Random Stuff

So far, so good in hamster land. No signs of wet-tail have been seen and he/she/it seems content. Most of the time. It has stopped crying but remains spooked whenever I get anywhere near the cage. My mere presence sends it into a fit. It sits up on its hind legs with its paws up by its face and bares its “fangs.” I guess this is supposed to be menacing and scare me away. I just find it cute. I haven’t seen much of Howie lately. He always seems to be buried somewhere when I come into the room and since I can’t reach up over the top of the cage to dig around and find him (we did some cage rearrangement and his cage ended up on the top of the bookshelf), I settle for saying hello to the general area through the glass.

I had IMA last night and (for the first time, I think) things went relatively smoothly and I didn’t come home with a migraine headache. The PD session speaker was a soldier who was over in Iraq for a year or so. He had all kinds of pictures and stories to share. Aside from his overuse of the phrase “I’ll never forget” and the word “literally”, it was a good presentation. Dinner was ok. I wasn’t impressed by the food at Liberty Hall last time and this time kind of continued that trend. I figured out a new system for my responsibilities though. I decided to wait and count money and tickets after the meal (as the speaker was setting up) rather than as the meal started. This seemed to work out a lot better than the last few meetings. I felt a bit rude sitting in the back of the room riffling through money while the speaker began her presentation. Oh well. I came out perfect on the first try again this month. Woo! I think my new, “organized from the get-go” system is working well. Even the members are commenting on it. :) I accepted the offer to continue in my position(s) next year and I’ll also be taking on another extremely important responsibility: nametags. The person currently responsible for them has missed the last few meetings because of back problems and I think it makes more sense for me to take care of them anyway. I’m the one who has the most contact with the members at the beginning of the evening. I take their money. Heh. I’m having a good time with the people there. They’re all much older than I am, but there were a few students at the meeting last night so I have some hope.

Nothing much else is going on. I’ve been spending more time reading during the past few weeks. Not only because of the 50 book challenge thing, but because I realized I was watching way too much TV. I think I just watch it because its there and then I don’t have to try and think of other ways to occupy my time. I know I should try and branch out and find something to do in the community. I just don’t know what I’d want to do. I’m not going to be joining any church choir or anything like that (sorry, Mom.) There is a chapter/group of the Sweet Adelines in Appleton, but they rehearse on Tuesdays so that kind of conflicts with the only thing I’ve got going on already. *sigh* Once again I feel incredibly boring and unmotivated.

I’m not doing too well on my “spend less money” resolution so far. Last weekend we went out and bought a little 5.0 cu ft freezer for all the big, bulk items we plan to buy at Sam’s Club. We also bought a deep fryer since most of the stuff there is restaurant type foods. Case in point: a box of chicken tenders. Directions on box: deep fry for 3-4 minutes. Martha (pre-deep fryer) method: put in oven, check every 5 or 10 minutes until they look done, cut into one, find it still raw, curse the oven and various other kitchen appliances, repeat. Yeah, their way is much better. We found that when they’re baked the outer breading is much spicier than when they’re deep fried. That was interesting. Because of all the recent kitchen appliance purchases we definitely needed more storage room so we got a few new bookcases for storage. They fit perfectly and freed up a lot of counter space.

I also finally got the CD I ordered from Barnes & Noble about a month ago. It had been out of stock for awhile. I guess this is ok considering it was an import and I couldn’t find it anywhere else. The CD is the newest from Charlotte Church. This is her first attempt at a “pop” album as the other albums she has done were all of the classical genre. It’s an interesting transition. Between being from Wales and the fact that she started out in strictly classical music, she’s not too popular over here in the US. She was the voice in the score of A Beautiful Mind though and she also sang the song played as the credits rolled, so you’ve probably heard her voice. She has a very unique instrument. I haven’t decided if I like her new persona yet. I’ve listened to the CD (on random) lots of times in my car and at work. It’s not your everyday pop music. It bears little resemblance to Britney Spears. I think it’s nearly impossible for Charlotte to completely abandon her classical roots simply because her voice has been trained so well for that type of music it comes through even when she’s singing questionable lyrics to funky drum machine beats. I generally enjoy the songs. I wasn’t sure I’d like them. I went to her website before I ordered the CD and there were clips and the music videos from the three songs that have been released as singles in Europe. She has definitely changed her image. Whatever makes her happy, I guess. I just wonder if she’ll find as much success in this genre as she did in the classical world. If she makes more CDs after this one, I’ll probably buy those ones too.