Ah...Vacation!

Yeah - I don't know why I took vacation. I mean, I have a million and two errands to run, but I still probably could have gotten some work done. I'm still getting up at the crack of dawn, mainly because Husband wakes me up every morning. Rude. OK - maybe not, he is waking me up to kiss me good-bye and say he loves me.

Yesterday was a busy day, I got our remote exchanged finally. After being remoteless for at least a month, I got our cable remote exchanged. It's funny because I tried to do it Tuesday afternoon, about 30 min before the cable office closed. I couldn't find it and had to call and sit on hold for 20 min to figure out where they were located. When I finally found it, I walked in and they locked the door behind me. I was the last person in but there was at least a two hour wait in front of me. It wouldn't have been an issue if I'd actually been prepared, but I had nadda - no book, no thank you cards to write, nadda! To make it worse, I'd gone to a cable office in the worst part of town possible, so I was actually pretty worried that two hours would be plenty of time for someone to steal my car. In the end, I waited a whole 5 min and then left. I called Rodney and told him we were simply going to do without a remote, unless we could mail it in and exchange it. He wasn't too happy about that. But, the good news is that he did a little research and found one for me to go to yesterday. I got up early, packed a book, my iPod manual (have no clue how to operate it just yet), a magazine or two, some thank you cards, and headed to the office. Was there 15 min after it opened and there was no one there! I was in and out in under 2 min. Damnit! Just when I was looking forward to getting my book done.

Today should be action packed as well. My top four to dos:

1. Buy a fake plant for our condo
2. Look at furniture for our office (need some kind of cabinet/bookcase/filing cabinet thing)
3. Get invitations for Heather's shower/bachelorette party
4. Grocery shop for our dinner party.

Yeah, I might just happen to run by the tanning salon as well. :)

Did I mention we were having a dinner party? We are! Rodney and I are cooking mediterranean food! Woo-hoo! That should be fun. Not! :) It's tonight, in fact, yesterday I got the table set to make sure we had enough dishes. Rodney's china set isn't quite complete, so I was worried. We barely have enough to seat 8 people. Actually, that was the hard party about the dinner party - deciding who to invite and keeping it limited to 8 ppl. There were at least 4-6 other people I really wanted to include, but just couldn't seat or serve. :)

Here's the dining table set up for our dinner party. Don't look too closely or you'll see that we don't actually have enough wine glasses. :) Note the various wedding gifts included....the light blue table runner, the stainless steel chargers, etc.

Isn't our Turkish rug pretty? Yay! Jason got it hung!

What's on the menu? Couscous stuff red peppers and Chicken & Apricot Phyllo Pie. Yikes!

So, other than that, I am slowly but surely getting my iPod updated with stuff. I found some cool podcasts on the Apple Music Store website, stuff like NPR and news/business updates. I also found some funny videos to watch (next time I'm bored in a car, plane or standing in line). We also used some of the Christmas money we got to buy an iGroove, basically speakers for the iPod so we can listen to music in the condo. Yippee! I think we will use the rest of the money to get a DVD recorder and possibly wireless headphones. With wireless headphones I can stay up later than Rodney and watch TV after he goes to sleep - gotta get all my Nick & Jessica in you know! :)

I guess that's it from me today. Have a great day!

We're Back!

Woo-hoo! Merry Christmas! We're back from North Carolina, where we spent Christmas day with Rodney's sister, Lynn. We had a great time! The food was delicious and I think everyone enjoyed their presents. As fun as it was, it is a minor relief to put most of Christmas behind us! I still have a couple of very late Christmas presents to pull together. Things to do that I just couldn't get done before the actual day. But, at least I have this week and most of next off to get them finished. Of course, to make things challenging, I am getting a new laptop this week - so that will take up at least a day or two to get that all setup and all my various software installed. I also have a list a mile long of errands to complete this week - store returns, exchanging our broken remote, etc. etc. My list of errands never ends does it?

The good news is that Jason managed to get our gorgeous Turkish run hung on our newly painted wall in the dining area. Yippee! I love having Jason around. He does all the things that I would have to nag Rodney endlessly about (and/or that I just don't have the motivation to do myself). I don't mean to be sexist, of course, but seems to me that if I am the one who makes the bed, straightens the house, does all the laundry (although I love doing laundry - i can't stand to have dirty clothes, and it's not like it takes more than 5 minutes of your day to throw a load in the washer or change it to the dryer and fold - right??), then Rodney can hang crap for me. :) But believe me, just asking him gets him all worked up and he will do anything but what I actually would like him to do. :) Ahhh....marriage.

Speaking of marriage, I bought the Newleyweds: Nick & Jessica season one on DVD. Yes, I am a freak. One needs to have plenty of bad TV around though, just in case a sick day hits or seomthing. There is nothing more comforting when you are sick than to put a DVD on and watch a train wreck, right?

Did I mention that I am slowly but surely joining the technologically advanced? Yes, I finally have an iPod. Therefore, I am cool. Yes, I know it took a while, but my darling husband bought me one of the fancy schmancy new 60 GB ones that plays videos as well as music. I was really torn about wanting that one or the super cool teeny tiny iPod Nanos. The Nano is so small and easy to carry - perfect for working out (and training for the 10K we've committed to doing!)!!! BUT - the one I got, although bigger, stores pictures too - and we all know how I am about pictures!!! Anyway, it's pretty cool - I can download more music and videos (music or TV programs). Very excited about it.

Well - the two most important things going on now are (1) getting ready for Heather's bachelorette party and shower and (2) preparing for our New Year's Eve trip with Scott & Alli! Woo-hoo! I better get started on my never ending list of things to do for the day - have a wonderful day everyone! :)

Ick...

Aha! That would explain my bad attitude about Christmas. I was as sick as a dog yesterday. What a waste of a day! Today I have dentist and doctor appointments though, so not much will get done today either! At least I'm feeling a little better. My guess is food poisoning, Husband thinks I have a food allergy (supposedly this is all explained by NOT having a fever while I was sick). Who knows! Have a great day!

Christmas Will Be Late.

That's all there is to it. I will NOT, in fact, be done with the homemade Christmas presents I am making people. I have come to accept this and decided, instead, to take a nap. Sorry. Hate to disappoint, but everything will be late. I completely suck.

I did, however, manage to drag my lazy ass to some far off region to purchase my new husband the BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER. I won't say what, in the off chance that he actually reads this, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't. I will say that I am simply the perfect most wonderful and generous wife ever. :)

Other than that, I really can't get my crap together to finish things up. I have three boxes of things just waiting for that one last little bitty present to be put in and mailed off. It's not gonna happen! I feel like a complete Christmas failure (well, other than the perfect gift mentioned above). =o)

The good news for the day...now Jason is painting! :)

Husband Painting

Look at him go! Can't wait to have that wall done and our Turkish rug on the wall!

Productivity!

Yep, our weekend was PRODUCTIVE! Yippee! I'm in all-out frenzy mode, trying to get the condo presentable in anticipation of Julien's visit this week. Rodney is so happy that Jason is now in town and my partner in crime, because that gets Rodney "free do what he wants" time without me saying, "lets go do this", "lets run here", etc. etc. He's very happy! AND, it's just downright amazing what Jason can fit in that tiny Hyundai of his!

Our weekend started with the Nutcracker ballet at the Fox. I hate the Fox. I love the Nutcracker though. The Fox sucks because if you sit in the lower level, there is ALWAYS some amazon big haired freak of a man/woman that sits in front of you. Then, just as you contort into a position suitable to seeing some small fraction of the stage, they shift too. The alternative, sitting upstairs offers a clear unobstructed view (thanks to stadium seating) but now you aren't at an optimum viewing position as you are looking down on the dancers. Anyway, we made a mental note for next time. It was a pretty low key night, since we had a bright and early day on Saturday!

Saturday, we started off around 8:00 am heading out to our storage unit. We'd been pretty happy with our storage crate that we could access with an hours notice, until we tried to get our Christmas decorations out of storage and found out that during the week, you can only access the crate until 3:00 pm. What? That's just ridiculous. Anyway, was good because that encouraged me to find a closer more accessible storage unit. In the end, we'll be saving a bit of money, it's only 3 miles away from home, we can access any time between 6 am and 9 pm and we don't have to call ahead to make an appointment. This proved useful for Jason as well, since we had a bed frame and mattress stored in there that we took to his new place. I think he was pretty tired of the floor. :) Saturday afternoon, I managed to make some more headway on Xmas presents. They'll never be done!

Finally, that night we had the Vision Composites' Christmas dinner. We ate at Prime, the food was fabulous, but really - who in the hell thought it would be a good idea to put not one, but two or three big fancy schmany restaurants in Lenox Mall? Really, it's a horrible horrible idea. We went to the valet and then had to wait 20 minutes before they could even take us (believe me, if it weren't for the fact that once you get in line you can't get out - we would have left). Anyway, the food was really great, considering I'm not a steak eater. The veggies were just scrumptous!

Now, talk about productive - Sunday was amazing! Jason woke us up around 10:30 with bagels from Einstein's (that's what I'm talking about!) and we headed straight away to the container store for large storage bins. I'd already decided that I wanted new storage bins for the Xmas decorations so I could organize them and protect all the breakable ones, but I clearly wasn't going to be putting those in my car. We got those and ran a couple of other errands then back at the apt I cleaned out all the closets! Yippee! Filled up most of the storage bins and we moved them to the unit. We finally feel organized. Then, of course, the primer white walls were staring at us, so we hopped on over to Sherwin Williams for some paint. I even managed to convince Rodney to put a coat on when he dragged his happy ass home from flying. :)

Well, I tried to post a couple of pictures of him painting, but that doesn't seem to be working. Will try again tomorrow.

Am struggling with what is interesting to write about here. Should I continue the same format as during wedding planning? Does anyone actually care what I've been up to? I'm not that exciting, I know. I need a gimmick. :)

Too Many Cats

We have too many cats. See photos for proof. Oh, they're cute. They match the apartment well. They are pretty well behaved, most of the time. But, still, three is too many indoor cats. If we had a big house or even better a big house in the country, three would be fine. But for a small intown loft, three is too many.

Anybody want a cat? Micah (black and white one) is free. :)

There isn't even enough room left for me in this bed!

Check out how perfectly Mythos Moose matches our sofa.

A Day Off to Shop

Yippee! I'm taking today off from work to shop (and get my nails done). Lucky me...it's raining and dreary. Ick. I have to get my Christmas shopping done today. That's all there is to it. No excuses or late presents. My list is a mile long and we're broke to top it off. Should be fun.

Did I mention that I got my final (I think) 20 cards in the mail last night? I hope they are the final, I am sure there is someone that I've managed to forget this year.

OK - posting this late, started as a draft yesterday...but I did take yesterday off and spent a majority of it shopping and wrapping. Our tree is so perfect now! Unfortunately, this weekend, we have to box presents up for shipping.


Isn't it pretty?

BRRRRRR

Indianapolis is COLD. I did a day trip there yesterday. FREEZING. So glad to be back and defrosted. There was SNOW there! Lots of it. Brrrrr. I had to call Scott twice to say "Brrrrrr".

Amazingly, our tree is still upright. If you aren't familiar with why that is amazing, check out my old blog. Still no pictures though. Husband has stolen the camera and not returned it just yet. I will yell at him later.

We are SO busy! Our January is sooooooooo full! We just got a wedding invite yesterday for the weekend of MLK. Yippee! Dilemma, of course, about what to do about the ski trip planned for that weekend. We also have HDH's bachelorette party and shower. I have 4 or 5 business trips, of course. Oh, then we have the New Year's trip to Gatlinberg with the Horner's. Therefore, we have exactly 2 weekend we'll actually be in town. Ug. CLM - that means no trip to FL for January. Maybe February? Wanna know what sucks about all of that? I am a mere 6500 miles away from Platinum status on Delta and WON'T make it by 12/31/05. That completely sucks. Gold again for next year.

Speaking of travel though, February is pretty booked and March is filling up quickly with HDH's wedding activities. Whew - we are just so popular and busy! :)

Observation of the day - cats (kittens, really) are fascinated by many things, such as:

• water coming out of the faucet
• christmas trees
• sparkly ornaments
• bugs
• water sitting in the sink
• women putting on makeup
• food
• lawn mowers
• other sleeping cats
• cat tails
• balls
• washers & dryers
• cabinets
• refrigerators
• dishwashers
• phones
• basically - all appliances
• Christmas wreaths that are not decorated and sitting on the floor in the living room
• hookahs
• cigarette smoke

Good News & Bad News

Good news

• you can now email individual blog entries to friends ('cause I know you're dying to do that)
• you can post specific comments about a given entry
• there is a spell checker, so there is no excuse for mispellings in posts any longer (poor grammar will be a given)
• we have a Christmas tree!
• Mythos has not knocked over said tree, yet

Bad news

• I have to think of a clever title for each and every post
• I plan to post more frequently
• if no one leaves me comments I will feel unpopular, uninteresting and unloved
• I am lazy
• I can't figure out how to post a picture on my blog profile yet

A Brand New Blog

And the winner of the fabulous new name contest is....Carsley! For first place, she'll get my undying devotion and friendship for the rest of her life (lucky girl!). Unfortunately, although we both liked it best with my name spelled out, this blog wouldn't allow such a long blog name.

Thanks to Sarah & Carsley for the other suggestions as well! I did love Sarah's suggestion of "Naughty Newlywed's Page of Escapades" but was afraid it just might attract the wrong kind of traffic.

Let the blogging begin!