About Me

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Ignorance is bliss

I used to be a humongous news junkie.  I loved to pour through the paper and to be up on current events, issues, etc.

For the last two years, that’s not so true anymore.  I think it has to do with me being unemployed.  The news, to be frank, is depressing.  I would obsess over credit card rates and people that died in an earthquake.  Riot victims and abused children.  Governmental ignorance paired with governmental interference.

Sure, I thought the adopt the puppy stories were cute, but honestly who could watch that all day?

I’m starting to miss reality though.  My life is still a wreck of sorts, but I’m so out of touch with what’s going on.  Maybe it was the Olympics coverage that I watched nonstop.  Maybe it was a passing glimpse at a newspaper.

Regardless, I need t be better informed again.

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Just call me Grace

Tonight was the first sanctuary rehearsal for the kids production that is on this Sunday evening.  I was on the stairs running sound and running back and forth to make sure that the motions were being done and that the kids were staying in line (115 kids on three risers can cause a bit of a fuss!)

So what do I do when turning around to restart the music?  Slide on the microphone/speaker/iPod cord and go down the last three stairs on my shins and plant my chin on the floor.  I stood up and said thank you very much, took a bow and kept going . . .

. . . but holy cow my right leg hurts.

Two hours later I am finally at home, and let me tell you my right shin looks like I have elephantiasis.  It’s swollen so much I have a cankle (no!) and I can barely walk with that knee.  PAIN!

On the flip side of the coin, the kids sounded AWESOME.  Aside from one kid who is sick and has a solo, the rest of them nailed the songs and they are doing a fantastic job.  I am so psyched about Sunday night it’s INSANE.  And all the people I’ve invited will just have to flounder around on their own because I’m in the sound booth and cannot see them until the free ice cream after.

SO looking forward to rehearsals on Friday and Saturday.  They are just too dang cute!!!!!

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Oh, my aching arms

This time last year I was joining a gym.  I became very diligent in going every day, swimming a mile about four times a week and then trying to hit the fitness center as well about three days a week.  I was pretty good about going, too.  Lost no weight (okay, I lost a half a pound in eight months) but then I could tell I was building muscle, especially in my arms.

I love to swim.  I’m not so fond of sweating, so ‘working out’ isn’t my favorite thing.  I like strength training, and working with weights, and riding a bike (especially when there is a tv screen attached)–but sweating? Not so much.  Thus the love of swimming.  I can’t tell if I am sweating since I’m already in water.  I use resistance paddles, work my upper torso especially, and also try to swim on just my legs.  A bum set of knees makes that harder, but I do try.  So I enjoy the time that I spend there.

Then, last fall, November came around.  Continue reading →

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Fill in the blank

First it was via email, now it’s on Facebook and other sites.  But I love reading these sorts of things by other people.  Or at least the ones that aren’t ‘what time did you wake up today’.  So here is one I found on another blog, thought it would be entertaining to do here.

My ex…is out of the picture.

Maybe I should… do laundry.

I love… cozy afternoons on the couch wrapped up while it snows outside.

People would say that I’m… loud.

I don’t understand why people… are suddenly lacking in manners. Continue reading →

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“You, too, can change your life in just 60 days!”

When I first began this blog in April 2008 (yikes!) it was with the challenge to write something every day for sixty days.  I accepted the challenge, and while there were some nights where I was on the verge of listing my supper contents to qualify for a posting I managed to post something every day for sixty days–and then some.  I grew to enjoy the mental exercise and had a lot of fun with this little website.  Once my employment status changed, however, there was a significant decrease in the number of posts that came up.  I no longer ‘collected’ interesting news stories with the intent of publishing a roundup in a posting, I didn’t have scraps of paper with fun ideas or topics I wanted to discuss, and basically with all that was going on in my life I had other things on my mind.  I had a hard time finding ways to communicate with my friends, much less with the unknown three or four people out there in cyberspace that stumbled across my blog.  Occasionally I’d have a rant I needed to vent, questions or theological issues I was struggling over, a charming story to share . . . but for the most part I was just silent.

Love, Kay

Well after today, my fair friends, that shall change.  A young friend of mine has started her own blog, which you can find over at Love, Kay.  One of her first entries cracked me up, Continue reading →

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Another year has gone by!

And I am another year older.

As my old college friend would say, whoopie-shit.

I know that sounds bad.   I was thoroughly anticipating today to be a blase sort of day, where I would just be able to do my own thing.  Once again I fell to the pressures of society/family/friends and did what they expected of me instead of what I should do.

I really need to get a spine, you know? Continue reading →

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The year in review

As we face a new year and I face a time of great personal change in addition to the one on the calendar, I figured now would be a good moment for a time of reflection and review.  The year has had many changes, many upheavals, many instances of drama.  I’ve hit lows, highs, middles, and sides.  I’ve had days where I’ve been running insane, working 14 hour days, working 21 days straight.  I’ve had times where I didn’t get out of my PJs or my nightgown for two days.  So I figured this would be a good time to go down the list of things that happened in 2008.  Things both dramatic and mundane, both noteworthy and ordinary, both elated and miserable.

January: The year started with the traditional New Years Day movie viewings.  This year it was Juno and Sweeney Todd. It was interesting–mom had heard of Sweeney Todd but had no idea that it was about a homicidal barber who turned over the corpses to the baker downstairs for inclusion in her meat pies.  How on earth she could have reached the age of 58 and not figured that out I have no idea, especially since she knew the music, but there you go.  Of course, being on vacation that week, I had a bit of a movie marathon.  We ended up seeing the Academy Award winning No Country for Old Men, the forgettable Dan in Real Life, and a slew of others both good and not so good.  Virginia Tech then lost in its bowl game against Kansas, and while watching the game I learned how my cousin split his thumb cutting a sweet potato pie.  Oddly enough, he split the other thumb on a beer glass that same night while telling the story of injury #1.  Managed to sprain my wrist by falling off a stool at my mother’s house, that was fun.  While trying to learn how to use my new Inno XM radio device, I ran across this particularly useful bit of advice for how to make it compatible with my iPod: “Personally, I would duct tape them together. I think you can still get a lot of use out of both of them without any interoperability.” Continue reading →

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Family Stays at Three

So my lovely puppy is actually turning 13 in January. I have talked for awhile about getting another while she is still in good form, so that she can help with training. Two weeks ago, I found the dog. A friend told me of a beagle/deerhound mix that was up for grabs and I made arrangements for him to be at my house as of tomorrow (12/06/08). All was good. I bought food, leashes, etc., and enjoyed my Thanksgiving holiday.

Then I find out Monday AM she went to my friend’s husband, who she works with, and starting saying all kinds of things like I work too much, she didn’t know what to make of me, she wasn’t sure it was going to work, etc. My friend called me to say if I wanted the dog I should call right away because of the conversation. This made me more than just a bit upset, seeing as how she had called me before Thanksgiving and said “I don’t like this other lady, I really, really want you to have the dog.” What caused the sudden about face? I thought it extremely tacky that she would go to someone else like that, involving someone else in the procedure.

Then this morning, before 7AM, I get a phone call. She has bonded with the dog and just cannot bear to part with him. I understand that, however I still think it was not only poor form to call me at the crack of dawn but to wait until Friday.

I still want another puppy to join the family, but I have to say that this lady left a bad taste for the whole procedure.

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My apologies!

Six months ago this Saturday, October 11, my blog started as a way to see if I could be creative enough to write something interesting every day for 60 days.  Well I don’t know about the interesting part, but the 60 days went well enough.  Everything from rants on the news to sharing absurd news stories to random tales of my life and reviews of TV infomercial products found their way into my ramblings.  And once the 60 days were over I kind of stopped trying to find something to talk about daily, instead just choosing to publish when I found something worthy of discussion.  I have never published the blog widely, only to a few select friends and whomever happened upon it by chance.  I don’t even think my family knows of it–if they do, I certainly didn’t tell them, they must have found it from somewhere else.

I’ve never been one for keeping a diary, even as a kid.  I have a fairly (okay, a really good) memory, even if my mother swears it is selective in the facts it retains.  This blog was never meant to serve as a diary, simply another outlet to express whatever the heck I feel like expressing, and if it was autobiographical in that endeavor then so be it.  Yet I have noticed a marked decline in the number of postings since I lost my job in July.  I don’t know why, but it just has.  I don’t know if I just don’t feel like writing, I don’t feel inspired, I don’t make the time, I just don’t wanna, I just don’t know.  Maybe it’s because losing my job was such a traumatic and raw experience for me that everything else in life became traumatic and raw by comparison, and I’m all about sharing the fluff instead of the realism.  (Why else do you think I put so many weird newscaps on here for cryin’ out loud?!?!)

So for those three of you that click in to read every now and again, hoping to find something semi-entertaining, my apologies.  Hopefully better times are coming soon!

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The House Rules

Based on experiences with prior visitors to my house and inspired by conversations of do’s/don’ts in various areas including house rules with a friend, I have developed my own regulations. All are a result of actual events that have occurred in the past.  So without further ado, here are the Ten House Rules for the house I live in:

  1. It is my house. It is not your house. Therefore Continue reading →
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Why I Read

There are two groups of people: bibliophiles and those that read a book a year if they’re lucky.  There are many levels of bookworms, from the collector to the packrat to the obsessive, and I’m not sure where I fall.  I do, however, read every day.  Sometimes I finish a book in one sitting, sometimes I just get a few pages in.  I usually have several books going at a time–one for the home ‘library’, one for the car, and one for when I’m tired of TV.  But I read.  I read a lot.

Awhile ago I was asked to provide, in writing, why I was one of the ones that read instead of one of the ones that chose not to lose themselves in the written word.  Here is my response (and I’ve not got the faintest idea where the last bit of it came from!):

Why I read Continue reading →

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My eMailbox Overfloweth

Usually, when I check my email, I have to delete a ton of spam, then a bunch of emails from places like Target and Lowe’s that I don’t really care about to get down to the one or two really important things (like my checking account balance and something sarcastic from my brother). Today I go to check and I freaked–how on earth could I have so many?

Ah. The one person I called out in my very first post finally cleaned out her eMail box and found my blog.

Hi honey! I’ve missed you!

That’s it for today, but stay tuned for tomorrow’s weird news roundup as I found some bizarro stuff across my desk the last few days!

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I completely missed my anniversary!

Okay, it was officially at 60 days.  But hey!  Today marks the 64th day of consecutive posting!  I accomplished my goal, which was to write something every day for 60 days.

Granted there were some items that were obviously forced (Ashton Kutcher’s Nikon commercial, anyone?) because, let’s face it, the tedium of my summer is immense.

But I’m proud of myself, and it did certainly give me something to vent with on occasion.  I even had fun with the news postings.

Will I continue posting every day?  I don’t know, but I don’t have to feel guilty if I don’t any more.  Will I still use this as a location to vent, unload, ponder, wonder, emote, and express?  Yeah, definitely.

I think as long as it doesn’t feel like a hassle or a problem trying to post, then yes I’ll keep it.  I know that some topics were stretched, but at the same time it was nice to be able to sort out my thought processes without burdening my friends.

It’s been fun!  And here’s to sixty (four) days!!!