Anniversary Weekend

Friday was the fifth anniversary of Mr. B’s and my first date.  He surprised me with flowers.  Stargazer lilies and roses are two of my favorites.  He also made a nice dinner on Friday night, including his version of Brandied Apples (apples baked in brown sugar and Southern Comfort).  Then we watched The Bank Job on DVD.  On Saturday, we got dressed up and went out to Jim’s Bistro in Peoria Heights for dinner.  We then went down to Crusen’s to see Too White Crew perform.  It was packed as usual for their performance.  You could barely move a couple inches without bumping into someone.  We ended up leaving early because the overwhelming warmth in that place was making me feel awful.  On Sunday, we just completely vegged out for the day.  All in all, a good celebration.

What I did on my winter vacation

Ya know, I much prefer summer vacations.  Can we move some of the freebie vacation days there?  No?  Well, then I guess it’s just winter vacation stories. Had quite a range of activities this holiday break.  Here’s a few highlights:

• Went shopping with Mr. B’s mom to pick my Christmas presents.
• Went to Mr. B’s work Christmas party and then got to take care of Mr. B for an hour or so while he worshiped the porcelain god.
• Got a call from work that big news was coming the next day and I needed to log in and check out the e-mails.  Checked e-mail at the appropriate time.  Was then called into work about 30 min later to make an emergency change.  Was called later that day to make sure I had read the e-mail and all the other supporting documentation in detail.
• Went to dinner with a group of friends.
• Caught up on Tivo’d shows.
• Spent Christmas Eve with my family.
• Spent Christmas morning with Mr. B’s family and Christmas evening with my family.
• Got a snow blower for Christmas from my parents.
• Drove through the near white-out stage fog to drop Mr. B’s car off at the shop.
• Hit the after-Christmas sales…hard.
• Went to lunch with a friend.
• Cleaned out most of my dresser and half of one closet.
• Drove up to Chicago to ring in the new year with a group of college friends.
• Read several books.  Bought several more.  Lost count of exactly how many.
• Watched several movies on DVD that we had purchased unseen based upon recommendations from friends.  Lost count of those too.
• Deflated and fixed the lights in the inflatable Santa car.
• Had dinner at Mr. B’s parents.
• Stayed up late and slept in later.
• Completely screwed up my sleeping schedule making the 1st couple days back to work slightly difficult.

If there was anything else, I’ve already forgotten.  Oh well…

Happy New Year!

I’m a day late in posting, and so far, the New Year is kicking my butt.  After hanging out with some friends in Chicago to ring in the New Year, I couldn’t sleep pretty much at ALL.  Which kinda sucked.  Felt like I had downed some energy drinks and then tried to get to sleep.  My eyes were stuck open and my heart was racing.  I had a good time and all, but I don’t know what brought all that on, especially since I had been drinking Malibu mixed with juice all night, which wouldn’t have caused me to stay awake.  And I had stopped drinking a couple hours before I went to bed.  Oh well.

This morning I was woken up early (relative term – it was 9:30 but remember the no sleep the night before, so I was going for later) by Mr. B being annoying (a shock to those of you who know him, I’m sure), followed by Sylvia getting sick all over the floor in the bedroom.  Not really a way to start the new year.

On the positive side, the pups are now a year old.  Tag’s birthday was New Year’s Eve and Kyra’s birthday was New Year’s Day.  They’re growing out of puppyhood so fast.  For those keeping track – he’s about 75 lbs and she’s about 65 lbs, so they’ve been beyond puppy size for a while now, but still quite in the puppy playful stage.  Sylvia still doesn’t want anything to do with them, so we’re still working on that.  Our main obstacle is Kyra’s excitedness.  She sees Sylvia and runs over to greet her, which freaks poor Sylvia out.  Tag’s more calm, so we’ve tried a couple times to get them used to each other hoping that it will help her get used to them and also will keep Sylvia from feeling overwhelmed with both of them.

And I’m going to try to post more.  Still not completely defined on how much.  Certainly not a post a day, but anything’s gotta be an improvement on last year, so we’ll see how it goes.

7 Deadly Sins

Not completely sure about this one. Apparently, having no objection to sleeping until noon and eating out once in a while as well as eating processed or packaged food bumps up some scores.

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Very High
Wrath:	Low
Sloth:	Very High
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Very Low
Pride:	Medium

The Seven Deadly Sins Quiz on 4degreez.com

Though I’m now wondering just why I’m with Mr. B with scores like these. I’m not sure what he answered to knock these up so high, though I do have a few guesses.

Greed:	Very High
Gluttony:	Very High
Wrath:	Very High
Sloth:	Low
Envy:	Medium
Lust:	Very High
Pride:	High

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

“And…Christmas is finally over…”

This is what I said to Mr. B a few minutes ago as we finally got our Christmas tree taken down. Yes, you heard me – the tree finally came down on Feb. 6, even though it sat undecorated and unlit since Dec. 29 and the rest of the Christmas decorations were packed up by Jan. 6. At that point, Mr. B had lamented that Christmas was over. But the tree remained. Why? Well, several reasons, actually.

• Mr. B started classes again the weekend of the 7th, with two classes this semester, so he was in class two nights, and working on homework usually two other nights and Sunday mornings.
• Mr. B has been working overtime for months consisting of 10-hr days on weekends and an 8-hr day on Saturday. One week he even worked a couple 12-hr days when they were trying to perform some work during a shut-down. Between that and the classes and homework schedule, he’s pretty wiped out most of the time. The overtime finally stopped last week, but we’re not sure how long that’ll last.
• We’ve had stuff going on most weekends since the holidays. Between birthday dinners, being on-call for work, trying to squeeze in grocery shopping and the like, it’s been quite hectic. And Mr. B got really sick at the end of Jan. to the point where he basically slept the entire weekend. This weekend we spent taking care of puppies at his house. His roommate recently adopted a dog and then found out she was gonna have puppies that ended up being born on New Year’s Eve. His roommate was going out of town last weekend, so we were taking care of the two dogs and 7 puppies. Talk about a handful. That definitely didn’t leave any free time.
• My cat chewed through a couple of the wires on the bottom of the pre-lit tree, so Mr. B’s been refusing to take it down until he could also fix the wires. At first, he didn’t have his tools here. Then he didn’t have connectors. Then he didn’t have enough time. It was always something.

Well, last night his class was canceled due to the weather. I tried to convince him to take the tree down last night, but it never happened. Tonight, his other class got canceled. Since that meant he had a week with no homework to tie him down, he didn’t have excuses like this was his only chance to do…whatever. So I finally convinced him to do it. And how long did it take him to actually fix the wires? Oh, about 5 min, including getting the tools and connectors out. Wasn’t that long of a task at all.

As we were leaving the basement after storing the tree, I told Mr. B, “And…Christmas is finally over.” I know he was a bit disappointed. He’s a big fan of Christmas.

The best laid plans…

Yeah – they never quite work out the way they’re supposed to, do they?

The plan as it started out was to leave for Minnesota on Thursday afternoon. I took the afternoon off to finish packing and take care of a couple things around the house. Mr. B only had to work until 2:30, so then he was going to get cleaned up and come to my house to get his car packed quickly. We were going to drop my car off at the shop so it could have the tires remounted and balanced and an alignment done, since it desperately needed it, and then get on the road. We wanted to get out of town well before any of the weather hit.

Well, things started out OK. I left work on time. I got home and got everything taken care of around the house. At about 3:30, Mr. B called and said there was a change in plans. He was sitting in the middle of an accident on the Bob Michael bridge. Apparently a car had died on the way up the bridge from East Peoria to Peoria and was sitting at a dead standstill. He realized the car was going slow, but not that it was completely stopped until the car in front of him ducked over to the other lane at the last minute. He had a car next to him, so he slammed on the brakes and came to a stop a few feet from the car. However, he was then hit from behind and drilled into the car anyway. Then that car was hit by a truck. So the front and rear of his car is banged up. Apparently the back end of his car was a couple inches off the ground where the car behind was wedged underneath. It was still driveable, but he didn’t want to make a long trip in it since he wasn’t completely sure what all was damaged, not to mention the back hatch wouldn’t open because of the damage.

The phone call basically consisted of him telling me he was in a car accident and we were going to have to take my car. Never once said that he was OK, though I figured he was since all he was talking about was the trip. Well, he called the car shop, Goodyear in Pekin, owned by some friends of his family to see if they could get my car in to at least get the alignment done quickly. But I’d been worried about the tires lately cause I’ve been having trouble getting traction, so I was especially nervous about going further north and in the weather that was supposed to go through Thurs. night/Fri. morning. I hurried out to the shop, and they said my tires were “iffy” and weren’t sure whether I should go with them or not. Luckily they had the correct size in stock, so in an hour they had 4 new tires mounted and balanced and an alignment done on my car. They rock.

I hurried home and met Mr. B right as he was getting there. We threw stuff into my car and got on the road right as the snow was hitting (over 2 hours after we had planned on leaving). Unfortunately we were heading out the back side of the storm, right through the areas that it had already passed through, so it was slow going. It took us 3-1/2 to 4 hrs to go from Peoria to Cedar Rapids, IA – a trip which should have taken about 2-1/2 hours. We had taken the nationwide number of Choice hotels with us and called when we stopped for dinner to find out what they had in the way of open rooms along our route when we started to figure out how far we might get. After dinner, the roads had been cleared enough that we didn’t really have any issues, though we still weren’t going full speed cause there were a couple of icy spots here and there.

The only real issue we had was slightly before we stopped for dinner. We were driving through the Quad Cities along a section of interstate three lanes wide. Still not completely sure where we were at the time. Mr. B had been on the phone for a few minutes with his family getting weather updates and filling them in on the situation with his car. I was asking him to get off the phone cause it makes me nervous when he’s on the phone and the roads are bad cause I know he’s a little less observant when he’s on the phone – though he swears in that kinda weather, he’s fully focused on the road. All of a sudden, a deer ran out in front of us. Mr. B slammed on the brakes, we started sliding, luckily pretty straight down the middle of the three lanes, and the sound of the tires must have scared the deer away cause he hopped up into the air, turned right back around and ran off. It was at that point that Mr. B then remembered my car doesn’t have anti-lock brakes. It freaked me out pretty well, but otherwise no big deal. Mr. B did get off the phone, especially cause at that point, I was pretty shaky and was really giving him a bad time about being on the phone.

The next morning, we made the rest of the trip to Minneapolis without any issue at all – and at almost full speed. He was still taking it pretty easy on the roads just cause there were some bridges that were a little slick, though nothing big enough that we really had any problem with losing traction. The rest of the weekend went without incident except we nearly bought more than we could fit into my little car, but that’s probably another post…

Productive? Me?

Mr. B and I really didn’t accomplish anything else last night. I spent half the evening making sure my kitty cat didn’t start chewing on the new tree and the other half of the evening we spent watching Knocked Up.

Today, however, was much more productive. Mr. B trimmed back all the hedges. A couple look exceptionally awful now because we really hacked them back. I hope they come back OK next year. I followed behind to rake up and bag all the branches and leaves, then he mowed the yard while I cleaned up all the leaves in the back patio. We then put up the new inflatable Santa in the low rider. Mr. B is pretty happy with it, but then again, he’s into cars and figures all of them should end up on air, so there really wasn’t much that could have caused him to be disappointed in it.

I came back inside and had a large cup of hot chocolate. It got pretty cold out there. Mr. B went home to get cleaned up and find his Christmas ornaments. I don’t know what’s planned for the rest of the night, but I’m hoping to take it easy, maybe just watch another movie or something. We’re planning on getting the tree decorated and all the rest of the Christmas decorations put up outside tomorrow afternoon. That is, if Mr. B doesn’t start whining that we need to get the tree decorated tonight.

Headfirst into the madness

Mr. B decided we needed to have some of the items in the After Thanksgiving ads. I hate shopping in the first place, much less when there are that many people out and about, so I really wasn’t interested in going out. Most of the stuff he wanted was part of the 2-day sales, but there were a couple of doorbuster deals that Mr. B just had to have. So, he woke me up about 4:30 this morning to go hit the Black Friday sales. We both got dressed quickly and threw on a hat, and off we went to spend some $.

1. JCPenny’s – We got the very last doorbuster 7.5′ 1000 light (500 clear, 500 multi-color) Christmas tree and they were giving everyone who walked in the door a free Mickey Mouse snow globe.
2. American – We actually didn’t buy anything here. We went for a 42″ Hitachi plasma flat panel TV that was a 2-day special. Unfortunately, they had only had 5 of them, so they were then trying to upsell the nicer Hitachi 42″, but we weren’t up for that.
3. Best Buy – We got a 2 GB Micro SD card that my brother asked us to pick up for him for his birthday.
4. Target – We went crazy here and bought a TON of DVDs. Family Guy: Volumes 2, 3, & 4; Veronica Mars: Seasons 1 & 2; The Holiday; and Ocean’s Thirteen
5. Menards – We went to get the 5-in-1 inflatable loveseat/lounger/bed, and ended up getting not only that, but an 8′ long inflatable Santa in a low-rider car for the yard (it even bounces the front end), a leatherman/utility knife combo, and a tree skirt and some ornaments for the new tree.

We made it to breakfast by about 9:45, and then we came home and went back to bed. That almost made me feel worse. I had so much trouble getting out of bed after that, and I’ve had a killer headache all afternoon. We got the new tree set up, and that’s about all we accomplished and are planning to accomplish today.

The good news: we saved 49% on the stuff we bought and everyone was pretty nice. The bad news: we really didn’t need any of the stuff we bought and a couple of the lines were extremely long. The even worse news: only one item purchased is a gift.

Imagine if you will…

Say you’re writing a blog post and your significant other comes home. That person glances over to see what you’re doing and realizes the blog post is about him/her. (S)He attempts to read the blog post over your shoulder and when you turn the laptop screen down and call him/her on it, (s)he says, “I just want to make sure you get the facts right.” You explain to him/her exactly what you’re planning to say in the post, and (s)he agrees that sounds accurate, but continues to try to read over your shoulder. You tell him/her “I’ll let you read it when I’m done” and attempt to continue. The reading over your shoulder continues, so you once again turn the laptop screen down a bit and say, “If you don’t stop reading over my shoulder, I’m moving to the other side of the living room. I’ll let you read the preview before I post it.” Things finally settle down and you finish the post. You offer to let him/her read the preview, but (s)he says, “Not right now. I need to take a shower and get to sleep. I’m wiped out.” You’re not planning on publishing the post until tomorrow, so you save it and close down the computer.

The next day, you’re thinking of publishing the post, but wonder if your significant other would be upset since (s)he seemed interested in reading it, and you said you’d let him/her read the preview before posting. You decide to wait until you can let him/her read it and hold off publishing it for the rest of the day. When you see him/her that evening, you ask if (s)he wants to read it quick cause you’re getting ready to post it. (S)He then says, “Oh, I don’t really care. I was just doing it to bug you.”

Would that bother you? Would you blog often if that was a common situation? Would you attempt to only blog when that person wasn’t there to bug you? What if that meant you could only blog late in the evening when you’re tired and no longer feel like blogging?

This was pretty much the exact situation I found myself in the other night when I was prepping Mr. B’s birthday post. Let’s just say this plays a big part in my lack of posting over the past few months. And yes, during ScaBloPoMo, I’ve been posting almost exclusively when Mr. B isn’t home or is busy working on something in the other room.

Dedicated to Mr. B

Today is Mr. B’s birthday, so I thought I would relate how the two of us met, for those who didn’t know us at the time. Settle in. This is gonna be a long one…and, oh yeah, I make no guarantees about interestingness.

It all started with Rachel, though at the time she was trying to set me up with someone else. See, she was trying to convince me to come to her son’s birthday party and meet some of her friends. If I happened to be interested in anyone, she’d try to set me up with someone. Well, I wasn’t really going for the whole house full of strange people. I’m a bit of an introvert if you hadn’t guessed. Anyway, one of her guy friends asked if she knew anyone she could set him up with, and the two ideas came together. The night before the party she had me and this guy over, so she could set us up and then I’d go to the birthday party knowing someone other than Rachel. Well, this story isn’t about that other guy, so suffice it to say, that setup didn’t really work out. However, at the birthday party, I met Mr. B. Now, I didn’t think much of it cause that was still when trying to figure things out with this other guy, and Mr. B got the impression that I was kinda there with this other guy, so I guess he didn’t think much of it either.

A few weeks after that, Rachel convinced me to go to a cruise-in hosted by the car club she and her then-fiancé-now-husband are part of. At this point, there was nothing happening with guy #1, and Mr. B started talking to me, explaining some of the stuff about the cars, etc. Towards the end of the night, he headed off to the bars with a bunch of the guys and I continued hanging out with some of the people from the club. I thought Mr. B was nice enough, but we hadn’t really talked much, so again, I didn’t think much of it.

Six months later, Rachel convinced me to come hang out at a bonfire and her house with a bunch of their friends. Her son ended up being hurt while at a family member’s house and I accompanied Rachel to the emergency room, where we spent most of the night. When returning to her house, I talked with a few of the guys, since that was mostly all that was left at the time, but mostly hung out and talked to Rachel. I didn’t really talk to Mr. B much that night, but when he left, I think again to head out to the bars with some of the guys, he gave Rachel and hug and then gave me one as well. That struck me as a little odd, but Rachel said he was just friendly.

A couple weeks later, I joined a group going out for Rachel’s fiancé’s birthday. I was talking a bit with one of the guys I had talked to at the bonfire and he asked me out. I figured, “What the hell” so decided to go. Unfortunately, he asked me if I wanted to go out a couple days later, which happened to be my birthday. I told him what the day was and said it’d be OK if he wanted to go out a different time as that put some extra pressure on a first date, but he said it was fine. He came over to hang out for a little bit the next night and we talked and got to know each other. At the end of the night, we hadn’t yet made definitely plans for our date, but he said he’d call me the next day to finalize plans. Well, he never called. I eventually called him and he said he got tied up. Well, it turned into a big mess and I wrote that whole situation off.

After a few weeks, Rachel again convinced me to go to a cruise-in. Well, guy #2 was there, and it was a rather uncomfortable situation, so I hung out for a while and made my excuses. At that point, Rachel had a hard time convincing me to go to anything involving groups of her friends. About that same time, Mr. B started asking Rachel about me. However, any time she brought it up, I refused to have anything to do with him because I was worried about people thinking I was working my way through the group of friends.

About four or five months later, I found out that Rachel was trying to set up a lunch date because Mr. B was working on a contract job in the building we worked in. However, at the last minute, things fell apart and he got pulled to a job in another building.

After several more months of him asking about me, she finally convinced me to let her give him my phone number. So, about a year and a half after we first met, we finally went out on our first state. We went to Olive Garden, sat at the bar and talked for an hour or so waiting for a table, then sat at the table for a few more hours just talking. We stopped at a bar for a little bit to kill time before the movie started, then went to see 50 First Dates.

All in all, it was a good night, almost 1-1/2 years after we first met. We’ve both agreed we’d have never worked out if we had started dating when we first met. He was still partying quite a bit, and I most definitely wasn’t into that lifestyle. So we took a little longer to get together, but here we are, coming up on four years in January.

A little side note, we did have an interesting story on our first date. Since we finally went out in January, he was driving his beater car. He has a couple show cars but they, of course, aren’t used in the winter. And let me tell you, the beater car was a piece of crap. It died a couple times at stoplights because it apparently doesn’t handle cold well…yes this from the winter car. Also, when we went to leave the restaurant, I was still getting my coat and purse settled, so I wasn’t yet seat-belted in when he was first putting the car into reverse. The car jerked so hard changing gears, I almost hit my head on the dashboard. A possible concussion would have made for a good first date.