I’ve been tagged….let’s see if I can figure out what to do. :-D

Here are the rules:
1) Link to the person who tagged me.
2) Mention the rules.
3) Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about myself.
4) Tag 6 other bloggers by linking to them.
5) Go to each person’s blog and leave a comment that lets them know they’ve been tagged.

So, here I go.

1) I can’t bid for anything on Ebay on the dollar.  It has to have a cents with it.

2) I am obsessive about saving money and not spending it if I can help it, but I can’t stand to let 6 months go by without a thorough truck/steam carpet cleaning.

3) I let my dog sleep on my pillow.  I know this sounds normal for some people, gross for others, but it is a plain and simple fact that I love my dog and she cracks me up when I wake up and her head is on the pillow next to me and she is snoring loudly with a paw on either side of my neck.

4) I spend more grocery money on fruit than I do on vegetables.  I buy frozen vegetables even though I don’t like them as good as fresh.  

5) My internal temperature (pre-pregnancy) is about 7 degrees lower than everyone else around me.  That is to say, if someone is comfortable at 75 I am cold, if they’re hot at 85 I feel great.

6) I hate milk.  I put milk in cereal and can eat it but I hate milk.  I can’t drink it unless it’s chocolate of course.  

I’m tagging
Joan at Grammy’s Goodies and Gripes

I would tag 5 more but I have a problem: I don’t know anyone else with a blog except for my husband and my brother in law.  I think they would ignore it.  And Emily tagged me so to tag her back would be cruel and unusual.  So I hope a rabid goat doesn’t bite me or anything for breaking the chain or something.  :-o

Max and Alli’s Wedding & False Alarms…

So Mr. and Mrs. Max Thelen are off to their honeymoon after a very sweet wedding and hot reception.  It was in the coolest place – the Heritage Club that had like 40 foot ceilings and a great layout for a reception.  It’s like a  group of subdivisions surrounding a park area and this humongous building with a fantastic set of pools and a water slide which were quite tantalizing considering that the A/C was either not working or not on and the entire building was 85 degrees or higher and outside it was only like 80…..  But in any case, the dancin’ was fun, though I did notice everyone out on the dance floor (except for good ole Captain KC and his 5 days post-delivery wife – man that woman is amazing) were young single guys and gals.  LOL  

Catie and I observed the crowd dancing and determined marriage must make you realize how much THAT will hurt tomorrow…..  I think Carol wanted to dance but Gary wouldn’t – we kept telling him the next early 90’s funky beat song was his cue but no success in getting him out there.  The guy who was to be the champagne pourer never showed up so Brandon and another gentleman volunteered.  I think I ate an entire bag of ice due to my pregnant obsession with it and the heat in the room making it necessary to avoid feeling dead in a ditch.  

Joe and Eric taped the epic moments – I never realized the great advantage Joe has but he can really get over the heads of most people at all times.  Which is why I probably never made it as a photographer – I was always having to clamber around people who were all 2 feet taller than me and all my good shots were either shadowed by shoulders or two seconds too late.  People have no respect for a camera.  They blankly gaze into the face of a camera/videocamera and fail to note the objects behind them (thus blocked by them) are the focus of said camera and not themselves.  SO MOVE ALREADY!  Sigh.

But I got some good shots which I will set up online for Alli if she wants them.  Some people, I am told as I would not understand this, don’t really have obsessions over as many hundreds of photos as they can possibly get of an event of such importance.  

Sigh.  

 

So onto false alarms – Thursday and Saturday night were major false alarms.  Thursday I had what felt like one solid contraction from 10 til midnight, with vociferous expulsion of stomach contents somewhere in the middle.  Last night, the contractions were starting in my back and moving front but they subsided both times after a cup of red raspberry tea.  But I think that means it’s getting closer…..  ???  :-D  :-D  :-D

I made the mistake of checking what orders we have so far.  BV did a “free book with $1 donation.”  Well there’s 800 $1 donations and a few $5 and $10.  The cost of shipping that “free book” alone will be probably $2.  I’ll refrain from further comment in this area.

Well, I’m off to a baby shower – I’ve had to miss church almost all this month just because of baby showers that have to be at 1 an hour away from us on a Sunday.  So much for trying to find a good Presbyterian church before the baby comes.  Speaking of which, we were going to try out one but were recommended to by people who go there not to.  That was a little weird.  I assume they must be in the process of not being there anymore.   But in any case, the church they recommended, we know people who left it too, so ….  ??  Church is depressing.  Finding one, being in one as “life” happens to those in it, feeling the need to leave one….  I’ve grown up leaving churches.  Joe has never left a church.  We both tend to want to find one and stick with it, good and not so good.  As Josh Harris says, stop dating the church.  As my grandfather said many times, church would be perfect if it wasn’t for all the PEOPLE that go to it!  The only thing that should majorly deter you from attending a church and sticking with that church is blatant heresy.  Smaller things can be tolerated.  That being said – the main purpose of the church is not to advise people on how to live (God’s Word is for that and we have three different versions of it in our house to refer to) but to be a close knit fellowship and family of believers who gather together in the name of God to worship Him and attend to each other.  

Sigh.

Batman: Dark Knight

It amazes me that a movie, a single solitary movie, can make in one weekend $155 million.  Dark Knight topped Spiderman in total sales but probably tied with them for tickets sold – due to rising ticket prices.

In any case, I will say that I am not the biggest “Superhero” fan.  I found the Incredible Hulk, Transformers, Spiderman and Superman tolerable at best and Fantastic Four dumb.  Previous editions of such movies I find equally tolerable – though I loved the Incredible Hulk series from the 70’s with Bill Bixby – he was great.  But anyway, Iron Man was the first Superhero movie that I really LIKED.  I liked his confidant attitude and the lack of inner turmoil that seems to pervade superheroes!  He didn’t have horrible issues inside that he was castigating over, no groveling at the feet of a woman for her to love him without knowing he was a superhero, no familial traumas, no hiding from the press at all costs – I call to mind the closer of “…..I am Iron Man….”

But Dark Knight!  Dark Knight topped every movie in this genre or category and remote distant star!  Dark Knight was by far the very best made movie I have ever seen.

The obvious correlation between the casual evil of Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the Joker and the lack of absolute morals was astounding.  The image of Dent’s half mangled face being turned to the other half non-mangled portion gave me an immediate flash to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which of course is the ultimate fictional story created on the basis of man’s sin nature vs. God-given moral compass.  

Christopher Nolan is a gifted director – I doubt he has any idea what a terrific picture of worldviews and corresponding morality he has portrayed in this film.  It was brilliant.

Overwhelmed. I’ll be normal tomorrow….

I just realized the impact of working 30 hours a week and still maintaining the same level of responsibility and tasks that I do…plus adding two more in the past 24 hours.  I love my job.  I love doing what I do – but today I got slightly overwhelmed.  Supposedly I have cut back to 30 hours a week, leaving the office at 2.  Last week I started doing this and worked 34 hours.  This week I will have to leave at noon tomorrow to get back on track, but I highly doubt I’ll manage to do that so I’ll probably end this week with a few extra.  It’s not that I want to make sure I give no more than I get paid for – but I really DO need the rest!!  Ha!  IT makes me laugh.  But I do sincerely enjoy being in the middle of a bunch of huge exciting projects.

Right now that includes:

Planning for our yearly catalog which will go out at the end of September approximately (my role in this besides biting people’s heads off about putting “call” instead of “visit web” and having Dumb and Dumber brought to mind after such a moment…..thus implying….well, you get the gist) is to get sponsorships/ads placed, the catalog quoted, figure out a cheaper paper, fiddle with ideas, and so forth.

Monitoring and coordinating the monthly creation and send out of the soon to be new newsletter sent to donors which includes choosing top products, new products, products coming soon, reminding Gary to have an article written, getting numbers together, and making sure that it goes out in a timely fashion (after folding and labeling and marking each one with the amount).  It will take the old 10 step process down to a 4 step though, so I’m thrilled.  Plus it will look cool.

Putting new products on our store, which will soon be a new and different and hopefully better back end interface (back end interface…..ew) which includes writing content (currently in the process of updating content on the already existing products), figuring out correct categories, relevant keywords and relating products and making sure it all formats correctly.

Events – which right now involves the big ECPA’s Expo in Dallas in March and the Apologetics Conference in July or August 2009.  And the Values Voters Summit in September.  

Smaller things like getting us 500,000 subscribers an email for 50% off from a network – getting CBP titles into all the various distributors – working on getting our products into those same distributors – and various and sundry other two page list of to do’s.  I can’t even remember them all.  I’ve never worked somewhere where I couldn’t keep track of my to do’s.  HA!  That’s funny.

Ok well, I’m hungry, having heart burn, listening to a whiny dog huff because I don’t want her in my over extended lap right now, and hot with the burning fire of summer.  I take my leave.

Our newly decorated bathroom and Aberdeen lovin’ on Reese.  :)

Kroger Today

So I went in needing to buy $75 in order to get $10 off, plus I had a 15% off $50+ coupon.  Several of the items I was already going to buy were buy 10 get $5.  You could do it multiple times so I did, getting juice and Propel vitamin-infused water for my labor (suggested by my doula) and some snacks and cheese.  I needed 2 more items so decided that we really needed 2 containers of Edy’s ice cream which would finish off my required items to get the money back.  Then I happened to see that if I bought ANY two ice creams I would get a free litre of A&W root beer.  Coke was also 4 for $11.  So I walked out with $125 of groceries for exactly $75.86.  

Fun stuff.  Oh and my receipt said I can enter to win a $500 gift certificate.  :-)

July is almost over…

Boy did I have a pregnant moment yesterday!  BV sent me off to get binder tabs for the board meeting binders.  I went rushing off to Staples.  I scavenge through the store.  I found some decent and cheaply priced tabs, 5 in a pack.  We needed 5 tabs per binder.  I bought 3 so we’d have 1 extra.  

Can anyone explain that screwed logic to me?  I literally counted it out and bought THREE packs of 5 thinking I’d have enough for 8 binders to get 5 and still have one left over.  I think I must have been thinking of Jesus feeding the 5, 000 or something.

Anyway, that was rather embarrassing.  So I sent Joseph off to the store to get the remaining needed packs, whispering to him in the hallway my idiotic mistake riiiiight when BV walks out of his office.  He got quite a kick out of it I think.  Sigh. 

I hope my brain comes back.  :-|  :-)

On other notes, we went to the pool yesterday – one of the few times I’ve been able to go this summer due to events on weekends.  It was glorious.  Perfect water temperature.

We finished disc 2 of John Adams – he has just been elected President.  We’re enjoying it immensely but rather disappointed that during their arguments about whether or not to support the French Revolution they make absolutely NO reference to two of the main reasons they did NOT: religious reasons and lawful reasons.  The series indicates that the only factor was “with Britain or against Britain” and that was a very small part of that heated discussion which endeavored upon the American people in the 1790’s.  It is quite intriguing to watch Jefferson and Hamilton at each other’s throats and Adams and Jefferson remaining friends………for now.  Anyway, it is quite worth a watch.  

I was given a brilliant idea and am following up on it.  In a nutshell: my mother’s only sister was killed in a car accident in 1970-something two weeks before her wedding.  She was on her way with her fiancee to pick up her china set at the store or their wedding rings (I have repeatedly heard both stories….).  A drunk driver hit them in the fog and she died instantly.  Anyway, the china set (which was a 12 piece place setting and several serving pieces) fell to my mother who did not like it.  I always liked it so it was kept away for me.  It’s probably been used 4 times.  Several plates were broken and a bowl, but most of the set is still in fine condition.  Replacements Limited, the huge store in NC that stocks patterns from all over the world and times, is sending me a list of what they will buy and what they will pay for it.  The rest I will attempt to sell on Ebay or something.  For those of you wondering why I am selling such an ‘heirloom’….which apparently I like….’tis because while I do like it, it cannot be washed in the dish washer and I am notorious for hating to hand wash dishes (due to 13 years of non-dishwasher capabilities in our house) and while the green and gold is very pretty, I am a black and silver kind of person and so our everyday china which can go in the dishwasher is much more to both Joe and my liking.  

Plus as of this week, I have switched to 30 hours a week (though somehow managed to do 33 this week…how DOES that happen – haha) so the pay has gone down so the extra money and two extra shelves in my cabinet will be handy.  

Oh yes, and I picked up Pink Pig from the pottery Girl’s Night – I am quite eccentric now that I see the finished product.  It was a fun night – I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be as fun as Joan’s planned night and I don’t think it was, but hopefully everyone enjoyed it nonetheless.  I wonder who will plan the next night……

Kroger Savings….

So the Entertainment Book coupon for July at Kroger is 15% off your purchase.  With that and another couple $5 or $10 off certain amounts coupons – I had $23 in coupon savings and a total of $193.25 savings.  I spent $299.15 for $484 worth of groceries….

So that was fun.  :-D

What they never told me about pregnancy…

It amazes me how many pregnant women or those who have been pregnant I’ve been around, yet was never informed about certain things.  For instance:

Taking one’s perfect fit engagement ring off.  Before it gets so tight that cold water, lotion, grease, butter and all other remedies for getting off rings are rendered useless.  I’m at the stage where my finger itches but I can’t even move my ring the slightest.  Yes, I know that’s not good.  I don’t know what to do about it.  So will continue to ignore the problem in hopes it will go away or my finger will fall off and the ring with it. 

Breathing normally becomes a long forgotten commodity.  You can be sitting completely still and be out of breath completely.  I think there is a 3 inch girl foot stuck in my 3 inch lung.

On a different note: I found Ben on Facebook.  Ben was a friend of mine when I was like 9 or 10 from the Messianic congregation we went to.  My mom was cleaning out stuff and found an old Hanukkah play program that we kids did and I started randomly looking for people.  Some people are hard – you find a name and you see the photo and you’re like hmmmmm, I don’t know.  Others you’re like that HAS to be them.  That is exactly what I picture them looking like from the 14 year old picture in my head of them at 7 or 8 years old.  Isn’t that weird?  I think that’s weird.  But whatever, it’s him and we said howdy.

Yigh

I feel disgusting.  Poor Jo had a time of it last night – ended up with a horrible temperature, achy, etc.  I appear to have got it today – had a VERY rough day.  I kept thinking I need to leave…..I need to go home……and then I didn’t.  I made it til 5:30.  Amazing.  Jo drove me home and made me go to bed but when he went back to the office to work on a side project, I got up and am now writing a blog post.

Silly me.  Sometimes I wonder why I have such a hard time just doing nothing. I feel sooo gross right now.  :-(  Worst headache I’ve had in a couple months….