Venturing into the unknown

I'm working on a project that I hope to unveil soon. Don't you hate when people say that and then get all hush hush about it all? Well, sorry to be all hush, hush, but until I have it completed, at least mostly, I am going to keep it under wraps. But know that I still love you and that I will be back soon.

SPH: Soft

Photo Friday: Texture

Photo Friday: Texture

The Stooge

Can anyone tell me why my daughter likes to put clothes over her head and run around the room despite running head on into tables and couches? Me neither. Must come from her father.

Best Shot Monday

Tracey over at Picture This does a little Photo Fun on Mondays, so here is my entry. This is what I believe to be my best shot of the week last week. I was playing around with my very limited macro settings and shot this growth on our fire wood.

SPH: Antique

Two shots of the secretary I recently got from my grandmother.

Lighter fare in the form of weird

Ignore that last post. I was having a moment. It's over, or at least I'm pretending it is.

Now, back to that Weird Meme. A couple of nice wonderful people played along with my rules. As for the rest of you... oh, nothing.

Weird things about me, in no particular weird order.

1. As my sister so nicely put it, I frequently run into walls. True. I seem to have a balance issue, or usually it's just because I am walking too fast and I cut a corner too soon because I'm not paying attention. We call it wall ping pong here at home.

2. Becky said it's weird that we don't watch TV during the day when Boo Bear is awake. I guess in this day and age that is weird. I used to watch a lot of TV, especially on weekends. I would pretty much veg out all day. When we had Boo Bear, hubby and I decided that we didn't want her watching TV all day and that we would go ahead and start that out right, so no TV. The TV generally does not come on in our house until 7:35 PM at the earliest. Boo Bear goes to bed at 7:30.

3. I have an undiagnosed (except by me) sensory "disorder". I am very easily overwhelmed with noise "pollution." For example, I cannot talk on the phone if anyone is talking in the same room. I can't talk on the phone if the TV is on. I can't concentrate and I can't tune out the other noise which makes it hard for me to focus on the conversation I am trying to have. I can't stand repetitive noise, such as a basketball bouncing or a repetitive beeping noise.

4. I haven't been to the dentist in 7 years. Not sure if that is weird to you guys or just gross. I also haven't flossed in, oh I can't even remember how many years.

5. I don't watch Grey's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives and I never have. I may be the only female alive that doesn't watch at least one of those.

6. I like peaches, but I don't like anything that is peach flavored, such as Bellini's, candy, etc. Same with banana.

I will spare you all the tagging. If you want to do the meme and let us all know just how weird you are, leave me a comment or link to this post so I can come visit your weirdness.

Words

hurt.
lost.
angry.
why.
don't know.
can't find.
new.
out.
happy.
lost.
angry.
lost.
hurt.

Photo Friday: Self Portrait

Me and Hubby.

A meme by any other name

I've been tagged, so here I go. The idea is to list 6 weird things about myself. Well, as Em had a hard time doing this, so was I. So I decided to change up the rules a little bit. Since most of my readers know me in real life, I am going to ask you to comment and leave one (or more, there are plenty) thing that is weird about me. If you don't know me in "real life" then either tell me something that you think is weird about me from reading my blog or even more fun and exciting, make something up.

So there you go, you get to tell me why I am so weird. Enjoy! Maybe, just maybe, that is not a definite, I will list any that I can think up at the end.

Is he the best or what???

Sometimes he's "or what", but today he is awesome. Who you ask? My hubby. See today is his birthday, so when we started dating, I gave up the Valentine's "dream". I know what it is like to have to share birthdays with holidays so I have always tried to make his birthday special and not about Valentine's day. He is always really good at getting me roses and a card, but I never really expect anything too extravagant (yeah, right!!! Don't we always expect something?)

Last night we were up late, so technically it was already his birthday so I gave him his present, which he loved! Now, hubby has been making up for a failed birthday (mine last year), but I still think he did a really good job for this non-holiday. He called me as I was leaving work today and we were discussing what I thought we are already decided on plans for dinner. I thought we were just going to grill some steaks at home and then I had told him I would go to church with him.

Well, he told me that he had already talked to his Mom and she was going to babysit so he could take me out to dinner. And.... and... dancing!!! We haven't been dancing in years. I used to do a lot of country western dancing, I was even on a dance team for a little while, but when I met my husband, I knew that I would pretty much end up giving that up because he isn't really a dancer and isn't really on the same level that I am used to dancing on. But I love dancing with my husband, because he is my husband. So we are going to dinner and dancing tonight and I can't believe it.

Hope everyone is having a fabulous day, whether it's a birthday, Valentine's Day or just plain old hump day, celebrate today for all it is, another day!!!!

Coming soon. I've been tagged. Goody gum drops.

SPH: Broken

Broken Light

Not one of my better shots, but I had a hard time wtih this subject.

Dude! Bonus!!!!

The ultimate Real Men of Genius treasure trove! These commercials crack me up. I had no idea they had so many of them. I plan to go through them one by one, but I might have to wait until my abs don't hurt so bad when I laugh. Enjoy!

Cingular and Blogger should get together and make useless babies

I've already talked about my issues with Blogger. Well, let's talk a little bit about Cingular and their lack of options for issues with my phone. A little over a year ago, (a year and 3 days to be exact), I switched from Verizon to Cingular because my hubby was on Cingular and it just made sense for us to be on one network. So two and a half weeks after I had a baby we went to get me a new phone. I ended up with this an LG C2000. I had the normal New Phone Euphoria, but it ended quickly. I couldn't hear on the thing. So I go to take it back to Cingular and they won't let me return in because I am missing the manual. By the time I get around to getting back to them to return it (keep in mind I have a new baby), I am past the 30 day return policy by 2 days. They tell me the only thing I can do is to send it in under warranty and get a new phone--the same kind of phone. This is after when I tried to take it back the first time, one of the sales people told me they had been hearing a lot of complaints about that phone. Great.

So I send the phone back and get the new one and it seems to be working better. I still have problems hearing sometimes and the volume does nothing to help. I sometimes have to call someone back and that will fix the problem, but it's really annoying.

So about two weeks ago, my phone decided to quick ringing when I had an incoming call. Not all the time, but on occassion. And to add to that fun, when I tried to make an outgoing call, I got "Channel Not Available". No, Cingular's tagline right now is "The Network with the least dropped calls." I don't think so. They just like to call them other things. Like, "Call ended," or ," Call Failed," or "Channel Not Available," or my personal favorite is when the phone acts like you didn't even hit SEND. So, imagine, the phone doesn't ring, all of a sudden I have a voicemail. I try to call voicemail to find out who called and can't because there isn't a d&$n channel available. Rinse. Repeat. My hubby has finally just resorted to text messaging me with "Call Me."

I called customer service last week and the chipper girl on the other end told me to take the phone in to get the sim (sp?) card replaced and that should fix the problem. So I went to go on Saturday to our local corporate store. We actually have 3 Cingular "stores" in our vicinity, but 2 of them are only retailers, so they are useless really. So I go to where the corporate store used to be, and it's gone. So, we scratch that. I go on Sunday after looking up their new location. Ironically it is 2 doors down from where we had dinner last Friday night. I take in the phone, they replace the sim card. I ask, "Is this going to fix the problem?" Her response, "We hope so." That's comforting.

Well, the phone is still not working correctly. I call customer service again today. Guess what? The phone is no longer under warranty. Guess when it expired? Go on and guess? Sunday, three days ago. My options: 1) Get a new phone (same model; because it's such a good phone right?) for $65; 2) Get an upgrade to a new phone with a small discount. I asked what it would cost to upgrade to the phone my hubby has that normally retails for $239.99. With discount $184.99 with $79 rebate. Sounds good, but why should I have to pay to replace a phone that pretty much has been a piece of crap. 3) wait until November when I am actually eligible for an upgrade. Crikey, what to do?

I am going to have hubby call later and see what we can try and fanagle out of them since technically, I was in on the last day of my warranty and they didn't fix my phone, and we (really hubby, has been a customer for over 10 years) and it all just sucks a big fat toe.

So, I think that if Cingular and Blogger got together, they could make really useless babies. Maybe we could use them to create new reality shows?

Dublin, TX Pop. 3,754

We moved around quite a bit when I was a kid. In fact I went to four different elementary schools between 1st and 5th grades. In the middle of my fourth grade year, my Mom, my sister and I moved to Dublin, TX. There isn't much I remember about that place except it was small town, the lady next door died, it was H-O-T and we left like a thief in the night.

It was so small that there was one school, kindergarten through 12th grade. I think they had chearleaders in 5th grade. I think that's when I first decided I wanted to be a cheerleader, but it could have been earlier when I started gymnastics at the age of 3. The town was so small that there wasn't even a Dairy Queen and if you are from Texas or have ever driven through Texas, you know that DQ is the Texas stop sign and every town has one. I had forgotten that Dublin is home to the oldest Dr Pepper plant though. Big deal for such a small town.

All I really remember about myself at this age was that I was obsessed with braces and I loved gymnastics and dance. I had really bad teeth and always longed to get braces so that I could straighten them out. You would be hard pressed to find a picture of me smiling showing my pearly whites until I was 13 and actually got braces. During this time in my life in Dublin, I did what any normal kid did who really wanted braces. I wore Wrigley's gum wrappers on my teeth. (You know you did it too!) Boy was I cool.

We had a small little room at the front of our house and I turned that into my personal gym. My mom always told me I should teach when I got older and back then I thought that is exactly what I would do. In fact, half way through college, I changed my major to do just that, and then I didn't do just that.

The most exciting thing that I ever remember happening was when our neighbor died. She was old, in her 80's I think, but it was still kind of shocking to see the ambulance across the street and know that she was dead. I was always a little creeped out by her house after she was gone. It just sat there empty, missing it's occupant. I went to sleep the night she died with the lights from the ambulance reflecting on the back of my lids.

When I say Dublin was HOT, I mean HOT! We had one window unit in the house and it was in the living room. My mom only ran that thing if the thermometer was over 100 I think and only for an hour or so at a time. My sister and I had a routine we did before we went to bed. First we took a cold shower and then we would spray our sheets down with water from the mister and then we would spray ourselves down with the mister and then we would lay there sweating. Good times.

The only real memory I have though is of leaving. I can't remember how long we lived there, but I don't think it was long. I went to school one day, same as every other day, no reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary. I walked home from school, my teeth gleaming in all their Wrigley wrapper glory. As I rounded the corner to our street, I saw a Uhaul sitting outside in our driveway. My stomach turned and I walked slower. As I reached the house my mom came out.

"What are you doing?"

"We're leaving."

"Today?"

"Right now."

"Wah? Can't I say good-bye to my friends?" (I think I really only had one friend; it's hard to make friends when you move around so much)

"Go quick, because we need to get on the road."

And just like that, we were gone, back to New Mexico and a new school. Maybe one day, I'll drive through Dublin, TX Pop. 3, 754 just to see what it looks like now.

I did it!

I went to the gym and worked out! I did 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer. The first 5 minutes were a little tough and so were the last 5 minutes, but it felt good. And I didn't fall down when I got off, which was surprising.

The girl didn't like daycare too much though. She cried off and on the whole time I was gone. I think it's because she isn't used to that much noise and that much activity. I really hope that she will get used to it. She needs to learn to be around other kids and to socialize. I really should have tried sooner. Surely she will get used to it, right?

Back in the swing of things

I finally did something for myself that I have been wanting to do for awhile. I joined the YMCA. I haven't worked out in about 3 years and it is time for me to get back into it. It's a little sad really considering I have a Kinesiology degree from UT and used to be a personal trainer and yet, I don't work out. Not exactly healthy.

So I joined the Y and it is going to be awesome because they have childcare! Yay! A necessity! And they have aerobics! Yay! Because I hate doing cardio! And they have weights, because if I want (I use that term loosely) to work out, it's usually with free weights. So, I hope to to set some goals on here and maybe I can be kept on track this time with your help.

So here are my goals. Ask me about them, ask me if I am doing them, ask, ask, ask away.

I will work out 3 x a week.

Doesn't seem like much, but it is when you are going from 0 to 3 in one week. Let's start small so our goal is attainable and maybe in a month we will bump that up to 4x a week.

Truly Enlightening Spam

recordho@cooperdirect.com sent me a very enlightening email.  It just might change my life.  Or not.

 

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