Saturday, June 28, 2008

Fun with the Laser Pointer

This is how we entertain ourselves on boring evenings at home. (First one is JC, second is Conner. Ted is seemingly immune to the charms of the laser...)



Belated Recap

I notice I neglected to regale you all with the excitement we experienced last week Thursday. Adam started his vacation around noon while I worked a full day. He was at home doing something (yard work? Cleaning his car? I don’t know…) and he called me. Tells me the cat just peed on his phone. That he had left open because he was expecting a call. Yeah.

So after I got home we headed to the new Alltel store over on CB. The only other people there were a mother and her daughter who was apparently having problems accessing her voicemail. We stood around and waited while the one customer service guy there sat on the phone with Alltel for a good fifteen minutes. After which the rep on the other end of the phone determined he couldn’t help them and transferred him to someone else. Who solved the problem in two minutes. *sigh*

We explained our situation. While Adam renewed his contract back last year when he got a new phone and we combined bills, I chose to keep my old phone and didn’t renew mine. So we wanted to renew my contract so I could get a new phone but really have Adam get the new phone. It sounded convoluted but apparently it could be done. Adam went with a Blackberry. And after probably 5 or 10 minutes of the sales rep trying to get the phone turned on, Adam took a look at it and discovered the guy had been pressing the “mute” button rather than the “power” button. *sigh*

After figuring that out the guy was able to activate the phone, get the numbers switched, and give us the bill. Finally. We headed back home where Adam proceeded to play with all the neat features the new phone has. I’m content with my ancient phone so hopefully it sticks with me until one of our contracts is up again.

Anyway, back to last weekend. On Sunday, after a not-so-restful night (JC decided it was play time around 5:00 and hopped around on the bed for awhile with his toy) we got up with the alarm at 7. Well, I did. I went to the kitchen to take my pills and when I opened the cabinet I was pelted with salt as the container of kosher salt I keep in there fell on me. I knew then it was going to be a good day. We ate breakfast and read the paper. I started laundry and Adam mowed the lawn. We ran some errands (Menards, Walmart) and also stopped up at his parents’ house for a while. They recently had to replace their computer and Adam helped them with that. Also, he ran into the curb while mowing the lawn and needed to sharpen the blade. We went home, ate some lunch, and then headed up to Green Bay to visit with Dave in his new apartment. It rained off and on during the drive up. It was the weird weather that comes with summertime: It rains on one side of the street while the other side is sunny. We stayed up there until the end of the Brewer game and then headed back home. Adam dropped me off at home to start dinner while he went to Copps and finished up the grocery shopping for the week. We had pizza and attempted to watch Michael Clayton. We were interrupted by toilet issues and decided to call it a night about halfway through. We finished it on Thursday evening. Kind of boring, but not the worst movie I've ever seen. I also rented No Reservations last night and I was kind of disappointed. It was not that great. Kind of unimpressive given who was in it. Oh well...

Monday was a relatively normal day. I made stuffed manicotti. Tuesday night I was on my own because some out-of-town Cisco people were visiting so Adam had dinner plans with them. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday were pretty much normal as well. Today was the cookout with my UWO group. It was definitely different this time. First, we had a cookout at Eric’s house rather than meeting at a restaurant. Second, significant others were coming so it was a completely different dynamic. Adam wasn’t overly thrilled that I dragged him along but hopefully he had fun. Other plans for the weekend include a haircut for me and a haircut and nail trimming for Mo.

Finally, congrats to Catherine on "transitioning" into her third year in Med School yesterday. Hopefully Dad and Cheryl did a decent job representing for the rest of us who couldn't make it out there.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

RIP Barry



As the rodents all recently passed the two-year mark we knew it was only a matter of time before they started their last laps with us. Barry had concerned me a couple weeks ago when I noticed he rarely came out of his house. Then he stopped eating. When we saw him stumbling around his cage after I cleaned it last weekend we knew his time was limited. So we tried to bother him as little as possible while still checking if he was with us on a daily basis. He was here on Tuesday night. He wasn't last night. Even though it was no surprise and he had what we hoped was a good life with us, it was still hard to put it all in a garbage bag on the curb.

I fear the next to go might be Gus. His eyes have been strange lately and he doesn't sleep in his house anymore, which I find weird. Howie, on the other hand, is as feisty as ever even though we got him months before the others. It's like Survivor: Hamster Edition, and Howie's kicking ass.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Mall of America 2008

So, today was Mall of America day. We were up at 5:30, showered and out the door a little after six. After a stop at Starbucks (for me) and McDonald's (for Adam) we got on the road. Shockingly, we ran in to no active construction zones and the whole trip was pretty smooth. Adam's going with this new "drive slower to get better mileage" thing so even at 70 the whole way tons of people were zooming past us. We made it out to Bloomington a little after 11. First stop: Food! We ate at Bubba Gump's again since we liked it last time. Since it was relatively early it was not busy and we were done and out of there by 11:45.

Then it was time to shop. I had gone online a few days ago and printed off a list of the stores I wanted to go to. We tried to work our way through the mall in an organized fashion. We started with Bow Wow Meow, which, as the name would indicate, is full of cat and dog related items. While I was tempted to buy the "crazy cat lady" shirt, we went with this pillow instead:



Then we headed to our favorite store, Marshalls. Especially liked in Minnesota where there's no sales tax on clothing. Both Adam and I found some good stuff. But it was awfully hot in the store. We checked out a few more stores including Godiva (yum!), Claire's (where I bought some scrunchies so I could put my hair up) and DSW. We stopped at Harry & David's where, in addition to some onion relish and multigrain chips we picked up some martini mixes:



We wasted no time cracking them open when we got home. Delicious.

We ended our shopping rampage at Le Gourmet Chef. Adam bought me the 12 quart stockpot with pasta and steamer inserts I'd been eyeing for awhile.



It's my early anniversary gift. I got some totally cute cow corn holders



and we also bought some whimsical chip and dip dishes.



We found our way back to the car and headed to Mecca. I mean IKEA. We wound our way through all the showrooms even though I was pretty sure what I was looking for would be found downstairs in the kitchen section. Sure enough, the first thing in our cart were some smaller, deeper plates to match the sets we picked up last year. We also got some garbage cans for the bathrooms that have covers since the cats seem to determined to tip them over and play with the contents. Last item was this cat toy:



Yes, it's a dead mouse pillow. Classic. I put it on the chair when I got home and the cats immediately checked it out.



But then they saw the other pillow and went nuts.



Our best guess is that it was on a shelf in the store with something catnip laced. Or our cats are even more insane than we thought.

Anywho, we made it back home around 7:45. All in all a good trip. And total spent (including gas, which was $3.99 in MN) was just over $200. Not bad. Probably less than we would have spent if we'd gone down to the Dells.

Yes, I ate at Red Lobster.

Last Monday night we were supposed to have leftovers. But since we were left with a lot less leftovers from the cookout than we anticipated we decided to go use the Red Lobster gift card we had. Now, I’m not a fan of seafood so you might wonder why in the world I’d agree to go there. Call it compromise. Anyway, I snuck out of work a little early, Adam fed the cats, and we headed up to Appleton. It was (not surprisingly) unbusy. We got sat at a table and ordered. My options were limited since a good 80% of the menu is fish and seafood. I ended up going with two appetizers as a meal: chicken tenders and mozz sticks. How boring. Adam got crab legs. He also got a ridiculously huge margarita (or, in Red Lobster terms, a “Lobsterita.”) I went with the more traditional sized drink. The service was pretty good although we waited for the cheesy biscuit things a while. Food came, I took breaks in my eating so I wouldn’t finish way sooner than Adam. It didn’t really work and I spent a while just looking at him cracking open legs and sucking out meat. Sexy. When his crab legs were reduced to a pile of shells we ordered their new chocolate chip lava cookie for dessert. Really not too impressive. It was good, but the cookie tasted a lot like the ones I mistakenly got from Bed, Bath, and Beyond a few Christmases ago. Kind of grainy. Adam took care of the ice cream. Then we both went home to take a nap.

Tuesday was the second IMA board meeting. Our president vowed that we’d adjourn no later than 8:30, but really no one was surprised when we adjourned at ten to nine. Better than last time though! This meeting ran a lot more smoothly and we’ve got a tentative schedule pretty well hammered out. My responsibilities in the summer are a lot lighter. I basically get to sit and listen to the planning and add my two cents worth where it affects me. And eat food for cheap. Yay. Next meeting is the beginning of July. We’ll see how things work out.

I had a nice, boring day yesterday, having vacation since we had intended to go camping. I did some shopping, Adam went golfing, I watched entirely too much Hannah Montana (really, not such a bad show.)

Today was another day - and another post.

Monday, June 16, 2008

A Rare Moment when Ted isn't eating.



In fact, he looks kind of bored...

A Hint of Drama

JC has developed this habit of sighing dramatically. It’s actually pretty funny. He did it a couple days ago when I was in the bathroom. He hopped up on the sink, licked his side a little, and then set his paw down, looked and me, and sighed. Like a heavy, exaggerated, drama queen sigh. I’m like, “Wow, rough day or something cat? Must be hard, laying around and sleeping all day long. Poor thing.” This isn’t the first time he’s done this. I wish I could get a video of it because I find it hilarious.

Because I couldn't get him to take a decent picture tonight (even with all my waving and shouting "JC, look over here!"), here are some of what I managed to shoot:

I call this "Glamour Shot Cat":


Here he is sprawled out on the bed:


And here he is staring down the camera in a creepy way:

Fun with the Family

Overall, a fun weekend. Friday night we did the shopping for Saturday’s cookout along with a stop at Walmart and Blockbuster. Adam had the afternoon off thanks to the storm knocking out power at his office so he got a good deal of the cleaning taken care of before I even got home. We shut the cats in their room overnight and he mopped the kitchen. We ate ice cream in bed while watching The Bucket List. While I’m not a huge fan of either Jack Nicholson or Morgan Freeman, the movie itself was decent. A little sad, a little uplifting.

Saturday morning Adam cut the lawn (again! Third time this week!) while I cleaned up the kitchen and started getting stuff ready for dinner. I really copped out this time with pre-fab food. I don’t think I made anything aside from the cookies I had baked the previous week. We bought a veggie tray and dip. I don’t think I’d do that again because the tray came with carrots, celery, broccoli, and cauliflower. Well, one for four isn’t bad I guess. I generally go with cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes. Eh. We bought potato salad and broccoli salad from Walmart. Adam’s mom brought fruit salad. Cheryl brought her fabulous cream puffs which were the star of the meal. So in any case, my prep work wasn’t very complicated this time, which was nice.

We headed up to Greenville for brunch with Adam’s family. We got there right at 10 and were the first ones there. We were afraid we were going to be late! Soon after the others arrived and we had a nice meal. We left first, stopping at Menards, Walmart (again – I had forgotten we needed more Sterno gel burners), and Hobby Lobby. Back at home Adam did some work on his models in the basement while I tried to stay awake on the couch. Everyone from breakfast (minus his two sisters and Chris) showed up at our house a little before 3. The TV went on so Craig and Dave could watch golf. His parents and grandma spent their time out on the deck.

My dad and Cheryl arrived at 5, right as Adam was firing up the grill. I got all the other food out and we started dinner. For only having 10 people there, we sure went through a lot of meat. We had originally planned to cook only part of the package of brats since we intended to take the remaining brats camping. Since we are no longer going camping, we cooked them all up. At the end of the day, out of 6 chicken, 12 burgers, and 12 brats we had 2 chicken, 1 burger, and 6 brats left. Impressive. It seemed like everyone had a good time eating and talking. It was the first time Craig had seen our house and the first time Margaret saw it completed.

After dinner, the Paalman/Van Rooy/Hively clan left pretty quickly. Dave wanted to get home so he could watch the Brewer game on his HD TV. My dad and Cheryl stuck around for a while longer after helping clean up the food a bit. After they left I finished the clean up, started the dishwasher, and watched some baseball with Adam. Yeah, they totally lost.

Sunday morning we intended to go to church but when we got up we decided to just stay home. We looked through the paper, ate breakfast, and then headed out to do our regular grocery shopping trip and pick up some oil and a filter so Adam could change his oil. When we got home that’s what he did, in addition to washing and waxing his car. So it should rain today. That’s how it usually goes. I put away all the dishes from the previous day and took care of some laundry. I laid on the couch for a while with JC laying on top of me. Adam came back in from working outside to discover I’d taken his towels and thrown them in the washer so he couldn’t take a shower. Whoops. We spent the afternoon watching racing, I took a mini-nap with JC and Conner on my legs, and we watched the golf tournament. When the DVR started recording two shows, forcing us to watch one or the other (one of its drawbacks), we turned the TV off and migrated to watch in the bedroom. Ultimate Fighting.

So, eventful, nice weather, good times. On tap for this week: Second IMA board meeting on Tuesday, I have vacation on Friday although Adam has opted to go to work for his QBR. Saturday we plan to head to Bloomington and the Mall of America and IKEA. We’ll see what else crops up.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Kitty Fort

Some Pictures...

To go along with this post.

Flooded back yard:


Grass growing crazy fast:

Friday, June 13, 2008

Lost Another One...

This is just crushing news. He made politics almost bearable to listen to.

Flood. Part 2.

Hoo boy. Mother Nature sure doesn’t like the midwest very much right now. We survived Sunday’s storms just fine. Last night it was pouring on my way home after having rained pretty much all day long. The lightning was everywhere. Now, I like thunder as much as the next guy, but lightning freaks me out. It hit in the fields next to the road as I was driving to the highway. Ugh. Of course I made it home just fine, but not without a few “aahs!” when there’d be a flash overhead. I turned on the TV the minute I got inside to discover that FDL had a tornado warning and our area was under a “Severe Thunderstorm Warning.” You think? The cats don’t care for storms much so they were not enjoying the thunder booming at all. I got them fed, going mentally through how I’d corral everyone into the basement if the tornado sirens went off. I got out the flashlights in case we lost power. I called Adam and told him he should come home.

The cable went out around 5:20, leaving me with no way of keeping track of the weather except to look outside. It was still raining pretty hard but all the tornadic activity had appeared to be sticking further south so I could start to relax a little. Adam got home and double checked the basement for water. It continued to alternate between torrential downpours and areas of calm. The sump pump kicked in sometime in the late afternoon. It ran almost continually all night and Adam had to go out in the pouring rain to attach the hose out to the street. The neighbors behind us had been working on doing some landscaping/yard work over the last couple days and their whole yard became a lake. It spilled through the fence into our back yard. It was mostly gone this morning (oh, and the cable was back on too.)

We dug out the antenna from my old apartment and were able to get FOX and NBC pretty well. Good thing this wasn’t a year from now – the bunny ears would be no good with the switch to digital signals. We decided to watch Norbit (another Oscar film. Ok, although I don’t really like Eddie Murphy in any of his many permutations) although we got sidetracked for awhile when Adam messed with the sump pump and outside. So far, so good for basement water. We’ve got the tiny trickle by the furnace and Adam says there’s a little in the shop area. Don’t know whether to be concerned by that yet or not.

All things considered, we made out pretty well in this whole thing. Areas of Oshkosh were flooded, submerging entire cars in some spots. I drove down 21 at lunch this afternoon and it looks like the area down by my former apartment got hit pretty bad again. I remember the flooding a few years back that shut down the whole street and flooded out the bottom level of many of the buildings in my apartment complex.


(pictures from back in June 2004)

One of my friends and co-workers at Kmart lived in a lower that had water up to waist height. He lost pretty much everything. That would suck. Luckily I was an upper and I managed to park my car uphill at Ponderosa. (Although that was when I still had the Saturn, so maybe I should have left it in the lot to get submerged. Hmm… But I digress…) Still a freaky time. Fond du Lac has rivers for streets and even a few confirmed tornadoes. The rivers and lakes in the area are still rising with most supposed to crest sometime today. Just crazy. And guess what? There’s rain in the forecast for tomorrow. Wonderful.

Looking on the bright side, the grass that Adam planted last Saturday? Growing like a rock star. Yay for water and nitrogen!

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Drying Out

So, the weekend was a soggy one. Luckily all the flooding is south of our area, although I heard a few roads in Oshkosh were covered with water for a little bit. It rained pretty much all day Sunday so it’s a good thing we got the shopping and yard work done on Saturday. Adam got sick of the ugly bush by the mailbox and decided to pull it out. With the help of the neighbor’s chainsaw, he mostly dug it up on Friday night. Saturday we went up and got his dad’s car and the trailer. We loaded up the brush and some superfluous dirt and dumped it at the city recycling place. Then he filled in the hole with some topsoil/compost mix and planted a few layers of grass. But then it flooded all day Sunday so we’re hoping some of the seed was resilient enough to stick around.

Here's a before and after for you:



Other than that it was a pretty basic, no frills weekend. We watched Surf’s Up (another Oscar movie! 11 more to go!) and PS: I Love You. I also watched Sex and Breakfast on my own on Saturday evening. Surf’s Up is a cute movie, reminiscent of Happy Feet. I’m not altogether sure why so many penguins took up surfing in a tropical climate, but whatever. PS: I Love You was not as bad as all the critics painted it to be. It’s questionable in its entire premise, but overall a sweet film. And Harry Connick Jr playing a guy with a social defect? Hilarious. Sex and Breakfast was also an interesting movie. Three of the four leads are pretty well known for other films/shows but this is very different from anything I’ve seen them in previously. It’s definitely not for everyone (plot in a nutshell: Two couples try to figure out what’s wrong with their relationships by engaging in group sex) but it was interesting.

On the culinary front, I accomplished what I had set out to do: BBQ Pork, Spaghetti with asparagus and bacon, and the Moo-Less Pie. I also baked a batch of peanut butter cup cookies. Even though it’s summer now and not really cookie-baking weather. Yum-a-licious.

One major bummer caused by the recent deluges across the state is that we got a call yesterday from Mirror Lake. Turns out they’re under water so our camping trip next weekend is cancelled. Boo. Looks like Lake Delton (where the park is) was hit pretty badly. That sucks. Hopefully nothing happens up in Door County so we can get at least one trip in! But now we’ve got a weekend with nothing to do. I’m sure we’ll figure out something. Adam has suggested a trip to Sault Ste Marie, but we’ll have to think about that.

This coming weekend will be a fun one. Adam’s aunt and uncle are in town from Florida for a little while. We’re having brunch over at his parents’ house on Saturday morning and then everyone (plus my dad and Cheryl) is coming over to our house for a cook out dinner. This means some power cleaning on Friday night and Saturday morning. It’s amazing how much kitty litter the cats trek all over the house. They will be banished to their room while people are here. Conner and Ted would probably be hiding regardless, but we don’t want JC to be obnoxious. Although he doesn’t dig being shut in a room so they might get to hear some kitty whining.

But for now I'll leave you with a cute picture of a kitty paw. Trying to grab my foot and eat it.

Friday, June 06, 2008

Necessities? (and some kitty pictures!)

I saw this article over on Yahoo! Finance this morning. It lists 12 things that people these days view as necessities when they’re really just things we want, but we think we need. At least I guess that’s the premise. Here’s my take on them:

Daily Latte – Ah, the infamous latte factor. We rarely go to Starbucks. At least I don’t. The only time I am there is when we’re on vacation or going camping and we leave early in the morning and need a boost. I rarely even drink coffee. Both coffee and tea are provided for free at work for me if I really need them and we have an instant hot water thing at home so we can brew pretty quickly there too. I mostly stick to water.

Cable TV – Yes, this is something we could probably scale back on. But I love the DVR and Bravo and FoodNetwork, so until Time Warner rolls out an a la carte cable package, I think we’re stuck with what we have. Since we bundle the internet and phone in with the cable I suppose perhaps it’s not as bad as it could be.

Manicure/Pedicure – Ha! The only time I had a manicure was for the wedding. Never had a pedicure, and never will. I wouldn’t want to subject some poor person to my feet. Not sure I’ll go for a manicure again either. It wrecks your nails.

Botox – Come on, I’m too young for this… And even if I had wrinkles I was worried about, I have such a needle complex that I doubt this would be a solution I’d choose.

Bottled Water – We gave up the bottled water a while ago. The only time we still use it is for camping and this year we’re going to get a big jug and use that instead. We’ve kicked around the idea of installing a whole-house water softener, but I don’t know that we really need that. I think the water from the tap is just fine.

Second Car – In the area where we live and with our schedules it’s just not practical to drop to one car. Public transportation is a joke. My car is paid off and the registration and insurance fees in WI are reasonable. As for gas, well, my car is pretty efficient, in the 30 mpg range, but I drive less than Adam who averages about 22 mpg. Thanks to all the gas taxes WI has, we’re running about $300/month these days. Ouch. Yay for the Chase BP rewards credit card!

Cell Phone – We originally planned to not get a landline in the house and use our cellphones. Then we discovered that our house is in a dead zone for my phone. So we do have both. I rarely use my cell phone and when I do, it’s generally to Adam so the minutes don’t count. I’m an add-a-line on his plan so it’s not horrible. Although we’ll have to see what the Verizon-Alltel combination does to our service.

Lawn Service – Pfft. Adam takes care of the yard work. The one thing we’ll probably have someone come in for is doing fill and slope work when we re-do the deck and siding.

Clothes – I go for months not buying anything. Then I go all gung-ho and drop a chunk of change for new underwear or shirts. My deal is I find something I like and then buy multiple colors of the same thing. My main problem is pants. I can’t find anything that fits right so we end up spending money to trek to Marshalls. Clothing is always a fight for me. No matter what size I’ve been, I can’t find clothing that fits or I like. *sigh*

Private School – I’m thinking this is only applicable to those with kids. I’m public school through and through while Adam went to a private school until high school. We’ve had discussions about this and I don’t think we’ve agreed on our stance. But that can wait awhile, of course.

Childhood Parties – Same as the schooling, this doesn’t help us save money if we’re not spending it anyway. My mom threw some pretty good parties for us at home, with a homemade cake. I don’t know where things will be by the time we have kids (if we have them at all) but I can’t wrap my brain around spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on something the kid won’t even remember. I think it’s probably more to satisfy some show-off urge in the parents…

Pet grooming/Walking – Not really applicable since cats don’t generally get taken for walks. Neither to guinea pigs or hamsters. The cats are shorthair so don’t require grooming. Mo is the only guy who needs a haircut every once in a while. We also trim everyone’s nails. Our biggest pet expense is food. We get the hamster and guinea pig food and timothy hay from Walmart. They seem to like that brand better than Kaytee. Plus we don’t really like Kaytee too much anyway. The cats eat pretty much anything, especially Ted. We feed them Fancy Feast and Iams, but we get the Fancy Feast at Walmart where it’s 8 cents cheaper per can. We use coupons on the Iams or wait until it’s on sale and stock up. We’ve talked about cutting them back to wet food every other day, but I don’t think the extra $1.26 a day will kill us. Plus feeding time is pretty much the only time Ted lets me near him! Lately when I lean over to fill their dry food he’ll get right up in my face and meow. Talk about bad breath… Heh.

In general I think we do pretty well in scaling back the buying of crap. With the arrival of warm weather we’ve been spending more on outdoor/yard/mini-home-improvement project items than before, but with the purchase of a home comes the need for continual improvement and upkeep. We’re still chipping away at the balances left from last year but I see no reason (for now) to not be able to have those gone by the end of the year. The two zero interest balances we have expire in January so after those are gone we’ll be able to start being responsible and putting some away for a rainy day. Or for a new deck. Whichever.

In other news, they’ve closed Cty A again so I’m back to taking the highway to work. Ugh. Although the lake has been smelling extra fishy lately so perhaps this is a good thing. Unfortunately the barriers are up at the end of the street so I have no choice but to go around on Bruce to get anywhere, including the grocery store. Hopefully the road repair is quick.

Speaking of groceries, here’s what’s on tap for this weekend: slow cooked BBQ pork, Alton Brown’s Moo-Less Pie, and spaghetti with asparagus and bacon. Yesterday I made a Southwestern Chili-Mac Salad and tonight was Lamb Pitas.

And since it's been awhile since I posted any kitty pictures, here's JC doing the exact opposite of what I told him to do (shocking, I know):



And here's Ted ruining a perfectly good picture by being a pervert:



Ah. Kitties.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Playing Catch-Up

Ok, so obviously month-end is upon us again. Argh.

This past weekend was an interesting one. And one with not a single trip to Menards! Yay! On Friday night we headed to the drive-in for the first time this season. We were the third or fourth car there and we had some pizza for dinner while we waited for dark to come. The two movies playing were Horton Hears a Who and What Happens in Vegas. The first was much better than I expected it to be. Yes, it’s a Dr. Suess book and a film geared toward a younger audience, but between Jim Carrey, Steve Carrell, and Carol Burnett there were plenty of great laughs. And everyone breaking into a REO Speedwagon song was pretty funny too. The second was nothing extraordinary. It’s pretty much every other romantic comedy every made transplanted to Vegas. I’m not a big fan of either Ashton or Cameron but their respective sidekicks made it more worth watching. You can’t beat the deal at the drive-in: we paid in total for two movies, a medium pizza, a medium popcorn, a small soda, a big pickle, and two energy drinks what we’d pay for one movie and one combo of popcorn and soda at Marcus. Woo!

Saturday we did shopping, I cleaned the guinea pig cages, I watched another Oscar movie (Sweeney Todd – it was ok, I guess. Nothing spectacular though), and probably some other things, but I don’t remember. We stopped at Simon’s cheese again so Adam could get some curds. We also stopped at his parents’ house so he could swap cars and pick up the trailer since he was helping Dave move on Sunday. I also seem to recall his uncle stopping by to take a peony or something from our backyard. I don’t know much about that.

Sunday we had the choir brunch at noon. After that Adam headed up to Green Bay. I was going to try and see the Sex in the City movie since I know Adam wasn’t interested in it. Brunch was done around 1:45. The movie wasn’t until 3:05. So I tried to kill some time by going to Macy’s to check out the Martha Stewart line of merchandise. I’ve been meaning to do that for awhile but I never had the motivation to go to the mall. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. I particularly liked the cutting board shaped like a mouse. Completely unnecessary of course, but still cute. When I was done browsing (and being accosted by salespeople. The same one cornered me twice. Maybe this is why I don’t go to department stores…) I headed back to the car. It was barely 2:00. Ack. So, I went over to Woodman’s to see if they carried Vitalicious products or this Edy’s ice cream we’d seen at the drive-in on Friday night. They happened to have both. Score.

Unfortunately even with all my perusing through the aisles (which I could do for hours if it weren’t so crowded. I love grocery stores.) I only managed to burn another 10 minutes off the clock. At that point I just gave up and headed back home. I couldn’t justify sitting in the parking lot or inside the theater for 45 minutes. I’ll see it eventually. Just not the opening weekend (not like it needed my help anyway!) I stopped at Blockbuster on the way and swapped out Sweeney Todd for Margot at the Wedding (not great - Nicole Kidman bothered me in this one, although perhaps that was the point. Her character was supposed to be abrasive and unlikeable.) I also stopped at Copps to take advantage of their one day dairy sale. I spent the evening alone watching the movie and defending my toes from the cat. I fell asleep with the TV on.

Cooking wasn't very extensive for the weekend since I knew Adam would be gone. I planned no new meals for the weekend but I did make a Turkey Tortilla Casserole and a Bacon Quiche at some point last week. Tonight I made Turkey Parm Meatballs.

Monday was back to work for me. Day One is always a long one. I packed it up a little before 6pm. Adam got home before me. Dinner and some TV and the night was pretty much shot. Yesterday morning I was out the door around 6:15am. Adam went back up to help his cousin with the rest of his move. I stopped home after work for a little bit to feed the cats before heading out to the first IMA summer board meeting. It’s going to be an interesting year. I haven’t decided yet if it’s a good interesting or a bad interesting. The meeting went until 9pm when we abruptly adjourned after a few people said they were leaving whether we were done or not. Blame was thrown around for why it took so long to get the meeting going initially. *sigh* Hopefully things calm down and go smoother next time. Today is pretty much back to normal for my work days. I finished my inventory valuations this afternoon so I’m in pretty good shape. Nothing out of the ordinary that I can think of going on the rest of this week or this weekend. Maybe I can take a nap some time.

I must have some kind of allergies because I’ve been sneezing a ridiculous amount lately. My nose isn’t really stuffed up, my head and throat feel fine. I just sneeze All. The. Time. It’s totally annoying. I also haven’t been sleeping well. This is not altogether my fault. The cat (that would be JC) has taken to biting at my legs in the middle of the night. It’s kind of hard to sleep through that. And last night he was playing with a piece of carpet from by their litterboxes: throwing it on the floor, jumping after it, jumping back on the bed (and me), repeat. Obnoxious with a capital O. Add to that an inability to regulate my body’s temperature. I start out in a tank top under the covers, Adam turns the fan on. At some point I get hot so I throw the covers off. Then I get cold so I take them back. Then I get really cold so I change into a t-shirt. But then I get hot again. Grrrr. I also can’t seem to sleep on my left side when the fan is on – the breeze from it hits my face and annoys me. Apparently I have issues.

Ok, so that catches you all up with life for a little while.