Saturday Edition

We had a pretty awesome day today. We decided to hit Greenville again for some shopping. I got new towels (yay!) and new sunglasses (yay! yay!). We also got t-shirts at Steve and Barry's. Mine says, "Happiness is a hard stiff one" with a martini glass, heheheh. Too funny, right? And we had lunch at Red Lobster. I can't seem to get enough shrimp. Maybe I have some sort of nutrition deficiency that is being satisfied with shrimp. Oh! And speaking of health, they took my blood pressure at the eye doctor yesterday. Guess what it was! 118/71!! How great is that? Turns out that it was Vermont that was causing my high blood pressure.

Okay. I'm off.

The New Me

Sans glasses. Yup. I had an eye doctor's appointment bright and early this morning and now I have contacts. After wearing them for a little over three hours they are finally starting to feel comfortable. How do I plan on celebrating? I'm going shopping for new sunglasses! It may not sound like much to you, but I've been wearing the same boring prescription sunglasses for years and my favorite accessory to shop for, buy, and wear are sunglasses. I can't wait. I have to go back to the doctor's in a week to see how I'm doing with the contacts, to have the pressure checked in my eyes, and for them to dilate my eyes so they can check for spots. They checked the pressure today with the puff of air thing but because of the episode that I had 5 years ago with my right eye, I always have to have extra tests done. It's the reason why I hate going to the eye doctor now. It always involves multiple varieties of drops being put in my eyes and it's unpleasant. But I have contacts now! Woohoo!

The Smell of Sunblock in the Afternoon

Isn't it lovely? And worthless. Does sunblock freaking work??? All four of us used an SPF of 50 and we ALL got sunburned. WTF is up with that?? And don't say that it needs to be reapplied or that it expires. We bought it brand new last night and reapplied it. I think it's a marketing ploy to get people's money. But despite all that we had a great time at the beach today. Since it's a Thursday, it wasn't packed with people like it is on the weekends.

The beach is a sociologist's paradise. We made camp behind these two girls that were there before us and a guy that showed up about an hour before we left. All three of them were eye candy and it was hilarious watching them check each other out. Every time the guy got up to go swimming, the girls' heads would turn and watch him the whole way out. C said they reminded him of prairie dogs, lmao. Then, this group is Hispanic guys showed up and they started feeding the seagulls which resulted in a huge flock of them flying over us. It was pretty neat though cuz one guy had them literally eating out his hand. Before all that, a kid was eating a snack which attracted the gulls. He had to run out in the ocean screaming the entire way to get away from them. The whole beach was laughing it was so funny. Also, a harrier flew over head today too. It's the only one I've ever seen fly over the whole time we've been going to this beach. C said the pilot was probably show boating because that isn't the normal flight pattern. It scared the living daylights out of a lot of people cuz he flew low and it was LOUD.

Now we're all resting and recuperating. Being at the beach takes a lot out of you.

Obsessions/Compulsions

I've been seeing this topic pop up a lot lately around the blogs and message boards that I read. Since I have my fair share of obsessions, I thought it could be a fun topic to discuss. Here are my obsessions/compulsions in no particular order.

1. My DVD shelves. My DVD's have to be in alphabetical order and perfectly aligned with the edge of the shelf. If they aren't, I think about straightening them out constantly until I can't resist anymore and get up to fix them.

2. My book collections. I read J.D. Robb's In Death series. It honestly drives me nutso that she released the first 16 or so straight to paperback and the rest went straight to hardcover. Why? Because now my books don't match. In order to have them all match I would have to re-buy the last 7 and how ever many more of them she plans on writing because I can't wait for them to come out in paperback. I pre-order them so that I get them from Barnes and Noble the day they're released. I'm the same way with Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. I waited MONTHS for #12 to come out in paperback so that all of her books would match. I totally get how insane this makes me sound. Oh. And this is why I didn't order the special edition last Harry Potter book. If I had done that, the last book wouldn't match the first 6.

3. This is a little Sleeping with the Enemy, but my canned goods are organized by type and all face the same direction in my cupboards. More Sleeping with the Enemy, all of my bath towels are folded the same way and in the same direction so that they look nice in the linen closet. (Who the hell sees my towels in the linen closet but my family???)

4. Blogging. I've blogged about my blogging obsession before. Since taking my Creative Writing class, I'm choosing to look at this as that I'm thinking like a writer. A writer is constantly looking at the world around them for ideas and subjects to write about. So there. Also, I use my blog as a form of communication.

5. The weather. I check the weather obsessively. Down here in N.C. it's probably a good thing. At least I'll see the hurricane coming, lol.

6. The Internet. I'd be completely lost without my Internet connection. I bank online, shop online, make appointments online, play games online, go to school online, order dinner online, and most importantly, I keep in touch online. The best way to get a hold of me is to send me an e-mail. Between e-mail, chat, and my blog, I feel like I keep in touch with people. This is probably why I never call anybody. Have you ever seen The Net? Yeah.

7. Driving. I have so many driving obsessions. They annoy me the most so I don't want to talk about it.

8. Being old. Turning 30 this year is really bothering me. And it bothers me that it bothers me. It shouldn't matter. The only difference between 29 and 30 is a day but I feel like my life is going to end on Saturday.

9. Being sick. I worry about having illnesses like so many in my family that it's probably going to end up killing me, lol. Back in VT, I should have been on high blood pressure meds but I felt like that would have been the first step to filling my medicine cabinet with every medication known to man and refused them. When I get bronchitis, I refuse to go to the doctor until C forces me to. Then the doctor yells at me for not having come in weeks ago. I like to hold out that whatever's wrong with me will just go away on its own. Is this the opposite of being a hypochondriac?

10. Bugs. I worry constantly about having bugs in my house. I hate them. In Florida we had roaches (thanks to our nasty neighbors), in Cali we had ants, and in VT we had earwigs. Bugs do not belong in houses. As long as they stay outside, they're fine by me. It's a big concern here in N.C. Down here, roaches are a way of life.

11. Having obsessions. I obsess about my obsessions. I worry that one day I'll be like those people you see on tv and they'll end up controlling my life. I really don't see that coming since I have amazing self control, but you never know.

Go ahead and judge me. I fully admit that I should be committed. But isn't it fun to talk about it?

Tuesday

In the title, I typed in "Monday, Monday" and had to check to see if it was actually Monday. Nope, lol.

For the first time since he bought it 3 1/2 years ago, C is legal to ride his motorcycle. Woot, woot! He took his driver's test yesterday and he's out getting it inspected right now. This means that as of today, the 4Runner is mine again!! Heheheheh! Can you tell that I'm excited? I get my caaar back. I get my caaar back. I get my caaar back.

Grandma's Boy

C and I had both heard from our respective friends how hilarious this movie is and that it's a "must see" so we decided to watch it this weekend on HBO or Cinemax or whatever channel it was on. We really need to stop watching movies based on the recommendations of others. I'm not saying that everyone else's taste in movies suck (okay, maybe just a little bit) but it's more that C and I don't have the same taste in movies as other people. Or maybe it's just that we don't get high and you have to be high to enjoy these movies (somebody actually told me this). Napoleon Dynamite is another example of a movie we watched because we were told we have to see it. And that one movie with naked Kathy Bates and Jack Nicholson, um yeah. Bad movie recommended to us by a mutual friend. C just Googled it: About Schmidt. Powder is where it all started and then after we watched it and hated it, the people that recommended it to us denied ever having watched it!! 40 Year Old Virgin. DUMB, DUMB, DUMB! I know there are others that I can't think of right now but I'm sure I could compile quite a list. A big thing to take note of is that the majority of these were recommended by other Marines. Yup. The more cussing, nudity, and drug use that a movie contains, the funnier it is according to Marines. And that's not to say that I find cussing, nudity, and drug use offensive, I just don't think that it makes a movie funny or good. And I happen to like what C and I term as "Funny dumb" movies. Examples...

Evolution
Road Trip
American Pie (The original one. The rest were just dumb.)
Dude, Where's My Car?
Idle Hands

Just to name a few. Oh well. At least we didn't pay to see Grandma's Boy. We watched it on a channel we already subscribe to. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Weekend Recap

The weekend didn't go as I had originally planned. Right after I posted on Saturday about how we had no plans and were going to stay home all weekend, we hopped in the car and went to Greenville for the day, lol. Greenville is the home of Eastern Carolina University. While we were there, we took a little tour of the campus. Greenville's a nice enough town that I wouldn't mind moving there. Too bad it's too far from C's work though. Ugh. And the houses are CHEAP! We grabbed a "take one" from a house right around the campus area and the same house here in New Bern would go for about 50 or 60 thousand more. That's annoying.

As a result of exploring Greenville, I had to play mad catch up to get all my work done yesterday. And remember way back when when I said that I was most looking forward to my mythology class? Well, it's turning out to be my least favorite class. I kept waiting for it to pick up and become interesting, but we're heading into week 5 and no such luck. I'm disappointed.

Sunday, the girls had an interesting morning. It seems that M whacked S over the head with a purse containing something that she won't admit to but was heavy enough that it left a nice sized bump on S's head. This resulted in M being grounded to her room the whole day. Talk about peace and quiet, lmao. They're normally not violent kids and this was a first. I also consider it be the first real punishment either one of the girls has gotten. Let's face it. Time outs are for amateurs. And it was effective. We let M out for dinner and I asked her if she was having fun being grounded. She answered with a resounding, "NO!!!". Bailey was short with Hannah all day yesterday too. Maybe it was just something in the air or a full moon or something.

So, that was the weekend. C should be home from work shortly because he's taking leave this week. We have things scheduled for everyday except tomorrow. I also have 3 papers due. It should prove to be an interesting week.

Saturday Edition

It's Saturday. We have absolutely no plans for the weekend. My main objective for today is to get all of my homework done so that I can have at least one day this week with no school work to do. C's taking leave next week so we're going to go to the beach then rather than on the weekend. People are packed in like sardines on the weekends.

For now, I'd like to share a couple pictures we took of Bailey this week. It's weird, but she likes getting dressed up, heheheh.

Lurking vs. Stalking Revisted

Jennifer from Tropical Fruit has been blogging about this in several posts yesterday. After reading her posts and then the reference she made to my previous post on this subject (see this link) I feel the need to clarify where I stand on the issue.

I've never made it a secret that I track the visitors to my blog. I use SiteMeter as well as Google Analytics. It started out as being a way that I could see how many hits I was getting just for fun. Plain and simple, end of story. I wasn't concerned with where people were from, what links they were clicking on my blog, or what search queries they were performing. Then, that all changed with November of last year. Some of you know what happened, some of you read the comments and subsequent posts that were a direct result of what was going on in real life, and some of you are probably completely clueless as to what I'm referring. Don't bother searching, I deleted all of it. You can, however, read My Last Post which is the only surviving post from the "Incident", lol.

Okay. That's the background of it. Now on to the meat.

Lurkers are people who read blogs, message boards, newsgroups, etc., but never or rarely post a comment. They're just people who are reading for fun, for knowledge, for whatever reasons. It's harmless and I don't mind them in the least. Welcome LURKERS!!

Internet stalkers and/or trolls are a whole other ball of wax. These people read the afore mentioned online mediums in order to glean information about someone or something for nefarious purposes. In my case, my stalkers were trying to get dirt about my husband in regards to his job. They can say that they weren't, but the search queries that they performed on my blog are proof. Nuff said there. Trolls post nasty, horrible, bitchy comments for the sole purpose of stirring up dirt, telling lies, and just plain being a nuisance.

I get anywhere from 1 to 6 hits a day (sometimes more, never less, lol) from Marion, OH. I know for sure that one of those hits is a certain person. The rest, I'm not so sure. They're all from my family though and it makes no difference to me that they don't comment. Whatever floats your boat. I'm not entirely sure how many individual, unique readers I have on a regular basis. I've gotten past the point of needing to know. I'm careful about what I say and am 100% aware of every word that I type. If it seems too personal, I meant for it to and if I seem too evasive or dramatic, I meant for that to come through as well. Basically, I'm saying that I don't care about the lurkers or stalkers that I have because there isn't anything on my blog that I'm afraid for them to see. Read away! However, I will admit that it stirs my curiosity a bit. Sometimes I have to hold back the urge to post, "Who are you??" when I get hits from interesting places. But, as you well know, I've never given in to the urge.

I hope I've been clear here. And I hope that I don't scare anyone away by letting them know they're being "watched" by my trackers. But it's not as if I get any personal information like names, addresses, bra size or anything like that. I posted links to the websites so that anyone can check out for themselves what they're all about.

One last thing, all definitions and opinions posted here are of my own creation. I didn't look up the official definition of lurkers, trolls, or stalkers. I based it all on my own experiences.

There. Happy reading.

Plumbing That Works

It's always good to have, right? After living in this house for almost 5 months, all of our plumbing finally works correctly. The shower no longer leaks and you can flush the toilet without using a pair of scissors, lol. Yes, that's how we had to flush the master bath toilet for about a month. Life is good. You should've seen my bathrooms yesterday though. GEEZ! Both of them were a complete mess. The hallway bathroom backs up to the master bath so in order to fix the hallway shower they had to take out the toilet in the master bath and go through the wall. My toilet was sitting in the shower for about three hours, heheh. All in all, it's a small price to pay for properly working bathrooms.

My Blog is Rated

Mingle²

This rating was based on:
ass (2x) and piss (1x)

Just goes to show I'm not as vulgar as I want to be, lol.

A Day of Ups and Downs

Yesterday was a roller coaster ride. When I got up, I had every intention of getting caught up on my school work (I'm seriously behind on my reading for my business class). With my day yesterday, I got less than half a chapter read, lol.

First, the heating and cooling guy FINALLY showed up to do an estimate on replacing the heat pump. Supposedly, he'll be back next week to replace the unit and install new duct work. I'll believe it when I see it.

Then, my phone rings and I get some pretty amazing news. About 7 years ago, C and I got our first cell phones with Cingular (now AT&T Wireless). We decided to cancel the phones for whatever reason. After the deed was done, we got a huge bill in the mail for the early cancellation fees. Well, back then, they didn't disclose that information and we had no idea that we were going to have to pay that. Turns out, hundreds of other customers weren't informed either which resulted in a class action lawsuit being filed against Cingular. The amazing news? We're getting our settlement checks in the mail!! I was shocked to the core. I never in a million years thought that we'd ever actually get any money. We've never been involved in a class action lawsuit before either. 1st time's a charm I guess, heheheh. This whole thing is the reason why I won't be switching to AT&T to get an iPhone which I dearly would love to have. Grr!!

Next, my phone rings again and it's my new friend informing me that her husband didn't get his promotion to Gunny yesterday. Another one of our friends didn't get it either. I was soooo disappointed for them both. It was big bummer news. Especially when C was going over the list and a totally dirtbag, nasty, buttheaded Marine he knows got promoted. That's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes though.

Later on that night (my phone pretty much rang off the hook yesterday), I get another call from my new friend. In her distracted frame of mind, she locked herself out of her house. Luckily for me, she gave me permission to laugh my ass off before she told me, which I did. She only had to sit outside for about 1/2 an hour before spare keys arrived.

Oh, and C made it to the commissary yesterday and arrived home with groceries, lmao.

And now, I'm sitting here waiting for Repair Guy to get here to fix my bathrooms. He said he'd be here between 9 and 10 so he still has time to be on time. Stuff is FINALLY getting done around here. I feel like there's something else that happened yesterday that I wanted to blog about but I can't think of it. It was a busy day.

Different Perspectives

I've recently made a new friend. I posted about her a little while back. She's 28, has her masters in something or other, she teaches band and orchestra to inner city 5-13 year olds, and she's a newlywed with just over a year's experience with the Marine Corps.

You know me. I'm 29, working on my B.A., I'm a stay at home mom, and I've been married for 11 years with almost 10 years experience with the Marine Corps.

We have totally different perspectives on life in general, the military specifically. I can remember being like her though: Gung ho, motivated, believing that the Marine Corps is the best, wanting to be involved in everything, and friendly to everyone. Now, I'm pretty blasé about the Marine Corps, I'm motivated to get my degree so that we don't have to depend on the military anymore, I'm involved in nothing, and friendly to nobody. Basically, I'm jaded and pessimistic. Do I feel the need to change now that I'm seeing myself side by side with what I used to be (minus the masters degree)? Not really. I feel silly for being so naïve. I figure she'll learn her lessons eventually especially since her husband wants to give recruiting duty a try, heheheheh. Dummy.

Also, I find it hilarious that after all these months, my loyal, loving, and devout readers from Massachusetts still read my blog. I'm touched. I'm moved. I'm not surprised. My blog is addicting, insightful, entertaining, and I totally understand why they can't live without it. Excuse me while I dab away at my tears.

Cross Out Another One

We are cursed to celebrate holidays. I think Mother's Day and Father's Day just went out the door. I don't remember what I posted about Mother's Day, and I'm not motivated enough to go and look, but it was 85% a bummer day (if I remember correctly, I sorta glossed it over). For Father's Day, Friday S and I took C out and bought him The Reagan Diaries and Saturday we went shopping and he got new beach shoes (and some other shopping besides) and lunch at Red Lobster. Sounds good, right? Well, it really was. We were having a fun time until the actual day arrived.

We had to do our commissary shopping. It had been over a week since I went and we were out of EVERYthing. We hate grocery shopping and put it off until there's mere crumbs in the pantry. So, we get there and it was pretty dead so we figured we'd zip in and zip out, no harm, no foul. We get to the check out lane and go to pay and our check card gets denied. We're like WTF?!?! How much money did we spend yesterday?? The only thing I could figure is that I made a HUGE mathematical error balancing the checkbook or our credit card number was stolen during our shopping trip on Saturday because I know there should have been more than enough money to cover groceries. We had to leave the entire, overflowing, basket of groceries there in the freaking commissary and walk out. It was so entirely humiliating. For this to happen at all is embarrassing, for it to happen at the commissary is downright nightmarish.

We get home and I immediately check the bank account online and see the problem: Our renter's rent check bounced. I instantly blew my lid and and was cursing and stomping around the house although I didn't throw anything which is usually something I like to do when this angry. But at least it wasn't a mistake that I had made, lol.

Cut to the end, skip the juggling I did to cover the bank account and skip the phone call:::The bounced check was a bank error on her bank's part, and she's overnighting a bank draft complete with the late rent fee and the bank fee we had to pay for the "charge back" on our account.

I hesitated posting this because I know I have several readers chomping at the bit to say "I told you so" about renting out our house but if anyone had a better solution at the time, I sure as heck didn't hear it. But, I had to vent. I still have to deal with Landlord and Repair Guy today.
Fun, fun times for me.

Holidays SUCK!!!!

Have I Mentioned This Before?

I hate people! Hate them, hate them, hate them. Hate them. Why besides the fact that they breathe??



I talked to my landlord on May 28th about the heat pump issue and about how our shower leaks a steady stream of water. He said all that would be fixed right? I called the repair guy last Wednesday, 6/6, to see where the hell he was and found out that Landlord never called him. Repair Guy said he'd be out no later than Monday or Tuesday of this week to fix the bathroom. It's Friday and I have haven't heard a word. As for the heat pump, I have no idea what's going on with that. I tried calling Landlord yesterday and got his voicemail informing me that he's on vacation and won't be back until Monday. You can see by the image below how the heat pump and leaky faucet have affected our bills. The leaky faucet started out as a drip and has increased to a steady stream. The top graph is the electric (which has decreased since we stopped running the heat pump) and the bottom is water:

As you can see, we're not making this problem up and I'm getting royally pissed off about flushing, literally, money down the drain. As of today, there isn't much I can do about it. Idiot Landlord is out of touch so I can't call him until Monday. All I can do is stew about it.

I hate renting and I hate people.

Reality

Sometimes it sucks, right?

There's this concert that I want to go to next month. We could afford it, it's not that far away, and I could probably, maybe swing finding someone to watch the kids. Does this mean I'll get to go? Most likely, no. That's reality.

People like to say that the huge, black, nasty bugs that run around all over down here are just water bugs. The reality: They're roaches. Stop kidding yourselves. You can call them water bugs to make yourself feel better about having bugs the size of small dogs running around, but they're just regular, run of the mill, American Roaches.

I'm participating in an "Ask the Student" session for my school this week for new students. Their favorite question to ask is how many classes can I handle as a single parent with 6 kids and a full time job or a variation thereof. We try to answer it by saying usually it's best to start out with 1 or 2 classes. The reality: Everybody's different and you we can't really answer that question effectively. There are too many variables.

There's more, but I, as always, have work to do.

Truly Inspired

You know those times when you're confronted by someone and at the time, you don't have a snappy comeback but hours later you'll think of the perfect one? Well, today was not one of those days for me.

I just got off the phone with a solicitor trying to get me to consolidate my student loans. Being the polite person that I am, I told him I wasn't interested. He decided to push the point by asking me why. I responded by telling him it was because of his un-solicited call on my line which is on the do-not-call list and that I'm a current student who is not obligated to pay back my loans at this time. His response was to ask me when I was going to graduate. My response? Not before the do-not-call block comes off my line. And I hung up. HEHEHEHEHEHE!!!

Ahhh! I'm having a great day!

It Has Arrived

MS Office 2007 arrived in the mail just a little bit ago. I have it installed and have been playing around with some of the new programs. We had Office 2002 and so there's quite a bit that's new and different. I'm going to have to re-learn all the old programs too. Word is way different. Outlook is different too but it was pretty easy to figure out. Publisher and Groove look like a lot of fun. InfoPath looks interesting too, but it doesn't look like I'll need it much. The interface for OneNote is a little different but I think I'll figure that one out pretty fast too. As for Excel, Access, and PowerPoint, I like those programs but really have little use for them. Maybe I'll need all those programs when we start up our own business, heheh.

Well, I have tons of homework to do and I have to figure out how to use Word again so that I can do it, lol. I'm such a nerd, but learning how to use all those programs is going to be a lot of fun.

Today, Cont.

I'm back. I was really, really bored (and no, I don't have time to be bored. I have other things I should be doing. If I wanted you up my back about it, I'd tell you.) and reading through some old posts which got me to thinking, I'm not nearly as angry as I was a few months ago. Many of my favorite posts (they still entertain me despite the fact that I'm not pissy about it anymore) were about stuff that was pissing me off at the time. I angry blogged TONS! I haven't angry blogged in a while. Well, at least not to the degree that I was back in VT. Yeah, people still piss me off on a daily basis, idiot drivers still exist, and all neighbors are still evil, but it doesn't get to me as much. Or maybe I just let it go faster. Most of '06 and the first couple months of '07 I was having migraines on a daily basis, literally, insomnia like it was cool, and high blood pressure. I don't have that anymore. Not even with the stresses of my school work load. School work is a good stress and everything else is just the daily ebb and flow of life. It's nice. It's a nice change of pace.

Oozing Slime

I had the strangest thing arrive in the mail today: An 11 year old phone bill that's not even mine. It's a long story of which I'm leaving out many details, but that's the gist of it. The dumb thing about it is that since it's more than 7 years old, they can't collect on it even if they had sent it to the correct person. So, what's the point? It's a giganto waste of a tree basically. It's an old GTE bill from back when Verizon was GTE. Apparently, A LOT of people are getting similar bills right now. I used to work for GTE way back in the day. I have to say, this latest development doesn't impress me any further with their business practices but whatever. The really interesting part is who the bill actually, legally belongs to. But that's neither here nor there.

Ohio, it's an oozing slime that just won't leave me alone. I haven't officially lived there since 1998 but I can't seem to permanently remove it's claws from my ass. No offense, lmao.

Tidbits

• I don't feel like forming complete paragraphs today.
• In addition to the glass I still have in my foot, my ear was bleeding. It's all a sign that I'm old.
• I like Keith and the Girl, but not this much: Tattoo.
• Did you know that Subway has more shops than McDonalds does but McDonalds makes more money?
• How can so many people make buying a house sound like it's as easy and simple as buying a Snickers bar?
• We got Cars, Peter Pan, and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 in the mail today. Woohoo!
• We're getting the new MS Office Enterprise 2007 for less than $100. Heheheheheh! And no, we're not stealing or pirating it.
• I wish all the Sopranos headlines would stop giving away what happened in the finale. I can't watch it yet.

New Rule:

*No drunk blogging.

It's as retarded and idiotic as drunk dialing. I considered erasing Friday night's post but figured I'd leave it up as a lesson learned. Aside from Friday night's escapades, over this weekend I've had glass stuck in my feet three different times. I dropped a wine glass out of the cabinet and it shattered all over the kitchen. This last piece is sticking too. I can't get it out. I've had Starbucks twice. I've been dragged to all the new housing developments that are popping up in New Bern. As fun as it is, I'm tired of looking at houses. Our house guest went home yesterday morning. It's impossible to get any homework done with a guest staying at your house. It's freaking rude to sit there and read a book while they're staring at the walls. As a result, I'm so far behind that I have butterflies constantly in my stomach. I've been writing poetry all day. I have to finish up one more sonnet and then I'll be done. I'm tired. Tired, tired, tired.

Okay. I gotta finish up my work. I'm outta time.

I Gotta Blog

Ok. We've had a few, but I have to blog because it's Friday and I always blog on Fridays. Anyway, we are having so much fun with our new friend. We've walked the hell out of my feet cuz she's talking us into buying a house. We also tried out this bakery in downtown New Bern that was awesome. But, we're having so much fun, right? Tonight, we had mojitos, pineapple wine, and a concoction that involved vodka. Now, we're getting ready to make jello shots with some watermelon jello and the rest of the vodka. Fun, fun.

Just get me a spoon!!

Laters.

Real Quick

I only have a few minutes here. I've been gone most of today and now we're cooking dinner but I wanted to drop a line.

Anyway, C and I are half-way sponsoring another Marine and his wife's move to N.C. She's staying with us a couple days (he's deployed) while she takes care of some details about their new house. We spent alllll day looking at houses today. It was a lot of fun. Tonight, it's mojitos and pineapple wine (she brought the wine from Okinawa, lol).

One last thing, M made the honor roll at school and C and I couldn't be more proud. She's made honor roll both of the nine weeks she's been going to school here in N.C. Yay!

Gotta run.

Strange Night (Update)

Last night we had to pick M up at the school at 9 pm. While we were waiting, we saw what we thought was a really big cat slinking out of the brush and into the parking lot of the school. Once it had gotten closer to the parking lot lights we could see that it was actually a fox. That's the first strange thing.

Secondly, sometime in the middle of the night, C scared me awake by sounding like he was choking or something. He came home from work yesterday sick on what he thought was orange juice that had gone bad. Waking up in the middle of the night like that makes me think it was more than the juice. I didn't really go back to sleep after that because he scared me pretty bad and I was worried that he'd stop breathing.

Sometimes I wish that I were into drugs because I have to find a way to fit two days worth of work into today because I'm not going to be home tomorrow. (More on that later.) I'm so stinking tired that the only thing I can think about is crawling back into bed.

Update:
I e-mailed C and asked him how he was doing today because of last night's incident and how he felt yesterday and he e-mailed me back and asked me what I was talking about. He doesn't even remember scaring me to death!! He was sitting up and talking and everything. Sheesh!

This is SOOOO Cool!

Check out this link: Surface

Is that not the coolest thing you've seen? This would totally feed my gadget addiction. It's due out this winter so I'll take one for Christmas. It couldn't possibly cost more than a few thousand, right? Heheh. Apple has already made a mini version of that with their iPhones. It's just too stinking bad that ATT got that phone. I wouldn't touch ATT with a 10 foot pole but it was really tempting to switch when I first heard that they were getting the iPhone. Still, I have to have one of these Surface deals as soon as they are decently priced. I'll need to get a coffee table that it'll fit on. As long as it takes us to pick out a piece of furniture, I better start looking now, lol.

Where's My Excedrin?

The world is a sad, sad place when the top headlines this morning are all about Paris Hilton going to jail. I'm not exactly in the best of moods since I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night and her face and all the boo hoo headlines are not what I want to see.

Whoa! My computer just did the weirdest thing. It made this strange noise and then shut down and restarted. These are the times when I appreciate Blogger's automatic save feature, lol. I wonder what in the world happened.

Anyway, I have a full and busy week ahead of me. TONS of school work to do. I have to write 8 different poems for English and I have a research assignment for Business due this week and a paper due for my mythology class too. M has a big field trip tomorrow to N.C.'s Outter Banks. She'll be gone all day and we have all sorts of things to do for it tonight. She'll actually be sleeping over at a friends house with 3 other girls so that the one mom will take them all to the school at 6:45 tomorrow morning. I could kiss her for offering to take all those girls overnight. Then, she has another field trip on Wednesday where they will be riding their bikes to downtown New Bern to a park. I have a parent/teacher conference for S after school today. The last day of school is Thursday and they only have half a day. And I have to fit in the bills, grocery shopping, house cleaning, etc. somewhere in the middle of all that.

And now it's 8:00 and it's time for me to get to work.

I Had to Share This

In my business class, we are learning about competing in the global market. Our books says how Americans are notorious for considering their own culture to be superior to other cultures. As a result, this has led to setbacks and outright failures in some foreign markets. They gave some examples of advertising and marketing f*ups uninformed Americans have committed in foreign markets (I actually lol at some of these):

• PepsiCo attempted a Chinese translation of "Come alive, You're in the Pepsi Generation" that read to Chinese customers as "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Dead."
• Coors Brewing Company put its slogan "Turn it Loose" into Spanish and found it translated as "Suffer from Diarrhea."
• Perdue Chicken used the slogan "It Takes a Strong Man to Make a Chicken Tender," which was interpreted in Spanish as "It Takes an Aroused Man to Make a Chicken Affectionate."
• KFC's patented slogan "finger-lickin' good" was understood in Japanese as "Bite Your Fingers Off."
• On the other side of the translation glitch, Electrolux, a Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer, tried to sell its products in the U.S. market with the slogan "Nothing Sucks Like an Electrolux."

Nickles, W.G., McHugh, J.M., & McHugh, S.M. (2005). Understanding Business. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Debates

Today, I had a really great conversation with my neighbor. We had met before at a school function (her son is in M's class and her daughter is in S's class) but it's really hard to have a decent conversation at those things. Well, today we got to chatting over the fence (how very suburban of us) and I ended up walking to her house so we could actually sit and talk. What was our conversation about? Religion. Yep. I hardly talk religion with anybody because I have such strong and abnormal opinions about it. Also, considering C's background and mine, religion is a subject better off left completely alone. But L (my neighbor) is intelligent enough to know that two people can disagree and it doesn't have to mean that you have to hate each other and that you don't have to have identical ideals to be friends. She's very religious and she and her husband are very active in their church. I'm agnostic and I believe in evolution. We had so much to say about it and from from the complete opposite ends of the spectrum. It was great. Most religious conversations I've ever had basically went like this: I'm right, you're wrong and I don't care what you have to say to back up your opinions. We plan on picking the conversation back up at a later date. I wasn't done and neither was she, lol.

I had planned on blogging about this subject but have decided against it. If I did it would end up being me thumbing my nose at the way I was brought up rather than an unbiased, well-rounded, and informed view on religion. I don't want to do that but I know I wouldn't be able to help myself. Sorry Dana.

Anyway, what's also great about L, besides the fact that she is able to speak intelligently, is that her husband is in the Army so we can relate and all of our kids are the same age and they like to play together. And now I'm waaaay behind on my school work because I spent most of the afternoon with L. So, off I go.

Funny Video