A Post of out Boredom

Wow, July already. Time flies when you're having fun.

I don't really have much to say. Most of my thoughts these days revolve around wedding stuff and I'm sure you're all tired of that already.

This nice, long, four-day weekend will be pretty uneventful. Adam works tonight, most of tomorrow, Monday, and then Tuesday evening. Today we hit the strawberry stand and managed to get there right after the owner dropped off some berries fresh from the fields. They are so delicious. I could eat an entire pint in one sitting. I didn't, but I could. We're lucky to leave pretty much down the street from a local farmer stand. We can't wait to see what other items they have later in the season. We also went to Adam's parents' house and set the tent up and cleaned it out in preparation for the camping trip in a couple weeks. It started raining about halfway through the process but luckily it was just a sprinkling. Tomorrow we'll head to church in the morning and then I'll be on my own for most of the day. I'm not sure what I'll do on Monday while Adam's at work. It kind of sucks that my company considers Monday a holiday and his doesn't. On the 4th we've really got nothing planned. We were originally hoping to head to Sheboygan to catch the Cardboard Boat Regatta, but those plans were dashed when he was scheduled to work at 5. Oh well. I'm sure we'll find something to entertain ourselves. Then it's back to work on Wednesday where I'll be thrown into unfamiliar Banner territory. Fun, fun.

More Wedding Updates

These will end eventually. I promise.

Anyway, we met with La Sure's yesterday about the cake. These pictures were taken with Adam's cellphone so they're not of A+ quality, but you can get the idea.

This is the design on the cake. It's like little stars with dots between them. You can see it best around the edges there.


This is how the cake will actually be arranged. Rather than have it in layers, we decided to separate them and have them go up in kind of a circular staircase manner. We also plan to put votive candles in the center of each layer.


This is the (blurry version of the) topper we chose.


All three of these are in the photobucket album in their bigger versions.

Next Thursday we have a meeting with a photographer. We're not sure he's the one we will go with, but his prices are reasonable (even has a discount for being on a Friday) and he comes highly recommended. After that is flowers and then the dress. Argh.

Mother Goose & Grimm Comic 6/25

This comic struck me as hilarious:



Bwahahahahaha!

Camping, Etc.

We’ve got our second camping trip arranged and reservations for a site made. We’ll be heading clear across the state to Merrick State Park July 14-16. This particular park is about 15 minutes from Winona, MN, so we’ll be meeting up with my friend Justin at some point during the weekend. It looks as though this park is relatively small and I’m not really sure what there is to do in that area. Our reserved site is very close to the bathrooms and showers so that should be nice. Adam is still undecided about whether we’ll be bringing a boat this time. I leave that completely up to him. I’m at his mercy to whether or not I get to hover in a boat by a dock, hanging on for dear life or not. :) Hee hee. It wasn’t that bad. Once we get the boat in the water and get out there it’s pretty fun. It’s the getting in and out that suck.

Our last two trips are as yet unplanned. We’re hoping Catherine and Tony can join us for one of them. That trip will probably be down to Mirror Lake (or another park in the area) again. Adam would like to go up near Chippewa Falls once but we’re not sure that long drive is worth it. We’ll see how things turn out. All we hope is that the weather is decent for at least one of the weekends. Otherwise we might lose our will to camp entirely.

This weekend will be pretty low key. Adam works tonight and we’re planning on perhaps going out a little after he gets home. Tomorrow we have to go over to The Meadows in the afternoon to sign the contract. Yeah, the lady completely forgot to have us sign the contract when we were there on Wednesday. I’m not sure if this is a bad sign or not… I think she was just in a hurry to get us out of there. It looked like her daughter was there and she probably wanted to get home. Anyway, so we have to do that and then Adam work a few hours in the evening. He also works most of the day Sunday. I’m not sure what I’m going to do during all that time alone. Maybe torture the critters a little, catch up on some reading. Depending on the weather I might do some cooking/baking. We’ll see how things shape up. There’s no real pressing matters to attend to so I could realistically watch tv all weekend. But I won’t. Hopefully.

A Random Update Post

Been slacking off on the whole blogging thing lately. There are a couple of things to update everyone about.

Wedding-related (of course you can check out the website for info, but I figured I’d elaborate here):

*We had our meeting with the woman from the reception hall last night and we paid our deposit to hold the site. It’s pretty much perfect. It should be a good time. They were set up for a 240 person reception when we were there and since ours will be less than half that large, we should have plenty of room to spread out and mingle. We’ll be talking color selection and menu nitty-gritty sometime next year. It should be nice. The people there are very flexible and seem to want to make things work the way we want.

*We bought our rings this past weekend. Pictures are posted on the photobucket wedding site. They’re pretty basic, although perhaps not exactly traditional.

*The wedding party is all confirmed. My side includes Catherine W. (friend from college) as my maid of honor and Catherine D. (sister) as my bridesmaid. Adam’s side has Dave (his cousin) as his best man and Tony (his friend) as his groomsman. It’s small, but important. I hope to get pictures of everyone up on the website sometime soon.

*We meet with Father Mike this evening. We have no idea what to expect from this meeting. I’m hoping to avoid a third-degree type conversation and I’m also hoping to avoid an “I’m not converting no matter what you say” type conversation. Heh. I’m not too worried about it though. He seems like a nice guy.

*We plan to look at flowers in August since that’s the time of year of our wedding and I’d prefer to get things that are in season. We have an inside connection with a florist in the area since Adam’s aunt works there.

*Most of the other elements (dresses, music, lodging, gift registries) can wait until later. I’m trying to get the big stuff out of the way so I can forget about it for awhile. I don’t want to be one of the obsessed people who can think and talk about nothing but their wedding. (Don’t look at the blog recently as a supporting point for me doing that right now. I promise, I’ll shut up about it soon.)


Not Wedding-Related:

*I am so far behind on my book challenge right now it isn’t even funny. I don’t think I’ve read a page in about 2 weeks. Argh! Hopefully I’ll get back on track soon. The year is half over already. Gotta pick up the pace!

*I recently purchased my third Rachael Ray cookbook and have begun cooking my way through the pages. I’ve posted a couple new dishes on the cooking blog in the past few days. I’m trying to branch out a little so I’m going to try a few fish recipes (salmon and cod) in the near future.

*The office move across town was successful. I’m pretty much acclimated to my new surroundings. Well, that is, I was until they told me they were moving me to the Banner accounting team. I’ve spent the last week preparing to transfer my New London responsibilities to the plant accountant at CSF and this afternoon is a meeting about what I’ll be taking over for the Banner people. It looks as though it will be mostly inventory valuation and job costing. Not sure if I’ll like it yet, but we shall see.

*Country USA started yesterday and although it hasn’t been too bad yet, I have the feeling that by tomorrow I’ll be cursing country music fans. It’s ironic that we moved across town so we’ll avoid the EAA mess, but we moved early enough to get stuck with the Country USA traffic right down the street instead.

New Wedding Website

Ok, so that weddings.com website just wasn't doing it for me. Everytime I went back to update something everything had disappeared. It was so annoying. So we took the plunge (heh) and bought a domain of our own. Take a look at our new website: marthaandadam.com

It's kinda stupid-looking but I'm working on it.

Yet Another One

Seriously, we've got problems. Yesterday we went to PetSmart to get some more bedding for the hamsters. I asked Adam if he thought Mo was lonely since he didn't seem to do much besides sitting there, staring into space. He said maybe and then decided to buy another guinea pig to keep him company. Apparently they like cagemates. So we picked out a cute tan one and brought him home. They haven't killed each other yet so that's a good sign.

This new one is named Larry. So they're Larry and Mo. Like the Three Stooges... Get it? Ha ha. I kill myself...

Sears Grand (!)

On the way home from camping this past weekend we decided to stop at the new Sears Grand store in Oshkosh and see how it looked. Remember, this is the old Kmart store. It has definitely changed. It looks as though they gutted the entire interior and started over. They moved major parts of the store and created a much brighter, cleaner atmosphere. They even re-did the bathrooms so they’re not totally scary anymore. We browsed through their selection of merchandise and even checked out the appliance section. I must say they cleaned the store up pretty well. Then I saw a few of the people I worked with when I was there and it was the same old stuff all over again. Apparently a lot of people were bumped out with the transition. Who’s to say I would have survived it either? I’m just still glad to no longer be working there.

That said, I keep going back and forth as to whether I want to get a second job to make some extra money (weddings aren’t cheap) and occupy some of my free time. Every time I get to thinking it would be a good idea I think about how I’d lose all that down time and the freedom to do stuff on weekends. I really don’t know what I want to do. Maybe I’ll work during the holidays or something.

Wedding Update

There's not a lot of updating to do, but I figured I'd post what I have.

We have two meetings next week: one with the place we want to have the reception - The Meadows, and one with Father Mike - the one who will be marrying us.

The Meadows is "holding" our date for right now which is something they apparently don't do but Adam had some connections or something. Unless there's something completely surprising or uncool, that's probably where the reception will be. We were there last September for a Cisco event so we know how it's set up and what the food is like. It's basically just event-specific stuff I want to talk to them about.

The meeting with the priest is pretty much to get things rolling on the church side of things. I don't think we'll start the marriage prep stuff until early next year, but I'm sure there's more to talk about than just that.

I've been doing research on photographers, flowers, cakes, and all kinds of other wedding-y things. At some point I'm going to have to sit Adam down and make some decisions before anything can really come of any of that research.

Being the absolute food network junkie that I am, I had an epsiode of "Unwrapped" on the other day and they were having a "Wedding Weekend" or something so it was all about wedding related foods. A customized fortune cookie wedding favor caught Adam's attention so we're thinking we might try and do that. I had originally thought personalized Hershey bars, but maybe we can do both. :)

We bought invitations a few weeks ago. From Wal-mart. On clearance. They're totally cute though, white and silver with an embossed bride and groom in the corner. Adam's mom will be printing them for us at the church office.

We're still looking around at all the options for rings. It would make the most sense to buy the matching ring from the jeweler he bought my other ring from but we weren't the happiest with their service and the sale they were running has since ended. We have plenty of time to comparison shop, of course, but it's still out there on the to-do list.

I'll be looking into lodging in the area soon. The wedding itself is in downtown Appleton but The Meadows is in Neenah/Menasha so it will be everyone's choice where they'd want to stay. There are plenty of hotels (La Quinta, Holiday Inn, etc) right off the highway in Appleton and there's a DaysInn in Neenah. I guess I'll need to sound people out as to where they might want to stay and then see if I can get a special rate code to give out. I'll keep everyone posted on that.

Ugh, I get tired just thinking about all the stuff I have to do.

In any case, things are progressing slowly. If anyone has suggestions or anything, feel free to leave comments.

Camping Trip #1

So this past weekend was the first of four planned camping weekends. We reserved a campsite down at Mirror Lake in Baraboo. Things started off kind of rough when we realized right outside of Fond du Lac that we had forgotten something kind of important (hint: rhymes with "girth patrol mills") so we had to turn around and go back home to get them.

On the road again, we made it generally unscathed down to Baraboo. The state park was easy to find and we got checked in around 4:00. We headed to the campsite and set up the tent. It was much easier this time since the pole arrangements had been kept intact from last summer. After camp was set up we hopped back in the car and went to take a spin in the boat. It was raining as we dropped the boat in and continued to sprinkle throughout most of the boat trip.

After we hauled the boat back out of the water we decided that since it was only 6:00 or so we would head to HoChunk Casino just down the road. We both lost our $20 and ate at their Stand Rock Buffet. They had a big Friday fish fry special which Adam loved. After eating too much we went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things: bait, ice, an umbrella... We also got to see the world's biggest Menards. Trust me, it's big. By the time we got back to our campsite it had begun to rain again so we vetoed the campfire idea and decided to call it a night a little early. We got the best sleep of the night between about 9pm and midnight.

It rained all night, varying intensity and direction. We got up twice during the night to walk to the bathrooms and each time it seemed to starting pouring the second we opened the tent. It appeared the tent had a leak but perhaps it was just condensation because of the temperature difference. It was cold. Very cold. The air mattress was pretty much completely deflated by about 2am. *sigh* It was a long night.

The alarm went off at 5:30, but we had been up for an hour or so at that time. We had planned to go for an early-morning fishing trip but since it was still pouring we nixed that and headed to the showers. They totally sucked. No water pressure, hot hot water. Ugh. So that made me increasingly crabby. I mean when I went back to the car I dropped a dirty sock on the ground and that made me swear up a storm. Not a pretty sight. After calming down a bit we headed to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Adam had been so psyched when he saw that there was a CB right off the highway next to our campground.

After consuming mass amounts of greasy food we drove into downtown Wisconsin Dells to see if there was anything we wanted to do. We decided to take a tour on the Original Ducks. I know I had been on one years ago but Adam had never been. After waiting in a full duck for about half an hour, our tour guide, Topher, finally boarded and we were on our way, barreling through the woods and diving into lakes. It was a fun time. It left us slightly damp and very cold, so for our next activity we decided to do an indoor one - Tommy Bartlett's Exploratory. Good, clean, educational fun.

After partying with robots and whispering sweet nothings to each other in the whispering dishes we decided to try out Moosejaw pizzeria and brewery for lunch. Our server was a very nice Bulgarian named Dimitar. He was definately attentive. Adam had elk while I stuck with chicken. We also had some of their blonde bock and Adam got a half gallon of that to go. More on that later.

After lunch I felt crappy so I wanted to go back to the campsite and take a nap. Adamm was antsy so he went down to the pier and did some fishing while I slept off the booze. When he returned we headed down to Lake Delton to do some more boating and fishing. It was easier to get the boat in the water this time but then the motor wouldn't start. All the cranking and carb fluid and help from a fellow Fox City marina worker wouldn't get it going. Finally Adam rowed us out a bit and dropped his line. He caught various sizes of seaweed before hanging up the towel and heading back in. We had quite the time getting the boat back onto the trailer. I kept drifting (I was in the boat...) and the line kept getting tangled. Grr. After the boat was finally back on land we had a "towel in the river" incident and an "oh crap, there goes the glass bottle of beer rolling out of the trunk" incident. This made for a second trip to Moosejaw where the bartender recognized us. He must thing we're alcoholics.

After a stressful afternoon we had to make the decision to stay at the campsite or head to a hotel. I was in favor of sticking it out at the park but ultimately we decided it would probably be best to head to more civilized conditions. We had originally planned to pack up the site, get a room, and then come back to the site and make s'mores, but we figured the way the day had gone, we'd probably start a forest fire. So we just took down the tent and all its accoutrements and went to the Ramada. The only room they had left was a two-room suite so we got a living room in addition to the bedroom. Heh. We watched some tv and ordered a pizza from Moosejaw (they deliver in this PT Cruiser with a huge moose hanging out on the top of it. It's awesome.)

After a much more restful evening (it appeared to have rained again during the night and was to have been even colder than Friday night. Yay hotels!) we partook of the hotel's waffle breakfast and then packed up and headed home. Adam's mom cooked our chicken and steaks on their (bigger than ours) grill and then we came back to our apartment.

Overall, not such a great camping trip. We wimped out on night two again, but I think it was a good decision. I got a little bit of a cold and Adam isn't feeling 100% either so who knows what could have happened if we'd stayed out Saturday night. We'll probably go back to that area for one of the other weekends. With the Dells being so close, there's an endless variety of things to do.

I didn't take any pictures and Adam took a few on the Ducks tour. I'm not sure I'll be posting any of them though. I don't even know what they were of. Rock formations or something...

Next trip is in mid-July.

Naming the Pets

Whenever we get a new critter, the hardest thing is trying to find an appropriate name. Adam seems to not really have the naming talent. With this newest addition, he wanted to name him Muskateer or something else ridiculous. I have informed him that he will have no say in our childrens' names.

Anyway, we went through a few different name choices, but have decided on Mo (as in Mohawk - this guy has got some crazy hair.)

RIP Pigster

It's not like we didn't see it coming. Last week I noticed he was being weird and over the past week he got progressively worse. His whole rear end was swelling up, he wasn't drinking or eating. It was really just a matter of when, not if. Adam woke me up around 8:30 this morning and told me he thought he might be on his last legs. So I got up and cuddled with him one last time - and he bit me. Not just a half-hearted bite either. He really clamped on. Sometime between then and 11:00, he went to hamster heaven. Adam cleaned out his cage, throwing away most of his things. It's so frustrating because since we didn't know what was wrong, we couldn't help him. He was so obviously in pain for the last few days. I felt horrible even touching him. I guess in a way I'm glad it's over now.

So, this left us with an empty aquarium. I know what you're all thinking - We went out and bought another hamster. But you're wrong. We bought a guinea pig. He is as yet unnamed.

Wedding Website

I set up a wedding website through The Wedding Channel's program. There's not much there yet, but feel free to check it out from time to time.

http://doddsandpaalman.weddings.com

General Update

It's been a little while since I wrote anything here. It's not really that I've been busy. I don't know. Things are kind of hectic around work. My office is getting boxed in more each day. We're set to move to the other location on June 7th. It should be interesting. Hopefully I'll have New London closed before then. It shouldn't be a problem. What will be the problem is finding everything once it gets over to the other office. *sigh* Why is packing so much more enjoyable than unpacking is?

On an unrelated topic, we've reserved a campsite down at Mirror Lake for the weekend of June 9th. It's down by Baraboo. I've never been to it so it should be interesting. It's the first of four planned camping weekends we've got for the summer. We're going to be trying out some new parks since Penninsula is booked up all summer.

Things seem to be all set for Monday. We'll be going shopping for our stuff today. I get to clean the house and make it all pretty tomorrow. Catherine will be staying with us until Thursday so hopefully the apartment won't be too scary.

The hamsters are doing fine. Pigster is acting kind of weird and has some "poo sticking to his butt" issues, but I think he's alright. Adam gave him a dose of the wet-tail stuff just in case. Barry broke two wheels already but his new one seems to be resilient enough. It's not that he's fat or anything. He just gives it all he's got while running. And he runs pretty much all night. He wore the poor wheels out. Duey is still kind of pudgy. He keeps tipping his wheel over. I tell him it's not going to do him much good laying on its side, but he keeps doing it. Howie just hangs out by himself. He's so easy-going.

We've been watching a lot of movies lately. The reviews are all up on my RT journal. I've also added a few new dishes to the cooking journal. I plan to make a crispy chicken parmesan this afternoon so that should be up sometime today.

Book Update

Current Progress: as of 5/27/2006
Days Gone: 147 (40.27%)
Books Read: 19(ish) (38.00%)
Pages Read: 6,488 (43.25%)

I finished up Son of the Circus and read The Lovely Bones. Both are up on the review site. Next up: The Little Friend by Donna Tartt.

We've Got an Announcement

At dinner this evening Adam presented me with another ring. There WAS a question attached to this one. :) Of course, I said "yes" so we're engaged. Woo!

No, no dates or anything yet. As soon as we figure it out we'll let everyone know. We're thinking late summer/early fall 2007.

Trip Pictures

Pictures Adam took are now posted (in no particular order) on the Photobucket site.

New York, New York

Ok, so technically that title should be "Buffalo, New York", but that's not a song, now is it.

We headed out for my sister's graduation on Wednesday afternoon. We flew on a teeny plane from Appleton to Buffalo through Cincinnati. Totally uncomfortable, but we made it. We actually arrived about 10 minutes early in Buffalo. We picked up the one bag we checked and headed over to the rental car desk. The lady at the counter took one look at Adam and upgraded us to an SUV. It was a Suzuki. It was a sweet car. Adam really liked it and was complaining last night how he missed his radio controls on the steering wheel. After some navigational adventures we managed to find our hotel. It just happened to be right down the street from the HSBC arena where the Sabers were playing. We just happened to arrive right in the middle of the traffic jam created when crazy hockey fans leave a game in which their team was victorious.

When we arrived at our hotel we immediately noticed it was a little too high-class for our tastes. They had valet parking and really no way to stop and check in without just kind of parking on the side of the circular driveway. When we checked in we discovered that the king-size non-smoking room we had confirmed just hours earlier was a "request" rather than a "guarantee" and we had a double instead. Adam kind of went off on the desk workers but eventually we got the keys and headed to the parking garage. After some elevator confusion we got to the room and almost immediately headed back down to the bar. We spent a couple hours there, most of which were disturbed by two blondes who were being shamelessly hit on by old men. When they revealed they worked for Victoria's Secret I thought I was going to have to ask the bartender for a mop to clean up the drool. Heh. Anyway, we headed back to the room and attemped to sleep. When you're used to a queen size bed it's kind of hard to adjust to being right on top of the other person. Many sides and heads were elbowed, Adam claims I pushed him out of the bed once (which I don't believe), and the night was generally not very restful.

We woke up on Thursday morning to a very loud alarm. About two minutes after it went off I got a call from my brother about breakfast. We hadn't expected everyone else to be so organized. After showering we headed downstairs. We discovered we hadn't activated our parking pass and we couldn't get out of the garage. I ran back to the front desk, but even after it was activated it wouldn't let us out. When we were finally freed from the garage we headed up to the Original Pancake House. After heading the wrong direction off the freeway, we finally arrived. We were totally late. Everyone met everyone else and now Adam has met everyone in my family. After breakfast we headed to the Albright-Knox and the Science museums with my brother and sister-in-law. We headed over to the Chinese restaurant where lunch was to be held and we were actually early until Evan and Jodi realized they didn't have their gifts. So we made a trip back to their hotel and by the time we got back to the restaurant everyone else was there. *sigh* After more food and conversation we ran to the car through the pouring rain and went to a local mall for a while. Then it was off to the graduation ceremony. Amazingly enough we found the rest of our group pretty easily. The ceremony itself wasn't that bad. It ran a little less than 2 hours and the speaker was one of the best I've ever seen. It was actually entertaining to listen to. Aside from some disturbing children (about whom Jodi tells me she plans to blog), and the uncomfortable seats, it was an ok time. After tracking down the graduate, we headed back to the hotel and played a few rounds of Chronology. Then Adam and I headed back to our hotel and went to bed. This time we each took one bed to avoid the chaos of the previous night. I think we both slept a lot better.

We got up bright and early on Friday to go have breakfast with everyone before Evan and Jodi went to catch their flight to Houston. We did the Mother's Day thing since it was so close and said our good-byes. After Evan and Jodi took off, the rest of us decided to meet up for lunch and head to Niagara Falls before Adam and I had to leave. It was great weather for the Falls. We parked on the US side and walked across the Rainbow Bridge into Canada. We stopped for lunch and then walked a ways down the path. We also stopped at the Hershey store on the way back. Then it was time to head back to Buffalo. We had to pay to get back into the United States. They charge you 50 cents to get back in. What a load of crap... Anyway, after sneaking some Cuban cigars through customs (shhh, don't tell anyone) we went back to Buffalo and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Our flights back to Appleton were uneventful considering that Adam's dad had called earlier in the day to tell us Cincinnati was under 6 inches of water. Both flights actually arrived at their destinations early and there was really not a whole lot of turbulence. Adam's dad met us at the airport and after some visiting at their house we headed back home to unpack and unwind. All the hamsters were in their cages and looked like they hadn't even noticed we had been gone.

All in all it was a good trip. Everything went pretty smoothly and the weather was a lot better than it was supposed to have been. Adam is putting his pictures on CD at work today so they'll be posted on the photobucket site soon. Evan already has his up at Doddsnet.

Book Update

Current Progress: as of 5/14/2006
Days Gone: 134 (36.71%)
Books Read: 17(ish) (34.00%)
Pages Read: 5,527 (36.85%)

Finished How I Paid for College and have started Irving's A Son of the Circus. It didn't come very highly recommended by my fellow Irving aficionados (my siblings) but I carry on and attempt to read it anyway. If I could get through The Water Method Man I think I can handle an Indian orthopedic surgeon who is obsessed with circus midgets.

Oscar Movie Progress

A History of Violence
Batman Begins
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cinderella Man
Crash
Good Night, and Good Luck.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Howl’s Moving Castle
Hustle & Flow
Junebug
King Kong
Match Point
Memoirs of a Geisha
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Munich
North Country
Pride & Prejudice
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
Syriana
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Constant Gardener
The New World
The Squid and the Whale
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
Transamerica
Walk the Line
Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
War of the Worlds

We'll be renting A History of Violence and Transamerica tonight and we plan to go see Batman Begins at the Big Picture on Sunday.

Book (and other) Update(s)

Current Progress: as of 5/3/2006
Days Gone: 123 (33.70%)
Books Read: 15(ish) (30.00%)
Pages Read: 5,094 (33.96%)

Woo! Finally my pages read is more than the days gone! I'm ahead of the game. At least for now...

Anyway, I just finished The Time Traveler's Wife. It is one of the best books I've read in quite a while. I'd absolutely recommend that everyone go out and read it. :)

In other news... not much is happening. The lack of blog postings should be an indication of that. I've been trying to go on a diet and exercise more but so far nothing seems to be happening. It gets me bummed sometimes. Especially when Jodi goes and posts on her blog about how eating healthy and being fit is so easy. (Heh, just kidding, Jodi. Kinda...) *sigh*

In still other news... The Big Kmart is officially defunct. They took down the letters off the front of the building about a month ago now. They redid the boards behind them and are in the process of repainting the entire building a dark red color. The lighted sign on the tall pole was taken down yesterday and replaced with a blue "Sears Grand" sign. The end of an era... Pffft. Just about no one expects the Kmart moonlighting as a Sears to do any better than the Kmart as itself did. You can dress it up anyway you like but in the long run, it's still the same store. But then again that might just be my bitterness talking.

Other than that I'm just living life, waiting for my mini-vacation next week.

Oscar films

I've decided I'm going to attempt to see every film that was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. This excludes shorts, documentaries, and the foreign films as well as any scientfic or technical award nominees. The list I've come up with is below. The ones I've already seen are italicized. The reviews will be on my Rotten Tomatoes site of course. Link is to the right. :)

A History of Violence
Batman Begins
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cinderella Man
Crash
Good Night, and Good Luck.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Howl’s Moving Castle
Hustle & Flow
Junebug
King Kong
Match Point
Memoirs of a Geisha
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Munich
North Country
Pride & Prejudice
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
Syriana
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Constant Gardener
The New World
The Squid and the Whale
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
Transamerica
Walk the Line
Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
War of the Worlds

Book Update

Current Progress: as of 4/26/2006
Days Gone: 116 (31.78%)
Books Read: 14(ish) (26.00%)
Pages Read: 4,353 (29.02%)

I had to return the Concise History of the Catholic Church today because I renewed it too many times. Heh. I'll check it out again in a month or so and try to plug through the second half.

I finished Invisible Man today and the review is posted. Next book is The Black Notebooks by Toi Derricotte. Seems like I've got a pattern going on here. Interestingly enough, the reason I'm reading this book is because I met the author in France back in 2003 while I was there with UNO doing my (really, really, super fun) study abroad deal. She's a very interesting lady so I decided I might as well go ahead and read her book.

Wierd Wisconsin Words

I found this article while browsing the news this morning. I thought it was interesting, considering how I had complained a while ago about commercials that annoyed me, mentioning one for a check-cashing company that was obviously not a local company because of their hideous mispronunciation of city names. I admit we have some pretty strange pronunciations going on around here. We even make up new words for some things (bubbler, anyone?) Dialects are wonderful. Especially when they don’t make any sense.

“MILWAUKEE (AP) — There are just some Wisconsin-related words that people butcher: Chequamegon forest, Lake Butte des Morts, Lac Courte Oreilles tribe and even Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz.

So radio reporter Jackie Johnson decided she was tired of it and wanted to give newcomers, tourists and even natives a resource to find the correct pronunciation. She recently started the Web site http://misspronouncer.com.

"They can't be expected to know. It's not their fault," said Johnson, a capitol reporter for Wisconsin Radio Network. "But there is no where to go."

By the way, it's shee-WAM'-eh-gehn forest, Lake BEWD'-eh-moore, lak-COOT-o-ray tribe and Madison Mayor Dave ches-LEV'-ich.

Johnson, who has lived in Wisconsin most of her life, said she has worked in radio for years and was embarrassed when she mispronounced words and didn't know where to go to get it right.

The site has recordings of her pronouncing Wisconsin's 190 cities, 400 villages, and 1,260 towns. She also pronounces names of judges, famous Wisconsin people, like Brett Favre, state officials and legislators. She even recorded some of them pronouncing their own names.

"If they tell me the wrong pronunciation, it's not my fault," she said.”

Odd Billboard Part 2

I forgot about this. Remember the Odd Billboard I mentioned a while back. Well, now the ad has changed. M Schettl is still on one side and the other side has changed to a Children’s Hospital ad. Now two cute little boys just happen to be sitting in the right spot to have the deer antlers. *sigh*

Stop the world - I want to get off

*sigh* I don’t know how it happens, but time just seems to get away from me sometimes. The week flies by and before you know it it’s been a long time since my last blog posting.

Ok, time to catch up on things. Let’s start with last week. On Sunday (the 9th) Adam fainted at work, drove himself home (grr) and proceeded to fall into bed. He stayed there for pretty much the whole week. I took him to the doctor on Monday where they told him nothing. Just to sleep, drink fluids, and take Tylenol because he had a fever of 106 or something. Tuesday and Wednesday were more of the same. Thursday was our anniversary and we had planned to go to dinner and then to The Mikado down at the PAC. Thursday morning he got up and planned to go to work. He took a shower, ate some pudding, threw the pudding back up in about 2 minutes, and crawled back into bed. At this point we gave our tickets to the show to his parents and canceled the dinner reservation.

He called me at work around 3:30 and told me he felt lots better and wanted to go to dinner and the show. Ok… So we went. He did look a lot better and aside from the horrible coughing seemed to be healed. The show was great, just as funny as I remembered it to be. Unfortunately the seats at the PAC are designed for anorexic teenagers. I suffered from “indented thigh-itis” as well as “crazy (possibly drunk) woman next to me laughing hysterically and jabbing me in the side-itis” for most of the show. It was also pretty warm. Next time we get box seats in the wings, Adam says. Anywho, we went back home and went to sleep. Friday morning (we both had vacation – we had been planning a crazy night…) I got up and putzed around until Adam emerged from the bedroom around noon. It was the incessant blaring of a car alarm (I’m talking about 10 minutes straight) that convinced him he was meant to be awake. We did some shopping and I think we rented movies. He went back to work on Saturday and seems to be fine now.

This week has been relatively boring in comparison. I had my monthly IMA meeting on Tuesday and was bored out of my mind with the IT guy’s presentation. Next month is the last meeting of the year and is CEO (ie. invite your boss) night. I’m as yet undecided about whether I want to invite my boss(es). I’d feel bad because I really wouldn’t be able to spend a lot of time with them. I’m the busiest person there most of the time. This is a working meeting for me. I have to think about it still. Tomorrow I have a lunch meeting over at Banner – the company that joined up with Milprint and the location to which we’ll all be moving in June. Should be interesting to see the new place and meet my new co-workers.

There’s really not much else planned until the trip to New York. Adam’s parents are going on a cruise the beginning of May but it looks like his sister will be driving them to the airport instead of him (as was originally planned.) Next week looks to be possibly even more boring than this one. I’ll be out in New London next Friday, but that’s about the most exciting thing. I’m finishing up some tax stuff this week for corporate. Meh. May is a nice month with the 1st falling on a Monday making our working days really simple to count. I was able to get my plant closed in about 3 days last month so we’ll see if I can do the same thing this next month.

I was thinking about the summer this morning and wondering if we shouldn’t get some days reserved up in Door County for our camping trip(s). I suppose I should talk to Adam (and Catherine and Tony) to see what they think.

Plans for Memorial Day are getting firmed up. I suppose I should get in touch with Cheryl and Catherine again since I kind of dragged them into this. Heh. I’ve been so bad about answering e-mails lately. I read them, I just don’t reply to anyone.

Ok I think you’re pretty much caught up. I should have a book update to post today or tomorrow. I’m still way behind but I’m trying to catch up.

We have an addiction...

... to hamsters. We went to buy Pigster a bigger cage yesterday. We had the original 10 gallon aquarium that he learned to climb out of and the wire top part to keep him contained. The problem is he was sticking his head through the wires to chew on them and it gave him ugly sores on his face. To remedy the situation, we bought him a bigger aquarium - 29 gallons. He's got a lot more room and he'll have to pull some amazing gymnastic type feats to climb out of this one.

This left us with an empty 10 gallon aquarium. What to do? Buy another hamster of course. *sigh* Meet Barry:



He's a black bear hamster (hence the name "Barry" ha ha), about 3 weeks old. He seems sweet so far, but we've only had him for a day so he needs time to become psychotic.

And to recap our hamster situation:

There is Howie, the sweet and calm Russian hamster:


There is Pigster, the gigantic teddy bear (it's mostly fur):


There is Duey, the psychotic Russian hamster:


And now there is Barry, the black bear hamster:


It's getting to be a zoo around here. :)

Rotten Tomatoes Journal

I just added a link to my Rotten Tomatoes movie review journal over to the right. I had been slacking on reviewing the movies I'd been seeing but I hope to get better about that. I just added a bunch this morning so go ahead and check it out. :)

Book Update

Current Progress:
Days Gone: 99 (27.12%)
Books Read: 11(ish) (22.00%)
Pages Read: 3,518 (23.45%)

Argh! So far behind!

Just finished Anywhere But Here and have started on The World Set Free.

Must read like the wind and catch up!

Stuff

It’s been a little while so I figured I’d post a little something to let everyone know I’m still alive. Ha. I’ve kind of been making some plans over the past week or so. My mom informed me that Catherine would be returning with my dad and Cheryl after her graduation in May so I starting thinking about what to do when she’s here. Right now the plans are in action for a Memorial Day cook-out at Adam’s parents’ house with his family and part of mine. If things work out as planned it should be an interesting day. Adam's parents are on board and Cheryl seemed to be ok with it too. I also plan to take Catherine to the airport when she leaves since she’s flying out of Appleton. Not sure if Dad and Cheryl knew that yet, but now they do. :) I don’t know if anything else will go on since Catherine says she wants to pretty much do nothing. Post-college, pre-med school relaxation break.

Ok, so that’s really all I’ve accomplished in the last week. Well, I did finish Twenty Years After so perhaps I’ll post a book update later. I’m kind of afraid to see my stats right now though. Total slackage! I’ve got a cold again as does apparently everyone else in the office. *sigh* Taking DayQuil doesn’t seem to help. It’s all in my nose again. We’ll be trying out another recipe tonight for dinner and Adam called me a little while ago to tell me my new cookbook has arrived so I’m sure there will be lots more new recipes coming. I have two more planned for this week and we’ll see what happens thereafter. I suppose we really should eat up all the food we have packed into the fridge and freezers. We could probably quit going grocery shopping for a month (aside from stuff like milk.) It’s nice to be able to buy food that’s not ramen noodles. Ah, the sweet taste of success. Too bad it’s all going to my stomach and hips.

Livin' in da Wal-Mart eh?

Ok, so this kid lived in a Wal-Mart store for 41 hours during his spring break. I read the article and aside from finding this kid to be a few crayons short of a full box, I thought he didn’t really try to hard to accomplish his goal. What, does his city have a ghetto Wal-Mart? I think it’s totally possible to live inside Wal-Mart and get pretty much everything you need while there. There’s an entire grocery store and a Subway inside the store. You can get hot food from the deli for most of the day. When they’re closed there’s a myriad of snack foods available. You can buy clothing and personal hygiene products. You can sleep on the futon in the furniture section. There is almost always some movie playing in the electronics section for entertainment. There are also video games and books to occupy your time. The one thing that might be tricky is the bathing issue, but I suppose the sinks in the bathroom might work a little for that. This would be much easier for a guy (since girls generally like to be cleaner than guys do… just an observation.) I don’t know that the Wal-Mart employees would be so observant to notice you never leave. They’d probably just think you really like to shop there… The fact that this guy freaked out and had some paranoia attack after less than 2 days concerns me. Perhaps he should consider spending his spring break with a shrink…

And why is this making national news anyway? *sigh*

Ooh, Creepy!

Adam doesn’t even know this yet but I thought it was… interesting. Either we’re freakishly in sync with each other or he has spies following me. :)

We bought each other the same card.

The other day after I went to the library I stopped by Wal-mart to say hi to him and do some shopping. I picked up a card which I planned to give him in a couple weeks for our anniversary. Yes, I shop early. In any case, when he got home from work later that evening he had gotten a card for me. I opened it and there was the exact same card I had just bought for him a few hours earlier. So weird. Luckily for me I hadn’t written anything in the card I bought so I can return it and hopefully find a different card. I’m not totally sure what to make of this, but I found it to be quite interesting.

A Lot O' Nothing

I really don’t have anything to say but I figured I’d post something anyway. The week appears to be going by quickly except for when I’m sitting here at work trying to find something to do. *sigh* Nothing much is going on. The month is almost over and so I’ll be up in New London on Friday. Woo. Sales this month are totally awesome but I’m sure something happened so that the profit will be horrible. I’m saying this with absolutely no knowledge of what the results actually are. I haven’t even looked at recovery reports at all. This is just based on past experience. Whenever I see that sales are much higher than expected something always happens to offset that increase. Then my plant manager asks me why this happens. *sigh* Hopefully things work out differently this month. *crosses fingers* Would be a nice way to end the quarter.

The hamsters are still doing well. Pigster is odd and we’re trying to find a way to position his wheel so it doesn’t bang against the cage. He’s so huge the wheel tips backward as he runs in it and hits the glass. So annoying… but if I move it away from the cage it hits the metal ramp. I turned it on an angle last night and I don’t think it made noise, but we’ll see how long that lasts. I’d like to get a bigger cage for him but I don’t know if it’s worth dropping $60ish for a bigger aquarium. I had no idea he’d get so huge. And it’s not all fluffy hair either. He’s a long(ie tall, in hamsterland) thing (which is how he managed to escape before I put the metal top on the aquarium.) Duey has gone from being sweet and cuddly to being the devil’s sidekick. Ok, maybe that’s being slightly melodramatic, but he’s just evil! He’s all bitey now. Adam originally tried to convince me that it was just me until Duey gave him a nice big bite on the finger the other day. He’s still crazy and obsessively runs his circuit around the cage. I just pick him up less. Howie appears to have remained his sweet self. He’s so much calmer than either of the other two. He just kind of goes along with whatever you do. If you pick him up, cool. If not, that’s ok too. Each of these critters definitely has their own personality. Perhaps I’ll get some more pictures of them soon. I have Pigster and Howie as my wallpaper at work and every time the tech guys remote my computer they ask me, “Are those gerbils?” No! They don’t have ugly gerbil tails! *sigh*

There are really no plans to do anything in the near future. Life is kind of boring until mid-April. I went to the library last night to return some books and pick up a new batch. Perhaps I’ll comment on my book challenge progress later. I’ve been slacking off terribly lately. TV has become so tempting. They are showing two episodes of 7th Heaven now on ABC Family each evening so there’s another hour gone. LoL.

Odd Billboard pairings

First off, Happy Birthday to my sister Catherine in New York. It's her 21st today. Have at least one drink (even though I didn't on my 21st...)

Anyway, the original point of this post was to comment on this billboard I see every day while driving home from work. On one side is a Cost Cutters ad - a pouty blonde woman posing with her great new haircut. Unfortunately, on the other side is an ad for M. Schettl sales - a huge outlet type store in Oshkosh that sells all kinds of weird stuff like lawn ornaments and the such. Their recognizable logo is this big moose head. As fate would have it, the antlers stick up over the top of the billboard and they just happen to be right where the woman's head is on the other side of the billboard. So it looks like the lady in the Cost Cutter ad has antlers. It makes me snicker every time I see it...

There's another odd pairing that Adam is always pointing out but I can't remember what it is... something with an adult bookstore...with McDonald's or something

You'd think they'd think about these placements before plastering up this huge picture.

Time is Flying

Wow. This week has just flown by. It’s kind of sad, considering I really didn’t do all that much. Monday was an average day, minus a 7th Heaven episode. Adam worked again so I taped The Apprentice for him. It was an interesting episode. Brent is a psycho and I’m sure he believes all the stupid stuff that was coming out of his mouth. I’m glad he’s gone. Perhaps things will be normal now. The previews for this coming week suggest otherwise, but we’ll see.

Tuesday was my IMA meeting. It was student night so the meeting was held down in Oshkosh. The speakers were two republicans running for governor – Scott Walker and Mark Green. Well, Mr. Green wasn’t there, but Rep. Underheim came and filled in for him. There were about 30 students and maybe 20 IMA members in attendance. All in all, a fairly big crowd. The politicians had been instructed to shy away from campaign-like speeches and instead focus on items of interest for people in the accounting/finance field – budgeting, tax issues, etc. Needless to say, this didn’t happen and it turned into a kind of mudslinging forum for the candidates to promote themselves (or in Green’s case, for Underheim to promote him.) This ticked a few members off and emails were flying on Wednesday morning. It’s been interesting, being on the “inside” of a group like this. I generally had a good time and had my first successful mystery guest contest. Sweet!

Wednesday I headed up to Denmark with Angie and Tina and Mike (that is, my boss, her boss, and her boss’ boss. Whew!) We went up there to help the ladies in their accounting department clean out all their files. They had stuff from the ‘80s hanging around in their file cabinets. We all got dirty and dusty and got plenty of exercise hauling boxes around all day. The afternoon was actually spent mostly helping out the HR department. Mike and I boxed up hundreds of terminated employee files that dated back to the ‘50s! I got plenty of paper cuts and thoroughly despise hanging folders after that experience. We finished faster than expected and only spent that one day there. I came home from the plant and pretty much crashed. I was so sore on Thursday.

Thursday was pretty boring. I was back at corporate and not much happened. I went grocery shopping after work and once again found myself lying in bed at an early hour. *sigh*

And today is Friday. My day at work has been pretty laid back. I’m still working on a special request from Jerry (my plant manager) but I’m kind of at a standstill waiting to hear back from the invoicing department out at Curwood. Other than that I’m just trying to prep as much as I can for month-end and quarter-end. My financial reporting system was down from Tuesday morning until yesterday so I had some catching up to do. Yeah, they migrated me to the new server and erased all my profiles in the process so they had to redo everything before it would let me into any of the systems. *sigh* again. Also mysteriously gone is my personal folder on my U: drive. I’m kind of ticked about that since all my IMA stuff was on it but I haven’t called up to the help desk yet. Meh.

Tonight we hang. Adam plans to stop at the video store on the way home and rent The Squid and the Whale which is a movie I’ve wanted to see for a while now. We’ll be having fish (it’s Friday after all) and he wants me to make some more of the dill fries I made last week. (See the cooking blog if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) I also hope to give our new bar and martini glass sets a spin. I bought Godiva liquor last weekend and am planning to make a chocolate martini. :) Maybe I’ll take a picture of that too. Other than that, I’m not sure what’s on the docket. We’ll be going to the casino tomorrow and one of Adam’s co-workers is coming over to clean the carpets (it’s his second job or something.) Adam works on Sunday so I don’t know what I’ll be up to then. It’s just a go with the flow kind of weekend I guess.

The Mikado

I forgot to mention this before: We got tickets to go see The Mikado in April at the PAC. It’s been quite some time since I’ve been to a performance of any kind and it’s been years since I’ve seen this one live. Was probably at South High the last time… Anyway, Adam knows nothing about it but I’ve assured him it’s funny. I’ve never been to the PAC so it should be a good time. Coincidentally (?) enough we’ll be going the day after our 1 year anniversary (just under a month away!) It just kind of worked out that way. We originally thought about going to Annie which is playing around the same time. Then I noticed that it was part of their “Kids on Broadway” series and decided it probably wasn’t the best idea. Plus it was more expensive. :) So we opted for some Gilbert and Sullivan. Let’s hear it for Yum-Yum and the other two little maids from school. Heh. I’m not sure what else will be going on for that occasion. We both have off the day AFTER our anniversary but not the day OF. Adam has an eye doctor appointment in the morning (he wanted me to be able to come with him so this was kind of the only option.) Meh. I don’t know. Guess I’ll see how things go when the time comes.

Mind boggling politics

This is absolutely ridiculous.

Senate votes debt limit hike to $8.965 trillion

Notable quotes:

The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved a $781 billion increase in U.S. borrowing authority aimed at averting a possible government default on debt this month.

Treasury Secretary John Snow applauded passage of the legislation saying it "ensures that the U.S. can deliver on promises already made, such as Social Security and Medicare payments and aid for the victims of the 2005 hurricanes."

Must be nice to have that kind of power…

(**Martha at bank counter**)
"Uhm, yeah, I’d like to take out a $781 billion loan please. I’m afraid I might not be able to pay the bills I already have (including my other loan payments) so I need to borrow some more to pay back what I’ve already borrowed."

Completely defies all logic! This doesn’t “avert a possible government default on debt.” This just raises the credit limit on the national credit card! If you can’t even pay your minimum amounts now how is giving you a higher limit going to help? I just don’t get it! And they wonder why so many Americans are drowning in debt...

Adventures in Banking

And now, for your reading pleasure, we present "The Adventures of Martha's Lunch Hour."

Went to the post office to pick up mail / send Catherine's gift. (Shhhh, don’t tell her.) Figured I'd just buy a mailing envelope at the post office and kind of kill two birds with one stone. As I was filling out the envelope with the address and all, this lady comes in and slips into the line before me. She had 5 medium-sized boxes. Each one was being sent internationally. Each one was being sent to a different country. *sigh* It figures that one of the only times I actually have to go up to the window I'd get stuck behind someone like that. The other window was occupied by another lady sending multiple packages. Her problem was the fact that she barely spoke English. *sigh* again. Oh well, I eventually got the thing sent.

I had planned to go to the bank branch on campus to avoid Mean Lady. So I headed down Algoma and was tailed by a cop most of the way. He turned at Wisconsin though (whew) and I continued to the campus. When I got there, there was absolutely no parking. So much for my spring break theory. I don't know where all the cars were from, but there was not one space open. Not even a handicapped one. So I headed back to the main branch. I entered and of course the only window open was manned by Mean Lady. I tell her I want to close my account and she tells me that they need to have my debit card for at least a week before they can close it. I tell her to look at my account and take note that there has been no activity of any kind in over 2 weeks. The last activity was my directly deposited paycheck. The last of MY activity was over a month ago. She decides to be nice since "I look honest" and tells me to just cut the card up and she'll close the accounts and give me all the money today. She did say that if I ever came back and wanted to open an account again I should be sure to mention I had one there before. *sigh*

So that's all done and taken care of. I’m rather happy to be out of there. In addition to all the other reasons I’ve cited previously for leaving, another one came to me today: They weren’t too good with making me feel that my money was secure. I didn’t have any kind of account card. When you go into the bank you just tell them your account number. The last two times I went there was to withdraw sizable sums of money and they just handed it over without asking for any identification. Of course you have to sign the slip, but I could be someone else pretending to be me… At least at Capital they have member cards and you have to have it to do anything. I get so pissed when places are so lax about this kind of thing. Especially places like banks. I mean we used a debit card at KFC the other day and they asked for identification. If KFC can do it, why can’t everyone else? Geesh! I mean, sure, they torture and kill chickens in horrific ways, but at least they ensure their customers are who they say they are.

Still feeling like crap and wish the cold would just come full force already so it can proceed to go away.

Not sure what’s going on tomorrow yet since Adam keeps changing his mind. He’s going to attempt to make the fish dish that I was going to make tomorrow tonight since apparently the Pope granted dispensation of the required abstinence for Lent tomorrow so that all those Irish Catholic folk can eat their corned beef.

Banking and other stuff

Adam has an interview at Dick’s tonight so wish him luck. I must say that was an awfully quick couple weeks. :) Hopefully things go well. Other than that, there’s not much planned for this evening. I’ll be making a chicken dish for dinner so look for that on the cooking blog later.

Everything seems to have fallen into place with the new bank accounts. My paycheck was deposited into the Capital account this morning and I ended up calling Toyota last night to see about my car payment. As I was lying in bed reading last night I realized that my car payment hadn’t come out of either of the checking accounts. I logged onto the online account information website and discovered that the payment hadn’t been made and was listed as past due. I called customer service and after a really horrible automated menu and some bad elevator music I spoke with a couple ladies to get things straightened out. Turns out they received my new account information into their system on March 1st but set it up to start deducting in April, thereby missing the March payment. I made the payment by phone and they were “nice enough” to waive the $5 convenience fee. (pfft. It was their fault…) Anyway, with the new account info verified with them and my paycheck going to the right place, I can close the UWO accounts this afternoon. Yay! I’m hoping that mean teller isn’t there. She hates me. (Ok, so I yelled at her a couple times, but she deserved it… I mean randomly changing my address three times? Sending my credit card to New York? Ridiculous!) She always seems to be the one there at noontime though. *sigh* I’m seriously considering just going to the branch in the student union on the UW campus. It’s spring break so there shouldn’t be too many people there.

The Gambler’s game this weekend kind of fell through. There was very little interest and it ended up being just me and Adam and two other people. We decided it wasn’t worth it so we’re going to shuffle plans a bit for the weekend. On Friday I’m going to try out an Alton Brown (of Good Eats fame) fish recipe and then Adam plans to go hang out with his cousin and friends to watch the Final Four or whatever it’s called. Not really my thing so I guess I’ll hang at home and read or something. Since we no longer have the game on Saturday night we plan to go to the casino then and use Adam’s birthday coupon. Original plans were to go Friday. We’ll still be heading down to Sheboygan on Sunday.

I think I’m getting a cold. Combination of crappy weather and not enough sleep probably. Adam tells me I snored like a lumberjack last night… Oh well. I feel pretty icky (and I’m also kinda sore from the treadmill last night) but I’ll survive. Hopefully it will warm up again soon. Last weekend was awesome. I even got out my spring jacket. This was perhaps jumping the gun a bit though seeing as how it’s back to 20 degree weather again.

The couch

As promised, here are pictures of our new couch. Don't ask me what that dark spot on the center cushion is... it's just the way the material was brushed. I'm guessing maybe that's where Adam was sitting earlier. Dunno. It's not a stain though :)





Here's a picture of the treadmill too. Figured I'd snap one of it while it was out this evening.

Martha Cooks!

So I went ahead and created a second blog area devoted to my adventures in cooking. The link will always be to the right or you can click here as well.

Buffalo in May

Ok, so we made all our arrangements for May this past weekend. Finally.

We’ll be leaving from Appleton around 5:30pm on Wednesday the 10th and should get to Buffalo around 10:30. From there we’ll pick up our rental car and head to our hotel – some place called Adam’s Mark Buffalo. It’s pretty much across town from the airport and everything else we’ll be doing, but that’s the way it goes. It was the cheapest option with the next one up being about $100 more. It’ll do. It got good reviews from fellow travelers. Plus, it's named after Adam... It's destiny. Anyway, we’ll be leaving Friday afternoon (the 12th) around 5pm and coming back to Appleton around 8 or 8:30. Everything in between is up in the air pending Catherine’s decisions and what everyone else is doing. But that’s us.

The Weekend

The weekend seems to have had its extremes. The weather here was beautiful, getting into the mid to upper 50s on Saturday and lower 50s on Sunday. And then it started raining and poured pretty much all night. Anyway, we had our appointment with the insurance agent late Friday afternoon. We got everything squared away but ended being there until about 6:15 or so. I ended up switching carriers along with Adam. We’ll see how that goes, not that I anticipate ever needing to call upon the insurance people anyway (knock on wood.) We stopped at Bed, Bath, and Beyond so I could look for a huge saucepan. To my dismay, the one I really liked was only sold in a set (which cost $150 or so.) We ultimately went with a 10 piece set that was on clearance for $30. It also had a $10 rebate. I also had a coupon. We ended up getting a $60 set for only $15. Woo us! We then headed back to Neenah for our 7pm dinner reservation at Gulliver’s. Adam had their all-you-can-eat whitefish special and I had grilled chicken. We also had a buy one get one free coupon for a pitcher of beer. Being the apparent light-weight that I’ve become, I think I got a little tipsy. Anyway, we then headed to Copps to pick up some bacon for breakfast the next morning. Then we went home and fell asleep while watching Prime.

We woke up on Saturday and I made pancakes and the aforementioned bacon for breakfast. We did some shopping and got a Madagascar video game that was on clearance and Adam spent a good part of the morning and early afternoon playing it. For being a children’s game, it’s not all that easy. We left for his birthday lunch around ten to 3. I had refused to tell him where I was taking him although he tried to get it out of me Friday night. I think he was happy with my choice of Outback Steakhouse. We had tried to go there a few times in the past but they always seem to be too busy. I thought if we showed up right when they opened we might have a chance of getting in and out in a decent amount of time. My plan worked. Their food is excellent and I would probably go back. Adam got their special 3 lobster tail dinner while I got grilled chicken (yes, I know, again, but this was much spicier.) We also tried one of their signature bloomin’ onions (also very spicy) and for dessert we got some brownie thing with ice cream and heavenly whipped cream. I think we both ate too much, but it was so good. We then headed to a few places in the area for some shopping. One of those stops was at Dick’s Sporting goods – the scene of one of my financial crimes. Adam wanted to get a new driver because his was dented. So I spent a while sitting on a bench in the golf pro shop while he tried out numerous clubs in their little driving range room. While there I noticed all the signs posted around advertising that they were looking for part-time help in the pro shop. When Adam was done and had selected the club he wanted I told him that I thought he should apply for the position. It’s very fitting for him and I think he might be happier there than at Walmart. He picked up an application on the way out and called the pro shop manager when we got home. He’s pretty much exactly what they’re looking for. He filled out the application and we went back up to Appleton to drop it back off at the store. We weren’t sure if the manager was going to want to talk to him right away so we left pretty early. Turns out he is going to be collecting applications for a few weeks and then will start making calls for interviews. This left us with an hour or so to kill before we needed to be at Skyline. We therefore headed to his parents’ house to bum around until club time. They were watching Nascar so we sat down and chatted with them for awhile. Then we headed to the club. We were seated on the front end of a table about 1/3 of the way back from the stage. I wasn’t fanatical about the location since it was right on the separation of tables where everyone walks to get to the bathrooms. Adam liked it though because he got legroom. We got there around 7:20 so we had some time to kill before the show started. We ordered our first round of drinks – Adam got a banana berry thing and I got a strawberry and cream. They have lots of floofy, girly drinks served with tons of whipped cream and an umbrella. The show itself was excellent. The MC was pretty good and the shrews themselves were hilarious. Definitely not for those easily offended though. It was obvious why it was rated “X.” I won’t go into specifics of their routines since it’s not really appropriate. :) It was a good time though. It was also shorter that expected by about 15 minutes. Meh. Oh well. Adam bought their CD on the way out and the lady in front of us asked a really retarded question (which I won’t repeat) and we wondered if the two shrews would use their answer to her in their second show of the evening. We laughed all the way down the stairs. Adam decided he didn’t want to go out to the bars so we just went home.

Sunday was another day. Adam (and to some extent, I) spent a good deal of the night in the bathroom. We’re not sure what we had to make us sick, but it must have been something. In any case, we were both pretty wiped out for most of Sunday. Adam spent a lot of time laying on the couch yelling at the TV (he was playing the video game again…) I cleaned the kitchen (well, the oven cleaned itself) and did laundry. Also went grocery shopping and cleaned Pigster's cage out. I’m planning on making two more of Rachel Ray’s recipes this week. I should devote an entire entry or maybe an entire blog to that book. Like I said before – it’s great, go buy it. Anyway, after Adam called in to work and found out he didn’t need to be there anyway he took a shower and we went shopping (again.) For some reason no one carries the Lysol ready-brush anymore. They have refills, but not the actual brush. I don’t get it. We got a new bed-in-a-bag set, some seashell inspired thing with greens and blues. It’s a lighter color scheme than our previous one. It caused a lot of struggle last night though with the sheets and comforter still being so stiff from being folded up. Hopefully it will work itself out.

That’s about it. It was a relatively busy weekend with ups and downs. This week should be kind of boring. Nothing much is planned. We have a Gambler’s hockey game on Saturday night and we’ll be heading down to Sheboygan to have lunch with my dad and Cheryl on Sunday afternoon, but the actual week looks pretty boring. Maybe I’ll be able to catch up on some sleep.

Book Update (again)

Current Progress as of 3/12/2006
Days Gone: 71 (19.45%)
Books Read: 9(ish) (18.00%)
Pages Read: 2,746 (18.31%)

Just finished Oryx and Crake. It was a good book. I like Margaret Atwood. I also think it's cool that she has invented a pen that allows people to sign autographs from somewhere else. Right now I'm still plugging through the Catholic Church book and I just started Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas. We'll see how that goes. I actually read The Three Muskateers in French once. That was fun. Reading this one in English though. :)

Speeding

I have a feeling this is going to be a somewhat political post here. This past Tuesday there was a horrible accident on highway 41, just south of Neenah. It was kind of a chain reaction turns into 2 people dying kind of thing. A station wagon was trying to get into the left lane (this particular stretch of road is two lane, divided) to avoid some highway workers who were patching asphalt. The station wagon got hit by a semi already in the left lane, and was pushed into the truck the workers had parked along the shoulder of the road. The semi continued to skid off the road, hitting the two workers and killing them.

This particular accident has created quite a bit of discussion about a few different topics. The most prevalent is speed. Everyone knows that people speed. I myself usually go about 70 or 75 whereas the posted speed limit is 65 - and there are people passing me. This accident has given people fodder to propose lowering the speed limit to 55. Now, come on people. What good would that do? The speed limit now is 65. I don’t follow it. 99% of the other drivers don’t follow it. You could have a speed limit of 100 mph and I’m sure there would still be people driving faster than that. The number posted in black on that white rectangular sign is just a guide so you know where you can set your cruise so that cops won’t pull you over. (The magic number is 7!) I know, this is not the attitude to have about this kind of thing because it can be the difference between life and death, but this is how most people look at it. Lowering the limit would have no effect on the flow of traffic.

So, since lowering the speed limit wouldn’t work, people would like to make the stretch of 41 between Appleton and Oshkosh the biggest speed trap ever (or something like that.) There are certain places that are almost guaranteed to have cops lurking, waiting to bust someone. Thing is, they never bust the people they should be busting. I’d love to have a button on my dash that I could push when I see some dumbass driving crazy. Kind of like the bat signal thing used to call Batman when help is needed - shine the silhouette of a hunky cop up in the sky. There are a lot of people who just shouldn’t be driving. People in Wisconsin suck at it and that’s especially scary considering how many days of the year we have not-so-good driving conditions. Anyway, back to the speed trap. I also don’t think this would be very effective. I’ve never been pulled over for speeding, so I don’t really speak from experience, but my guess is that people who get speeding tickets are freaked out and very cautious for a while after the incident, but soon fall into their old speeding ways. Until there’s a car that can be programmed for the current speed limit and not allow the driver to accelerate above that speed, you can’t stop people from speeding (hmmm, do you think I could sell that idea to an inventing place and make tons of money?.) No amount of fining is going to stop it completely. And how would it be possible to stop and fine everyone who was speeding. Since I’ve already stated that 99% of the people out there are speeding, that’s a hefty group of cops needed to get them all. Doesn’t really seem like good allocation of resources. Although if all the police are busy pulling over speeders, drug dealers and thieves will have a much easier time.

Plans are already in the making to convert this part of the highway into 3 lanes. I’m not sure how this would solve the speeding issue, but it would make my morning drive a whole lot easier. These plans have caused uproars of a different kind, mostly from businesses that are due to be replaced by the new highway. Understandably, they’re not exactly the biggest fans. The city has a history of low-balling the people they buy land from. Anywho, this project is part of some huge road bill thing passed a little while ago. We’ll have to see if it actually happens.

And thus ends my mini-essay on speeding on Highway 41.

Birth Records

So, I was browsing through the local papers online this afternoon, looking through the birth records to see if any more of my friends/acquaintances have reproduced. Didn’t find anyone I know, but I found a few entries that I felt like commenting on. This just confuses me…

Jeason Andrew, son of James and Rebecca McElroy of Lomira, was born March 6.
Savannah Jo, daughter of James and Rebecca McElroy of Fond du Lac, was born March 6.

So, there just happened to be two different couples with exactly the same names who just happened to give birth on exactly the same day at the same hospital? Hmm. Odd.
Another one that caught my attention did so for a different reason:

Weston Karl Kramer, son of Karl and Heather Kramer of Oshkosh, was born Feb. 28. Siblings are Amelia, Hannah, and Bethany. Grandparents are Bob and Carol Palmer, and Karl and Brenda Kramer.

My interpretation of this one might be skewed by my whole attitude about the “having kids” thing. In my mind, each time they had a kid, Karl would say, “damn, it’s a girl. Gotta try again!” and Heather would say, *sigh.* This time Karl said, “woo-hoo! A boy!” and Heather said, “It’s about fricken’ time.” In my opinion, two and out seems like the logical option. I mean you’ve got a fifty percent chance of getting a boy each time. If you get two girls, it seems like the boy card is being withheld anyway. But that’s just me. I’m crossing my fingers that the first one I/we have is a boy. That way I can be done with that whole thing. Then again, who knows, I might find being pregnant to be so enjoyable that I’ll want to spend the remainder of my child-bearing years popping them out. Or not.

I will take this opportunity to make no comments about the ridiculous events (somewhat related to this posting) going on in South Dakota and various other (apparently Bushified) states. *sigh* Looks like it might be time to move to Europe soon.

A little bit of everything

Wow, I’ve totally been spending too much money. Throw that previous entry about being financially responsible out the window. Heh. I think I mentioned that I/we bought a treadmill about 2 weeks ago (or not? I don’t see anything about it now that I look.) That was a fun experience. I went into the store (Dick’s Sporting Goods) with the stock number of the one I wanted. We found it and when the salesperson got around to us he proceeded to inform us that the one I had chosen was a piece of crap. Adam had already expressed his preference for a different model – one that was about $100 more than the one I had originally been looking at, but the salesperson said it was an excellent choice. So we went with that one. It didn’t fit in his car so we tracked down his parents who were having dinner with his younger sister and her fiancé. We took their Santa Fe and headed back to the store only to find that it didn’t fit in there either. It was apparently a lot longer than the other one that he had taken measurements on. They ended up shoving it in as far as it would go and tying the trunk down. We went home on the back roads but I still had fears that it would fall out of the way. Adam called his parents back up and asked if they’d want to come down and help get it up the stairs. The model we bought was about 40 pounds heavier than the original planned one was. So his parents came down to our house (in his car, therefore simplifying the swap) and his dad helped him get the monstrosity up the stairs. It was not the easiest thing in the world and Adam got his foot smooshed in the process (he’s ok though.) Once it was upstairs it had to be taken out of the box and assembled. My original thought was to have it in the living room so I could unfold it and watch tv while I was on it. Adam wanted it out of the way, back in our bedroom. So to the bedroom it went. After we got it where he wanted it, he decided he didn’t like it because our bed was no longer centered with the window. So we moved it back out to the living room. Assembly didn’t go too well either. We had cut the straps in the box that said “Do Not Cut” before we noticed they said that (oops) so it didn’t lay flat on the ground like it was supposed to. That was easy enough to fix. The holes drilled to attach the electronic display to the handles were messed up and the wiring kept getting caught. It took a while (and we could only get 3 of the 4 bolts in) but eventually it was put together. I’m sure Adam left quite the feedback on their registration website. So far things are going well. I’m not a fan of the one-touch programs and I usually end up doing my own thing. Adam likes the golf course one… Hopefully I can keep my motivation going.

The other major purchase of the past few weeks was a couch. I have a futon that I bought when I moved across the hall to C12 in September 2004. I was trying to put off buying a couch because I wanted to spread out the big purchases a little more. But we went to look at American last weekend and couldn’t resist the sale they had going on. We had seen a couch we liked in their ad in the Sunday paper so we zeroed in on that one. Anything $499.99 and up was 25% off, so we got the couch (plus stain protection and delivery) for less than it would have originally cost without the discount. It was a great price which is the reason I decided to just go for it. It should be delivered tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll take a picture of it. We’ll be storing the futon at Adam’s parents’ house until we move somewhere bigger (which won’t be for a while… and when we do we’re hiring movers!)

Here’s some good news/bad news: Bad News: Somehow a Trojan or some kind of hacker virus got into the computer over the weekend. None of the virus or firewall stuff could repair it or get rid of it so Adam determined the only thing to be done was to reload windows. Argh. Good News: I had backed up the hard-drive so I didn’t lose my addresses! Yay me! But (bad news) my Money file didn’t back-up properly so I lost all my history for that (oddly enough it was just mine that didn’t work. Adam’s and our joint account worked fine… *sigh*) but (good news) luckily I had just opened the new account and had only written 5 checks so it was easy enough to recreate. Woo. (Bad News) It seemed as though all the songs I had just loaded onto the iPod mysteriously disappeared while re-downloading iTunes, but (good news) it turned out they were indeed still on the iPod but just didn’t show up on the listing in iTunes for some reason.

Hmm. Let’s see. Not much else is going on. I’m plodding through the history of the Catholic church still. That book seems to put me to sleep almost as much as Proust did. I’m also in the process of reading Oryx and Crake. I’m not liking it as much as I liked The Handmaid’s Tale, but it’s ok.

I’m glad the new season of The Apprentice has begun but I’m not sure I like the fact that it’s on Monday now. I can’t say much right now (Adam hasn’t seen this week’s yet) but so far the season is interesting. I was especially impressed by Ivanka. She seems to have turned out very well despite her upbringing. I’ve watched American Idol a bit and I’m not really too impressed by the choices. I kind of lost interest after the Clay/Ruben catastrophe anyway. (I do own Carrie Underwood’s CD though. Heh.) Apparently one of the guys (Will Makar) is the nephew of someone in Oshkosh so the paper keeps having these articles about him.

I tried out a few more recipes from Rachel Ray’s 365 days of 30 minute meals cookbook. Seriously people, she’s awesome. Pretty much everything I’ve made from the book has been wonderful (scampi excepted…) I also made this beer and cheese soup with broccoli the other day. This was an Emeril recipe. It was good but made me totally sick so Adam gets all the leftovers. I guess I’m going to try and come up with some recipes to try on Friday during Lent to get used to the whole “no meat” thing. Not saying that I won’t be eating meat, but Adam won’t.

Speaking of Adam, his birthday is on Saturday. Since he reads this I won’t go into details of course. We already have reservations at Skyline (comedy club) but the rest of the day is kind of up to me. After this weekend we can go make reservations for May since he’ll be 25 now so we can avoid the huge surcharges on rental cars.

Oh yeah, speaking of cars, we had an appointment last week with his insurance agent to see if putting us both on one policy could save me money. My insurance has continued to go up each year which I find ridiculous since I have the same car in the same place and have never had an accident or a ticket. *Grrr* Anyway, with his current company I ended up paying more but he sure got a reduction. His agent took a look at other companies and found one that saved me a minimal amount, but with his “turning 25 drastic reduction” and the multi-car thing, his rates went way down. We have another appointment on Friday to talk about it some more. The thing is, with this company everyone in the house has to have their insurance. I know he wants to switch because it will save him bundles.

So anyway, as soon as we have confirmed plans for May, I’ll let people know. Hopefully it will be soon. Haven’t checked airfare prices lately, but hopefully they’ve gone down. :)

Hamster Pictures

I feel like an obnoxious parent. You know the ones. They take all kinds of pictures of their kids and force everyone they know to look at them and ooh and aah over them. Or in my case, hamsters. It's just they're so cute. So get ready for some pictures. :)

This is all three of them. You kind of get a size comparison here. Pigster is the huge one on the left hanging off the house. Next to him is Duey. Howie is the white one on the windowsill.



Here's Pigster and Duey again - you can see their faces this time though.



Here's Howie and Duey. They get along until they notice each other. Then they fight.



Here is Pigster and Duey again. It looks like they're kissing. Awwwwwwww.



Ok, last one. This is Pigster again. Looking adorable. :)

Finances

I guess I’m pretty lucky.

I’ve been reading all kinds of articles about how my generation is kind of screwed finance-wise. People are graduating with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt and they’re entering a not so hot job market earning not so hot salaries.

Then there’s me. I guess once again I find myself outside of what is normal. I graduated with absolutely no student loans at all. I paid for college all by my lonesome, getting financial aid only 2 of the 9 semesters I was there. Granted, I went to UWO (aka: the cheapest school in Wisconsin), but it still took a lot of work to keep afloat during those last few years. Yay for Ramen noodles. The only debt I have is my car loan which is interest-free and 1/3 of the way to being paid off. I pay my credit card off in full each month. Actually, I only use it because I earn reward points which in turn get me $50 gift cards or checks. Since I never carry a balance, I never pay any interest, so I’m actually profiting from the arrangement. It’s a sweet deal. I’m not sure how people can run up such exorbitant amounts of credit card debt. Perhaps it was just my upbringing that leads me to be in the “If you can’t pay for it in cash right now, you probably shouldn’t buy it” school. Ok, there are always exceptions. Mine would be cars and houses. Very few people can afford those things straight out. I just find it hard to be sympathetic for the idiots who go out and buy all kinds of unnecessary crap and then cry about how they’re in so much debt. I don’t understand it.

I also don’t understand how the savings rate of this country can be negative. How hard is it to put a couple hundred dollars in a savings account every once in a while? Aren’t we all supposed to have 3 or 4 months of living expenses socked away for that proverbial rainy day? I guess this could just be a result of my doomsday attitude - always anticipating that my life will completely fall apart any day now so I’d better be prepared. This does have a certain degree of validity because for a while there it seemed the second I got some money in the bank something would go wrong. Be it car-related or something else, it never failed. These days things are going better. In the past year I’ve managed to save up some dough even though I spent a whole lot more than I have in the past. I guess when you make more you can spend more. Heh. Anyway, I don’t know if I’m just that much more financially responsible or what, but I just find it kind of ridiculous. Although what can you expect from a country with such a huge deficit…

Book Update

Current Progress:
Days Gone: 57 (15.62%)
Books Read: 7(ish) (14.00%)
Pages Read: 2,225 (14.83%)

I've totally been slacking off the past couple of weeks. It's so sad. But, I just finished A Creed for the Third Millenium (see website for review - link is to the right) and plan to go to the library on Tuesday to return this batch and check out a new pile of books to read. Yay!

Kmart

I read this morning in the paper that the Kmart in Oshkosh will be transformed into a “Sears Grand” store in the next few months. All I can say is “good for them.” I’m amazed the store has lasted so long as it is. I’m not sure adding a coffee shop and various other features will add to their customer base. I no longer shop there. I admit most of my shopping is done at Wal-Mart. Who can say no to the employee discount I use (somewhat illegally)? Ok, so I bought some pant hangers there a while ago. Wal-mart didn’t have the ones I wanted. In general I do most of my shopping in Appleton anyway. I don’t know. I guess I might be harboring some hard feelings toward the place. I just think it would be funny if they spent all this money for this great (excuse me, GRAND) transformation and then the store failed to bring in any additional business. Maybe they’ll replace the flooring that’s been coming up in chunks for years now…

1 Year Anniversary (of the car that is)

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year since I bought the Toyota. It’s been a nice year. No problems whatsoever and all the oil changes and tire rotations have been free. (Yay, Kolosso!) I’ve been keeping track of my MPG since day one. Average is at 30.7 right now. To be fair, this includes the two months of mega driving when I was going back and forth to Lancaster each week. I still think this is pretty good mileage. And unlike the Saturn, I have some acceleration when I step on the gas too. Who could ask for more?

Speaking of Saturn, I’ve gotten two “extra special promotional event” invitations in the last two weeks. I’m tempted to call them up and say, “I don’t have your sucky car anymore. Quit sending me crap” but that seems unnecessarily rude. Although it was unnecessarily rude for them to sell me a shitty car… hmm, it’s a draw. Maybe I should just show up to the “special event” in my Toyota, get my free stuff, and then drive away laughing.

Snow Part 2 (and other stuff)

I suppose we got a decent amount of snow – local channels say about a foot in Green Bay, a little less in the Fox Valley. I don’t know. I just expected it to be much worse. They pumped this thing up as the first big snowstorm of the year. Someone from The Weather Channel was even here to do on-site reports. I just wasn’t impressed. Meh. Adam took some pictures of our parking lot last night when he got home from work. They show the drifts of snow in front of our apartment building.



I left work yesterday around 11:30. It was a few hours of indecision on the people above me’s part until finally they said if I was feeling uncomfortable about waiting around I could go ahead and leave. Of course I left. Duh. The roads really weren’t that bad. The place I expected to be the worse (the Butte des Morts bridge) wasn’t bad at all. There was a slow down near Jackson, but as long as people drove relatively sanely, it wasn’t too nerve wracking. Of course there was the occasional asshole in his pickup truck who’d fly by at excessive speeds, kicking all kinds of crap up at everyone else in the other lane. There were also a surprisingly large number of semis who did the same thing. When a semi flies by you, you really have no hope of being able to see when they throw all kinds of crap all over your windshield. *sigh* Stupid winter drivers. The horrible plow company hired by our apartment complex sucked once again by not plowing at all. People were getting stuck in the drifts of snow at the entrance to the parking lot. Even this morning it wasn’t plowed. It stopped snowing around 7 last night. How hard would it be to get a plow out here? *sigh* again.

This weekend will be interesting. Adam has off for the third Saturday in a row. We’re going to go set up our joint “household” checking account in the morning. I went to the UW Credit Union at lunch today and took out everything except the minimal amounts needed to keep the accounts open. That’ll stay there until I know the direct deposit and withdrawal works. The rest will be put into my Capital accounts tomorrow. It was funny – when I told the teller at UWCU what I wanted to do she was like “you must be buying me something special.” Pfft. Then as I was leaving she said “make sure to put that in a good place.” I said (under my breath), “like into another bank?” Heh. We’ll probably do some shopping and Adam needs a haircut. Then we get to do some housecleaning so the place looks presentable when my dad and Cheryl get here in the evening. We planned to go to Olive Garden because I have a gift card but apparently they don’t take reservations on weekends. That’s kind of dumb. Oh well, their loss. We’ve got reservations at Good Company instead. I know, I know, we were just there. But it’s a good restaurant that’s generally not too noisy. Not sure what’s going on Sunday yet. Adam works a short shift in the afternoon I think. Nothing is planned at this point (that I know of, at least.)

Snowy Weather

So apparently we're supposed to get dumped on today and tomorrow. It snowed a bit overnight and it's snowing now. 8-12 inches total is the estimate, but with huge wind gusts it's the blowing snow that makes it so much worse. Pretty much all the school districts in the area called a snowday and Adam's work is shutting down at 9. I don't know what's going on here yet or what the chances are of my leaving early. The worst part of the storm is supposed to hit around noon. The drive in wasn't too bad. Only one pickup in the ditch near 76. I'll probably take a round-about way home to avoid the highway near 21 and 76 because those are the places where the bridges always ice over and people do stupid crap while merging and cause accidents. I guess I'll see how things look whenever I leave. I got gas this morning on the way to work so I should be all prepared. :)

In other news: we bought PowerBall tickets last night because two of our fortune cookies told us our financial investments would pay off. We didn't win. Stupid lying cookies...

Book Update

Ok, last post of the day, I promise. :)

Current Progress:
Days Gone: 45 (12.33%)
Books Read: 6(ish) (12.00%)
Pages Read: 1,879 (12.53%)

Just finished Catholicism for Dummies this evening. I'm about 1/4 of the way through A Creed for the Third Millenium and while it's easy to read (nice big font) I'm not quite sure what it's about yet... Hopefully that will clear itself up in the next hundred pages or so. Heh.

I was browsing through the 50books livejournal site the other day trolling for book ideas and I managed to get a list of 10 or 11 in addition to the others on my pre-existing list. That should keep me entertained through the next few lonely months.

Pictures

Birthday cookie cake:


Birthday flowers:

Valentine's Day flowers: