Catching Up

Three or so days ago I said that I was going to get some of my favorite scrapbook pages posted. I haven't done it. I will do it, but I haven't yet. Maybe this weekend. Maybe next week. Soon, my pretties, I promise.

You know those days where no matter how fast you hurry you just get farther and farther behind? That was my Thursday. I had something at work that was supposed to start at 10:30 a.m. that I knew would take roughly a half hour, theoretically freeing me up by 11:00. This was, of course, important because I "needed" to be able to leave work by 11:00 to do lunch with a colleague and then get to another obligation in a town about an hour away that started at 1:30 p.m. When I returned from that little jaunt, Shad and I "needed" to leave by about 4:30 p.m. so that we could travel for three hours to a concert that started at 10:00 p.m. While I realize that this isn't the very tight, every minute planned schedule that some people operate on a day to day basis, this was pretty packed for me. And it all went wrong.

My 10:30 didn't start until 11:00 so it didn't finish until 11:30. My colleague was waiting for me in my office (rather impatiently, I might add!) and off we went, only to turn around about five miles outside of town because we needed to trade vehicles. By the time that we get into the town where the 1:30 appointment is it's 12:20 or so and what was supposed to be a nice leisurely lunch with even more colleagues has turned into grabbing food from Popeye's and wolfing it down. We arrived promptly for the 1:30, which of course didn't get started until more like 2:15 and then, instead of taking the 15-20 minutes that I assumed it would take, went more like 45 minutes. A quick trip back had me home at 4:00, but we didn't actually leave town until 5:00 or so, which meant that our planned romantic dinner at the concert venue turned into the drive-thru at Arbys and a turkey sandwich that I ate as I drove. The concert? That's definitely another "Shad and Susan" story for the ages!

The concert was at the House of Blues in Chicago. We were very excited to see one of the newer artists on Jack Johnson's label, Zee Avi, in the smaller venue of the HOB called the "back porch." I was hoping for a jazz club-like atmosphere where we could sit at a table, maybe have a drink, and chill out while we enjoyed Zee's music.

As you have already gleaned from past posts, I'm a country mouse. I consider myself to be a very good driver and I really enjoy driving, but not necessarily in downtown Chicago and most definitely not when I'm not sure of where I'm going. We finally find the HOB and locate parking which, because I was getting frustrated and just wanted to be out of the stupid car, we ended up doing at the HOB. Valet parking. $16 minimum for one hour or less, more for longer. Not to expose my backwoodsishness, but I don't know that I've ever valet parked before, ever. As we're dropping off the car, the attendant asked what we're there for and when we say "a show" he looked a bit, well, befuddled. I justified this to myself by saying that the performed was fairly new and probably a bit unknown, thus off the radar.

As we entered the HOB the souvenir area was right inside of the door. It was about 9:10 p.m. or so and the doors didn't open until 9:30 so we had some time to kill. Plus, we had coupons for $10 shirts, so what better way to waste time than to pick up some mementos of what was sure to be an awesome night, right? I saw, but did not buy, this fantastic magnet. The sentiment is spot on for how I feel most days.

As Shad asked about an ATM, I took a closer look at the concert schedule but could not find Zee's name. The placard outside of the back porch had a name on it, but it was not Zee's name. The closest working ATM was a few steps outside of the HOB, so as we left to go to the ATM I asked Shad if I could take a look at the tickets. I looked, then asked him to look. At the date. He did and said "Yeah, it's the 26th." I'm sure you can see where this is going - our tickets were for the 26th all right. Of September.

I of course thought that this was hilarious! It kinda capped off my day in which nothing had gone as planned, but it was truly a "no harm, no foul" situation. After all, I got to spend time with my favorite boy, I got a cool HOB t-shirt, and now I have something else to look forward to doing with him! Pretty much win, win, win as far as I was concerned, and I immediately recognized that this (mis)adventure would become a part of our history. Shad didn't take it so well at first, there was a little self-blame, etc., but I think the ride home with great music and the "OMG I'm so tired that I'm loopy and saying off-the-wall stuff" conversation that we shared at about 2:00 a.m. made it a little better. At least he can tell the story and smile now!

So as not to have a three page long post, I shall end there and pick up again later with Friday, which turned out to be "Appreciate Susan" day. What a wonderful surprise!

Until then, my friends, keep your powder dry. Mostly because wet powder gets all clumpy, I guess...

*** Not that you probably care, but I always spell-check my posts. Strangely enough, "backwoodsishness" is not in Blogger's dictionary. "Colleague" and "souvenir" both are, thankfully. ;) ***

30 Days of Me - Day 7

Okay, total dilemma....

I had planned to do the "30 Days of Me" in 30 actual calendar days; however, due to a couple of late nights and poor planning on my part, I am now two calendar days behind. Do I post 3 days worth of material to catch up with the calendar or modify this project to be "30 Days of Me On Whichever 30 Days I Feel Like Posting"? I'm thinking about going with this one with the explicit understanding that I'll try to make it as close to 30 calendar days as is now possible - there's no use dragging this 30 days into a year long thing, right?

Today's prompt is "a picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you." My immediate response was to pull a picture of my adorable husband and plaster his mug all over this post - after all, we've been married almost ten years now and I simply adore him. He's undoubtedly my biggest fan and is supportive, indulgent and affectionate and, as I've said before, he's a hottie! He is, quite literally, the love of my life. *Can anyone tell that I'm feeling really schmoopy towards him today? Of course, he's asleep right now and it's pretty early, so there's no telling how I'll be feeling about him in a couple of hours.... ;)

As I gave the matter a little more thought, though, I considered the people who have given me wisdom, guidance and life lessons that I turn to again and again and who shaped the core values that I draw upon every day. Without further ado, I give you.....

My parents, circa 1980. I'm the adorable little blonde sprite and my sister Jen is the mischievous-looking brunette. Yep, this is me at seven!

My parents are awesome. There is literally not a situation in which I can look back and think "Wow. I wish they would have done _______ different." The lessons that they taught me (and the ones they let me learn on my own!) have provided the base for who I am today and who I'll be tomorrow.

When people tell me that I'm "just like" my mom or my dad, it always makes me feel good. There are definitely some ways that I'd like to be more like my parents - I'd love to have more of my dad's work ethic and technical knowledge and I'll never be the cook/homemaker that my mom is or, I suspect, be able to match her selflessness or compassion - but I guess those are things I can continue to work on. All in all, I'd have to say that I'm not "just like" either one of my parents, but a pretty decent blend of both. And I like it!

30 Days of Me - Day 6

So I don't know if she counts as a "superhero" or not, but for "Day 6 - your favorite superhero and why" I choose Alice from the Resident Evil movies. She has all of the qualities of a regulation superhero - genetically altered and programed by a big corporation as an experiment, now rebelling against said big corporation, generally kicking a** and taking names. Throw in the end-of-civilization zombie story lines and the franchise has it all. Just like spiderman but with zombies, right?

Now for the "why". I think that I like Alice as a superhero because she is depicted as a very self-sufficient, competent savioress of the world. This, of course, contrasts markedly from the usual gun-toting-bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold-avenging-the-loss-of-his-only-love movies.

As you can probably guess, I'm super-psyched for the new Resident Evil movie coming out next month. We might even go see it in 3-D!

Milestone Tuesday!

Okay, so you never have to read about me preparing to take my motorcycle road test again...I took it, I passed, I pretty much rock! I was a lot more nervous than I thought I was going to be but I got through it okay. Now I'm ready to hit the road on my own (legally) and I'm super-psyched about roaring up to work on my "hog". **Don't worry, I totally understand that I'm nowhere near that cool - I look like a woman approaching middle-age riding a motorcycle - but darn it I'm a happy middle-aged woman on a motorcycle!**

I love watermelon, I really do, but I'm not a fan of cutting it up. I know that I can buy it pre-cut, but as lazy as I am in not wanting to prepare it I'm even cheaper in that I won't pay 100% more for someone else to do it.

I do not like hand-washing dishes. Our water is very hard and leaves spots on our dishes, so even though we have a dishwasher it really doesn't work too well. I did about 70% of the dishes last night, but of course we had supper and dirtied more dishes, pans, etc. Even cutting up that darn watermelon dirtied more dishes!

My plan for tomorrow is to download (upload?) pictures of some of my favorite scrapbook pages. I'm not generally satisfied with my pages because I have a very hard time breaking free from my linear, very controlled style, but I've done some pages that I like a lot and I'll share them tomorrow.

Ah, the dishes await. Good night all!

30 Days of Me - Day 5

Day 5- a picture of somewhere you've been to

Well, on Christmas Day 2008 Shad and I "been to" our first trip out of the country together to Canada for a few days at Niagara Falls. Since it was right after Christmas there were not so many tourists and the weather turned out to be surprisingly nice. During our first trip down to the falls (our hotel was about three blocks away) there was a lot of snow and ice on the ground, especially as we got closer to the Falls.

Three days later, I took a picture of the same marker, now completely free of snow and ice. The temperatures got up to the high 50's, low 60's and it was actually nice enough to walk around without a coat (at least for those of us acclimated to the Midwestern winters!)

Possibly one of the best parts of the trip was the unique dining experience that we shared at a Chinese restaurant. Shad spotted the flyer for this place at our hotel and decided that we should give it a try. Of course, we had no concept of how far away from the hotel it was so we called a cab and, with our senses of adventure front and center, off we went to this fabulous mecca of Chinese goodness. Right. Like $10 later we got to the place and find that it's among the sketchiest buffets ever. Like, so sketchy that when the floors got a little wet the employees threw down copious amounts of corn starch to make it "safer." It was pretty atrocious, but us being us we found plenty to laugh about. Shad even found these delectable (?) cookies for desert.

30 Days of Me - Day 4

Fantastic. Now I get to share "a habit that you (I) wish you (I) didn’t have."

I have a couple to pick from, like the way that I'll put off doing housework until the last possible moment because it's just going to get dirty again in like four seconds anyway or the way that I make horrible food choices with the justification that "I'll do better tomorrow." I think that the one that I'll go with for these purposes is my compulsive acquisition of craft supplies.


I have way too many craft supplies by almost anyone's standards. It seems like if I get involved in a new craft, say making jewelry, I go out and buy all of the stuff I might possibly need to make 1000 bracelets. If there is an upside to my habit, I will say that I am relatively good at shopping for items either on sale or at flea markets/thrift stores. Of course, that doesn't reduce the amount of physical space that this stuff takes up. My craft room/office is now full to the brim. I'm even at the point that I feel like I can't tell the kids to clean up their rooms because my room (which is on the same floor as their bedrooms) is so messy!

I'm working on slowly but surely getting things organized, but you know how it goes - you have to make a mess to clean a mess. I'm at least getting better about putting things back where they belong when I'm done, so my table is at least 50% usable at most times.

So now that it's out in the open maybe I'll do a better job of staying on top of it, right? One can hope.....

Hasta la vista!

Sunday Roundup

A week or two ago I declared on facebook that I was going to re-introduce myself to crocheting. My third grade teacher taught all of her students to crochet and I remember really enjoying it and quite frankly being pretty good at it as well. Almost thirty years later I decided to try my hand at it again and I've posted the results (so far) for your review. Not too bad if I say so myself. My one lament is that the green yarn that I'm using is a different brand than the other colors and seems to be a little less dense, causing a very slight size variation in those squares. Live and learn I guess.....

Shad and I went on a lovely motorcycle ride today. We went to a town that we don't often visit and wandered through three of their antique/junk shops on the town square. My favorite find was five round quilted placemats for $7. It's actually a pretty good idea for us to go wandering on the bikes rather than taking one of the vehicles - it's easier to walk away from "must have" items because they won't fit in the saddlebags.

The one down side of the trip occurred when I experienced my first killin'. There we were, traveling at highway speed down a two-lane road. I was in the lead, Shad was behind me, and it was then that I saw my future victim, hoppity, hoppity, hoppiting from the other lane into ours in great, leaping hoppities. As soon as I saw the little guy (although really he was not so little so far as frogs go) something told me that our paths would soon cross. Sure enough, just as I went by he made a fantastic, flying leap right into my front tire. *SQUISH* It was horrible. Shad said that he watched as the frog went under my front tire and then was kicked out from my back tire where he landed in classicly comedic roadkill pose. I, of course, was cool about the whole thing. (Okay, that's a big dirty lie. As soon as I hit the frog I immediately started doing that hand-flap "Ew Ew Ew" motion, while actually saying "Ew Ew Ew" just like a little kid). I sincerely hope that is the last thing I hit, ever.

Shad and Malorie just went to pick up the pizza, so I'm going to call it an early (blog) night. See ya tomorrow!