Things that Make Me Happy

Mr. B is out of town, marking the first time since his illness that we have returned to a regular work schedule.  

Today, I got harassed outside the grocery store by someone who wanted me to sign a petition to bring medical marijuana dispensaries into town.  (Many issues with this, but I will spare you.  Suffice it to say that out of principle, I have little to no respect for individuals who break federal law, and find the blatant abuse of medical marijuana by people who do not have medical need disgusting.)

Anyways, I was passing by the frozen foods and all riled up about the damn hippie drug abusers who are able to organize to get themselves medical marijuana dispensaries, but can't be socially responsible enough to not break the law, because instead of pushing to pass a law to legalize recreational use, which might make sense, they're seeking to legalize medical use so they can continue to break the law with prescription drug abuse....*grumble, grumble*.  Illegal and illogical--what a combination.

Then I find Ben & Jerry's Magic Brownies, and it catches my eye for obvious reasons.  It's awesome.  Try it.  Black raspberry ice cream and brownies.  One of my new favorite things.

This is the book light my husband got me for my birthday (to go with the nook, which I was counting as a sort of early birthday present).  Also one of my new favorite things.  2 levels of brightness, fits great into the little pocket slot on the back of my Bronte nook cover.  I thought it was a little bulky at first, larger than I expected it would be, and the clip is kind of poorly designed.  The metal slide clip would probably shred a leather cover, but I guess it worked out okay where I put it on my nook cover, so that's a positive.  Blue lights on the back give it kind of a futuristic feel, spread out LEDs give a good glow on the book without needing repositioning, and it was very reasonably priced.  Love it!

Ritelite LPL792XLB 5-LED Computer and Book Light, Metal

Alula

Mr. Borealis -- Boy Genius

About two weeks ago the electricity in our downstairs bathroom and front courtyard stopped working.  We reset the breakers for those areas, but the lights and outlets still didn't work.  We tried resetting ALL the breakers hoping they were mislabeled, and it still didn't work.

Convinced we had fried wires and were about to shell out several hundred dollars to have the issue resolved, we did what we usually do with this sort of non-imminent home project: we ignored it.  We have another bathroom and a streetlight in front of our house.

Then, tonight, Mr. B gets antsy and needs to vacuum something (this weird habit is a post in and of itself, so I won't go into it here).  He goes into the guest room downstairs and tried to plug the vacuum into and outlet in the dark bathroom (off of the guest room), and I hear him cuss because he forgot the room no longer has power.  Then he walks out and a thoughtful expression passes his face.

I can almost see the light bulb appear above his head.  "I have a theory!"

He runs up the stairs with a glee not seen since Archimedes went streaking through the streets of Syracuse.  Then he runs back downstairs and into the guest room, and I hear "It worked!  It worked!"

As it turns out, our house continues to be a construction oddity--somehow, the safety outlet in the upstairs bathroom got tripped, thereby resulting in the total loss of power in the downstairs bathroom and front courtyard, even though the outlet and power upstairs still worked (heck if I know...).  When he reset the outlet upstairs, everything started working again.

How my husband's brain arrives at Loss of Power Downstairs = Tripped Outlet Upstairs, I have no idea.  He claims someone must have told him of this weird configuration at some point, but I'm still a little baffled.

Thank goodness for illogical conclusions.

Alula

Naming Hats

No its not crazy to name the hats but could you use names that won't confuse people, there are just to many Katie's in this world right now. Yell that name into a crowd and see how many people answer!

Katie

Munckin was kind enough to be a model for my latest hat.

So I am thinking about giving my hats names, for the purpose of inventory; or does that just sound crazy?

Scouts!

Ladies,

Today I was offered the opportunity to be an assistant leader of a scout troop!  It's a new online virtual troop type thing, and one of my friends from library school will be the primary leader.  It's apparently a pilot program, so having this opportunity offered to me is very exciting!

I need people to be references.  You may need to print out a form, fill it in, scan it in to your computer, and then email it to the program organizer.  Please let me know if any of you are available to be a reference for me!

Thanks!
Alula

Snow

So yesterday we didn't get snow on us but higher up snow has officially fallen welcome the white peaks back.

Hows it going

Well how is everyone doing? I like the new look of the blog very fall and we already have some color changes up here. I'm trying to get photos ready for the festival thing we are enrolled in this next month. I had a job interview at a Karate school as an office manager I don't think I got it but I will call him Monday and find out. Well that's the down and dirty about me. SMILE.

Fuzzy

Breaking out Fall

Ladies,

I'm breaking out a new look for fall!
Please excuse the changing blog templates.

Alula

Amazon Student, Free Shipping!

I'm not sure if any of you knew (or how many of you this currently applies to), but Amazon has a new student membership program going on!  You can read about it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/student/signup/info

The big point is that you get a FREE Amazon Prime membership for one year (usually costs around $70-80 for this service)--for those of you who don't know what Amazon Prime is, it's unlimited free 3-5 day shipping with no minimum order size, and a discount on 2 day shipping ($3.99 per bundle).

Combining my love of online shopping with my obsession with education, I am on this like a pregnant woman on nacho cheese covered chocolate ice cream.

Alula

No Energy

No I will not be getting married any time in the foreseeable future (if ever). One thing is that I am suffering from just being tired and having no energy. Let me tell you it is no fun forcing myself to do anything all I want to do is lay down and not move. Fortunately the 2 year old in my life doesn't let me get away with it at all. this has been going on for a month and no I am not pregnant ruled that out already. Working on top of a mountain is definitely draining the heat is only surpassed by the pelting rain that hits us every afternoon. I've learned to cut rocks with a saw that is just way to big but good thing I can't cut myself because the blade only cut rock using friction and water. Well that's all that is going on here.

Who's getting Married?

Most of you know how bad I am about keeping up with my cell phone.  So today when I charged it at work I wasn't surprised to see I had new text messages accumulated from over the weekend.  One from Q.  One from...some number not stored.  Normally I would disregard, except for the content from the mystery number:

"Im engaged!"

Ah....CRAP.  Somebody out there cared enough to tell me about their impending lifelong prison sentence--I mean, marital bliss--and I didn't care enough to store the number in my phone.  Crap, crap, crap!  I sent one back: "Congrats!"  Then I set to work trying to figure out who the heck I knew, who wasn't in my phone, who could possibly be getting married.

The only person who came to mind was my brother's ex, the mother of my niece and nephew (she has switched cell phone numbers a few times).  Or maybe Fuzzy, if she changed her number and didn't tell me.  Or maybe DoHP, if she forgot to tell us a few things over the last few months or got drunk in Vegas.  I decided the BroEx was probably who it was, and then started freaking out, because the last 2 times she got married, a pregnancy was involved.  Then my mom texted me back that the number didn't belong to the BroEx, and she didn't receive the text message of fortune, ruling out family.

The search continued....Q could not identify the number, which ruled out quite a few friends..  Mr. B had not received the text, so that ruled out his family.

Then I got home and showed Mr. B the number, and I said, "Who do we know who switched cell numbers recently?"  And he said, "Well, I think my sister did a while back, but it can't be her--why would she text you and not me?"

Well, it's his sister--she got a new cell phone and number and forgot to store his number in it.  Getting married.  To her boyfriend of about two years (eh, maybe a year and a half would be closer).  This probably means another bridesmaid dress in my closet and weekend lost to doing cheesy wedding stuff.

But more importantly, this means I'M FREE.

FREE I TELL YOU!

My mother-in-law is about to be too busy planning a wedding to demand we hang out with her every weekend.  FREE! FREE! FREE!

Eleven of the last 14 weekends spent with the inlaws--NOT ANY MORE!  If I hit the jackpot on this one, she'll get pregnant and then I AM OFF THE HOOK.

Sister in law, I am this happy for me, but moreso, I am happy for you!



FREE!
Alula

Comment Monitoring

All,

There has been a surplus of comments here advertising unrelated crap (usually using Chinese characters and a link to something pornographic).

So, I have changed our settings so that all comments must be approved before appearing on the site.  I don't know if we will all be able to monitor and approve, or if only one person's email will be delegated the authority, of if we will all do our own posts' comments...

Anywho, we will now be approving comments before they appear so that the stupid spammers don't run amok here.

Thanks,

Alula

A Wii Little Experiment

Hi Ladies!

A few weeks back, Mr. B and I attended his cousin's wedding in Oklahoma (there's yet another great inlaw story here, but that's another post entirely--in fact, between Q and I, that could be another blog entirely). The point is, we spent one night in a hotel in Oklahoma, and something neat happened.

Mr. B got an overview statement of all the hotel points he's raked up from having a job where he travels for a quarter to half the year, and we had enough points to "buy" a Wii Fit with them.

For anyone who hasn't heard of this device, it's a board that connects to the Wii and is intended for use with games (included with the purchase of the board). As the name implies, it's a workout device that comes with routines for Yoga, Strength, Aerobics, and Balance. There are also games like skii jumping, snow boarding, hula hooping, and others. The Wii Fit posts your progress with charts in the game, tracking your weight, how much time you spent working out, how your balance is, your "real age", and how many calories you burn in exercise, and other things. You can even customize your own workouts to target trouble areas.

I've been using the Wii Fit since we purchased it, and have already seen some weight loss (about 3 pounds, which isn't bad for a couple of weeks). And good golly, for just being a board, some of the exercises will make you hurt the next day--my arm muscles give me the most grief after workouts, while Mr. B complains he feels in more in his thighs.

Having struggled with my weight for a while now, I decided that this is something I can do. It's low impact and people at the gym don't have to watch my wiggly butt in sweats doing squats.

Riding the BMI line between overweight and obese, I finally decided to get Mr. B involved to make me do something about it. I've been using the Lose It! app since the start of this year, and showed him the chart of how much I weighed on January 1st, and then how much I gained when he got sick and went to the hospital. Since then, I've managed to get back to my start-of-the-year weight. I signed him up to get weekly email updates tracking my weight and what I'm eating (caloric intake), and he can see when I'm on the Wii Fit, for how long, and session activities.

He has similarly committed to working out with me to try to gain weight as per his doctor's orders, and is increasing the amount that he eats.

I don't know if anyone here has an interest in seeing my weekly caloric intake, but I'm hoping that I continue to see enough progress with the Wii Fit to be worthy of mention here. Hopefully it can get me back to swimsuit weight, and then I can start swimming laps like I did back in high school.

In other news, I think I'm going to start another blog devoted to ereaders. I've developed an unhealthy relationship with my nook (as in, it now joins me at work so I can read scientific articles from our library on it instead of the computer screen, I sleep with it, and I miss it when it's not around). I have found so many cool resources for ereaders in the last few weeks that I am going to try to organize them somehow. I also wrote to author Jennifer Roberson to inquire if she was going to release any of her Chronicles of the Cheysuli books in digital format, and she wrote me back less than 5 hours later (!) saying she was trying to do it--it's more in the hands of the publisher. (For anyone who hasn't read these books, there are 8 of them, they are a dynastic fantasy genre, and they are very good--you may have trouble finding them in a bookstore because they are older, but they are worth it to order from online.)

Alula