Empty Rooms

Our stuff has been slowly disappearing... and reapppearing in the downstairs family room! I would take some pictures to show the pile in our family room, but alas, the cable I use to get pictures off my camera is in an unreachable spot. Man, am I looking forward to getting the new carpet in and putting stuff back where it belongs. :-)

Tired....

My eyes hurt... I want to journal, but I'm too tired... and Matt says I have to go to bed. So it looks like there's not much I will write tonight! I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, but I might have to take a nap while I'm there... :-)

What a good Saturday...

I had such a good day today. It all started with some chocolate chunk pancakes....

Matt and I went into St. Paul today so I could show him where I'm working now. We got some exercise walking through the St. Paul skyway system, but we ruined it all with a stop at Caribou Coffee. :-)

Then we headed home for the afternoon, making a couple of stops on the way. I got to snuggle with my cats and watch some TV/help Matt play some video games.

At 3, I headed out to meet my friend Kathryn and some of her gymnastics friends at a bar near the U. We hung out for a while before heading to a MN vs. OK gymnastics meet at 6. I always have fun at those gymnastics meets - it also inspires me to keep trying to include exercise in my week. :-)

After gymnastics, I headed over to our church to catch the last bit of a game night. The remaining group, including Matt, was playing Loaded Questions, so I listened in for a while. Then a few of us played some DDR - always a good time, and it counts as exercise!

Finally, on the way home, I got a call from my cousin Catherine, who happened to be hanging out with my dad. (Catherine goes to school in Indiana, so for holidays she will sometimes head over to stay with my Grandma and hang out with my dad.) We talked for 40 minutes on the phone - good times. :-)

And now I am sitting at my desk while Matt is playing clips on youtube from "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". Again, good times. And what a great end to a great day....

Change of Plans

Well, my chick-flick night turned into a clean-the-car, walk-with-Matt, do-homework night, which then ended with a little bit of American Idol catch-up on youtube. :-)

If you are watching American Idol this season, who are you hoping will win? I am still trying to formulate my opinion, but I think I'm leaning towards Carly...

Also, who typically agrees with Simon? I know I do - practically every time. It's the game of guessing what Simon will say that keeps me watching the show. :-)

Spring Break!

I am excited - there's no class tomorrow! So I guess I get to spend the evening with Matt.

But wait...

Gamestop called today. Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 is being released tomorrow. I think my husband may be preoccupied. I suppose it will be a chick-flick night.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for movies to watch or ways to spend a free evening?

New Carpet

For those of you who don't know, the carpet in our house is not exactly my favorite. I do dislike the kitchen floor more, but I don't want to mess with anything in the kitchen unless we are redoing the whole thing. Carpet, on the other hand, can be replaced whenever.

So, in the near future (sometime in early April?), Matt and I will be recarpeting a significant portion of our house.

And here are my questions:
Does anyone want to give us a hand (assuming it works in the schedule)? If so, we will be in your debt... just something to think about.

Also, who knows where we can trash old carpet? Jennifer, you may know since you and Ben recarpeted during your last move... any help is appreciated!

New Job

It's been a while - sorry for slacking. I have been busy, though, as you can probably tell from the title of this post.

I started my new job on Wednesday. Things are going really well so far, and I am having fun while learning a lot. :-) My co-workers are friendly and helpful, and I'm excited to be there. It's also exciting to finally have a job that I can expect to keep for a longer period of time. It will be nice not to have to perform a third annual job search next February/March.

So, here's a thought. I like comments, but I rarely write posts that lend themselves to comments. Why don't I start providing a question at the end of some posts that will hopefully encourage some sharing? Here's the question for this post:

What has been your favorite job/career so far, and what was it about that job that made you like it so much?

Please write a comment! (Also, I may turn on comment moderation so I can be sure to see all comments, even to older posts.)

Memes?

I was tagged by my friend Jennifer to participate in a Q&A blog game, which is apparently known as a "meme". Okay, so it is a generally accepted fact that I tend to lean towards the geeky side. Knowing this, one might imagine that I would know the majority of blogging terms, but alas, I do not. So upon reading the word "meme", I turned to ask a (mostly) trusted resource, Wikipedia. Now I feel like I have a clue and can proceed with my life. :-) On to the questions...

10 Years Ago:
I was a freshman in high school. I was dating my first long-term boyfriend, Kevin, who my parents were not very happy about due to the fact he was a senior. (That relationship lasted over 4 years, and we are still friends, but only talk once in a blue moon.) I was a band geek, and an academic nerd, and most of my friends were in band, too. I played flute, Kevin played trombone. Another good friend, Joe, also played trombone. My dad repeatedly told me that trombone players were trouble, but I ignored his warnings. (My dad also plays the trombone.) My stand partner and future college roomate for a semester, Becky, partnered with me to complain about the evil junior flute players who hated us. (There were no senior flutes that year, and the juniors were mean. I'm happy to report that during my sophomore year, when we got a chance to try out for chairs, I beat out the meanest of the bunch for first chair. Needless to say, she was not happy and became even more mean.)

My biggest bummer of that time was that I missed out on a trip to Ireland that the band took for St. Patrick's Day. To this day, I am still sad about that. My best friend, Dawn, and I were probably not on speaking terms at this point - or had we made up by then? Side note: Dawn was my maid-of-honor and to this day is still my friend. And she played the saxophone.

There really isn't that much else interesting about this time of my life... It was a typically freshman year... Oh - I did get my permit ~10 years ago. That was fun... spinning out in parking lots in a rusty, brown Chevy S-10. Anyway, college was much more fun...

Things on my To-Do List Today:

• Help at MOPS (check)
• Wrap presents for Allison (check)
• Clean my house (I got the office and spare room done, does that count?)
• Clean the litter box (Ummm...still need to do that)
• Blog (in progress)
• Exercise (Hey, I worked up a sweat cleaning that office! - check)
• Make job search phone calls/send emails (check)
• Eat (check - I have forgotten this one before)
• Go to girls' night (check)

Three of my Bad Habits:

1. Slouching. My mom used to poke me while I practiced piano. It didn't help.
2. Staying up late. I can't help it, I just function better after 10 PM.
3. Not drinking enough water. I think that's why I get so many headaches. Thank goodness for Excedrin! It gets me through until I can drink more water.

If I Suddenly Became a Billionaire:
Travel, travel, travel. First stop, Ireland. Second stop - Australia? I've been thinking about that one lately. I like English speaking countries.

I would also love to pay off the house and remodel our kitchen. I really don't want more house to maintain, but I would maybe add on a dedicated office instead of using one of the bedrooms. I could also buy a comparable house with a better layout... Either way, I would want the house function a little more smoothly. No more sticking doors or hard to clean, easy to stain carpeting! Although, we would have to invest most of the money, knowing Matt.

5 Jobs I've Had:

1. McDonalds Crew Member
2. Sales clerk at my uncle's teachers' supplies store
3. Lawnmower/Babysitter
4. Paper Girl
5. Electrical Engineer

5 Things People Don't Know About Me:

1. I have never balanced my checkbook. Ever.
2. I frequently have (and remember) very vivid dreams, and they are usually very odd.
3. I took my best loved stuffed animal from my childhood with me to college. I teared up when, after marriage, I realized I had lost said stuffed animal.
4. I have never lived alone, and also have never had to regularly cook for myself. Thank goodness for that, because according to one of my previous roommates, Soma, I may have starved to death had I lived alone. Let's hope I go before Matt does...
5. I have a fear of ponds/lakes/oceans where you can't see the bottom. There's too much unknown about what lies below the area that can be seen. Who wants to go where they can't see what's near their feet? Very scary.

Okay, so #5 in that last question took me a long time... I tend to be an open book, so hopefully those met the criteria for being things that are unknown to most.

Anyway, I would love to tag everyone on my friends list, but that may leave others with no choice for who they can tag. So, since Allison and Dustin are most likely to read this sooner than everyone else, I will tag the two of you. Happy typing!

Unemployment, Day 3

Lots of meetings today! Thankfully most were by phone. I spent the morning in meetings and the afternoon catching up on homework and typing up notes from one of my meetings - it was a phone interview for part of our group project. And today is class day, so my evening was also used for school. :-)

Other than that, nothing really exciting happened. But I did update my blog skin again! This time, I actually drew the images instead of using brushes. Still not settled on something yet, but this blog skin can last a while if needed.

Jennifer is blogging

A new friend has been added to the left side of my blog! Let's all give a big welcome to Jennifer Dzioba, whose blog address is: http://dzioba.blogspot.com/.

Welcome to the blogging world, Jennifer! And thanks for inspiring me to update my blog template yet again!

Unemployment, Day 2

I got to sleep in today! How nice... it's good to wake up when the sun is shining once in a while. I hung out with my kitties while eating breakfast, and then I got ready for the day and started some more work on taxes. For lunch, I met with some of my girlfriends from BSC, and then I headed back home to work a bit more.

And then my afternoon and evening were lost. I am finally printing all of my tax forms, but I spent all afternoon making sure I had found all possible deductions and credits, and double checking to make sure I handled all investment info appropriately. I am happy to say that I not only know what I'm doing and exactly what I'm paying for, but I am also done - really done. Yay!

So my hope for this week was to have time to clean and do homework. Looks like tomorrow I will be doing homework in the afternoon, as my morning is filled with meetings. Additionally, since I will be helping at MOPS on Thursday, I hope to get cleaning done Thursday and Friday. Oh, and that paper that's due on the 12th? I'll need to get that done, too - maybe sometime this weekend. I can't work any longer in this disaster we call an office...

Unemployment, Day 1

Today was a good and busy day. First thing I had to do was deal with health insurance issues. The insurance we had through my severance from last year was supposed to be a 12-month deal, but I found out after the fact that it didn't cover leap-day... interesting... Anyway, Matt had setup insurance through his company starting on leap-day, but after some checking, it didn't seem like the information had gone through. I also needed to find some sort of documentation to show that I had experienced a "qualifying event" that would allow us to sign up for benefits when it wasn't the standard sign-up time... Suffice it to say that I spent a lot of time on the phone this morning.

So, once I had gotten things settled with that, I folded laundry and cleaned out my "too small" clothes. I was finishing more clothes folding, and I got a call from the person I have been interviewing with for a while. We scheduled another meeting for later this week. After that, I headed out for lunch with Shannon. :-) It was a nice way to break up the day.

After lunch, I prepped for a phone screening interview that was scheduled for the afternoon. The interview went pretty well, so we'll have to see what happens there.

Finally done with the clothes and job-hunting, I started working on our taxes, only to be distracted by a message waiting on my answering machine. It was another job-hunt related call. I called back, and scheduled a phone screening for later this week.

Back to taxes - Due to the taxes on my severance from last year, Matt and I will be getting a refund. Yay! I still have to do state taxes. Oh, and Bible study was last night, too, in between working on taxes. :-)

It was a productive day, but I got no real cleaning or schoolwork done... we'll see about tomorrow. I'll probably first get state taxes done, then start work for school.

Another lead...

My week is quickly becoming booked! I still don't know exactly when to expect a call back from the person I had previously interviewed with, although it should be sometime soon, and today, I made plans for another initial phone screening for a job that one of my classmates recommended me for. Tomorrow will be busy with homework, job hunting, cleaning, possibly breakfast/lunch plans with friends, and general catching-up on "stuff". I will have to try to remember to give a report on what happens during this week. Hopefully I get tons done, including cleaning my house. :-)

I know this was just a quick note, but I'm trying to blog even though I have nothing important to say and no good stories to share, so cut me some slack for now, please...