My 100th post!

I can't believe I've made it to 100 blog entries. I'm just proud of myself for actually keeping up with this. When I started this blog I had no idea what I was going to post about. It's pretty much just a mishmash of topics, but it's my life, and now I can look back on my posts and see where I was, how I got there and where I'm going. I'm looking forward to keeping up with this and can't wait for my 200th blog post...stay tuned :o)

Oh and I must leave you with a treat. Last night we tried to go to the Sonic that recently opened near us, but yet again, to no avail. The lines are still ridiculously long. So I still wanted a sweet treat and we headed over to McDonalds. Their $1, 150 calorie, reduced fat, vanilla cone is my favorite! I could seriously go there once a day, if not more to get one. Oh how I love thee sweet ice cream. Some people debate whether or not it has 150 calories or more, but I'm going to stick with the 150 calorie figure and enjoy my ice cream.

Everyday tote

Thanks to kimberlymichelle, I bought the cutest tote and it was 60% off! I've been wanting a nice everyday tote that I can cram all my crap into and this was perfect!

Good bowling night

So I kicked ass at bowling last night. I have a 156 average and bowled a 179, 212 and a 171 for a 562 series. I beat my own high series, so that was an accomplishment.

Me and my Vibe...we get things done :o)

I FINALLY ordered it

So for the past few days I was going back and forth between this website and that one to find the best deal. Then it was between used ones and new ones. What am I talking about? My new camera! I decided to go with the Canon EOS 40D and I'm pretty excited about my purchase.

I got it through Amazon with free shipping, so that means I have to wait 5-9 days for it to get here. I ordered just the body. My friend Rachel sold me her kit lens for really cheap, because I basically just need something to practice with. I can already tell you that I want a macro lens and I have my eye on the 100mm f/2.8 Macro Lens. I can't wait to start taking pictures of...well...pretty much anything that comes my way!

With the camera I ordered a memory card (of course), The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter), and a Crumpler 6 Million Dollar Home to hold everything...or everything that I plan on getting in the future :o)

Now all I have to do is wait for the thing to show up!

I worked it out baby

Ok, so I've been getting back into the groove of working out again even though I absolutely despise it. My parents have a treadmill so I've been going over there after work to work out. Today I decided to do one of those preset programs...this was an aerobic one. It was 30 minutes with a max mph of 6.5 and a max incline of 3. There was a good 10-12 minutes where I had to run nonstop and while I did take a handful of 10-15 second breaks, I think I did pretty good. For me to even run two minutes straight is quite the accomplishment! And I felt better after I finished...a little sweaty, but good.

Where ya goin' Pants?

Here's Mowee trying to dig her way to China apparently. She does this pretty often and it's quite hilarious. Ah the joys of being a cat owner.

I'm feeling better

Leah left me a comment hoping I was feeling better and I am! Thanks! I'm actually surprised how quickly I felt better. Usually when I get some type of sore throat, runny nose, stuffy nose, type ordeal, it lasts forever! I stayed home from work last Friday and rested and napped all day and by Saturday night I was good to go. I do have a little bit of snot (gross huh?) that feels like it's stuck in the middle of my head and doesn't want to leave, but other than that, I'm feeling pretty good.

Let's be honest...

So Meredith over at La Buena Vida tagged me with the "Honest Scrap" award.

The rules are as follows:

1) Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.

2) Show the 7 winners names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with "Honest Scrap." Well, there's no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.

3) List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

Well I don't have too many followers of my blog, but I was able to pick 7. So Rachel A, Rachel L, Karen, Alyssa, Jessi, Danielle, Melissa, you've been tagged!

Okay..here we go!

1. I hate flying! I'm sure most people know that by now since I've definitely done my fair share of complaining about it on here, but I hate it! I'm sure if I did it more often I'd get over it, but I don't know. There's just something so unnatural about it.
2. I'm pretty much scared to death to have kids. That's not what's preventing us from having them now (we're just not ready emotionally OR financially), but when the time comes...oh dear lord. I'm worried that I'll be sick the entire time, I'm worried that I'll have a difficult delivery (and don't even get me started about that whole process), I'm worried about the lack of sleep afterwards, I'm worried that I'll freak out over every little thing that might "hurt" my child. Ugh...like I said...the whole thing just scares the crap out of me.
3. Stemming from #2, I'm worried I'll suck at being a mom. Anyone that knows me in real life knows that I'm quite the sarcastic person, not very emotional and really just don't give a crap about kids right now. I don't think people can even picture me as a mom. A few friends of mine have recently had kids and I visit them as newborns and then I'm over it. I don't want to hold them, I don't need to smell their heads...lol. I just don't have that urge. Will I ever? Part of me wants to have at least one child in the future, but I definitely don't have that deep burning passion to be a mom.
4. I love candy! Seriously. Any kind of candy, give it! Oh and gum too. I have a giant bag of gumballs at home and every night I cram like 9 or 10 of those babies into my mouth and go to town. I'm like a little kid at the store when we turn the corner and enter the candy aisle. Sometimes Jim has to act like the adult at that moment and tell me no, I already have too much at home...lol. And with Valentine's Day around the corner, let me at those candy hearts! The Necco ones...the ones that everyone hates. Mmmmmmmmm.
5. I have very little patience, just like my dad. There was this one morning where I was getting a piece of American cheese for Jim for his omelet, and I couldn't get the stupid piece to separate from the rest of the block without it breaking off in little pieces. So I pretty much squeezed the whole block in my hand, tore some pieces off, threw it in the sink and stormed off. Yeah...I tend to like to throw things when I lose patience with something. I'm trying to get better and just take a deep breath and move on, but sometimes...ugh. Yeah, and how is that going to work with kids? Patience is sort of a necessity with children.
6. I would love to own my own pizza place. Jim and I met (13 years ago!) at our jobs at a local pizza place. I worked in pizza for like 3-4 years and him probably like 4-5 years. We would love to own our own place someday. And not a franchise...our very own store. Too bad we'd probably have to win the lottery in order to do so, but maybe someday...
7. I love sour cream! I put it on noodles, dip fries in it, and use way too much on potatoes. Good thing we buy light sour cream :o) Sour cream and BBQ sauce are pretty much my favorite condiments. Sour cream is a condiment right?
8. I'm really annoyed that I don't have my camera yet! Being responsible sucks and I'm sick of it! lol But we did so good at paying off our credit card debt so of course I don't want to go piling on the debt again. I think I'll have it soon though. I should have a bonus on my next paycheck so that should cover more than half of the cost. Yay!
9. I think I have more restraint than I give myself credit for. This mostly has to do with shopping. I've never been a crazy shopper with a credit card from every clothing store imaginable, but I do love me some shoes. Like yesterday, Steve Madden had buy one clearance shoe and get another one for 50% off. I had two pairs in my basket which added up to about $80 (not too bad for two pair of Steve Maddens) but I didn't buy them. I was a good girl. And Jim was proud of me for not buying them too. And this past Christmas...I could have gone crazy buying a bunch of fun decorations, but I knew I really had nowhere to display or store them so I didn't buy one thing! I used to just buy anything that I liked. Now I actually think about my purchase before doing any unnecessary spending. And this shopping has nothing to do with our credit card debt. We had that before we even moved in together.
10. I started taking piano lessons when I was 9 years old, through about age 19. I was classically trained and can read music like nobody's business, but I often envy those that can't read a lick of sheet music and can play with such ease. I try and sit down at the piano and make up a song, and while I'm successful with coming up with a chord progression that sounds cool, it never amounts to anything more than that. In all reality, I just need to start spending more time at the piano again. I miss playing. I do have a full size keyboard at our condo (that I just had to have because I knew I would miss having a piano in the house), but it's just not the same as a real piano.

It got me!

Whatever cold/flu is going around, made it's way over to me. Sore throat, swollen glands, runny and stuffy nose, slight fever. Good stuff there. Needless to say I didn't make it into work today. I left early yesterday too and just felt a TON worse today. At least I can rest over the weekend. Jim was nice enough to buy me flowers yesterday, so that brightened up my day a little.

It's been 11 days

So one of my New Year's goals was to quit smoking...again. Well it's been 11 days since I've had a cigarette. The other night when I went to the Metallica concert, I didn't even think about it. Not even when the guy sitting in front of me lit one up. The ultimate test I think is at bowling and last Thursday it didn't even cross my mind, so I'm thinking I should be good tonight too. If I get the urge, I just remind myself how stupid, expensive and unhealthy it is. It's just SUCH a STUPID habit!!



That's pretty much the only goal I've worked on. I switch to an 8-hour/day schedule next week as opposed to the 9-hour/day schedule I'm on right now so I plan on starting working out next week. And like I said, hopefully that will lead to better night's sleep which will allow me to get up for work earlier. As far as helping more around the house, I have been trying to keep the clutter to a minimum in the living room / eating area. That's really what makes things look untidy, stupid clutter. I'm not saying we live in a pigsty, but magazines build up, random pieces of mail, coats get thrown on a chair instead of being hung up...you know...the usual.

Mighty Metallica

Metallica rocked the house at Joe Louis Arena last night and I was lucky enough to be there! Well me along with Jim, my brother and another friend of ours, Moose. Our other friends Rachel and Fred were also there, but they were in a different section. We did meet up in the concourse before Metallica came on though.

Me and Rachel

Oh yeah...these are all camera phone pics since none of us thought we could bring a camera in. So that explains the crappiness of them all.

The stage was set up in the center as opposed to one end, so the entire place was filled.

They started the show with an awesome laser display...

The crowd was rockin' and lovin' it. They played like 5 or 6 songs from their new album, Death Magnetic, but there was also a few of the older songs like Master of Puppets, One, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I was just excited that they played our wedding song. That's right, our wedding song. Our first dance was to Nothing Else Matters and it was fantastic!

Three Column Layout

So I decided to go on a search for the code to make this blog have three columns. I wanted to use the same template (Minima Lefty Stretch) I already had and I FINALLY found instructions that made sense. Hopefully this will help someone else.

Three Column Minima Lefty Stretch

Once I followed these instructions, I indeed had three columns, but my blog posts were on the left side of the screen. I found additional instructions on how to move the columns around.

You can rearrange the divs to arrange your blog any way you like. Want your post on the far left and both sidebars to the right? It's easy, make the div id "main-wrapper" come before the other wrappers. That's right, just cut "main-wrapper" div and paste it above the side wrappers. Can't find the divs? There are at the end of your template code… the very very end.

I also made a new header, but I don't know...I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's going to stay for awhile though, because messing around with a blog is very time consuming and I can get wrapped up in it for hours, like I did trying to find out how to make this three columns AND making a new header.

Where milk rings go to die

Last night I was on the hunt for some little toy mice that we had given to our cats. I was looking under all the furniture, ya know...where all the toys end up after being played with. Well we have this old bar/hutch/server (not sure what it's called) thing in our house. It's on wheels so it's lifted up off the floor a little.



I pulled that thing away from the wall and holy crap! So that's where all the milk rings went!



There's 35 milk rings in that picture, and while they weren't ALL under the bar/server/hutch half of them were, with the other half being strewn about the house. Pretty impressive huh? Oh and the little toy mice were under there too.

Before I went on my hunt for toy mice and milk rings, we attended the Red Wings game. I'm glad it was a good game and that we won, because we had to go out in the crappy weather to get there. What normally takes us about 30 minutes to get to, took us an hour. Not too bad though considering it was still snowing and the roads hadn't been plowed yet.

And yet Detroit was once a vibrant place...

While visiting the Detroit forum board over on The Nest this morning, I came across this article that someone posted. It is by Mitch Albom, who isn't one of my most favorite people, but this article is excellent!

"And yet Detroit was once a vibrant place, the fourth-largest city in the country, and it lives in the hope that those days, against all logic, will somehow return. We are downtrodden, perhaps, but the most downtrodden optimists you will ever meet. We cling to our ways, no matter how provincial they seem on the coasts. We get excited about the Auto Show. We celebrate Sweetest Day. We eat Coney dogs all year and we cruise classic cars down Woodward Avenue every August and we bake punchki donuts the week before Lent. We don't talk about whether Detroit will be fixed but when Detroit will be fixed.

And we are modest. In truth, we battle an inferiority complex. We gave the world the automobile. Now the world wants to scold us for it. We gave the world Motown music. Motown moved its offices to L.A. When I arrived 24 years ago, to be a sports columnist at the Detroit Free Press, I discovered several letters waiting for me at the office. Mind you, I had not written a word. My hiring had been announced, that's all. But there were already letters. Handwritten. And they all said, in effect, "Welcome to Detroit. We know you won't stay long, because nobody good stays for long, but we hope you like it while you're here."

Here's to hoping that things will turn around for the state of Michigan in 2009!

You are Modern Maestro

Apparently that's my decorating style. I took the quiz and that's what it told me. Below is what it says, and there's a few suggested items that I would like in my home:

MODERN MAESTRO

You want to furnish your home to reflect the way you live your life: it's functional while being stylish, easy on the eye and adaptable. No wonder, then, that it's such a popular look these days. The trick is to find clever ways of introducing a sense of your own style and personality. Inspiration doesn't just have to come from the home: check out shops, bars, restaurants and even museums and galleries for smart ideas and finishing touches.

Living Room
You have a comfortably contemporary living room. The danger with the 'modern look' is that it too easily falls into the realm of the bland and insipid; 'easy' gets confused with 'careless' and the result is just downright dull! Perhaps of all the rooms in our homes, the living room can be the one that most expresses your sense of style and your interests. Think, too, about how and when you will most use the room. For example, do you want it light and airy or warm and cosy? Try introducing one or two unexpected elements when choosing your accessories: one of the positives of the modern look is that it is very accommodating. Neutral wall colours provide a calm, easy background, while glamorous prints and patterns are fun and stylish. Make comfort the priority in your living room: it's where you naturally go to watch TV, relax and de-stress.

Darlings of Chelsea Wooden Round

Dever Round Drop-leaf Table, Chestnut

Bedroom
Your bedroom has that classic look that never goes out of style. Sleep is fundamentally important to our well being. In busy towns and cities, noise can often hamper a good night's sleep. Soft furnishings really do absorb sound, and touch is such an important sense in the bedroom, from crisp, linen sheets to wool or even sheepskin underfoot. Elegance and relative simplicity are keynotes in your bedroom, using a palette of beautifully muted colours to create the perfect retreat from daily stresses and strains.

Olivia Bedside

Blissful Organic Bedding - Percale Cotton Bed Linen

Dining Room
You're a clean slate waiting for a dash of spice. Different meals and types of food lend themselves to different styles of dining. Think about how you live your life and even the sorts of places where you like to eat out, and use these to create a dining area that suits your needs and reflects your personality. When it comes to entertaining, you like quite simple (some might say 'peasant') food with big, robust flavours.

Kerala side plate - blue

Provence White Chest of Drawers

Home Office
You have a place for everything and everything has its place. Decorating your home office to reflect the spirit and personality of the rest of your home really does make all the difference - especially when it comes to sitting down and sorting out the filing! The modernist adage that form should follow function is nowhere better demonstrated than in the home office: keep things simple and add your own sense of style by using a splash of colour or a single, well-chosen decorative piece.

Macassar Slant Desk

Embossed mirrors

Conclusion

Your contemporary take on home life is fresh, optimistic and easy on the eye.

Now all I need is a nice big home to decorate. Lord knows I can't fit anything else in this condo!

Ready for the weekend

TGIF! Actually, for this being my first full week back to work, it wasn't too bad. It went by pretty fast. But as I sit here, knowing I have two hours left of work, I swear time is in reverse! I probably shouldn't even be blogging on work time, but it's Friday afternoon, everyone else is already gone, and I'm sort of in a standstill position with a few of the items I'm working on as I'm waiting for other people to respond so I can move forward.

Last night was my first night back to bowling after three weeks off AND it was position round. How nice for a position round to be played after everyone has been off for 2-3 weeks. But, apparently that didn't matter for me. I have a 155 average and bowled a 208, 147, and a 179. Not too shabby for being a little out of practice. And we took 6 out of 8 points so I think we ended up in 3rd or 4th place for the first half. MUCH better than last year considering we ended up in 17th place the first half of last year...lol.

Oh and then I had to get gas on the way home. I was going to stop at this one particular gas station, but then I remembered how slow their pumps are, so I stopped at a different gas station. Oh sweet lord!! Big mistake! This was the slowest gas pump I have ever used in my entire life! I swear I was there for like 10 minutes! You know how normally the numbers whiz by so fast you can't even see them? Oh no...not this time. I could clearly read the numbers in the hundredths spot on the gas gauge. That's ridiculous! But...I didn't really have anywhere to be so I just filled her up...all 18 gallons worth. And why are gas prices going up again? Can we say annoying?!?!

Tomorrow Jim and I are going to the Red Wings game to see our Stanley Cup Champs!!

I'm pretty excited since this is the first game we've gone to all season! By now we've usually gone to like 2-4 games already. I wanted to get Jim tickets for his birthday, but Ticketmaster had only corner seats left and we always sit there, so I kind of wanted to get better seats. So I went to StubHub, knowing that the prices were going to be jacked up, just to see what I could get. Well for two, upper bowl, non-corner seats, it would have been $175 for two tickets! I was so close to buying them but just couldn't do it. So a few days later, a guy at work puts out an email that he has two tickets for tomorrow's game, pretty much the same seats I was looking at, and only $90 for two tickets. It's just nice that he only charges face value for the tickets. I just hope the traffic doesn't suck getting down there. The auto show doesn't officially start until the 11th, but ya just never know when it comes to driving and parking in Detroit.

So that will pretty much be the highlight of our weekend. Don't get me wrong...tonight's grocery shopping will be quite electrifying, and will definitely be hard to top, but I'm thinking the Wings can probably trump our grocery shopping trip.

Have a good weekend!

My pretty kitties

Not too much to say. My camera happened to be within reach while my cats were chillin' out around me so I decided to take a few pictures.

CHEETO - he likes being orange

MOWEE - but she pretty much just responds to PANTS now

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Don't ask me what the deal is with Jim's sort of bug-eyed look, that was apparently how he decided to take pictures last night.

Anywho, it was a fantastic evening. Our friends Brittani and Raymond were nice enough to have us over for NYE again this year. They live in a 7500 sq. ft. house built in 1915 and it's filled with fantastic historical details and many old items left behind by the previous owners.

They treated us to a Mexican fiesta, which was delish. And Mexican just so happens to be my fave, so it was great! Then Raymond took us on a tour of the house. We had a great time on the tour looking at all the old clothes, furniture and just plain strange things that were left behind. The marble fireplaces, original light fixtures, all the beautiful woodwork...just amazing!

And don't forget the 12 ft. Christmas tree in the living area...

...and just another fun tree I couldn't resist taking a picture of...

After the tour it was time for some fun and drinking. Brittani's brother brought his Wii so I kicked every one's ass in Guitar Hero...

...and Brittani was nice enough to buy some candles so we could sing Happy Birthday to Jim and celebrate with a fantastic pie...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And I can't forget a picture of the girls. Had a blast! Thanks for making it such a fun night!

Brittani, Rachel, me