-20T20:14:00.002-05:00

Last weekend and the weekend before, Aaron and I went to look at some wedding venues. The weekend before last, we went to Theodore Wirth Parkway, and saw the Fireplace Room. This weekend, we went to two places, but neither of which I got pictures. Yesterday after work, I went to Centennial Lakes Park, which is in Edina, the town I work in. It's REALLY small, but really pretty. It's in this quaint little shopping area, with ample, covered parking. It has a large building, which includes an outdoor fireplace. Pretty! There's also a tiny lake, with sale boats, and a little amphitheater.

So there ya have it! I picked up a packet on rental information while I was there, too.

Dresses

2008-08-20T20:13:00.001-05:00

So I got an email this weekend, along with a postcard in the mail yesterday about Alfred Angelo dresses being "on tour" in my area. I LOVE his dresses. When I've been looking at wedding dresses, he has been my favorite designer so far. So yesterday I called and made an appointment for Friday after work to go look at dresses! I'm really excited. I asked our friend Anne to come with me, and she's going to bring her baby, Parker with. The Bridal Center that the dresses are being shown at is right next to a pizza place, so maybe Anne will want to get something to eat afterwards. It's nice to just sit and have some girl talk every once and a while. And ogle over Parker, because he's so darn cute.

Got my oil changed on Tuesday at the Mazda dealership. It was one weird thing after another. I showed up a TEENSY bit late because I had stopped at a park to take some pictures (more on those later), and then by the time I made it onto the highway, it was rush hour. I was literally like, 3-4 minutes late. No big deal. Pulled part way into the garage, and no one greeted me as usual (had to get my tire checked one day because I found a nail in it). Waited, waited, finally, someone greeted me and told me what stall to pull in. Got my little buzzer thing, like the ones you get at restaurants when you're waiting, and went up to the lobby. A woman and I were sitting in the chairs, and later, a man came up, and was dinking around on the computer behind me, mumbling to himself. He gets up, turns towards us, and says, "May Jesus Christ bless you and save you," and leaves. What? The woman and I exchange puzzled looks and wait for the man to make it down the stairs before starting in. "What do you say to that? 'Thank you'? Do you bless him back? Did I sneeze?" Not sure. We had a good giggle over it, though. Then my thing buzzed and said I was done, so I went down, the guy says "Your car is over there, the keys are in the ignition. I go over to my car, and there's still the little paper floor mat they put in there so they don't muddy up your car, along with a sheet of printer paper with "VACUUM" typed on it under my windshield wiper. I look in the car - not vacuumed. Go into the office, tell the guy my car wasn't vacuumed. He says he'll get the kid on the phone to vacuum it once he's off the phone. I wait, wait, wait. Finally, the guy tells the kid to go vacuum the car, and he'll take care of the phone. The kid says, "Yeah, I'll vacuum it. I'll vacuum the hell out of it." And vacuum the hell out of it, he did. I was waiting there forever. Kid gets done, but doesn't come back to the office to tell me my car is done, but instead gets into another car and drives off. I asked another guy if my car was done, he says yes, and takes the paper mat out of my car, and I'm ready to go. Buckle, turn the key. Wait. There's no key. That kid took off with the key to my car! Tell the other guy my key is not in the ignition. He checks for himself (like I would lie about that or not know where my ignition is?). Goes to find the kid, kid doesn't have the key. Somehow the key ended up back in the office, but I'm really not sure how. Finally get to go home!

So that was my Tuesday, minus going to the park, which I will post next. TTYL!

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The weekend, and then some

2008-08-18T17:25:00.002-05:00

So Thursday night marked the first company softball game. Man, was I excited! I hadn't played softball in at least five years, and that was a one-game, half-assed attempt at a game in college. I didn't go to the pre-game celebrations, as I didn't want to spend three hours at the bar before going to the game. So I drove in on my own, following directions from Google Maps. Apparently that was mistake number one, because there is a LOT of construction going on in that area, and it was utterly confusing. I think I missed the turns I needed to take at least three times, if not more. I didn't have the phone number for anyone on the team, so my first attempt at help was to call Aaron, as he can always get me turned in the right direction. He didn't answer his phone because he was on the other line, and then never called me back. So then I text messaged a co-worker and got the phone number of someone on the team - well, he left his phone in the car, never got ahold of him. I stopped, used Google Maps on my phone, and ended up finding my way, 5 minutes late. Which turned out okay, as our team was just getting in the dugout.

I was catcher. I could barely move my legs after that day. Saturday was the worst. Every time Aaron and I got out of the car during our errands, I had to stop and stretch my quads because they'd tighten up on the road.

Friday was pretty relaxed - I think we just stayed home and watched the Olympics. Saturday involved LOTS of driving around. I wanted to check out Minnehaha Falls as a wedding venue, it's outdoors, and very pretty. Unfortunately, there was ALREADY a wedding taking place, so we couldn't park, or really look around. I tried to take some drive-by pictures, but I think they turned out blurry. Hehehe. Then it was off to Kahn's Mongolian Grill. They didn't open until noon, and it was only 11:30 or so. So we wandered over to IKEA and killed some time, then back to Kahn's. I think we got turned around a couple of times during this whole run, too, so that wracked up the miles.

There were two other parks I wanted to visit that day, but it never happened. We stopped at Target and got a bunch of crap, then came home. On Sunday, we went to Clifton French Park in Plymouth, but everything looked very picnic-y. Shelters, not a lot of cleared-off grass, and sand volleyball at every one. Not quite my style. I learned from a co-worker today that there's actually a large building that the ceremony could be in. I'll have to go check that out. Groceries were bought, and baseball and Olympics were watched.

We got into more wedding stuff this weekend, and I was trying to figure out how much the average wedding cost in this area. Quite a bit. I had no idea weddings were so expensive. We're going to try to keep ours around $10,000, which means that in 13 months, we'd have to save $770 each month. Yikes. I don't know if we can do that. We're going to try to save a lot of money by having friends help us out. We already have at least three individuals who have offered their services to us in the areas of music and photography. Now, if we can just have one of our friends ordained as a priest over the internet, we'd be set! Too bad we didn't have someone's large back yard, or someone who worked in the food industry. That would really help out.

We'll just have to see what we can do!

Mmmmm, pancakes

2008-08-12T18:14:00.001-05:00

So this morning, all of us on the short term disability team got to go out for pancakes! We went to the Original Pancake House, or something like that, and ate massive amounts of food. We were gone for about two hours from work, and didn't even have to extend our work day. It was fabulously good, and a fun time, too.

Yesterday, I had a horrible headache after work, and I went over to the fitness center to see if I could make it go away. Unfortunately, it never did go away, so I only ended up doing enough to get 2 miles in, which was somewhere between 22 and 26 minutes. I don't remember because I forgot to write it down. Today when I went in, all of the machines were full, and most of the weight lifting equipment was full, too. I managed to do some rounds on the weights, arms, abs, and legs, did a couple of stretches, and left. Oh well.

Got back to the apartment and vacuumed because I was lazy all weekend and didn't do much cleaning. I had to clean out the filter before I could do anything, which I'd never done before, so I wasn't entirely sure what to do, but I figured it out. Man, I can't believe how much dust and crap accumulates in this apartment! Gross.

Last night, I was doing some wedding research, just dinking around on TheKnot.com, trying to get some ideas, and bookmarking the things I liked. Then I came across a Q&A section, and one woman was asking what to do for name changes, because both she and her husband were changing their names - they were both hyphenating. I jokingly told Aaron that's what we should do. He said he wanted to do something different, like make up a whole new last name. I was telling Mom about that, and she said that we should take all of the letters of our last name, put them in a bowl, and draw one by one. I told Aaron, and man, did he get excited. Then he grabbed the Scrabble board and started pulling out our letters, and threw them in the bag...and so it began. We pulled one letter after another, left them upside down, and once we pulled all 11 letters out, we flipped them over. These are some of the new names we came up with:

Ahamljvrrme

Mrealjahmrv

Emrmlaahrvj

Ralhmjemrav

Unfortunately, we have a bad combination of letters between the two of, mostly consonants, three vowels. Mom told us to get ready for a lot of full body cavity searches at the airports. Adn that we would never be able to spell it the same way twice. Drats. Then our friend Brandon said we should just meld our last names together, literally. His last name end in an M, mine begins w/ an M. We'd be the Rehmravlja's. Haha. We were laughing our heads off the whole time we were creating new names. What a hoot.

Lori invited me to go to lunch with her on Friday, to some organic restaurant. That'll be fun, and nice to get out of the building for a while.

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weekend

2008-08-10T17:28:00.003-05:00

Well, Aaron and I did go and look at the Theodore Wirth Fireplace Room on Saturday. I took some pictures, which I will post below. The Fireplace Room is very cozy, and I do believe would hold everyone for the reception. It's not large enough to have the ceremony AND the reception both, but the Theodore Wirth parkway also has something called Wedding Hill, but we didn't go look at it because to reserve it, it's through a different number, and just getting someone to let us up to the Fireplace Room took about 10 minutes, I wasn't going to hold my breath in the guy behind the counter telling us how to get to Wedding Hill. I'll call on Monday.

So pros about the Fireplace Room: It's cozy, it will hold the people we'd like to come (we only have about 70 people on the guest list currently, and I think many won't be able to actually make it due to the distance that they live from here), it's inexpensive, beautiful building, would look great with the fall colors, has a balcony, and is close to where we live.

Cons about the Fireplace Room: It's a little dark, as you will see by the pictures. It's a little beat up, but I think most of the woodwork is original, and the building is quite old. All decorations must be free-standing. No using the rafters for decorations, no using tap, tacks, pins, etc., to keep decorations up. That could prove to be difficult, especially with such a high ceiling, you'd like the decorations to go up higher. There were golfers everywhere. But, it was a beautiful summer day in August when we visited. Who knows what it would look like in September or October.

Oh, speaking of that, Aaron had thought that maybe we could push it back to September or October, due to heat. If we had it at the Fireplace Room, there is no air conditioning there, it's on the second floor, and with it being as cozy as it is, it would get quite warm filled with people. Maybe later in the year would be better, as it would be cooler.

If the Wedding Hill is close to the Fireplace Room, I was thinking we could do the ceremony itself at the Hill, and the reception at the Fireplace Room. I'd like to have them as close together as possible, to eliminate people having to drive back and forth and finding parking and all that crap.

Here are the pictures of the Fireplace Room. We didn't turn the lights on while I was taking them, so the only lighting is from outside, or the flash of my camera.

After we looked at the Fireplace Room, we went for a walk at the Bird Sanctuary again. I remembered to take a Claratin before we left, which either helped tremendously, or there were different pollens out from the last time we went, which I wasn't allergic to. Either way, I wasn't sneezing and snuffly.

We've had a very relaxing weekend so far. We've been watching Olympics, watched the Twins lose to Kansas City (and go back to second place for the American League), did some cleaning, gave Odin a bath, as he was starting to look a little grimy. His white wasn't as white as it should be. It paid off, he's now much softer and smells better now. And he doesn't hate us. At least, I don't think so, but I haven't tried on all my shoes to see if he pooped in them...

Well, I think that's about it for me today. Back to the grind tomorrow. I will be so happy to be doing just my own work and no on else's. Until tomorrow!

late entry

2008-08-07T06:04:00.002-05:00

2.26 miles in 30 minutes yesterday. I forgot to blog about it because Aaron was home when I got back from the fitness center, and he's usually not home for another hour.

So at work we have this goal to have a decision made on new claims or new mail within four days of receiving that piece. I don't have a very big workload yet, so I can easily reach my goals. Which means I help a lot of coworkers out when they get backed up because they have a lot more work than I do, and that's perfectly fine with me. Except this week seems different. This week, a coworker is out on vacation, and another person and I are the backup, making sure that all of the claims in the office are at four days, including our vacationing coworker's. I am supposed to be the second backup, but the first backup is so backed up herself, I've been essentially first back up. Which is not really a problem, I just find it difficult going through current claims that are waiting on decisions to be made before making another payment. But then yesterday, this other backup worker leaves work early due to not feeling well, and she has a claim and a new piece of mail at FIVE days, plus a bunch at four days, and I get asked to help with her stuff, as well. Um, ok. Total overwhelming feeling hits at three hours before my day is over. Hopefully today and tomorrow will be better.

We've been trying to kennel Odin at night so he learns a schedule of sleeping at night, being up during the day. On the weekends, we're not so worried about it, and let him roam around at night, but during the weekdays, I really would like him to be kenneled. Monday night and Wednesday night, he was not kenneled. Monday wasn't a problem, but this morning, about an hour before I need to be up, he's in the bedroom, scratching on the box spring of the bed. I ask Aaron why he's not in his cage, and he says he couldn't find the cat last night before he went to bed, which is the same reason he wasn't kenneled on Monday. It's not a very big apartment, he shouldn't be too hard to find, and a sure-fire way of finding him is shaking the treat can. I just let Aaron know that he's never going to learn his schedule if we don't stick to it. I hope that we can stick to it, because I'm tired of being woken up in the mornings before I really need to be.

So those are my rants for the morning. Time to get ready for work!

2008-08-05T17:50:00.002-05:00

2.23 miles in 30 minutes, plus some abs and lower back workouts on the weight machine today. Rockin'.

Today at work was BUSY. I now know what it feels like to have a full caseload, only worse. When I have my own caseload, I'll have worked on all the claims myself and know what's going on, at least.

I haven't heard back from the club room yet for the Theodore Wirth Parkway. I called and left a message yesterday. I'm going to shoot off an email today. Called the insurance company / billing place, and they told me to call the doctor's office. Last time I called the doctor's office, they told me to call the billing place. Grr. Makes me mad. I've never had to deal with insurance before in my life, and it's a pain in the ass - no one can help me.

Now I kind of know how my claimants on short term disability feel when they aren't getting their checks. Only not as bad because they need the money, and I just need to pay some money, but I want to make sure I'm paying the right amount, first.

Anywho...that's it for me today.

back at it again

2008-08-04T20:27:00.001-05:00

Today was 2.08 miles in 30 minutes on the elliptical. Project Runway wasn't on, and I couldn't bring myself to watch a full episode of Shear Genius, so half an hour was all for me today.

This weekend was good - we got a lot of cleaning done, groceries, hung out with some friends. Good times.

Monday was Monday, times 10. One of the claims analysts is gone this week on vacation, and I am her second backup, but I've been doing most of the backup work, and it's hard to do when it's a claim that's already been worked on, and you're waiting on information, but you're not familiar with the claim. Just kinda sucks.

Aaron just installed the latest and greatest version of Linux (Kubuntu) onto my desktop computer, so I am having a good time messing around with that, adding widgets and changing the themes.

I called the place where I want to have our wedding today after work to see what their availability in August and September is for next year. Ended up having to leave a voicemail, but I hope I hear back from them soon. I'd like to be able to go look at it soon, if they have availabilities during the weekend. That's the big thing. Don't want a Wednesday night wedding.

Well that's about it for now. Until tomorrow!

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Something worth watching

2008-08-01T18:06:00.001-05:00

2.12 miles in 31 minutes on the elliptical, and since they got cable, I was watching Project Runway, and wanted to see the whole episode, so I did another 3 miles in 15 minutes on the stationary bike. Whew!

Now I'm going to have to show up around 5 every evening so I can watch some real TV, since we still just have the antenna, haha.

I'm hoping Aaron will get home at a decent time tonight - he sounded busy in an email today, and it's past 6 and I haven't heard from him yet.

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Improvement

2008-07-31T18:13:00.001-05:00

2.19 miles in 30 minutes. I'm doing better! This was on the elliptical. I've been doing the same pre-programmed "weight loss" setting each time, on each machine, in order to be able to keep track better. I'll be sticking to about half an hour for now, and increase as I feel I plateau for that time frame. Now that I have a really nice fitness center to go to that is free and close by, I look forward to going. Granted, it's only been three days, but it's nice and quite and cool in there. And once they get the cable hooked up on the TV, it will be even better, because watching the fuzzy news every afternoon is kind of lame.

I tried reading a magazine that I brought, but it was hard to read while bobbing up and down, so I guess I won't be doing that again. Bummer.

Odin's not getting any better in the middle of the night, but I am thinking that we need to start locking him up in the bad kitty cage at night when we go to bed. I think this way, he'll learn a schedule, and that he can't just be up annoying the crap out of us whenever he damn well pleases. I'll let you know how that goes.

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Today

2008-07-30T18:02:00.001-05:00

Only 1.64 miles in 33:00 minutes. The elliptical was in use when I arrived, so I had to use the treadmill, which doesn't allow you to set your own pace as easily as an elliptical, you have to push the stupid button over and over again to find the right speed. Oh well. Felt good anyway.

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Today

2008-07-30T17:58:00.001-05:00

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Nada

2008-07-29T21:31:00.001-05:00

No workout today. Today was Open House for the fitness center, with free pizza! What a great way to get people working out! Plus, I knew no one would actually be working out at the Open House, because the guys who installed the equipment were coming in to show everyone how it works. Which wouldn't seem like something you need to do with gym equipment, but even the pulley weights are set up digitally, so instead of sticking a pin into the weights, you select an amount on a digital screen. Interesting.

Got all the bugs washed off my car, plus I'd run over some sort of hook and discovered it the day we were packing the car up for Fargo, but it was at such an angle as it only pierced the rubber, no walls. The tire did fine the whole trip to and from Fargo, and I had the guys at the Mazda service shop check it out, and it was fine. They did the classic soapy water test, and there were no bubbles. Whew. I don't want my car to be a nail magnet.

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is available again for free on MySpace, so check it out if you like Joss Whedon, musicals, and villains.

Well, the week is half over as of tomorrow! These last few days have drug by SO SLOWLY. And Odin isn't getting much better at night. I put him in the kitty carrier at 4:30 this morning because he kept jumping on the bed and flopping on me with a toy in his mouth, mewing. Eww. He's so bored. I really think he needs a friend. But that has to be a joint decision. Blah.

Anyway. Until next time!

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Stats

2008-07-28T17:57:00.001-05:00

2.07 miles in 30:05 minutes.

The new fitness center for our apartment complex has finally opened up. It's a really nice room, wooden ceilings and walls, with one mirrored wall. A big, 50" (at least) flatscreen TV mounted on the wall in front of the ellipticals and treadmills, along with some free weights and some pulley weight machines. It's nice and cold in there, so that's really good. It was pretty popular, too. All the times I'd gone to the old room, it was just me in there, along with the 2 other machines. Today when I showed up there was already someone on the treadmill, and then two more girls showed up a little later.

The only bad thing? They have this nice big TV hooked up to an antenna, instead of a cable, so half the time you couldn't see or hear what was on the TV. Oh well, I brought headphones, so it didn't really matter.

So yeah, I am going to try to go every day after work, and take a break on the weekends. I'll start off with half an hour on the elliptical, most likely, maybe do some biking, and some weights once in a while. I'm going to try to record my miles and minutes, and see what kinds of improvements I can make. I really want to lose about 20-30 pounds before the wedding, and I know that I have a year to do so...but I'm a procrastinator, so I'd better start now, or it'll never happen.

I'll post about our Fargo trip next. Toodles!

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How to Stop the Nighttime Crazies

2008-07-22T18:04:00.001-05:00

That is the name of the article I read this morning because Aaron had been up since 1:30am due to the cat monster yowling his head off all night long. Normally the cat doesn't start howling until about 4:30am, and even lately, he hadn't started until closer to 5:30am. But for some reason last night...or early this morning, 1:30am is when it all started.

I think Aaron was about to kill the cat. He was up, about, in and out of the bedroom, on the computer, on the couch, snuggling with the cat...nothing. Odin was still yowling and romping around on the bed.

So I started to read some articles, as cats are nocturnal animals. Many articles said that the cat needs a companion to keep each other company. Other articles stressed keeping the cat busy in the early afternoon/late evening hours, and then feeding the cat a high-protein meal afterwards - which would simulate the cat hunting, and then eating his prey.

I am pretty sure that Odin getting a girlfriend is out of the question, so after work today, I stopped by the store and picked up a laser pointer for him to play with. It's a start - I got him panting and tired within minutes, but he's already lounging on the cool kitchen floor, and I can't get him motivated to do anything more. Drats. Maybe I need to wear him out later in the evening?

Any advice from fellow cat owners?

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Another weekend

2008-07-20T19:55:00.002-05:00

Well, I guess I should clarify something from my post last weekend. Although I may vent about being frustrated with my sister and all her "ideas/suggestions" about our upcoming wedding planning, I by no means am going to really listen to her, or postpone the wedding, or anything like that. I was irritated after talking with her, and needed a place to vent about it, and my blog was the most convenient spot. That's all.

This week was pretty good. Work's been going well, I've been getting good feedback from my supervisor still, saying I'm handling my caseload well, I'm managing tough situations well, asking good questions, all that jazz. So that's exciting. Our company has a softball league starting in the middle of August, so I've signed up to play! That's going to be a lot of fun, although there's no team practices, so I need to head out to some batting cages a few times before the first game - Aaron and I have played catch a few times, just to get out of the apartment and go do something, but I haven't actually swung a bat at anything in about five years.

On Tuesday it was Aaron's birthday. We went to Granite City for dinner, which was excellent, and then just went home and chilled, very relaxing. On Wednesday, we had happy hour at work at a bar/grill called Majors with some of my co-workers. Lots of fun. Thursday was the St. Paul Saints game, Aaron's boss bought tickets for the company and some others, and we tailgated for a bit, then went to the game at the 4th inning. Lots of fun, we won, and almost got killed by a foul ball. Good times. On Friday, we just stayed home. I had tons of laundry to do, and was just pooped from the week. On Saturday we hung out with Karlie, Jamie was at a concert, so he did not get to enjoy the steaks, French silk pie, or sweet carrots from the grill. Shame. We had a good time.

Today has been lots of cleaning and getting the apartment back into shape. It always seems to get so messy during the course of the week. I don't know how. But we are getting ready to watch Hellboy so I can be prepared for Hellboy 2 in theaters! Until next time!

Frustrated

2008-07-11T20:00:00.001-05:00

So I want to start doing some more wedding planning this weekend with Aaron, and I was relaying this information to my sister via MSN Messenger. She pointed out that if we have the wedding in the fall (any later than the last week in August), she might not be able to make it because she will still be in school. This will be her last semester, and she is worried about missing some classes and not passing.

I think the chances of that happening at the beginning of the school year are slim, especially within the first few weeks of school, but she thinks differently. I also figure people aren't going to be coming out here for an entire week, just a long weekend, but I don't really know how this is going to work.

She says "Can't you wait 2 years, and then I will be out of school?" Or "August is a really bad time for Dad, can't you have a spring wedding? Or one during my Christmas break?" I do want to have people be able to come, obviously. That is the whole point of planning a ceremony like this. But, this is also MY wedding, and I want it during the fall, which is my favorite time of the year. And I want it outside, because I want to enjoy the fall foliage.

I'm frustrated. Overwhelmed. But this is our day, not everyone else's day. But I want everyone else to enjoy it with us. Maybe we can push it back to August, although I don't think there are any fall colors in August. But that's okay - greens are pretty, too. I'm flexible. For the most part. But I also don't want to be sweating to death on my wedding, either.

I don't really know where to start. It's too early to start trying on dresses for one reason - I need to lose some weight before the wedding. About 30 pounds is all, but it needs to come off because I am not going to be a fat bride. Not sure about cakes, but I do have some in mind that I have found on the internet.

At least it's the weekend, and I can sit down with Aaron and start getting some things sorted out. Hopefully.

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Weird...

2008-07-07T06:03:00.001-05:00

Aaron and I went to Coldstone Creamery for some ice cream yesterday afternoon because we had a coupon that let us get an "add in" for free. I was checking the bank account this morning, and there was a credit to our account for $7.15. That's a very weird and small amount to be added to the account, and right before that transaction was a debit for $7.15. It looks like the kid at the register accidentally credited the whole sale back, instead of just the cookie that was added into my ice cream cup.

Sometimes those amounts aren't accurate, however. Like, if one of us goes to the gas station, for about a day or two after, you'll see a debit of just $1.00, as a pre-authorization debit. Then, after it clears, the actual amount you paid for your gas shows up. Guess I'll just have to keep an eye out on that.

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Holiday Weekend

2008-07-06T14:32:00.003-05:00

Well, after a nice short week at work, Aaron and I enjoyed a nice long weekend at home. Friday started off with not much, but we ended up going to see the fireworks in St. Louis Park. I had done quite a bit of research on how to photograph fireworks because I just wasn't sure what settings I needed to use. After some good tips, some practice, and a tripod, I was all ready to go. Here are some of the better ones out of the 140 pictures I snapped.

On Saturday, Aaron and I went out to visit Jay and Anne and their new baby, Parker. He's about five weeks old, and we hadn't met him yet because he was in the hospital for the first week or so due to various ailments. He's doing great now, and is a very sweet baby. I even got to hold him for a while, and he fell asleep on me. But no worries for me, there were no "I wish I had a baby of my own" feelings to be had.

Sunday has been busy. We have been slowly working on cleaning the apartment all weekend, due to the fact that we just unloaded all our crap last Sunday from the road trip, and left a lot of it in the living room. Odin has reverted back to his terrible ways, which took him all of a day to do so upon returning to the apartment. He's been running amok all afternoon, grrrmowing and grrrschproinging off the furniture, and basically being a monster. Hopefully he will fall asleep soon.

The last weekend of this month, Aaron and I are going to go to Fargo to visit my college roommate, Jill, which is really exciting for me because I haven't seen her since March or somewhere around there, and that was just for lunch, and I haven't ever been to Fargo to visit her since she's been living there for the last four years.

So that's it! My update for the week. After we finish watching the baseball game, we're going to Coldstone Creamery to get some ice cream. Mmm, mmm, good.

The end

2008-07-03T21:28:00.001-05:00

I forgot to finish blogging about the end of our trip! Well, I didn't forget, I got pretty busy. So I ended on Friday, which was starting out to be pretty relaxing. We did end up going to the bar again, as usual, and met up with Bryce and Liz finally. On Saturday my mom and dad came up from Gillette for one last "goodbye", and we had a great dinner of steak, potatoes, fruit salad, and a whole bunch of other great stuff. We made a trip to the Crow Peak Brewery, where Dad and Aaron sampled their different types of beer, and Mom and I sat and played cribbage while they did so. After Mom and Dad left, we started getting stuff packed up, and went and had dinner with Henry at Applebee's for another last goodbye. Finished packing the car, and then we were outta Spearfish by 8am.

Odin did much better on the outside world when we stopped at rest areas, he wasn't nearly as terrified as he was the first time I let him out of the car at the rest area. Unless you count the time that Odin saw the Basset Hound bounding towards him at a rest area. "Don't worry, he lives with a cat!" the owner shouted over the wind. Yeah, but Odin has never been around another animal that is 10x his size. The cat puffed up to about three time his regular size, and we retreated to the car. We listened to the Twins game on the radio, and made it into Minneapolis around 7:30pm. Unpacked the car, Aaron made macaroni and cheese for dinner, as we had no food in the house except that, and I was in bed by 9:30. Exhausted.

Odin had done pretty well at Aaron's parents' house - got used to it after a few days, and was tearing around like his normal self eventually. He slept all through the night, at our feet on the bed, which he never does at home, and that was really nice. However, that behavior did not translate to apartment living once we got home. He was back to his antics of bringing toys up into the bed and flopping around on us, eating our hair, and making horrible noises at 4:30am after being locked out of the bedroom for the flopping episodes. Some things will never change.

Well, here it is, Thursday, and the apartment is still a disaster. Aaron brought home a bunch of camping stuff and some personal stuff from his parents' house, and I brought home one box of stuff from my parents' house. Most of that has yet to be unpacked or put away in the garage. Aaron brought some stuff home that he wants to try and sell, but he hasn't gotten around to that yet. We've both been pretty busy with work, coming home, cooking, cleaning, and going to bed. Thank goodness we have a three day weekend.

I was pretty swamped when I got to work on Monday, a lot of stuff I was hoping to have accomplished when I got back by my co-workers was not, so not only was it a Monday, it was month-end, and I was just coming back from being gone for a week. I did miss the 4-day deadline that we try to meet on a couple of items because of that, but my boss knows that it was an isolated incident, and wasn't too worried about it. Thank goodness, because they were mostly just tasks I could have cancelled and forgot to, due to the "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" all Monday.

We don't have any big plans for the holiday weekend. A friend of ours is in the hospital, he just had surgery today, so we might be able to go visit him, and another friend of ours had a baby about a month ago that we haven't met yet. This baby is the one I made the green baby blanket for a few months ago.

But for now, it is just nice to be at home for the evening, playing cheap-ass games, listening to music, and not doing a damn thing.

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Busy last couple of days

2008-06-27T20:55:00.001-05:00

Since I last posted, we've been pretty busy catching up with friends and spending too many hours out at the bars until closing time.

Wednesday started off with Mom driving me to Spearfish, and we had lunch with most of Aaron's family at the Chophouse in the Spearfish Canyon. Mom headed home, and Aaron and I went with his family to Roughlock Falls, then to Savoy to the lodge, and we got ourselves settled in to his parents' house. Then we had dinner, and went out to Flanagan's to see everyone. We were out until 2am, and boy, was I pooped. I am not made for the night life anymore. I've gotten too used to getting up at 6am and being in bed by 10pm.

Thursday was pretty fun, as well. I felt terrible after drinking too much the night before; my legs had this weird sensation that made me feel like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. And that's why I never drink. We had breakfast with Aaron's parents, and I don't really remember what we did for lunch. Then we had the big barbecue at his folks' house in the evening, which had a really good turn out. We had burgers, brats, and Aaron had brought a whole bunch of beer from the local breweries back home in Minnesota. Then, another night at Flanagan's, but I left early because I am a weiner.

Today has been very calm. Aaron and I got up a little late, and were going to try to meet someone for breakfast, but it didn't happen, so we had some coffee and split a bagel, because we were supposed to be having lunch with Aaron's parents and some of their friends in Belle Fourche at Noon. We made up some leftover burgers and brats from last night's party, and we are just chilling right now. Pretty relaxing for the time being.

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The last few days

2008-06-24T08:37:00.002-05:00

First off, a few pictures from the first day of vacation all bunched together at the beginning, then the rest will go in order with my post.
Odin, scared out of his mind for the first few hours of the journey. All he did was stare at us, then yowl any time we made eye contact.

Aaron, trucking along, during the first leg of our trip, before we made it out of Minnesota.

I'm a sucker for clouds.

Before leaving Aaron's parents' house, we headed to the car wash.

After breakfast, we drove to Gillette to meet up with my parents, my Aunt Sharon, and Grandma. The first night there, we had barbecue ribs, and Aaron showed my dad all kinds of beers from the Surly Brewing Company, a brewery across the street from where we live. We spent most of the day lounging on the back deck, as it was the perfect weather outside for doing so. I discovered a feature on my camera that lets me focus on one color of my choosing, and grays out the rest of the colors, so I spent a lot of time messing with that.

Sunday, Aaron and I went to lunch with Amy, who told us all about her summer job as a dirt truck driver in a coal mine. The tired on one of those trucks barely fits on a semi-truck flat bed. Pretty cool stuff, I would definitely like to do that some day. Then we saw Get Smart at the movies, and then went to Las Margaritas for dinner, a family favorite.

Aaron left for Spearfish Monday morning, and Mom, Grandma, Aunt Sharon, and I left for Laramie to visit Ashley, as she wasn't able to make it up for a visit with her school schedule. Mom and Grandma were in one car, and Aunt Sharon and I were in her rental car. It was pretty fancy, with push-button ignition, which was hard to get used to. It was nice to catch up with Aunt Sharon, as she always has lots to say about the family back down south, and new things that are going on with her. I hadn't seen her or Grandma since May of '05 when we went down to visit Grandma in Mississippi.

We had time to eat at The Library, a cool local place that has its own brewery. Aaron would have enjoyed that, but he had a lot of things to get done at his folks' house that would have bored me to tears. Then we visited Ashley's apartment, because I had never seen it before. Grandma and Aunt Sharon weren't going to have time to see it because they had to go down to Denver to get checked in to their hotel for the night, so I took plenty of pictures of that. Unfortunately, I don't have a way to get them from my camera to my computer right now, so that will have to wait.

Mom and I spent the night in Laramie, and will head back to Gillette this afternoon. Then Mom's going to drop me off in Spearfish, and I'll spend the rest of the week over there.

Until the next update!

Road Trip, part one

2008-06-21T10:09:00.001-05:00

We left Minnesota around 3:30pm on Friday once I was done with work. Made it to Spearfish, SD after about 9-10 hours in the car. Cat monster was in his kitty carrier until about 10:30pm, he lasted 7 hours before he started yowling his head off. We stopped at a gas station, and let him outside on his leash near some gravel and grass. Mind you, the cat monster has not pottied the entire trip - I let him out once at a rest area, but some other family was by the pet area with a poodle dog, and they stood around for like, half an hour, so Odin was pretty scared.

Aaron's car is completely covered in bug guts. You get used to driving around in the cities, where there really aren't too many bugs, and if there were, all the cars in front of you on the freeway would had killed them first. We did go through a little hail storm that lasted all of a minute or two once we had passed Sioux Falls, which scoured off the first wave of bug guts, but it didn't take long to dity up the windshield again.

We spent the night at Aaron's parent's house, and Odin could smell their female cat, Jasmine, all over the basement. He was mewing, and slinking around, and hissing at his own shadow for the first hour or so. I was so exhausted, after working 8 hours, then spending 9-10 hours in a car, so I zonked out pretty quick. We woke up, and couldn't find Odin anywhere. Searched all over the basement, under everything, in the bathroom, no kitty. I was a little worried that he'd crawled in a corner to die or something, after such a traumatic day. But we finally found him underneath the bed, and he was slinking around, scared of any sound that he heard from upstairs. He hasn't met Jasmine yet, and we think they should wait at least a day before they do meet, to kinda get used to each others' smells.

We just finished breakfast, and are going to wash the car, pick up some coffee, and head to Gillette.

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I try to do something nice, and I get stabbed

2008-06-12T17:17:00.001-05:00

So last week there was a poster in the women's bathroom promoting a blood drive in our office building. I signed up for it, and it was today. I go in, pass the interview, iron levels, etc. I go to the lounge chair, and she hooks me up. I've donated blood several times in the past, but it's been about five years since the last time I did. They use my left arm, which I have had trouble with before, but the left arm's vein is crooked, and they were scared to pierce the vein wall.

The girl sticks me with the needle, and it's not flowing very fast. The first thing they do is take four small vials of blood before filling up the larger bag with blood for the actual donation. The blood isn't flowing very quickly, so she moves the needle around, up and down my vein, trying to find the right position for it. All of the sudden, the skin right above that vein starts to bulge. It's getting bigger and taller. I ask, "Is it supposed to do that?" Normally, they cover the area with some gauze so you can't see the needle enter your skin. They had not done this yet. She starts closing off the tubes I am hooked up to, takes the needle out, and has me put pressure on the hole w/ some gauze over it.

Then she says, "Well, you can try it again with the other arm, or you can come back next time." I opt to try again later, as I am taking time out of work to do this. If I hadn't had to go back to work and didn't need to get going, I would have let them try the other arm.

I can't blame the girl who stuck me - she took blood from the guy who was sitting right next to me, no problems. She pierced the wall of the vein, and blood started pooling up under my skin. I am going to have a HUGE bruise, and I'm already quite sore.

I'll post pictures of the bruise when it shows up. Gross.

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pulled muscles and colds

2008-06-07T18:30:00.001-05:00

So Thursday night Aaron and I are driving to get something to eat for dinner, and I have this sudden feeling of a pulled muscle in my right armpit. It hurts really bad, and I can barely use the gear shifter because of it. Then we get inside, and my fingers are tingly. And the inside of my upper arm feels kinda weird, too. So I've either pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve. I'm not sure which, and I'm not sure how, but I think I may have done it trying to open the garage door a couple months back when it was jammed shut because either A) some jackass backed into it, or B) it was iced over in the winter and wouldn't budge. Either way, I think that's how I pulled the muscle, but the pinched nerve/tingling fingers thing is what's bothering me.

But I don't want to go to the doctor to have it looked at, because even with my insurance card, I apparently still have to pay a buttload of money for an office visit. I had a physical/checkup and some other stuff done at the end of March, and I got an office visit bill for like $45. Not too bad, I paid it, thought that was it. Then I get another bill in the mail for an obscene amount of money for all the different things they did while I was there. Some discounts were taken off, but it seems really ridiculous. Aaron suggested I call my insurance provider and ask them if everything was done correctly, and maybe re-submit my card and the bill to them, because that's what he did when he had his kidney stones problem in September, and he hardly had to pay anything in the end. So we'll see.

I was super busy at work all week, and my phone never seemed to stop ringing. I would leave my desk to go to lunch, and I would come back with four or five or six new voice messages on my phone. As I was calling people back, listening to messages, or fielding other calls, I would get more calls that would go to voice mail and have more messages waiting for me. I'm surprised I got caught up, frankly.

This weekend has started off very slowly. I think I am getting a cold, because I have no energy, a slight sore throat, and my face hurts. I was up around 7:30 this morning, and then back in bed by 10:00 because I just didn't have the energy to do ANYTHING, and let's face it, if you're not going to be doing anything, you should just be laying down in bed. So I slept until about 1:30 (Aaron came in a couple times to check on me and Odin, as he was napping with me), and I feel much better now. We have yet to leave the apartment today, but I think we will venture out for dinner, as we don't have any food in the apartment. Which also means we have to go grocery shopping tomorrow.

Also, I need to buy quarters for laundry because they raised the prices from $1.25 on each machine to $1.50 on each. Which means instead of four loads of laundry per roll of quarters, I'm going to get three and a half. Lame.

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Weekend

2008-06-04T21:33:00.001-05:00

I don't really remember what went on this weekend. I bought some yarn to start on Jess' baby blanket. She's not due until September, but the baby shower is at the end of June, so I have 2 weeks less to finish this blanket than I did for Anne's blanket. I've been taking it to work to speed up the process.

On Friday we had a birthday dinner to go to, and on Saturday, a birthday party for the same guy, a friend of Aaron's. Sunday, we had Jamie and Karlie over, then we went out for Chinese food, then played Super Smash Brothers on the Wii. Good times.

Aaron and I both took Tuesday off so we could get our Minnesota driver's licenses, as we've lived in the state longer than 90 days and never got around to updating our Wyoming and South Dakota ones. You had to take a written test to do so, 40 questions, and you could only miss eight. They were hard questions! I haven't looked at a "rules of the road" book in 10 years since I got my driver's license in the first place! I missed eight and barely passed. Aaron missed nine, I think, and had an unusual number of questions dealing with CDLs, which he was not pursuing. So that was very frustrating, as we'd both taken the day off, and he couldn't take the test again in the same day.

Then we poked about most of the day and went to see the Twins play the Orioles that evening. Good times, even though we lost, but we had good seats and a good view, and there were some really good plays. Good, good, good, that's all I can say, apparently.

Man, there is nothing to watch on TV now that all my shows are over for the season! So I've rented How I Met Your Mother and Freaks and Geeks on Netflix, so that should keep us occupied.

Alright, that's enough babbling. Until next time!

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Weird "Lost" dream

2008-05-27T06:16:00.001-05:00

So on the show Lost, whose season finale is this week, Locke and Ben have discovered they need to move the island to keep it safe. I had the weirdest dream about that.

I am on the island along with everyone else on the show, and they are getting ready to move it. Except when it comes to moving the island, it's a little more difficult than first thought, as it is really on another solar system, and the island is the whole planet. I'm not sure how the moving process began, but when it did, everything went terribly wrong.

There were landslides, floods, all the snow melted almost instantaneously (I know there is no snow on the island, but like I said, it's more like a whole planet in the dream), there were earthquakes, the Sun became incredibly strong and burned peoples' eyes. Then there were missiles being fired at people. Either that, or they were meteorites. People were dying left and right.

Then the dream cuts to me and Ashley sitting in the middle of my living room floor, doing some planning, when a phone on the coffee table rings. It's the same kind of phone from work, so I set the call to go straight to voicemail, as it's really way too early to be calling about anything. Then the "message" light comes on, indicating the caller left a voicemail. I try to access it, but I keep punching the numbers in wrong. I get frustrated and finally give up, figuring I can check it when I get back to work.

Then we are back on the island, and there's a point where you can see outer space from the planet- like bubble that the island is in, The whole thing is being rocked around, back and forth, out of its natural orbit. You can see other planets in that solar system starting to get sucked into a black hole.

Then the alarm started going off.

What the heck was that all about?

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First half of the weekend

2008-05-24T15:52:00.003-05:00

I am so glad it is finally the three day weekend! On Thursday night, Aaron and I went to go see Iron Man, the first movie we've been to in two years, since Superman Returns came out! It was really good. I didn't even know there was a comic called Iron Man until the previews for this movie started showing, so I went in with no expectations of how it should be, which is always nice. Even Aaron enjoyed it, so it must've been good. That, and Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark is HOT.

Friday after work, Aaron and I went to Bret and Jess' house for grilling steaks, and I think we are going back over tonight. They just got a new, really nice grill, and the weekend weather is perfect for it. We had steak, mashed potatoes, and grilled corn on the cob. All very good. Will and Vandy were there, as well, and they made a really good mango/avacado salsa that we all munched on while waiting for dinner.

This morning Aaron and I went for a walk at the Theodore Wirth Parkway, which has a bird sanctuary. We'd gone there in April when Aaron's folks were visiting us, and there were a few flowers and plants starting to come up out of the ground. It was quite a change today, now a month later. I took lots of pictures, so I'm going to post those on here.

We got Odin his cat-carrier for when we take him out to South Dakota next month for our vacation back home. He tolerated being in there well, so I don't foresee getting him struggling against us when we need to put him in there for various reasons.

So far, a busy last couple of days. I'm not sure what's in store for Sunday or Monday, but I don't really care at this moment.

That should hold you over for a while. I'm not sure what most of those plants are called, so don't ask.

I was sneezing and snurfing quite a bit near the end of our 45 minute walk in the bird sanctuary. I kept saying that I don't have allergies, but Aaron then pointed out that Yes, I do have allergies, and that I get them every year, and every year he has to make me take benedryl or something. I concluded that I must have blocked out the horrible memories of allergies, because I sure didn't remember all that.

Odin's first bath

2008-05-18T14:13:00.003-05:00

You asked for it, you got it. Odin's first bath! Be warned, he does make some of the most terrible noises you will here, and you might think that he is being cat-murdered, but he is not. He's just quite unhappy with his damp situation. He is now fine and bouncy and fback to his normal self. He doesn't even hate us that much.

Problem solved

2008-05-18T08:30:00.001-05:00

Well, the handyman came by a little after 8pm last night to fix the tub. First he plunged. Then he used a small snake, which got bent. Then he used a bigger snake that wouldn't fit in the bend of the P-trap. Every time he came back into the apartment, it was a bigger, more powerful tool. He said that Home Depot was the only place to have the right auger, and they were closed; he'd have to come back in the morning. Then he comes back in with some of the most pungent, powerful stinky drain cleaner. Which cleared the clog! It stunk to high heaven, and we had to leave the bathroom door closed for about half an hour so we didn't pass out from the fumes, but the tub drains now!

So that means Odin will get his first bath with us! And he is all kinds of wound up right now, so this should be fun. Or terrifying. I'm not sure which.

See, the design flaw with that drain is there is some plug/stopper thing that you can flip a switch with your toe to close or open. But it gets filled up with hair easily. So you take it out of the drain, which is hard because it has an o-ring in there to keep it in the tub. Then you forget to put it back in because it's a pain to have to remove it after every shower. Then the drain clogs up after a few months of that. So we went to ACE Hardware and got a little mesh strainer that fits right in the drain, and is easily removed because there is no suction or anything that keeps it in place besides its weight. Hopefully that will solve all our problems.

It was so nice to shower this morning and not be standing in five inches of water when I was done!

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