TP

So, I find it fascinating and infuriating the bathroom toilet paper situation I have encountered at my job lately. Who the heck keeps stealing/loosing/taking/misplacing the freakin spindles that hold the toilet paper rolls in their holders?!?!?! They are missing in 3 separate women's bathrooms. Its so annoying, and gross, to just have the TP rolls balancing on the holders or handicap bars. THEY DONT ALWAYS STAY BALANCED, so that means they are often on the floor. Sick.

in the Lou

Well, I have been at home in F-Town/ around and about in "the Lou" this weekend. Its been whirlwind as usual but thats ok. I am glad to be home, but honestly, its been a pretty tough trip. First of all, my parents had to put our family dog to sleep on Thursday. Dusty was almost 20 years old! thats right, I said 20! He was such a sweet dog always, but had been getting so sick and old the past couple of years. I felt so bad for him the last few times I saw him or when I saw him in pictures. So now, he is dog heaven with Daisy (if she'll deal with him) and Daphne and all our other extended family doggies.
Also, my (bestest) Grandpa suffered a 2nd stroke in a month and is currently still in the hospital because they are trying to get his medication all leveled out. It was pretty hard to go see him today, although he is not "sick" really at all and is totally "with it". It was hard because he was telling me what happened and how he has lost the sight in his left eye and he started to get pretty emotional about that. Man, was that hard to see! He has always been so strong- invincible really- always taking care of all of us and my Grandma and everything. I think he will be ok and will be able to do most everything he wants to do he will just have to get used to maybe doing things a bit differently. They even said he could still drive(!) My cousin K is going to find him an occupational therapist to help him "re-learn" how to drive with just that one eye. I will keep you posted on his recovery.

So tomorrow we are going to go to church and then go visit my other Grandpa and his wife (not my Grandma.) He has had a very rough year health wise (like very rough.) I haven't seen them since the wedding. I am glad to have the opportunity to get by there although, I am sure it will be somewhat upsetting also- to see him more frail and sick.


The weekend wasnt all sad and stressful. Most of the family came over tonight to see me and to kind of celebrate my birthday a little early. It was nice to see everyone of course and we always have a good time. We got out some old VCR tapes to watch some old family footage of dance recitals and some of us doing those slingshot/dragons wing rides. Not me- I didnt go on that trip to FL for some reason.
Anyway, go to get to bed. 

This weekend

was my one year anniversary and it was really wonderful! I cant believe how quickly the year went by. Being married has been very awesome. I couldn't really ask for thing to have gone any better.
It has been fun getting used to living together- although I am sure I frustrate Stock more than he does me, with my little bit of a messy streak still left in me! We have so much fun together and he makes me laugh all the time. We have serious discussions about things and I enjoy those as well. I feel totally fulfilled. I just wanted to put that out there.

So for our anniversary we had a lovely and romantic evening at the Gaylord Texan. We had an awesome King Suite that was probably bigger than our old apartment! it was nice. We had a great dinner at a Latin restaurant where we both got some yummy fish dishes. Then I got a lovely surprise text message from my friend W. She sent us a gift card for the Gaylord, so we had a lovely breakfast there the next day too!
On Sunday we did a little shopping and then went to go get massages. It was both of our first professional massages. It made me SO SORE! Man. I still hurt today! Its getting better though, so maybe tomorrow I will feel a difference or something.

We had the cake topper and some cupcakes left over from the wedding that I thawed out this weekend too. We tried eating the cupcakes on Saturday night- YUCK! they were totally gross and freezer burnt. The cake however is still very good. We had a little of that today! Ameretto cake with raspberry filling! :0)

la la la la la la la la la

Well, I joined a community choir tonight. Stay tuned as to how it goes. The people were all very nice and welcoming which is a plus, but as I pretty much expected, I am the youngest person in the choir by 15-20 years. I have commited to singing their next concert with them in mid-Feb, and I will probably stick around for the April one but past that we will just see how it goes. The Feb concert theme is LOVE SONGS so its a bunch of musical numbers and other standard type stuff. Fun stuff, but on the initial read-through lets just say this group wasn't really "swingin"! We were (myself included sad to say) pretty square. I think my professional jazz musician husband will have intersting things to say about our renditions of some of these tunes.
I also want to try out for a musical this summer. This one community group is doing the show "Sugar" so I think that will be fun. Again, I dont know anything about the dynamic of this community group, or anything about their calliber or level of professionalism, but why not just give it a try! Right? I cant sit at home and only work, clean and go to gigs with the hubby all the time, forever. I need some "creative outlet" too. * Not that I mind any of the aforementioned things!
ALTHOUGH, knitting has been SO fun to me lately. Will post more on that later, so I can start a new project now!

hair

I dyed my hair a few weeks ago and no one has noticed. (btw: I cheeped out and used box color. but got 2 boxes so that I had enough to thoroughly cover everything because my hair is getting pretty darn long these days.) I tried really hard to choose a color that was between my “highlighted” length but closer to my darker roots so the upkeep would not be as hard as it is with having highlights. I am so bad about getting highlights done frequently enough. Its so dang expensive!


So, do you think since no one said anything I chose a really good color? Or that they think it looks bad? I like to try to think that it is the 1st choice but then, maybe its not. I actually didn’t like the color myself at first, but its grown on me a lot.

I have been trying to grow out my highlights for several months now. At least 6. I have gone once to a professional place to have my hair dyed a bit darker, in the hopes of matching the roots, but it really turned out to be too light still once more roots grew in. Such a pain.

new laptop here...

I am posting from my brand new laptop! WHO HOOO. Very exciting. I have never owned a brand new laptop in my life! I have bought two computers, both desktops over the years and have own 3 other laptops which were all either used or hand-me-down. The latest two laptops were both since moving here to TX and they had been Stocks. They were good machines, but just had issues which made them not good for him to travel with.

ANYWAY. Now I have my own, new portable laptop. I think I will blog alot more now because I can sit down in the living on the couch and play around online.

I bought a Gateway and its from Best Buy. I think it should be a pretty good machine. I am super excited about it having a built-in webcam. My good friend "A" just had a baby and recently started using Skpe with him so now she can see me too. cool!

I am so jealous- I just got off the phone with my sister who is leaving for a cruise tomorrow. She is going with our cousin, aunt and a couple other people. Interesting group, but still fun! I hope she has fun. I am sure she will come back "black again" because if you know my sister, she likes to joke about being "mixed."

Decorations- stored!

I got all the Christmas decorations put up today. I feel pretty accomplished! I still have to get the outside decorations "taken down" but they are very minimal. 4 stings of 100 lights and a spotlight to be exact. cake. I think the red ribbon will just get thrown away. I dont think it will store that well.

Lots of people have been posting on facebook how sad they are to take down their Christmas decorations. It is a little sad, I guess. I will miss the pretty glow of the tree but I will be glad to have the other furniture back in its place.

Taking down the Christmas cards from the mantel really makes it look bare. I need to get some more decorations for up there. We are also still looking for a trunk type thing for the first landing of the stairs. I would like to have those things before my friends S and K come visit in a couple of weeks.

So, we had to spend a bunch of money on my car today. What a bummer. 3 new tires, some new light bulbs (because they were out and it already was in the shop) and then an oil change. I am glad to have the new tires. I knew the ones I had were not great so I will feel better driving on wet or possibly frozen roads now.

A new year is coming

Well, again, I have been a terrible blogger so perhaps I should consider one of my resolutions to become a better blogger. better as more frequent and also more creative blog posts!
So Christmas was really great. I hope everyone's holiday was awesome too.
Will write more soon, but wanted to get something posted TODAY! My carpool buddy is ready to leave work and so am I!
Hopefully I will blog more today still, but if not, Happy New Year!! Welcome 2010 for new adventures and fun things!

Almost Christmas Time!

Well, I have had a lot going on over the past week or so! Let’s see about doing a little recap:

The weekend before last my sister and cousin came down to visit. We had a great time! Well, I had a great time and I hope they did too. We went to downtown Grapevine to do the Main Street Christmas stuff and also to hit a few wineries. Grapevine certainly makes great efforts to keeping their claim of being "Christmas Town USA". As someone who I was chatting with on Saturday morning about going to Grapevine said, "It looks like Christmas threw-up all down Main St." I am all for some good holiday decorations, and being Texas, a lot of the decorations were truly CHRISTmas decorations which is nice, but I will admit, some stores were a bit over the top!

Then last Monday I went to a cookie exchange with some people from work. That was fun and I got a bunch of cool new recipes to try. The way this exchange was done was for each person to bring a "batch" of their cookie for each other person coming to the party, plus a "batch" to share with the group at the party. A batch could be 6-12 cookies. Everyone made very different kinds of cookies and they were all really good!


Last week flew by like a blur. It was kind of busy at work with tons of stuff going on in my department on Thursday and then tons of stuff in general, that needed planning and finalizing on Saturday. I am still waiting to get all the stories about how drama filled Saturday here at work really was!


This weekend Stock played a show at the Winspear opera house here in Downtown. It was certainly interesting to say the least. It was the TCC Christmas special and they were accompanied by the Met Winds. The choir was great in the second half and the band was of course great too. The play that was the 1st half of the show was very silly so once you just resigned to that fact, it was pretty cute and funny.

I finished wrapping all the rest of the Christmas gifts last night after getting home from baking (yet more) cookies with my friend W. Again, we made like 5 different kinds. The lemon ones were not done when I left, but hopefully I can sample some when she comes back to work on Wednesday. So Gifts are wrapped, some need to be shipped this week- hopefully today or tomorrow. I also decieded to use some of the larger boxed gifts on our landing on the stairway leading upstairs as Christmas decorations! I think it looks really cute and how perfect- a bunch of decorations that DO NOT NEED TO BE STORED!! haha! I will post a pic later.
Tomorrow I am hosting my departmental Christmas party at the house. So tonight will be cleaning cleaning cleaning. The house isn’t too dirty of course, but when you have people over that have never seen your place before I personally want it sparkling. I think that can be accomplished in just a couple hours. Will update how the party went on Wednesday! Today is also the official work party here at the museum. Should be cute/fun. I hope there is some good food. I brought a super light lunch so I would feel bad eating the snacks they provide- and more cookies!

Hello December

Here we are in December! Wow, this year has been C-R-A-Z-Y! Well, my Chistmas shopping is well underway. I had major motivation for getting the shopping done early because my sister and cousin are coming to visit me this weekend and will be taking back all St. Louis destined gifts. WHOOT to not having to pay shipping on those. I still bought small-ish and light weight things as to not bog down Dan (my sis) with her checked bags. She is also playing Santa with many gifts coming down from the Lou but apparently my mom did not plan/purchase in such a way.
So I am excited for my visitors this weekend. They get here tonight and will here until about 6 PM on Sunday. I think it will be a really fun visit. We have so much to do- and we will be all over the metroplex! We are going to a couple kiddy birthday parties, a gig DH is playing, shopping and it will be nice to just hang out. I guess I have not seem my cousin since her wedding in June. Wow.
Well. I am just about finished eating my lunch here at my desk so its back to work for me and my afternoon filled with meetings!

Aquarius trying to climb the stairs. Desperately.

wow

Wow, its been so long since I blogged. sorry. I always have lots I think about blogging but then I just never get on here.
Well, lots has been going ok this week. Work has been interesting over the past two weeks or so. Lots of changes happening. Nothing is official or announced yet, so I cant say too much but I think things will be good. barring some people potential bad attitudes that hopefully they get over! blah to pissy people.
I know my last post was about me being crabby, but I just felt crabby. I dont think I actually acted crabby toward others. Especially not work people.
So, the house is still getting put together a little more every day. I really love it. This week we got a Christmas Tree (We are going to put it up tomorrow) and some other random things. I also got a Tiffany (Dale Tiffany, not Louis Comfort Tiffany) lamp for my nightstand tonight on a great "Black Friday" sale and with a saved VISA gift card from the wedding. Its so pretty. I will try to post a picture on here.
At the end of last week we also ordered a arched window shutter/blind for our bedroom window. We CANNOT wait for it to get here.
I am excited for tomorrow to be a day of tree decorating and grilling for the first time on our new grill. Yummmmmmmy!

can't focus

So, I just cannot focus. I have been feeling really crabby for no reason since yesterday too. This is dumb. blah.

bad blogger

So, sorry its been 3 days. work has been kinda crazy. DH went and got back from a short trip up. He got a really great gig this weekend, but its quite time consuming. That's okay though, I am proud of him for getting it! :0)

We started watching Step Brothers tonight- def a guy a movie. Terribly vulgar but funny too.

Will write more, and hopefully work on the design of this blog, over the weekend.

this counts as my monday post

so this post, although made after midnight is to count as my Monday post... today was rather busy. busy at work and I worked kinda late. Then my evening flew by chatting to various people on the phone, working on a few things and then going to a late gig to see my man play some music. It was good. I enjoyed hearing/seeing the bass player play upright, she usually plays electric when I see her play at the church her and DH work at together.

its kinda fun starting to know more people so you can actually "run into people" when you go out. That was a hard transition for me moving here. going into places and knowing that you will 99% chance NOT run into anyone you know. I like running into people I know at stores, restaurants, clubs, whatever. Now, I do know more people- ALTHOUGH they are mostly all dudes who play jazz. NOTHING wrong with that, I just could use a few more girl friends in my life down here but that will come.

I do have some great girlfriends down here in TX, its just hard for us to hang out together very often btwn families, work, living kinda far apart--- real life stuff! It would also be nice to have a few more "couple friends" for us both to hang out with. those are the hardest friends to make I think! instead of just 2 people having to like hanging out and being about to schedule hangout time, you now have 4 people to work around and consider! I know that will come too. Not to worry.

turtle things

well today I had to buy Aquarius a new filter for her tank. Her old one was not working well anymore and really was not large enough to keep up with... well her pooping! gross, I know.
Now, she has a new filter that is for up to 75 gallon tanks! She only has about 30 gallons in her tank at any given time so 2.5 times the filter to tank ratio should help a lot! We will see.

home from Canada and off to IKEA!

So my hubby came home yesterday and I am so glad he is back! I am totally fine with him going out on the road to do what he does- play music- but of course I miss him while he is gone. But the home comings are always nice too! :0)

He is so awesome. He was gone for two weeks (almost) and was so tired when he came home but STILL did a bunch of work last night! He hung several pictures on our bare walls including some wedding pics and changed the toilet seat in the downstairs half-bath. It used to have this horrible forest green seat, but now, it has pretty white one with brushed nickel hardware. Sweet!

This evening we made a trip to our favorite furniture store- IKEA- and picked up a few things we needed for the house. We got another dresser for our bedroom (which we have needed for since we moved in together!), a cool stand/shelf thing for our TV in the master, some cool shelf legs for hubby's desk so it looks like more than just a couple IKEA tables put in an L shape and a small 2x2 honeycomb shelf for the 3rd bedroom TV. All of that for under $400 people! Ohh yeah, and we got a candle holder and some cookies! Pretty darn sweet huh?!

I will take and post some pics once things are put together- later.

Tonight he is working on the dresser and TV stand. Ohh how I will enjoy spreading my belongs out from being STUFFED into 3 drawers plus 2 plastic drawer sets, out into 7 real drawers! WHOO HOO. Maybe I can finally retire those plastic drawers of underwear and socks I have had since college. I think I might take one set to work to have some more storage under my desk.

HGTV?

I find it funny that since buying the house, I have hardly watched ANY HGTV! I was so obsessed with watching all the home buying shows during our home search/closing process and I really watched quite a few of them before I even thought about buying a house.
I guess having gone through the whole process makes it not as exciting to watch others go through it.
*We saw plenty of horrible houses on our journey.
*We had TONS-O-Stress (unexpected I might add) come up during the closing/loan application process.
*We had fun agents to work with.
*We just did not have the camera crew.

Actually, when we finally were able to get into our house after closing I kind of felt like I was on HGTV for a second. The old owner left us a few gifts- some candles on the mantel, a caddy of things to hang pictures on the walls with, and lovely note. How sweet is that?! We will definitely do the same when we move on from this house!
Ok, off to bed for me. My hubby comes home tomorrow! Yea!

doing good so far

Last night I did not watch 1 minute of TV! Can you believe it?! Like I talked about yesterday, I had my friend over for dinner last night so we just hung out and talked until around 9 pm. Then I played around online for a bit, then made myself go to bed! I had to wait up a bit for my DH to call from "the road", but still was a sleep before 11:30. pretty good for me these days.

Today though, I turned on the TV as soon as I woke up (I gotta watch my Today Show) and the back on again when I got home.

I have been struggling with the urge to go shopping all night and I did not give into that urge. I really really want some new fall clothes- just a few things like maybe a couple sweaters and a new courderoy skirt. I think I will go this weekend- my Old Navy and Limited coupons will still be good!

Cant wait for my DH to get home Friday. 11 days is along time for us to be apart! I miss him. I wonder if he is going to come back home from Canada saying "Egh?" at the end of every sentence or have cravings for gravy on his fries. j/k!

dinner was nice tonight

I had a friend of mine over for dinner tonight. I had a great time hanging out and cooking dinner for her. It all turned out pretty yummy I think AND I didnt go buy anything special to make the whole dinner with. I had everything here already! That is quite an accomplishment for me.

I have such a bad habit of getting an idea of something to cook into my head, but then I am short one or two things. Once I have an idea in my head I have a hard time not making that idea, so I usually end up going to the store to get what I am missing.

Maybe my shopping is not organized enough. I try to think of meals I might want to cook throughout the week, but I sometimes have a hard time with that. I think the fact that I get daily emails from Martha Stewart telling me what I could make for dinner doesnt help either. I dont always, or even often, make what she suggests, but it does spark ideas a lot of the time.

So back to our dinner. We had pan sauteed Tilapia seasoned with this awesome Central Market seasoning I got this weekend. For sides we had lemon pepper green beans (thanks to my friend, W) some sweet steamed Carrots (for W to try because she had not them before) and couscous with raisins and herbs.

W totally helped me clean up the kitchen and the dishes after dinner, which she did not have to, but I am grateful for the help. I feel like I have been cleaning so much for weeks on end with the move and getting ready for visitors. Blah to cleaning, but I do like having a clean house!