Updates

Sorry, I know it's been a while since I've posted.  I'll try to catch up on everything that's been going on.

This weekend, we went down to Florida to celebrate Marcus's grandfather's 97th(!) birthday.  We flew down late Friday night.  Marcus's dad picked us up from the airport and dropped us off at Marcus's mom's house.  We stayed up talking for a little bit, but soon retired to bed.  Saturday we slept in a little bit, then went to brunch with Marcus's mom and her wife at the restaurant where his sister is working as a hostess.  Then we came back to the house and hung out for a few hours before it was time to go to the party.  Marcus's sister was nice enough to drive all of us to the party (me, Marcus, and his little brother).  The party itself was interesting.  It was nice to see all of his dad's family (we hadn't seen any of them since the wedding), and there were some nice speeches made and cute songs and such.  The food was amazing.  It was also good to see my parents, who came down for the party too.  After the party, we pretty much went back to his mom's house and went right to bed.  Sunday we got up early (for us).  Marcus and his siblings headed to his grandfather's brunch, while my parents came and picked me up to take me to lunch with them and my great-aunt and great-uncle (who my parents were staying with).  We had a nice lunch, then went back to my great-aunt's house and hung out and looked at pictures for a while.  Then my parents took me back to Marcus's mom's house and stopped in to visit for a little while before they left for the airport.  The rest of us hung out for a little longer, and then Marcus's mom took us to the airport.

Our flight was at 6:25 pm, and we were at the airport and through security by a little before 5.  I decided to get Chili's To-Go for dinner, since we had some time.  I ordered, and about 15 minutes later, my food finally came out.  I went back to the gate to sit and eat, opened it up, and noticed that my black bean burger had cheese on it (which it wasn't supposed to).  I took it back, and the manager lady told them to fix it.  I waited for ANOTHER 15-20 minutes before it FINALLY came out.  They offered me a free drink, but I had already bought a bottled water the first time, and I don't drink soda anyway, so I turned it down.  I ran back to the gate and frantically tried to eat before we had to board the plane.  I didn't make it.  Marcus convinced me to box the food back up and bring it on the plane, so I did.  I did NOT appreciate how rushed they made me feel by taking forever with my food!  It seriously would have been faster to go eat in their sit-down restaurant area :-P  But anyway, we made it home fine, and David picked us up from the airport, and we went right back out grocery shopping before Cliff came in around 11.  He had an interview in Atlanta on Monday, so he stayed with us for a couple of nights.

On to Monday.  I had my first training session for the tutoring job on Monday (I had decided to at least try it before making a decision about whether to take the job).  I ate an early lunch (around 11:15) before heading out around noon to get to the center I was training at by 1.  They had told me in the email that the training would be from 1-8 pm, but it turned out that it was actually from 1-9.  This pissed me off, because I had been planning to go to the gym when I got home, since it was supposed to be a gym night, but I didn't get home until after 10 pm, and I was too tired to go to the gym.  I also didn't eat dinner until after I got home, because I completely missed the half-hour break I was supposed to get around 4 pm.  Fail.  Anyway, the tutoring itself looked very different from what I had imagined.  First of all, it was mostly high school kids, who I don't do well with.  Second, when they originally told me that you tutor one-on-one a max of 3 kids at a time, I thought they meant that you have one-on-one sessions with up to 3 different students, one at a time.  Well, apparently what they really meant was that you have 3 students at a time (so 3 sessions of 3 students per night, for a total of 9 different students per night) and they still call it "one-on-one" because you're supposed to focus your attention on each one individually while the other two are doing work.  I felt really uncomfortable with the setup, and when I got home, I debated for a long time over whether to continue with the training.

Tuesday morning, I had to make a decision.  I was supposed to report for training at 1 pm again, so I had to decide by 11 (so I could eat lunch if I did decide to go).  I went back and forth.  Wrote an email declining the position, but couldn't hit send.  Had a long talk with Cliff about it, and another with Marcus when he called to tell me about something else entirely.  Finally, I sent the email, so I will not be taking the tutoring job.  It was a really tough decision, since I could really use the money, but ultimately, I would have been miserable working there.  So now, I need to go to the unemployment office today and make sure that turning down the job won't affect my eligibility to continue collecting unemployment.  Fingers crossed!

So I ended up hanging out with Cliff all day yesterday.  We went to Menchie's and got frozen yogurt for lunch, then came back and just hung out.  We talked a little, and I watched one of my home videos.  When Marcus got home, he and Cliff went to the gym (he hadn't gone on Monday either, so he wanted to make it up.  I'm planning to go on Friday to make it up while Marcus is at his D&D game), and then we all went out to dinner at Copeland's.  Marcus had a $25 gift certificate to Copeland's from restaurant.com, but it required a minimum purchase of $50, which we'd never be able to get to just the two of us.  So Cliff came too, and we had a nice dinner and then walked around Atlantic Station for a while.  I love Atlantic Station!  When we got home, Cliff headed out to drive back to Athens, and Marcus and I watched the end of the Braves game and looked at houses online.  We tried to go to bed early, but it just didn't happen.

So, on the docket for today: I need to go to the bank and deposit a check for Marcus, go to the unemployment office, figure out what to write in my cover letter for this job I want to apply to - and then apply.  When Marcus gets home, we need to go to the gym, come back and eat dinner, and watch Survivor (and probably the end of the Braves game, too).  Then we need to shower and go to SLEEP!

I'm already exhausted...I need a real weekend!

Oy...

Today was a very long and stressful day.  I slept in a little bit, got up around 8:30 instead of 8.  Once Marcus left for work a little after 10, I headed out to the bank to deposit my checks, then came home and ate an early lunch around 11:15.  Got changed into nicer clothes and headed out to Duluth for my interview with the tutoring company.

It ended up being a video conference (skype) interview, since the hiring lady was out of town at one of the company's offices in another state.  It went well, I got the impression that the interview was just a formality, and apparently my friend who hooked me up with the company gave me a great recommendation.  So, they want to hire me, but I have some reservations.  I don't want to get into it on this public forum, but I wrote a livejournal entry about it, and I've talked to Marcus and a few friends about it.  Everyone has pretty much given me the same advice, which is to at least try it out for a while, and if I don't like it, I can always leave.  My problem with that is, once I say I'm doing it, I'm not going to leave.  That's how I got stuck at the law firm for 3 years, lol, it's just how I am.  Plus, it wouldn't be fair to the students for me to leave after a short time, it's not good for them for the teachers to be constantly changing.  So we'll see.  I'm planning at this point to at least go to the training next week and see how that goes, but I want to make a decision before I actually get in the classroom.

So anyway, after the interview, I came home and was stressing out about it until Marcus got home.  I talked to him about it for a while, and then we went to the gym, which was great because it took my mind off the job stuff temporarily.  After the gym, we came back and ate dinner, and then I watched the new episode of Millionaire Matchmaker.  Now we are watching yesterday's Survivor premiere again (Marcus hasn't seen it yet), and then it will be time to shower and go to sleep!

Tomorrow I'm hoping will be somewhat more relaxing than today, but since we're traveling tomorrow night, I doubt it :-P  I do get to go watch Eli for a little bit tomorrow morning though, so hopefully that'll help me feel a little better.  I need to find some down time between now and tomorrow night, though, because with my stress levels already so high from this job stuff, I might be headed for some kind of meltdown over the weekend if I can't cool them down.  And being so stressed about the job thing, it's a really bad time for me to be put in a situation where a lot of people (whose approval is important to me, I might add) will be grilling me about jobs...it's just not good timing.  So hopefully I'll be able to relax at least a little bit tomorrow.

I'm not sure that I'll get a chance to post before we leave tomorrow night, so I may just be gone until Sunday night or Monday.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Today is my Daddy's birthday!  Happy Birthday, Daddy!

This morning I got up normal time and headed over to Joel and Shosh's to babysit.  Shosh tried to put Talia down for a nap before she left, but she only slept for about 15 minutes, so she ended up taking a 3-hour nap a little later, which was perfect!  Eli and I played out on the deck with beans, bubbles, and basketball for most of the day.  He says the funniest things...

We were playing with the beans (Talia was inside sleeping in her swing at this point), and Eli randomly says, "Baby Talia!"  I thought maybe she had woken up and he heard her making noise that I couldn't hear or something, so I said, "Baby Talia?  What is she doing?"  Eli said, "swing!"  At this point I relaxed, and said, "yes, that's right, she's sleeping in her swing."  Eli responded, "she's a lucky girl!"  I laughed out loud...he gave me a funny look as if to say "why are you laughing at me?!?", but it was so funny!  I guess he must have heard Joel and Shosh saying it at some point and was just repeating, but to hear a two-year-old say that was just priceless.

Anyway, Joel got home a little early, so I ended up getting home around 3:30.  There had been a possibility that I would have to pick Marsha up from either the airport or MARTA, but she texted me earlier saying that she had found someone else to do it, so I just went straight home.  Marcus had a board meeting after work tonight, so I was on my own for dinner (leftover pasta, yum!).  I watched the season premiere of Survivor...don't worry, I won't post any spoilers!  I'm kind of "eh" on this season so far...there aren't any new players who have really caught my attention yet, good or bad.  I did like the immunity challenge they did tonight - I LOVE multi-step challenges!  Beyond that, it wasn't all that interesting.  Then again, it's usually three or four episodes before I really start to get into it and know who I like and dislike, so we'll see.

After the show was over, I called my dad to wish him a happy birthday, and we talked for a little bit (I talked to my mom, too).  Then Marcus got home, and now we are just hanging out on the couch staring at our respective computers.  Marcus gets to go into work late tomorrow (around 10:30), which is nice, but I haven't decided yet if I'm going to sleep in with him or just get up normal time.  I have my interview with the tutoring company at 1 pm tomorrow, and I need to go to the bank before that to deposit a couple of checks.

Speaking of the interview, I'm kind of in a holding phase right now.  I found a couple of jobs I want to apply to, but I'm waiting to see how this interview goes first.  I really don't know much about the tutoring job - full time, part time, how the hours work, etc., so I want to find out more about it before I apply to anything else.

For some reason, I am REALLY tired, so I think I am going to actually try to go to bed early tonight.  Tomorrow should be a slightly less hectic day, but still active.  And then Friday is going to be a long, busy, and stressful day (traveling always has that effect on me).  At least we (hopefully) get to sleep in on Saturday!

Thinking of blogging less frequently...

I know I completely forgot to write a post yesterday.  Luckily, there wasn't much to miss, since I didn't really do anything yesterday :-P

Today, on the other hand, has been busier.  I got up normal time and headed over to Joel and Shosh's.  Shosh wasn't working today, but she had a doctor appointment this morning, so she asked me to babysit.  I had a great time playing with Eli with his beans, basketball, bubbles, and playdough.  He parrots back pretty much everything you say to him now, which is SO cute!  When Shosh got home, I stayed and hung out with them all for a few hours.  Cutest moment of the day - Talia rolled over and bumped her head on the floor, and Eli came running over and said, "I kiss it, Baby Talia!" and then kissed her on the head!  What a good big brother!  He is so sweet <3

I finally left around 4 pm so I wouldn't hit too much traffic on my way home.  Marcus had to stay a little late at work today, so I just hung around until he got home.  Then we went to the gym, and because I got so much exercise today (between the gym and babysitting), I had enough calories left to eat that we were able to go to Chipotle for dinner!  We hadn't been in a few weeks (a LONG time for us), so that was a nice treat.  We had some really nice conversation over dinner, too, so that was really good for us.

We got home a few minutes ago, and now we're just watching the Braves game and then we'll probably head to bed early (assuming they don't go into extra innings again like last night :-P), since we both have busy days tomorrow.

So, I've been thinking about possibly cutting back on blogging a little bit.  Some days I have a lot going on, but there are a lot of days when I don't really have anything interesting to write about.  So I'm thinking about not blogging every day anymore, and just blogging when I have something interesting to mention.  The reason I started off blogging every day was to get myself in the habit of it so I wouldn't neglect it for long periods of time.  I think I've been doing it long enough now that I'll still remember to post when stuff happens.  So we'll try it.  I'll probably still be posting every day for the rest of this week anyway, since it's a busy week.  And we'll be out of town this weekend, so I'll probably just write a weekend recap on Sunday night or Monday.  After that...we'll see!

Sunday Recap

Sorry I didn't post last night (for anyone who actually reads this).  It got late, and I was tired, and I decided I'd just wait and post this morning.

So yesterday, we got up around 9 and headed over to Jerrilyn's office.  She drove us out to Marietta to look at a few townhouses.  One of them I had actually found online and sent to her.  That was the first one we went to.  We found out that it was actually a foreclosure, which is why the price was so low (although it hadn't mentioned anything about that on the listing, Jerrilyn just found out by talking to the selling agent.  I kind of felt like that wasn't right, they should be required to include that information in the listing!), but we really liked it.  Very cute house, and there are only a couple of minor, inexpensive repairs that it needs.  We then went to look at another townhouse in the same subdivision.  This was the first house we went to where the owner was actually there.  He was an older man who has lived in the house for 15 years.  He had SO. MANY. TCHOTCHKES.  It was hard to get a good idea of what the house would look like without all the random stuff!  It also had a slightly different floorplan from anything else we had seen.  We weren't super impressed.  Then we headed over to a different part of Marietta to look at another townhouse, which actually ended up being in the same little area as one of the Gables apartment complexes we had looked in a couple of months ago!  This was a newer townhouse, it was very nice and well-maintained, but felt very tall and skinny.  Even though it had some really nice amenities (new kitchen appliances, refrigerator included, etc.), we ultimately decided that we still liked the first one we had seen (the foreclosure) the best.  After we got home, I sent Jerrilyn a list of the single family houses I had found in the Marietta area, so that will probably be the next thing we go look at.

When we got home, I did my laundry while we watched the Braves game.  Then we went grocery shopping, came home and ate dinner.  We decided to watch a movie on Netflix, and ended up watching a movie called Strictly Sexual, which had been in our instant queue for a while.  It was a decent movie, but it made me really upset afterwards.  Marcus and I had a long talk about why I was upset, where we both concluded that somewhere along the way, I lost my "mojo" (for lack of a better word).  I should add here that "mojo" in this case is not sexual necessarily (I am not Austin Powers!), but more just a general like...passion, and driving force in my life.  I'm frustrated, because I remember what it felt like to feel the way the characters did in the movie, and I want that back, but it's like I don't remember how.  Talking to Marcus helped a little, I guess, at least to ease some of the frustration, but I still need to figure out how to get my mojo back!

We ended up showering and going to bed right around midnight, so I could watch the new episode of Food Truck Race, since I missed the original airing at 9 (while we were watching the movie).

This is looking to be a really busy week, with the exception of today.  I'm just hoping that I somehow have SOME store of energy left at the end of it, because next weekend is going to be crazy.

A Busy Saturday

Today was a very busy Saturday, but productive and also fun!  We got up on the early side (for a Saturday), around 9:30, and headed over to meet Jerrilyn at her office.  She drove us out to look at some houses.  We had a little adventure getting there - due to the construction on 285, we ended up taking an alternate route, STILL getting caught in the construction zone, but eventually making it to the first house with plenty of time to spare (she had told them we were coming between 11 and 12, and we made it there around 11:30).  We looked at SIX houses today!  The first two were built in the late 1960s, and we weren't thrilled with either of them.  The third one was built in the late 1970s, and we liked it a little better, but still not great.  The last three were all in the same two subdivisions.  Ironically, they were the same subdivisions that Marcus and I had driven through a few weeks ago, and were a little concerned by the fact that across the main road was a not-so-good looking area.  However, Jerrilyn assured us that this wasn't something we needed to worry about, especially since the houses we looked at were pretty deep into the subdivisions.

All of these houses were built in 1999-2000, and we liked them MUCH better than the other ones we had seen.  They were very compact, but really cute, and very nice and bright and open.  One of them I really liked because it had a HUGE kitchen, with lots of cabinet space and TWO pantries!  Marcus really liked another house which had basically an entire apartment in the basement (a bedroom, dining room, full bath, and a kitchen with stove and other appliances, and an entrance to the backyard).  We concluded from the day's outing that we definitely prefer newer houses over older ones, but that we haven't really seen anything in the middle (built in the 1980s and 1990s).  Tomorrow we are going out to look at some more houses, this time out in Marietta!  Today's houses were all in Dunwoody.

We got back to Jerrilyn's office around 1:45, and headed straight over to Panera for the APO Metro Atlanta Alumni Association gathering at 2 pm.  It ended up being the same 5-6 people as usual, but it was still fun.  Paulabeth brought her baby (3 months old), who we hadn't gotten to meet yet, so that was exciting!  He's a real cutie, and he was very well-behaved for the most part.

We finally made it home around 4:30.  We kind of just hung out for a little while, and then Marcus left to go chaperone his cousin's AZA youth group event (he sort of got roped into doing it, haha).  I made myself some pasta for dinner (an old standby recipe - Marcus doesn't like it that much, so I really only make it when we're not eating together), and watched the Braves game until he got home.  At some point before he got home, my mom called, so I spent a good 45 minutes or so talking to her and my dad about our house-hunting today, family trees/reunions, and other fun stuff.

So that was our crazy busy Saturday.  Tomorrow is suddenly looking much busier than I was anticipating too, now that we're going out house-hunting again.  I also need to do laundry, and we need to go grocery shopping, so the day is filling up very quickly!  And we have to get up even earlier than today for the house-hunting, because we're meeting Jerrilyn at 10 instead of 10:30 :-P

In case anyone's interested, here is the pasta recipe that I made for dinner tonight!  I found it on the ajc.com's recipe pages several years back.

Summer Penne Pasta
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:
8 ounces mini penne pasta
1 (14.5 oz) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes or 2 cups fresh tomatoes, mostly drained
1 (12 oz) jar marinated artichoke hearts, cut in bite-size pieces and mostly drained
1 (2.5 oz) can sliced black olives, drained, or 1/2 cup sliced pitted kalamata or other olives
1/4 cup freshly shaved Parmesan cheese

Directions:
Prepare pasta according to package directions.
In a bowl, combine tomatoes, artichoke hearts and black olives.  Add pasta and toss to combine.  Add additional oil from the artichoke hearts, if necessary.
Grate Parmesan (or use a veggie peeler) on top.  (If you wish to add a sixth ingredient, this dish can be served over a bed of baby spinach.)

Notes:
This dish tastes equally good warm or chilled.
To reduce the sodium further, here are a few options: Substitute frozen or water-packed canned artichoke hearts and add olive oil to moisten the salad or cut down slightly on the olives and/or cheese.

Nutrition (per serving):
350 calories (percent of calories from fat, 21), 3 grams protein, 56 grams carbohydrates, 7 grams fiber, 8 grams fat (1 gram saturated), 4 milligrams cholesterol, 448 milligrams sodium.

My additional notes:
You can use any shape of pasta, I usually use penne or something similar.
The cheese is optional - I make it without since I don't like Parmesan and don't need the cheese anyway.
I use artichoke hearts that have already been quartered, and I don't cut them down smaller.
I prefer to eat this dish warm (I don't like cold pasta), but I've tried it cold and it's actually not bad.

TGIF!

I did end up letting myself sleep in today.  I didn't actually get up until around 11:15 or so.  This resulted in me rushing to get ready and pay my bills so I could get them out in today's mail.  I had to go to the bank anyway to deposit a check, so I stopped at the mailbox on my way out.  I also called back the guy from the tutoring company, but apparently he wasn't working today, so I left a message for him.  Stupid phone tag!

When I got back, I didn't really do much for the rest of the day.  I cleaned the bathroom this afternoon, but that's about it.  When Marcus got home, we had an argument about our upcoming trip to Florida.  We figured things out before he left for his RPG, but it left me kind of grumpy, and we didn't get to eat dinner together.  I ate about an hour after he left (I had eaten a late lunch because of how late I slept, so I wasn't hungry earlier).

I was watching Jeopardy when my phone rang.  It was Laura!  I hadn't talked to her in a while, so it was a really nice surprise, and we talked for about half an hour just catching up.  She actually told me she reads my blog, so I figured I'd give her a shout-out (hi, Laura!). 

By the time we got off the phone, the Braves game was starting.  I was conflicted, because I also really felt like watching our wedding video again, so I ended up putting that on in the bedroom and going back and forth between the two tvs.  It's never fun to watch your team lose a game they looked like they were going to win, and that's all I really have to say about tonight's game.

Marcus came home from his RPG earlier than usual (around 11:30), which is kind of nice.  And now I need to go shower and go to bed...we have a busy day tomorrow!

Steps in the right direction

I feel like my life finally took a couple of steps in some right directions today.  This is exciting!

I got up normal time today and headed over to Joel and Shosh's around 9:45 to babysit.  Eli and I played with playdough, and also played out on the porch with beans, his new basketball hoop, and bubbles!  He still does the same thing he's done with the bubbles since he first started playing with them - he watches them land on the floor, then looks at me and says, "pop them!"  I tell him to go ahead and pop them, and he steps on each one individually.  I say "pop!" each time he steps on one, and this sends him into a massive giggle fit!  It's the cutest thing ever :-D

While I was giving Talia her bottle, I got a phone call back from the tutoring company.  My scores on the teachers' test were "excellent", and they'd like me to come in for an interview.  I need to call them back tomorrow, now that I know what my schedule is looking like next week.

I got home around 4:30, received an email soon after that from Jerrilyn (our realtor), and spent the next few minutes emailing back and forth with her planning an outing on Saturday to go look at a few houses!  Marcus came home a little late because he had a meeting at work, so I watched the first game of the Braves' doubleheader with the Mets, and then ate dinner when he got home.  We are still watching game 2!  I also went and watched the new episode of Millionaire Matchmaker in the other room during the hour it was on.  I loved one of her clients this week!  He was such a good guy, and she found a great match for him :-)

Tomorrow is looking to be a quiet day, which will be nice.  All I have on the docket is to pay my student loan bill and clean the bathroom.  And Marcus has his RPG tomorrow night, so I'll be here by myself.  I'll probably end up just watching the Braves game, but we'll see.  I MIGHT let myself sleep in tomorrow...I've had a hard time waking up every day this week, so I feel like I need to make sure I get enough sleep at least one night.

An Interesting Day

As predicted, today turned out to be a very interesting day.  The morning was pretty slow, I didn't really do much until around 11:30.  Then I ate an early lunch before heading out to Duluth (about a 45 minute drive) to take the "teacher's test" SAT.  When I got there, they first had me fill out an application, which took a while since I had to look up people's addresses and phone numbers.  Finally, I finished, and they led me back into the testing area.  It was a row of little cubicles against a wall.  They gave me a calculator (non-graphing), pencils, an eraser, and scrap paper.  They didn't make me leave any of my stuff outside, so I had my phone, my purse, and even my notebook that I had brought where I had written directions of how to get there.  Also in the notebook happened to be my study notes from when I took the GRE, and there were several points during the test when I could easily have cheated and looked up certain formulas in my notebook - but I didn't.  Anyway, the test was REALLY easy.  I don't remember the SAT being that easy, and I didn't find it super hard in high school.  There was only ONE question on which I completely guessed, and only about 4-5 others where I wasn't completely sure of my answer.  So yeah, I'm pretty sure I aced it, but we'll see.  They said they'd get back to me within the next week or so.

I didn't get home until right around 5 pm.  Marcus got home soon after.  We were supposed to call Susan (the financing lady) at 5:45, but we got an email from her just before then saying that she was stuck in a meeting and she would call us later tonight.  So we went ahead to the gym, and then went to this cute little taqueria on Piedmont (Marcus had a coupon for $16 there) for dinner.  Susan finally called us on our way home from dinner.  Marcus talked to her for a little while, and we found out a lot of useful stuff.  We are qualified for a loan that is less than what we'd like, but still doable.  We also found out our exact credit scores, which are AWESOME!  Mine are slightly better than Marcus's, teehee :-D  Susan was actually impressed by them (which is always a good sign)!  Anyway, as this was just the first of what I'm sure will be many conversations, we've already started discussing other things we need to ask her about, including other loan programs where we could potentially have to put a smaller down payment.

After we got off the phone with Susan, we just hung out, watched the end of the Braves game, and I called Marsha back (we had been playing phone tag all evening).  I'm babysitting tomorrow, so getting ready to head to bed when I finish writing this.  Goodnight, world!

Oh, hello fall!

All I have to say about the weather the past two days is that I wish it wasn't raining so that I could spend the day outside and enjoy the nice, cool weather!  It was in the 60s most of the day today - PERFECTION <3

Today was a pretty slow day for the most part.  I was out of it because of the weather, and also because I really didn't get enough sleep last night.  I spent most of the day job searching and bumming around on the interwebs, although I did take out the trash!  So not much happened until Marcus got home.

He actually didn't even come in when he got home, I just went down to meet him at his car, and we headed over to meet with Jerrilyn.  Jerrilyn is a good friend of Marcus's aunt, who happens to be a realtor.  Marcus's mom hooked us up with her, so we are really getting this house-hunting process on the road!  We went to her office, and she asked us a bunch of questions about what we're looking for and our timeframe and stuff, and then she went through this huge packet of information with us, basically walking us step-by-step through the entire process.  It was very helpful and informative, and I feel like we really have a much better idea of what we're in for and where we're going with all this now.  She also gave us contact information for someone she works with who can help us with the financial aspects - pre-qualifying for a loan and all that.  So we sent her an email (her name is Susan), and she emailed us back right away!  We're going to call her tomorrow, so we'll see how it goes.  And Jerrilyn has already started sending us some properties to look at (via email).

So now we are just sitting here watching the Braves game and unwinding.  I really need to go to bed at a decent hour tonight.  Tomorrow I am taking the SAT (or a version of it) for this tutoring job I applied for.  I really wish the office I have to go to opened earlier.   They open at 11 am, so I am going out there at 1 pm (after lunch, I don't want to get hungry in the middle of the test!), but I really would prefer to take it first thing in the morning.  Then I wouldn't have the problem of having too many other thoughts muddling my brain.  Oh well.

That's about it for today.  Tomorrow should be interesting!

So out of it

So I'm trying to get back into the daily grind, including writing in here every night.  It's hard!  I literally JUST remembered to write in here tonight.

I slept in a little bit today, but got up around 10 after Marcus got a phone call that woke me up.  We ended up going to lunch with Pearl and Joey, then went grocery shopping.  It was a rainy, dreary day (although I did enjoy the MUCH cooler weather!), so we were kind of out of it all day.  I did go to the gym tonight (but Marcus didn't come with me), and felt a little better after that.  I ate dinner and we watched the beginning of the Braves game before the season finale of Secret Life came on at 8.  It was a GREAT episode, definitely the best one this season.  I have a love/hate relationship with season finales.  I love that they are usually amazing episodes that finally tie up all the loose ends of the story.  I hate that they mean I have to wait for MONTHS to see the next episode! :-P

Anyway, after Secret Life ended up, Marcus had left to pick David up from the airport, so I watched the end of the Braves game by myself.  Then I just hung out until he got home.  I showered and got ready for bed, and now here I am writing this.  I'm hoping that I will be able to get back into my regular routine starting tomorrow!  The only things I have on the docket for tomorrow are to review some basic math stuff for the SAT teacher's test I'm taking on Wednesday (pre-requisite for a potential tutoring job), and Marcus and I are meeting with a good friend of his aunt's, who is a realtor, to start house hunting in earnest.  So hopefully I'll have something interesting to report tomorrow night!

Chattanooga Choo Choo!

Marcus and I had an amazing weekend getaway in Chattanooga!

On Friday, we slept in a little bit and left around 11 to drive up to Chattanooga.  We first made pit stops at the bank and gas station, and then another one to drop off the final DVD of Julia's montage with the DJ.  Then we were FINALLY on our way!

We arrived in Chattanooga around 1:30 pm and drove straight to Ruby Falls.  Ruby Falls is one of the attractions at Lookout Mountain, and it is a massive underground cave inside the mountain that contains an amazing underground waterfall!  Before we went on the tour, though, we got some lunch at the little cafe there - we each got a sandwich, and Marcus got some fudge!  Then we set off on the tour.  Our tour guide's name was Martin, and he was HILARIOUS!  You take an elevator down into the cave, and then walk through it in a single file line to get to the waterfall.  The cave is amazing, it has all kinds of cool formations in the rock, and they've given names to ones that resemble things (some examples are: Dragon's Foot, Steak and Potatoes, and Leaning Tower).  It's about 2/5 of a mile from the elevator to the waterfall, so about 4/5 of a mile round trip.  It's always around 60 degrees in the cave, which was a VERY nice break from the upper 90s weather outside!  We could have stayed down there all day!  The waterfall itself was breathtaking.  We took lots of pictures in the cave, and one video of the waterfall.

When we were finished with the tour, we went up to the observation tower for a few minutes to look out at the Tennessee River and Chattanooga.  Then we browsed the gift shop for a bit, and eventually decided we were ready to head out.  By this time it was about 4 pm, so we headed over to our hotel to check in.

We stayed at the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel, which was AWESOME!  They have actual old train cars that have been converted into hotel rooms.  Unfortunately, we didn't stay in a train car room, we just had a regular room.  But we did get to walk around and see all the train stuff!  They also feature "Dinner in the Diner", a dining car where they serve a fancy dinner.  We didn't actually do that either, but we took pictures of the car ;-)

Anyway, we settled into our room and relaxed for a little bit, then headed over to get dinner at the hotel's casual restaurant.  Afterwards, we went to the on-site Model Train Museum, because we had free tickets included with our hotel package.  I wasn't expecting much, but it was actually REALLY cool!  The model train system they had set up was enormous - it filled an entire large room!  It covered the history of the railroads that had gone through Chattanooga, and they had all kinds of clever little setups with the tiny model people and vehicles (not just trains).  We spent about 45 minutes in the museum, then headed down to browse in some of the gift shops at the hotel.  I bought a little magnet for Shosh (she collects magnets, so it made me think of her, lol).  By this time, we were exhausted, so we headed back to our room and went to bed early - we were in bed before 10 pm!

Saturday, we got up around 9, ate breakfast at the hotel (we also had free breakfast both days included in our package), and then headed over to the aquarium.  They had a free electric shuttle bus running through downtown, with one endpoint being our hotel, and the other being right near the aquarium (perfect!).  So we took the shuttle over, then headed into the aquarium.  At some point on Friday, Marcus had discovered that his friend Mike and his wife Heather were also going to be in Chattanooga this weekend, and we had decided to meet up with them on Saturday.  So we called them, and they were already at the aquarium, about halfway through the River portion (the Tennessee Aquarium is divided into two sections, housed in separate buildings - the River section and the Ocean section).  So we headed into the River building first, and kind of sped through the first half of it until we finally caught up with them!  We took our time going through the rest of the River building and all of the Ocean building together.  Being the aquarium snob that I am (having grown up going to the Baltimore Aquarium), I have to say I was pretty impressed.  It was definitely much bigger and better than the Atlanta Aquarium!

At 1 pm, we headed over to the IMAX theater, where we watched a movie about rescued baby elephants and orangutans, narrated by Morgan Freeman.  It was a pretty cool movie, and the baby animals were SO CUTE!  Afterwards, we decided to walk over to where Mike and Heather were staying, which was a little bed and breakfast in the art district.  We went to lunch with them at an Italian restaurant right next door called Tony's Pasta and Trattoria, which was pretty good.  Then we went back to their B&B and sat around talking and playing games for a couple of hours.  Around 5:30, Marcus and I headed back to catch the shuttle back to our hotel, where we showered, changed, and got ready to go to dinner.

We caught the shuttle back downtown and went to a really nice seafood restaurant called Bluewater Grill.  It's apparently owned by the same company as Gordon Biersch, and it was a similar level of restaurant.  Our waiter was awesome and helped us narrow down the MANY menu options we were interested in!  We both ended up getting tuna dishes, and they were both delicious!  After dinner, it was finally cooling off to the point where it was at least comfortable to be outside, so we decided to walk across the pedestrian bridge to the other side of the river, where we went to a local ice cream place called Clumpy's (bad name, GREAT place!).  It was similar to Jake's, for you Atlanta people, basically, they make their own ice cream in house, and they have lots of flavors that they change up every day.  Marcus got cherry almond chunk, and I got chocolate chocolate chip raspberry.  We didn't taste each other's, but we both thought our flavors were delicious!

Then we walked back across the bridge and caught the shuttle back to our hotel.  We went to bed on the early side again, this time around 11.

This morning, we slept in a little bit and got up around 9:30.  We packed our stuff up and loaded up the car, then went to breakfast and checked out.  The drive back to Atlanta only took about 2 hours, which was nice.  We didn't really do much the rest of the day.  We watched the Braves game, and went to Target to pick up a few things, but we're both kind of tired and out of it.  I'm really glad we still have tomorrow to sleep in and go grocery shopping and do our typical weekend things!  Much less stressful than coming back from vacation on Sunday evening and having to do everything that night!

I really enjoyed Chattanooga, and would definitely go back!  It's a great place for a weekend getaway, it has all the amenities (restaurants, museums, etc.) of a city without feeling city-like, and there's a lot of stuff we didn't get to do that I'd love to go back and try.  It was definitely a great investment, and I'm really glad we did it!

TGI Thursday!

Today was another crazy day.  I headed over to Joel and Shosh's at 9:45 this morning to babysit.  My plan was to go straight from their house to Nora's to drop off the DVD of Julia's montage afterwards.  While I was babysitting, I got 3 calls from Nora, 2 from her husband, and 1 from the DJ for the Bat Mitzvah about coordinating dropping off the DVD.  Apparently none of them talk to each other, it's ridiculous!  So what the DJ and I ended up deciding (and I later conveyed to Nora and her husband via email when I got home) is that I will drop the DVD off at his office on our way up to Chattanooga tomorrow, since it's basically on the way.  I also now have to call Nora AND her husband to let them know when I've dropped it off successfully :-P

So anyway, babysitting was fine, Eli was adorable as usual, and Talia slept for most of the time I was there.  Shosh had put her down before I got there (around 9:15), and she didn't wake up until around 12:30!  Then she was up for a few hours, but went to sleep again around 3:20 or so, just a few minutes before Joel got home.  All I have to report from today (and actually yesterday too, but I forgot to mention it in my post last night) is that it absolutely melts my heart when Eli calls me "Auntie Tara"!  Yesterday when I was leaving, he was going down for a nap, and he said "night night Auntie Tara" <3  Today he kept wanting me to "help" him with his toy (which he's perfectly capable of using by himself, lol), and he kept saying, "help, Auntie Tara!", and it was SO. FREAKING. CUTE.

I was all stressed out when I got home, mostly because of trying to juggle Nora, Spencer (her husband), AND the DJ, AND still had to pack and plan for our trip.  When Marcus got home, we debated for a while before deciding to forego the gym tonight in favor of devoting our evening to planning our trip.  I printed out a whole bunch of stuff, from directions to coupons to my voucher for the hotel.  We also looked at restaurants online and decided which ones we want to go to.

Since I'm not bringing my computer with me, I won't be able to update every night while I'm gone.  We're coming back Sunday afternoon(-ish), so I promise to write about our trip either Sunday night or Monday!  I'm so excited, I can't wait to get away for a couple of days!  I need a break.

Busy Busy Bee

Today was another busy but productive day.  I got up early (7:30 am) to go babysit for Eli and Talia while Shosh went to the doctor.  Talia was pretty fussy, but it was only for a couple of hours, so it was fine.  Eli was in such a goofy mood, it was the cutest thing!  My favorite moment was when I was trying to get Talia to stop crying, and I kept saying "What's the matter, Talia?", and after a while, I said it one time and Eli repeated, "whassa matter, Talia?"  I cracked up, lol, he is SO CUTE! :-)

Anyway, after Shosh got home, we hung out for a little bit, and then I came home.  I got home around 1:15 or so, ate lunch, and then relaxed for a little bit.  I decided that if I didn't hear back from Nora by 3:30, I was going to go ahead and finish Julia's montage - put it on DVD and everything.  Of course, I never heard back from her, so I went ahead and did it anyway, then sent her an email asking if she and Julia had had a chance to look at the final montage yet and also asking if I could come drop the DVD off tomorrow afternoon (I'm babysitting again tomorrow, and Joel and Shosh's house is about halfway out to where they live, so I'd rather go right after babysitting than have to double back later in the evening).  I said in the email that if I didn't hear back from her, I would assume that it's fine.  I haven't heard back yet...we'll see if I have anything from her in the morning.  If not, I'm totally just gonna go anyway, and if she's not home, I'll leave it in the mailbox :-P

Marcus got home before I finished the DVD.  It took FOREVER to burn for some reason, but it finally finished, and I was able to create the label for it and everything.  Marcus helped me out by creating an invoice for the project (we had a little argument because he wanted me to add in more stuff, and I told him no, because it wasn't what Nora and I had discussed, and he thinks I'm short-changing myself, but whatever), which I also printed out to take with me tomorrow.  Then we ate dinner and watched the Braves game.

After the game, I got a facebook event invitation for my 10-year high school reunion.  I am SO bummed out that I won't be able to go, because it's over Thanksgiving weekend, and we'll be in Florida this year (we've been in Maryland the last two years - we have a two years and two years arrangement, it's a little complicated).  The nostalgia junkie in me has been looking forward to this reunion pretty much since graduation...and now I can't go :-(  Although I have already gotten a couple of facebook comments from friends who also can't go, so that makes me feel a LITTLE better, that some of the people I'd want to see if I went aren't going to be there anyway.

Then Marcus and I played cards for a while.  It's been a long time since we've done that, it was really nice (and fun!).  I kicked his butt at gin rummy and crazy eights, and then he kicked my butt at casino (even though I skunked him the first round) - pretty much on par for us, haha ;-)

I think I'm going to head to bed early (as in, as soon as I finish writing this), because I'm exhausted and I have another long and busy day tomorrow.

You are getting sleeeeepyyyyy

Well, actually, *I* am getting sleepy.  So this will be a short post.

I had kind of a slow start this morning, but once I got moving, I was fairly productive.  I managed to pretty much finish up Julia's montage, and posted it to youtube around 12:30 pm.  Then I pretty much just vegged for the rest of the afternoon.

When Marcus got home, we went to the gym, then came back and cooked dinner (yummy pasta again!) for our friends Cat and Drew, who came over around 7:30.  They brought a delicious apple and blueberry pie for dessert, and we mostly ate and talked, and also played a quick game of Blokus (which they also brought).  After they left, we cleaned up and started to get ready for bed.

Then I got an email from Nora (Julia's mom) about the montage.  She liked it, but was wondering where the video clip was that I was supposed to add in.  I did add it in, but apparently it got lost somewhere in the upload to youtube.  So I had to go back and re-add it back in, and re-upload it to youtube.  Thankfully, it worked this time, so I sent her the new link, and we shall see what she says in the morning.

And now I am going to bed, because I have to get up early tomorrow (7:30) to go babysit Eli and Talia.  Goodnight all!

Manic Monday

Days like today are why the term "manic Monday" came about.  I'm heading to bed early (as soon as I finish writing this, in fact) in hopes of recovering and catching up a little bit on sleep!

I woke up at 6 am this morning, and while I was attempting to fall back asleep, was startled awake again by a loud noise from somewhere outside (it sounded like a gunshot, but maybe that's just my imagination, since I haven't heard about any shootings...).  After that, it took me a LONG time to fall back asleep, and when I finally did, I had a very unsettling dream about my car, in which it ended up having even more problems than those that were already there.  Needless to say, I did NOT want to get up when my alarm went off at 8!  But I had to, because I had a lot on the docket for today.

First order of business - took my car in to get the tire fixed.  Luckily, they were able to plug the hole and didn't have to replace the tire, so I didn't have to pay anything!  It also only took them about 20 minutes or so, which was nice.  I brought my computer with me and worked on Julia's montage while they were fixing my car.

When I got home, I worked on the montage for a couple of hours longer.  I got a lot done, and I'm HOPING to be able to finish it (or at least get really, really close to finishing it) tomorrow.  We'll see how that goes, haha.

Then I just hung out for a while.  Walked down and got the mail, of which there was a TON - I guess we forgot to get it on Saturday, haha.  When Marcus got home, we took out the trash, then ate dinner.  We were both feeling lazy, so we just kind of grabbed whatever out of the pantry.  I had a tuna pack and he had a bowl of cereal!  Then we watched Jeopardy together, then I watched Secret Life (can't wait for next week's season finale!), and we watched the new episode of Millionaire Matchmaker together.  It was a rare episode where I actually liked both of the millionaires, haha, so that was fun.  We also paid rent for next month and Marcus emailed his mom about houses and such.

So, it was a very busy and productive day, which leaves me feeling tired, but accomplished (which is a rare treat for me these days).  Tomorrow should be another fun one, not much during the day other than finishing the montage, but after Marcus gets home it will be super busy!

What happened to the weekend?!?

I can't believe the weekend is already over, it went by SO fast!  And this week is going to be insanely busy...at least I have our Chattanooga trip to look forward to at the end of it.

I got up early (for a weekend) this morning, around 9:30.  Marcus had gotten up to head out to the APO section event, and I couldn't fall back asleep, so I just decided to get up since I had a lot to do today.  I spent the morning doing laundry, then headed out around 2:15 to go to Eli's birthday party.  I had to take side streets because of my spare tire, which went fine, although the tire seems to be running low.  But I'm taking the car in tomorrow morning, so as long as I can make it to the dealership okay, it should be fine.

Anyway, the birthday party was fun!  There were lots of adorable little kids there, and I ate way more than I should have.  Eli seemed to enjoy himself - his favorite part was chowing down on grapes and watermelon!  This child is a watermelon addict, seriously, it's hilarious!  Especially since he calls it "waterlemon"...every other sentence out of his mouth is, "more waterlemon please!", lol :-)  It was really hot out, so I've been super tired since I got home - too much sun, I think.

When we got home (Marcus came a little later to the party, straight from the APO event), we cooled off for about 15 minutes, then headed back out to go grocery shopping (Marcus drove).  We decided to stop at Menchie's and get some frozen yogurt on our way home, which was a nice treat.  Then Marcus headed over to David's house for a True Blood viewing party, and I stayed home and watched Food Network.

I have a really busy week planned, and it just keeps getting busier!  So far, this is what I've got on the schedule:
Monday - certify unemployment, take my car in, work on Julia's montage, pay rent, watch Secret Life
Tuesday - finish Julia's montage and post it to youtube for final review, gym, Cat and Drew coming over for dinner
Wednesday - babysit Eli and Talia, finalize Julia's montage and burn it to DVD
Thursday - babysit Eli and Talia, deliver montage DVD to Nora, gym, pack for weekend trip
Friday - leave for Chattanooga!

I'll try to keep up with the blog posting, too!

Oy, too much stress!

So much for a relaxing weekend.  Today started off innocently enough.  I got up around 11:30.  Marcus left at 12:30 to go shop with A and some others for the APO section event tomorrow, and I left around the same time to go over to Marsha's.  We hung out at her house for a while, had some yummy waffles, and then decided to go check out a flea market.  It was about 45 minutes away (not too bad), and we ended up spending a couple of hours walking around there.  We got some yummy Italian ices and saw lots of cool stuff!  We got back to her house around 5:30, at which point I looked at my car and saw that I had a flat tire.  So I called AAA, and the guy came out 15 minutes later!  This is the first time I've ever had a AAA person make it out in less than an hour, haha, which was awesome!  He put my spare tire on, and then Marcus showed up.  I had called him to let him know what was going on, because we had a dinner reservation at 7, and when I originally called AAA, they had said the guy would come anytime "between now and 7:17", so Marcus had decided to head over so we could go to dinner straight from Marsha's.  Luckily, we were able to leave her house around 6:30, so we were on time for our reservation!

This week is Restaurant Week for Midtown Atlanta, which means a whole bunch of restaurants have special 3-course menus for $25 or $35 per person.  We had looked through the menus and picked one to go to, it was a restaurant called Steel.  Our dinner was DELICIOUS!  Their regular menu is a bit out of our typical price range, and the $25 3-course menu was a steal of a deal given their normal prices.  We were so full after dinner that we almost couldn't walk back to the car!

Anyway, we headed back to Marsha's after dinner to get my car, which I drove home with no issues.  I'm a little concerned about the spare tire, because I'm supposed to drive to Dunwoody and back tomorrow for Eli's birthday party, and the car place is closed on Sundays, so I can't take it in to get the regular tire fixed until Monday morning, so that's a LOT of driving on the spare.  The AAA guy assured me that it would be fine, that I "could drive on it for a week if I needed to", but that I shouldn't drive over 50 MPH on it.  So I'm now planning to take surface streets tomorrow rather than the highway (which is fine, since they've been doing massive weekend construction on 285 anyway), but I'm still a little concerned about the spare tire holding out :-/

In other exciting (to me, anyway) news, several extended cousins from my mom's generation had a family reunion in Maine a couple of weeks ago.  They are trying to get the WHOLE family back in touch, and to get many more people (including me!) to come to the next reunion in a couple of years!  So they created a facebook group for the family, and I of course went crazy adding people to it, lol.  I'm so excited, I've always wanted to have a family reunion!  And this is on a way bigger scale than I even imagined!

So, now I am exhausted and heading to bed.  Hoping my family in DC and NY (and everywhere in between) holds out okay with the hurricane!

TGIF!

I'm exhausted and so ready for the weekend!

Today ended up being much busier and more stressful than originally planned.  I went over to Barnes & Noble this morning to try to find a good birthday present for Eli.  I texted Shosh while I was there to ask whether he already had a few books, but eventually headed home for lunch.  She finally texted me back after I got home, telling me that he doesn't have any of the books I mentioned, so after lunch, I headed back to Barnes & Noble and bought his present!

When I got home the second time, I had an email from Nora about Julia's photo montage.  There was this video clip that they wanted to include, and we had communicated about my needing to pick it up from them.  So at 3:30, I headed out to their house.  I had plans with Rebeca at 7, but figured I had plenty of time, since I was just going to transfer this one video clip (which literally should take about 2 minutes).  Well, long story short, I got stuck at their house for 2 and a half hours and was super late getting back for Rebeca.  We were in touch the whole time, so it's not like she was here waiting for me, but I was super stressed out and pissed about the whole thing.  I vented a lot already about this to Marcus and to Gabbie and now to Rebeca as well, so I'm not gonna write out the whole story again, but suffice it to say I am VERY glad I have the weekend to recover before I have to finish up the montage starting on Monday.

Anyway, Rebeca finally did get to come over, and we ate dinner (leftover pasta from last night) and watched a movie (40-Year-Old Virgin, which she had never seen!).  It was the relaxing ending I needed to a stressful day.  This weekend is actually looking pretty busy, but hopefully I'll get to sleep in and relax in addition to running all over Atlanta.

Oops!

Just realized I completely forgot to post last night.  I'm SO good at this blogging every day thing :-P

I let myself sleep in pretty late yesterday.  I didn't get up until around 11.  I then proceeded to have a pretty lazy day overall, watched the Braves game (which was an afternoon game) and job searched a little bit.  When Marcus got home, we made pasta for dinner - it's our favorite recipe that we've tried so far from the cookbooks we've gotten over the past year or so.  I'll post the recipe below so you can try it if you want!  It's YUMMY!

Anyway, after dinner, we decided to watch a movie (yay, Netflix!).  We browsed around for a while, and ended up watching Wet Hot American Summer, which I had never seen and had been wanting to see for a while.  It was clever, I really enjoyed the sarcastic jabs at...well, pretty much everything, lol.  Definitely entertaining.

We went to bed on the early side, around 11:30.  That pretty much sums up the day, so I'll go ahead and post the recipe to finish this off!

Lemon-Pepper Pasta and Asparagus (from the Betty Crocker Easy Vegetarian cookbook)
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:
2 cups uncooked farfalle (bowtie) pasta
1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
1 lb. asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 can (15-16 oz.) navy beans, drained and rinsed
Freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
1. Cook and drain pasta as directed on package.
2. Meanwhile, in 12-inch skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat.  Add bell pepper, asparagus, lemon peel, salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper; cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are crisp-tender.
3. Stir in lemon juice and beans.  Cook until beans are hot.  Add pasta; toss with vegetable mixture.  Sprinkle with pepper.

You can do variations, too.  For example, we usually use yellow bell pepper instead of red, and we don't freshly grind the black pepper.  It also says you can try using lime peel and juice instead of lemon - I'm sure this would be delicious, although we haven't tried it.  We also never realized that step 3 probably means you're supposed to cook the lemon juice and beans separately and then add the pasta to it and THEN add the whole thing to the vegetables.  We just cook it all (except for the pasta, which we add at the end) in the skillet.

Also, for those of you who are health-conscious like me, the cookbook actually tells you the nutrition information!  Information is for one serving; remember there are four servings in the recipe (so eat 1/4 of what it makes).

Nutrition Info: Calories 400 (Calories from Fat 130), Total Fat 15g (Saturated Fat 2g), Cholesterol 0mg, Sodium 410mg, Total Carbohydrates 52g (Dietary Fiber 9g), Protein 14g

So tired...

I'm having a hard time with writing in here every day.  Some days I just don't feel like writing, but I've been making myself do it anyway, because if I skip one day, I'll end up never keeping up with it.

So today I had a hard time getting up again.  I may let myself sleep in tomorrow, just because I'm so exhausted.  I got up normal time, and headed over to Joel and Shosh's house to babysit.  It was a little bit of a rough day, Talia was really fussy, but eventually she actually fell asleep for a real nap, which was nice.  Eli was pretty good, except for when he dumped his Cheerios all over the floor and refused to clean them up :-P  But he also went down for a nap with no trouble!

I got home around 3 and pretty much just hung out for the rest of the day until Marcus came home.  Then we went to the gym and ate dinner before watching the Braves game.  And now I'm watching a random Coldplay concert on OnDemand!  They are so amazing in concert...I'd love to actually see them live someday.  I <3 Coldplay.  At least back when they were Coldplay and not U2 redux :-P

I actually had a non-Coldplay song stuck in my head for a good chunk of the day, thanks to just catching the end of the song on the radio this morning.  The song is called "Stolen" and is by Dashboard Confessional.  It's like, the definition of emo, lol, but I LOVE it!  The line "you are the best one of the best ones" really resonates with me for some reason.  Anyway, part of the reason I'm watching the Coldplay concert is to try to get that song out of my head, lol, and I think it's actually working!

That's about it for today.  I'm so tired I can't think straight, let alone write straight.

Weird...

Today was a weird day.  Very productive, but weird.  My routine is so thrown off!

I got up normal time this morning, got ready, and headed over to Joel and Shosh's house.  Shosh had asked me if I could come with her and the kids to a group meeting and watch Eli out in the hall while she was in the meeting with Talia.  I gladly agreed, so that's what I was doing this morning.  The meeting was at this church that had lots of long hallways (which Eli greatly enjoyed running through and exploring!).  He was pretty good for the most part, but was really tired by the end, and had a mini-meltdown when he got sick of waiting for Mommy to come out of the meeting room :-(  Once she did come out, though, he was fine again!  We had lots of fun playing with his picnic basket - taking all the foods out and naming them, then putting them back in.  The cutest thing was, one of the foods in the basket is a triangular cheese slice (which is supposed to be part of a sandwich, but he has all the pieces separated), and at first, he only called it "triangle".  I told him it was a cheese triangle, and from then on, he called it "cheese triangle"!  It was really cute, lol.

Anyway, I got home around 2 and ate lunch (late lunch for me), then called the car insurance company.  Basically what had happened was that when I changed my name with them, they made me add Marcus onto my insurance, but not his car (he still had his own separate insurance).  So we figured out that it's cheaper to just have one combined policy.  I went on the website and got a quote for how much it would cost to add his car onto my policy, and he got a quote for how much it would cost to create a new policy from scratch including both of us and both our cars.  His quote was significantly lower than mine, so I called them today to see if I could talk them into just adding him onto my policy for the lower price that he had found.  After about 20 minutes on the phone (most of it on hold while they looked stuff up), the customer service lady confirmed that I could get the lower price, so I went ahead and did that!  One more thing checked off the list!

When Marcus got home, we both were kind of out of it.  He had gone into work early this morning, so both of our routines were a little off.  We kind of threw random stuff together for dinner, and then watched the Braves game.

OH - I also got an email from the bank about that check that I mentioned yesterday.  Apparently the car company got the check and tried to process it, so I got an email from the bank saying that my account had "insufficient funds" (duh, cuz I closed it, it has NO funds :-P) and that I could be charged an overdraft fee.  So I got on the bank website and ended up chatting online with a "representative".  Luckily, she assured me that since the account has been completely closed, I will not be charged a fee.  So at least I'm not getting fees from both ends!

I am babysitting for Eli and Talia again tomorrow (this time is a normal day, Shosh is working), so I'm heading to bed to try to get a sufficient amount of sleep to deal with an almost 2 year old and a 3 month old.  Goodnight, all!

Oh, Monday...

I had a really hard time getting up this morning.  I kept falling back asleep!  I finally got up around 8:45, and tried to be productive this morning.  I called my car finance company, because I had originally sent a check for this month's payment, but then I closed the checking account I sent it from because it was like 5 days later and I completely forgot that it hadn't gone through yet.  As soon as I had realized this, I paid it "again" online (and it's not due until the 29th, so I'm still fine as far as paying on time).  But I wanted to let them know so that they wouldn't try to process the check when they got it.  Well, apparently there's nothing they can do about it, so I will have a lovely fee to pay ($20-30) for the check not going through.  You'd think they would be able to put a note on my account or something, but nooooo, apparently they can't do that.  LAME.

Anyway, I was annoyed after that, so I decided to go grocery shopping (since we didn't get a chance to go this weekend) before lunch so I could listen to music in the car and try to improve my mood.  It worked pretty well, it was a successful (and cheap!) grocery shopping trip, so now we have food in the house again, yay!

I spent the rest of the day job searching and such, until Marcus got home.  He actually came home a little early because the air conditioning at his office was broken, so his boss let everyone go home early.  So, when he got home, we booked our next "vacation" - I had bought a weekend getaway type thing on Living Social a while back, and we finally decided to use it!  So we're going to Chattanooga for a couple of days over Labor Day weekend.  We're going to go to the aquarium and to Ruby Falls, and we're staying at the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel!  It should be fun, I'm excited to get away for a couple of days.

After we had sorted all of that out, we went to the gym, which was nice, since I didn't go at all last week when I was sick.  Marcus went out to get us Chipotle for dinner (yum!), and I watched Secret Life and the new episode of Millionaire Matchmaker while he watched True Blood on the computer.  And now we are watching the Braves game, and hoping it'll be a short-ish game so that we can get to bed early tonight!  Marcus has to go into work a little early tomorrow, and I am going with Shosh to a meeting tomorrow morning so that I can watch Eli for her while she and Talia are in the meeting.

It's crazy how the fall always turns out so busy, no matter how calm we try to keep it.  There's always so much travel going on, and with the holidays thrown in, it just gets crazy so quickly!  So far we already have two trips planned in September and one in October, plus the holidays...it's really kind of ridiculous.  Hopefully we'll still manage to get enough sleep somehow!

Time flies when you're having fun

Today was another busy day with my parents.  We did get to sleep in, which was nice.  We got up around 11, and headed over to pick them up at their hotel around 12 in order to get to Marcus's aunt and uncle's house for brunch at 12:30.  Brunch was great, lots of good food and conversation, and it's always nice to see family.  We hung out there until a little after 4 pm, then headed over to Joel and Shosh's house.  Shosh was working, but Joel was home with the little ones, so my mom got to meet Talia and see Eli (her birthday buddy)!  They were both adorable as always, and my mom got to hold Talia for a while.  Talia LOVED my mom!  She was smiling and giggling the whole time!

Unfortunately, we were only able to stay there for about 20 minutes before we had to head out to Marcus's cousins' house for dinner.  We had to make a pit stop back at his aunt and uncle's house first to retrieve our wedding video, which Marcus had brought along and then proceeded to leave there accidentally :-P  Anyway, we made it up to his cousins' house, where we hung out for a while and had a nice dinner.  We left early, around 7:30, and got caught in a downpour on our way back to my parents' hotel.  But we made it, and Marcus and I went in and hung out in the lobby with them for a while.  Around 9 pm, we left the hotel and headed home.  My parents are leaving early tomorrow morning, so we won't see them again before they go.

It's been a crazy weekend, fun and busy, and it absolutely FLEW by.  I'm so not ready for the weekend to be over, but I guess I don't really have a choice.  We have a lot of stuff to get done this week, so I'm really not looking forward to dealing with various institutions (my car financing company, car insurance company, etc.).  I also need to go grocery shopping tomorrow, since we didn't have time to do that this weekend.  I think I really just need another weekend starting tomorrow - can we make that happen? ;)

The parents are coming!

My parents are here visiting this weekend, so we have been super busy.  They got here around 11 this morning, and we unloaded the stuff they brought down for us out of the car.  Then we headed off to the bank, where we were able to get everything done that we needed to in short order.  So we set off to downtown Decatur for lunch at Raging Burrito.  Over lunch, we had a nice talk about the options that Marcus and I have when our lease is up in January.  We are starting to think more seriously about trying to buy a house, so my parents gave us some really helpful tips and advice.  We also briefly discussed car insurance options.

After lunch, we went to Whole Foods to get my mom her peach salsa.  Usually they get a case of 12 jars, but the store only had 11 jars in stock.  Luckily, when we explained this to the person at checkout, he was able to give us the case discount even though we only had 11 jars instead of 12.

Then we came back to the apartment and loaded all the stuff my parents are taking back with them to store at their house into the car.  After that, we were all tired, so my parents went to check into their hotel and relax for a few hours.  Marcus and I also spent that time resting.

My parents came back over around 5, and we headed out to the Braves game!  We took MARTA so we wouldn't have to deal with traffic and parking.  It was my mom's first time on MARTA, and she kept making comparisons to the NY and DC public transportation systems.  We got to the game a little early, so we first walked all the way around to the other side of the stadium to get food for my mom at the gluten free concession stand.  We passed a Chik-Fil-A on the way, where Marcus got food.  Then we went back up to our section (413), and my dad and I got food.  We decided to sit in a shady spot and eat our food before going to our seats, since it was really hot and sunny outside.  This was a good choice, as the sun went behind some clouds by the time we made it to our seats.

The game was great, the Braves kicked some Diamondback butt, and Marcus made friends with an 18-month-old boy who was sitting next to us with his grandpa.  He was really cute, his grandpa was showing him how to do the chop, and he also enjoyed clapping along with the crowd and pointing up at every airplane, bird, and bug that flew by overhead.

After the game, we had a little adventure walking back to MARTA, as we came out an exit on the wrong side of the stadium!  So we had to walk all the way around, and ended up getting caught in the mass exodus of people.  Luckily, the vast majority of them had driven to the game, so they all disappeared into the parking lots by the time we were halfway to the MARTA station.   We ended up getting home around 11, and my parents headed back to their hotel to sleep.  Marcus and I are heading to sleep soon too, as we have another busy day planned tomorrow!

Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody, Everywhere...

I really didn't do much today.  Cliff left just after lunch, and I pretty much just hung around the house until Marcus got home.  Then I was really tired, because I woke up at 7:30 again this morning (not intentionally), so we got in bed and rested until dinner.  I ate a tuna pack for dinner while Marcus went out to get a sandwich from Jersey Mike's.  Then we started cleaning.

In the past 3 hours, I have cleaned the bathroom, bedroom, and most of the living room (still have to clean the tv, but I'm trying to wait until the Braves game is over, since we're watching it, lol), a deeper cleaning than I've done in several years.  I literally took everything off of the shelves and stuff to dust!  Meanwhile, Marcus cleaned the kitchen (I figured this was a safe task to give him, since it's really hard to screw up wiping down counters and stovetops), and he is still going to vacuum and mop the floors.  Then our apartment will finally be in mom-ready condition!

My parents are arriving at 10 am tomorrow.  Hopefully I won't wake up at 7:30 coughing again :-P

We also found out tonight that our friends Mike and Heather are pregnant (well, Heather is, haha)!  I'm happy and excited for them, but why does it seem like EVERYONE is getting pregnant these days?  I would so love to jump on that bandwagon, but unfortunately, there's a lot of things that have to happen first, not the least of which is that I need to find a job.  I do feel my biological clock ticking, though, and given my medical history, I worry that when we do start trying, it will take us a while to get pregnant...which makes me want to start trying RIGHT NOW, even though we can't yet.  This is one of those rare times when I really wish I was normal.  *SIGH*

A Day Full of Clifford

I'm feeling a LOT better today, although I still had a few coughing fits.  I'm optimistic that I'll be fully recovered by Saturday...but we'll see.

I didn't really do much this morning.  Cliff and I just kind of hung out and stared at our computers.  Then we went to have lunch with Marcus at Jason's Deli, which was fun and yummy!  After we dropped Marcus back at work, we came back home and hung out some more.  We watched one of my home videos and talked a little until Marcus got home.  Then the boys went to the gym (I really wanted to go, but I didn't think it would be a good idea since I'm still coughing so much) while I hung out here, and when they got back, we ate dinner and watched the Braves game.  We also played two rousing games of Betrayal at the House on the Hill (one of our favorite games), in which the bad guys won both times.

Tomorrow we have to clean the apartment in preparation for my parents' arrival.  It's what I've heard referred to as the "mom clean" - pretty accurate, if you know my mom!

On the road to recovery!

I'm writing a little earlier than usual tonight, because I've noticed that I tend to be more in the mood to write a few hours earlier than I've been posting, so I thought it might help me write a longer (and better) post.

I had a rough night last night, had a HUGE coughing fit just when I was trying to go to sleep, so I ended up not falling asleep until probably an hour after I intended to.  Luckily, though, once I fell asleep, I slept through the night (yay!) and didn't have another coughing fit until after I woke up around 7:30 this morning!  I felt really gross this morning, just really stuffy and coughing a TON.  But I did get dressed and stuff for the first time since Saturday.

Around 12:30, Cliff dragged me out of the house to get lunch at Panera.  I'm SO glad he did!  We ended up sitting there until almost 4 pm talking, and I felt SO. MUCH. BETTER.  I only had one little mini coughing fit the entire time we were out!  And we had a great 3.5 hour conversation about everything from religion to books to science to paranormal activity, it was amazing :-)  Then, of course, as soon as we got home, I started coughing again :-P  I swear I must be allergic to the apartment or something!  But anyway, even though I'm still coughing, my throat isn't sore anymore, and I haven't had any fever for two days now.  My headache is also gone, I think because I've finally been draining.  So hopefully I will actually be fully recovered by the weekend!

One good thing that's come out of this annoying sick-ness is that I've lost weight more quickly than usual.  Apparently I've dropped two pounds in the last week!  That's a lot for me.  The weird part is, it was really only the first day (Sunday) that I didn't eat much, every day after that I've eaten a normal amount of food!  AND I haven't been exercising since I've been sick.  So I guess coughing up a lung must be good exercise or something :-P  At any rate, I've surpassed the 9-pound weight loss mark.  We'll see if I gain any back before I start losing more, now that I'm feeling better, but anyway, being so close to 10 pounds is really exciting!  I feel like it's a huge accomplishment!  I can't see any difference when I look in the mirror, but I feel better about my body, and I'm inching closer to the "normal" range - my BMI is down to 25.1!  The very lower limit of "overweight" range!

So overall, it's been a pretty good day, despite the incessant coughing.  I'm hopeful that that'll follow the rest of my symptoms out the door sometime soon (tomorrow would be great!), but we'll see what happens.  I missed out on babysitting Eli and Talia TWICE this week...sadface :-(  I can't wait to get back to that.  I also feel like I've been really distanced from Marcus because I've been trying not to get him sick, so I've been more avoidant of physical contact of any kind than usual.  Now that I'm starting to feel better, I'm looking forward to getting back to normal.  He told me today that he's been having trouble falling asleep because he hasn't been able to hold me when we go to bed (awwww), and I have to admit that I miss it too.  So as soon as I can get rid of this annoying cough and lay whichever way I want, I will jump for some snuggle time!

Same Old, Same Old

Today was another day spent on the futon.  I didn't have a fever at all today, but my head finally started to drain last night, and I spent most of today coughing up a storm.  This morning, my cousin posted a picture on facebook of him and his brother when they were little, which made me all nostalgic, so I watched one of my home videos (in which he and his brother play a prominent role and look just like they did in that picture).  Other than that, I didn't do much today...I did take out the trash, which was exciting because it was the first time I left the apartment since Saturday.

Cliff came over around 9:30 and brought our mutual friend Chris J. with him to say hi.  We hung out for about an hour before Chris left to drive home, and Cliff is now sleeping on the futon while Marcus and I are about to go get ready for bed.

Not sure how I'll feel tomorrow...hopefully I'll continue this trend of one symptom getting better each day, and tomorrow's will be this ridiculous cough!  I'm so sick of coughing :-(

Another sick day...

Yup, still sick.  I think I'm starting to get better though, my fever didn't spike nearly as high tonight as it did last night, although it still did go up a little in the evening.

I spent the entire day sitting/laying on the futon in our living room today.  There was a marathon of Millionaire Matchmaker on, and I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I watched it for about 6 hours...but hey, I'm sick, so that's my excuse, right? ;-)

When Marcus got home, we decided to order in dinner from Mediterranean Grill, since Marcus loves their food, and I was actually craving their potatoes!  I ate while watching the new episode of Secret Life, and then joined Marcus in the living room to watch the end of the Braves game - very exciting finish!  I swear I have a 6th sense about these things...I had a "feeling" that Freddie Freeman was going to drive in at least A run somehow!  But he managed to drive in two, so we won!  Yay!

I felt much better overall today, for most of the day, I didn't even have a fever, in fact my temperature was below normal for a good chunk of the day (thanks to the thermometer I made Marcus pick up when he went grocery shopping yesterday, I was actually able to keep tabs on it for once).  I seem to hit a wall around 7-7:30 pm...that's when my fever spiked yesterday, and when it went up to its highest point today (which, today, was only a little over 100 - much better than yesterday's high of 102.4).  It somehow went down after that though, as I checked it again around 10 (to see if I should take some Advil before going to bed), and it was 99.7!  So I deemed Advil unnecessary, and I think it was the right choice - I'm starting to sweat a little now, which likely means it's dropping even more on its own.  GO IMMUNE SYSTEM, GO!

I also ate real food today.  Yesterday I fed myself the "sick diet" - toast with jelly for brunch, and soup for dinner.  Today I decided I needed some protein, so after eating an orange for breakfast, I ended up having peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and a sandwich from Med Grill (as I mentioned above) for dinner.

I plan to spend most of the day tomorrow laying on the futon again...but Cliff is coming to stay over tomorrow night for an interview he has Wednesday morning, so I'll have to give up my futon spot a little earlier in the day tomorrow than I did today.

Still Sick :(

Sorry I didn't post last night.  I really wasn't feeling well last night (my fever tends to spike in the evening), so I ended up showering at like 7:30 and getting in bed to watch the reunion show and season finale of Next Food Network Star.  I fell asleep soon after it was over, probably around 10:15-10:30.  I feel better this morning, but then again, I felt better yesterday morning too.  I think it's just because my temperature is lower in the mornings.

Since I was sick, I really didn't do much yesterday.  I did laundry, but that's about it.  Marcus was awesome and went grocery shopping for me, so I didn't have to leave the house at all.  I'm not planning on going anywhere today either.

So, sorry for the boring update.  Tonight's will probably be just as boring.  Hopefully I'll get better soon, and we'll be back to more interesting daily goings-on.

Sick :-(

I'm sick :-(  I was feeling okay when I woke up today, but over the course of the day, it got worse, and I know I had a fever for the better part of the afternoon and evening.  I'm really hoping it won't last too long, since I need to be better and ready to go when my parents arrive for their visit next weekend!

I intended to sleep in later than I did today, but I woke up around 10:15 and never went back to sleep.  We went over to Dunwoody Gables to look at the 2-bedroom apartment that we like, to see one with the fireplace.  I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about it, but we're going to wait until after next weekend to decide anything anyway, so that we can talk to my parents about it and see what they think before we decide.

Then we headed over to Joel and Shosh's house.  Eli was napping when we got there, so we hung out and played cards until he woke up.  Then we all headed over to the mall to get work clothes and shoes for Joel and to look in the Disney store for Eli.  We ended up going to an early dinner at the Cheesecake Factory at the mall, too.  By the time we got done with all that, I really wasn't feeling well, so Marcus and I went home.  Since then I've been sitting on the couch, we have the Braves game on, but I'm not really watching.  I took some Advil, which seems to be kicking in a little bit now, so I'm feeling slightly better, but still not great.

I'm going to go to bed early (like, in a few minutes) and hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow...especially since I have to do laundry tomorrow and go grocery shopping (and Marcus has a meeting in the afternoon, so I can't just send him out grocery shopping, either).  He was also planning a date night for tomorrow night - it was originally supposed to be tonight, but he realized that all the coupons he has for the places he wants us to go aren't valid on Saturday nights :-P  So now it's supposed to be tomorrow night...but we'll see how I feel tomorrow.

Nostalgia

Today was an interesting day, as I predicted it would be.  I didn't really do much during the day, just job searched a little bit and fooled around on facebook and the interwebs.  Today was really about tonight.

Marcus left for his RPG around 6:30, at the same time I was tuning in to the Braves broadcast for Bobby Cox's number retirement ceremony.  The ceremony itself was pretty cool, they had a LOT of former players show up to honor Bobby, and the big three pitchers of the '90s (Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz) as well as Chipper Jones and John Schuerholz spoke and paid homage to Bobby.  But what really got me (unexpectedly) was the game afterwards.  The Braves jumped out to a huge lead early with a bunch of homers...and the energy in the ballpark...I haven't felt that kind of energy emanating from a televised game in a LONG time.  It reminded me of how it used to feel watching the Braves back in high school, when my life revolved around them.  I really miss that energy, I've kind of been lost and searching for it for a couple of years now, so it was nice to be reminded that it can still exist!

Anyway...that's really about all I've got for today.  I'm going to try to get to bed early tonight, I'm completely exhausted, haha, but in a good way, for once.  It's shaping up to be a fun weekend, so hopefully I'll have some more happy posts coming up!

Interesting Day

Today got off to a slow start.  I had a hard time getting up this morning, and once I did get up, I had a hard time getting myself going.  I finally made it out to the unemployment office around 10:45, where I sat and waited for almost an hour before finally getting to talk to someone.  I just had a question about a notice I had received in the mail, and the lady was able to explain it to me in about 30 seconds.  So I waited for an hour to talk to someone for 30 seconds.  LURVELY.

Then I went home and ate lunch, since by that time it was after 12.  I spent the rest of the day just hanging out here...did a little job searching, but not much.  Around 4, I got started baking cookies, and when Marcus got home, we headed over to Cat and Drew's house for dinner and games.  They had made gazpacho and hummus and pita for dinner, which was yummy.  We played Betrayal (one of our favorite games), and then just talked for the next few hours.  It was really nice, and we hope to do it again sometime soon!

Anyway, it's late and I'm really sleepy, so this will be a short blog.  Hopefully tomorrow's will be a little longer...but we'll see.  Something tells me I'll be exhausted tomorrow night in ways I can't even process right now, haha.  And Marcus has his RPG tomorrow night, too, so he'll be out until probably after I go to sleep.  *sigh*  My mind is such a weird place to be sometimes.

Tired, but in a good way

I am exhausted, but today was pretty satisfying.  I got up normal time (around 8) this morning, and had just enough time to post yesterday's blog (oops!) and check my email and stuff before heading over to Joel and Shosh's house to babysit.  Today I babysat for both Eli (almost 2) and Talia (3 months old).  It was the first time I watched them both by myself, and it was definitely an adventure!  It went really well, though, both kids were really well-behaved, and Eli was in a great mood!  Talia was happy too, when she wasn't hungry, or wet, or tired, lol.  But we had a few good cooing and smiling moments in between :-)  Favorite moment of the day: I was cleaning Eli up after lunch, and I started pretending to "eat" his toes (I leaned down close to his foot and made "nom nom nom" sounds).  He started giggling like crazy, and every time I stopped, he said, "again please!"  After we went back to the playroom, he came up to me every 20 minutes or so and said, "eat toes please!", while trying to hold his foot up toward my mouth while he was standing in front of me (which didn't work at all, haha, I don't know how he kept himself from falling over!).  It totally cracked me up...he is such a funny kid!

I left their house around 2:15 after Joel got home.  I came home and job searched a little, and basically just hung out until Marcus got home.  Then we went to the gym, and splurged on Chipotle for dinner!  After dinner, we came home and watched the rest of the Braves game (we missed the first 4 innings or so).  Then I showered and now I am typing this while Marcus showers, and then we'll probably go to bed early, because I am pooped!

I don't have much on the docket during the day tomorrow.  I have to run over to the unemployment office to ask about a letter I got from them last week, but that's about it.  I'll probably spend most of the day job searching and Amazon Turk-ing (yes, I just made that a verb).  Tomorrow night we are going over to have dinner and play games at Cat and Drew's house.  It's weird because they are friends of friends, and this will be the first time we have ever hung out with them just the four of us.  We don't really know why they've reached out to us all of a sudden, but they're nice, and it should be fun.  I'll give a full report tomorrow night! ;-)

Oops!

Sorry I didn't post last night!  I realized after I had already turned off my computer that I hadn't posted, but I figured I'd just do it this morning rather than spend all the time turning my computer back on.

Yesterday was fairly busy, especially in the morning.  The first thing I did after I got up and ready was head over to Turner Field to get tickets for a Braves game when my parents are here.  It was interesting...I had never been there on a non-event day before (I say non-event rather than non-game because I did go to FanFest there one winter), and it was kind of cool!  I got to park in the Delta Medallion lot (right in front of the stadium!), which was the only one open and basically empty.  When I walked in, I saw maybe 4 or 5 people walking around, but that's it.  They had only one ticket window open.  I went up and was able to get the tickets we wanted.  Success!  Then I had a little adventure finding my way back to the highway, lol, but I made it work.  Stupid one-way streets!  Just one reason why I hate driving in the city.

Anyway, when I got home, I spent the next few hours finishing (to the best of my ability at this point) my online application for several jobs in the DeKalb County School System.  This involved taking a test online, entering all of my education and work history ONE ENTRY AT A TIME, ordering transcripts from all colleges I've attended, and sending them a copy of my high school diploma.  Luckily for that last one, I had applied for another job with them last summer, and my mom had already scanned and emailed me a copy of the diploma, so she just resent the email, so I was able to print it and mail it to them right away, rather than my mom having to search my bedroom to find it like last year.

I finished that up right around lunch time, so I ate lunch and then went back to job searching.  The afternoon was definitely much slower than the morning.  When Marcus got home, I decided to make dinner for us - sweet potatoes, baked beans, and salad.  It was easy and yummy, which is the best kind of meal!  Then we watched the Braves game and went to bed.

Today I am babysitting for Eli again, so look for another post tonight.  Hopefully I won't forget this time!

ETA: I totally forgot to mention that while we were watching the game last night, I got to spend a couple of hours talking to my friend Michelle on facebook chat!  We hadn't talked in a while, and I miss her so much, so it was really nice to get to talk to her.  She's going to be in eastern Alabama for a ride (horses) in late September, about an hour and a half to two hours away, so we were trying to figure out if it would be possible for Marcus and I to make a day trip out there to see her.  It's hard because most of the time she's there is during Rosh Hashanah, but there's still a possibility that we could go out for one day after the holiday is over.  We'll see.  It would be great if it works out - it would be great to see her! - but logistically, it's a little tricky on her end.  So who knows.  Anyway, just couldn't forget to include this!

Just Another Manic Monday

I didn't sleep very well last night.  Just when I was going to sleep, I found a bug crawling in the bed (just a silverfish, but still, IT TOUCHED ME!), and after Marcus got rid of it for me, it took me a while to get rid of that creepy-crawly feeling and actually fall asleep.  So this morning, I had a hard time getting up.  I did manage to drag myself out of bed around 8:30 though.

It took me a while to get going even after I got up, and as a result, I didn't even get dressed or anything until around 10:30.  I didn't do much during the day - job searched some (and started working on applications for a few jobs, but I didn't find those until around 4:30, so had to save to return later when Marcus got home), did a few tasks on Amazon Turk, and that's about it.  I also emailed the leasing agent from the apartment complex we've been looking at, and she got back to me within a couple of hours, letting me know that there would be a unit for us to come look at on Saturday.  I also managed to actually walk down to get the mail today, which I hadn't done in a while.

After Marcus got home, it was a typical Monday evening.  We went to the gym, then ate dinner, and then I watched Secret Life while he was watching the Braves game.  And after my show was over, I came out and watched the rest of the game with him.  Also, because we went to the gym AND I ate a relatively small dinner for a gym day (usually I splurge on tacos or Chipotle or something on gym days, but today I just ate easy mac and salad), I hit a new low weight!  I've been trying to lose some weight, with the help of a great free online food log I found (that also lets you log your exercise and weight among other things).  My goal is to eventually get back down to 120...I haven't weighed 120 since high school, haha, but I don't have a specific timetable in mind, it's just an eventual goal.  For right now, my more immediate goal is to get my BMI back down into "normal" range (it's currently in "overweight" range), and I'm getting really close!  My BMI as of tonight is down to 25.3, and I think 25 is the upper edge of "normal" range!  I started tracking my food and exercise (and weight) about 2 months ago, and in that time, I've lost about 8 pounds!  It's a really slow process for me (slower than it should be based solely on my net calories, but that's not surprising, since one of the potential effects of PCOS is difficulty losing weight - it could be MUCH worse, though, I'm lucky that that's not one of the effects that's particularly bad in my case), but I'm clearly making progress, which is exciting.  I was SO excited when I had my first sub-140 weight a few weeks ago, and now I am down to 137.7!  Granted, it fluctuates, but a few weeks ago, it was bouncing between 140-142.5, and now it's been between 138.5-140.5 (until today!), with the 140s getting rarer all the time.  So I'm very pleased with that :-)

Also, the Braves won again tonight, so yay!  And we've been firming up more plans for my parents' upcoming visit, it's starting to shape into what will be a very busy weekend.  Mostly fun stuff though, so I'm actually getting excited about it.

I have a long list of stuff I need to do tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have another interesting entry to post tomorrow night!  Until then, goodnight all!