Fun Weekend with MIL and FIL

The weekend before last my mother and father-in-law came for a visit.  It had been a while since they’d been down so it was a special treat.  My mother-in-law is one busy lady.  After losing her job due to outsourcing several years ago she took advantage of job re-training and got her associates degree in Office Systems Management.  She was a honor student and the community college she attended liked her so much that hired her to teach computer skills in their Continuing Education Department.  The interesting thing is she’s doing almost the exact same job Eddie is doing, although Eddie’s job has more of a systems side to it.  Anyway, with that and being a full time wife and a very hands-on grandmother to our niece and nephew her and Bop-Bop (what niece and nephew call their granddad) don’t get away very much.

We started out on Friday night with a steak dinner here at the house.  On Saturday morning mom and I  slept in while the guys went out for a father-and-son breakfast.  After that we loaded up and went to the mall.  Mom needed a new pair of shoes, but her back was on the fritz a bit.  I went along and helped her with the selecting and trying on.  We had a good time making the Dillard’s shoe salesman earn his pay for the day.

Eddie wanted to take mom and dad to a football game, and so on Saturday we ate dinner a Showmars…a must try if you’re ever in Charlotte…they’re everywhere here and oh so good…and off we went to the first pre-season Panthers game.  I tell you what…Bank of America Stadium is a great stadium.  Our seats were in the nosebleed section, but I’ve yet to find a bad seat in BOA stadium.  Because we were so far up we had a wonderful view of the Charlotte skyline…such a beautiful city!

While mom and dad aren’t big football fans they really had a good time…other than the very exerting walk up to our seats.  The game ended up being pretty exciting.  We left early in the fourth quarter to try and beat the crowd out.  The game went into overtime, and we watched the last two minutes sitting in our living room!  The Panthers won by a field goal…thanks to my friend…John Kasay.

Needless to say we were exhausted and turned in after our busy day.  Mom and Dad needed to leave fairly early the next morning in order to check on Uncle Bobby who is not doing too well with respiratory disease.  So, we got up and went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast…if you’ve never tried Cracker Barrel breakfast (especially their pancakes) you need too!  It’s the one of the few things I have splurged on during my recent nutritional cleanse.

From there we said goodbye and they were off home to Brevard.  We just hope it’s not another two years before they visit again.

The Weather Station is Back Up

Just note to say that the weather station is back up (thanks to Eddie)…so, if you just have to know what the weather is like at our house you’re hooked up!

Friday Animated Silliness

I just love Veggie Tales:

This is mine and Eddie’s all-time favorite Veggie Tale Song:

Weather Page Temporarily Down

Due to some computer switchovers at our house the weather page has not been fully functional for a few weeks.  A couple of people have brought this to my attention, and yes, I’m aware of it.   We still do have weather at our house.  In fact we’re getting a nice gentle rain today.  Yay!  Eddie has been so slammed with computer work and marking stuff of the honey-do list that he’s not had time to address the weather web page.   We were having issues with the weather station host computer timing out as it was on constantly.  We fixed that issue by having the computer automatically re-boot at 4 a.m. every morning.    Shortly after that we decided to replace the host computer (my PC at home), but we’ve not had time to link it back up to the weather station. The cameras are linked up, but there is no weather info.  Again, hopefully that will be corrected soon.

Thanks for your patience.

Isagenix Day #23

Cleanse day again!  This one has been a little rougher, because I splurged some this weekend during my mother and father-in-law’s visit.  While I won’t go into detail on the most undesirable effects I have definitely cleansed today.  I have a headache and I feel hungry , not ravenously so, but I know I’m paying rough penance for eating too much this weekend and then hopping right in and doing a cleanse day.  I have one more week to go on the 30-day cleanse.

I measured today (was really supposed to have measured on day #18 but was too busy getting ready for company so I waited until today) Here is the total loss so far:

Weight:  5.2 pounds (measured on the evening of cleanse day.  Expect to be at least pound lower tomorrow a.m.)

Inches:  13 inches globally.

I’m a little depressed because I haven’t seen the rapid success that my co-workers have, but I expected that with my endocrine disorder; however, I feel much, much better overall physically.  My leg and knee pain is gone, and my energy is up for which I am very pleased.  I’ve also had a couple of unexpected events this month which threw me off a little.  I was planning on blocking out these 30 days and living sort of modestly and reclusively, but life doesn’t always go as planned…again, not a big deal.  I’m really stoked that I’ve lost the weight and inches I have.  I have been stubbornly stuck at one weight for a long time, and while I don’t gain very easily I don’t lose easily either thanks to my arch nemesis:  Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome

Anyway, we’ll see what the next week holds.  I do my last cleanse day next Monday and will report back then.

Video: Font Conference

As a transcriptionist I couldn’t resist sharing this.  Since I’m terrible at embedding video (I don’t hold my tongue right or something) here’s the link to the video.  (Warning:  There are a couple of profanities)

Video:  Font Conference

I’m an Arial 12 girl myself…tall, blocky, and easy to read.

Fourteen Million Dollars!!

How much would somebody pay for your family portrait?  I don’t know anyone who would pay a plug nickel for mine,  In fact last year, I paid Olan Mills around $200 for a package of portraits of Eddie and I, and the whole time I was writing the check I was muttering under my breath.

Evidently if you’re Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie people are willing to pay you millions for yours.  While this may not be one of the signs of the Apocalypse I think it speaks volumes about the state of our culture.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not anti-capitalist, but the fact that a picture of celebrities and their designer babies draws that much moolah is simply disturbing to me.  Again, it’s simple supply and demand, and evidently People Magazine felt like they’d get a good return on their investment with magazine sales and royalties from licensing of these pictures.  So, that only means that a large chunk of the American population idolizes these folks to various degrees.

Another example…other than the opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing last week what was one the biggest news stories of the week?   The news story I kept hearing over and was Paris Hilton’s video rebuttal to John McCain on comparing Barack Obama to puff celebrities like her.

While I’ve been known to read things about celebrities I don’t live vicariously through them like it seems thousands to even millions of people do.  I know that worship of celebrities, kings, and queens is not a new phenomenon to the human culture…it’s happened down through the ages, but it llustrates the fact that people, in general, are so bored or miserable in their lives for entertainment they feel the need to follow the intimate details of other people who are tired and miserable in theirs.

Maybe I’m just old and out of touch, but to me it’s all so very, very disturbing.

Loving Google Reader

Google Reader is awesome! If you don’t know what Google Reader is go here. It’s basically a headquarters for all of the favorite places you go on the web. When someone posts to their blog, or if a breaking news story happens it automatically shows up on your reader. If you have favorite blogs/sites but get frustrated with clicking there numerous times a day to see if they’ve posted anything new reader totally eliminates that frustration. You ‘re automatically updated on the reader when new posts or content is added to the site. What’s even more awesome is when your friends and family start using it they can share things with you from the places they go using the shared items feature. I only have a few friends on reader now, but if I could strong-arm every one of my friends and family to sign up for it I would. It eliminates the need for e-mailing interesting/informative tidbits or stories when you find them. If you are a Google reader user and would like to be on my “friends list” contact me by filling out the form below with your name and e-mail address. If you are not someone I know personally please tell me how you found me, and if you’re legit and not a spammer I’ll add you. The more the merrier!

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Isagenix Day #16

I did my second cleanse day yesterday…meaning no shakes, virtually no food, and just the cleansing drink.  It went pretty well.  I really don’t get that hungry on cleanse days, but sometimes I feel my blood sugar getting a little low, and so I eat a small amount of the approved snacks.

Today was back to shakes…meaning I could have a sensible lunch.  I was looking forward to lunch.  It was a little less than sensible since it was chicken Alfredo, but I ate a smaller portion, lots of veggies, fruit on the side, and told them to go light on the Alfredo.  I have to say that I was a little disappointed as the noodles were very mushy, and the chicken had almost zero taste (this was from my work cafeteria BTW).  It kinda put a shadow over my afternoon, and I have been kinda of depressed this afternoon for a couple of reasons.  Once I got home I really wanted to do some comfort eating, but the upside of that is that I realized that I was only wanting to eat to make myself feel better.  Okay, I have to stop and confess that I was wrong about emotional eating.  I have discovered that maybe I have done more of that in the past than I thought.

But I was proud of myself.  I didn’t slide.  Eddie has taken a couple of vacation days in order to get some work done around the house, and this evening he needed to run an errand.   He was going to be driving through the countryside to get where he was going, and so I went with him.  It lifted my spirits somewhat, and I blended my shake with extra ice and drank it on the drive.

I think part of it is I’m just tired.  My insomnia…while not as bad as it was last week…is still affecting me.  I didn’t sleep well last night.  So, I’m going to bed..hoping that I’ll sleep.

On the upside as of this morning after the cleanse day I’m down two more pounds.  I won’t measure again until later in the week so measurements will be reported on the next update.

Vicki out…

It’s Home Improvement Saturday!

Our Honey-Do list has gotten pretty long over the last couple of months, but since were doing a lot of traveling in the early Summer things kinda had to wait. Eddie’s Mom and Dad are coming to visit next weekend, and it was time to address some items that sorely needed attention. Our kitchen faucet was literally on it’s last legs (or I guess “gasket” in this case) and it was high time it was replaced. Eddie did an excellent job of installing it, although the installation wasn’t without it’s “&%#!” moments. It turned out real purty….

It also has filtered water!

Our toilet seats had also reached their maximum booty capacity, and no amount of cleaning I did made them look, well, clean. So we ponied up about $24.00 and replaced our two upstairs toilet seats. I did these mostly by myself, although I did require my muscle man to loosen the old bolts for me. Tada….now we have nice inviting toilet seats!

Nanny and Bop-Bop are going think they died and went to the Westin!

This only leaves us one issue to fix. The hole where Eddie fell through the ceiling from the attic a couple of months ago.

I mean, the plywood is functional, but it kinda messes with the Feng shui of the house, so we’ve opted to fix it. Hopefully, it will be done sometime next week. While the sheetrocker is at it he’s going remove the popcorn on the ceiling of the hall and the stairway since according to HGTV popcorn ceilings are passe. Whatever…I just want a ceiling without a Eddie-sized hole in it.

TUESDAY UPDATE:  Just spoke with Eddie a little while ago, and the hole is now fixed.  The sheetrock guy has to come back tomorrow once the compound is dry to paint, but my hall ceiling is intact again.  Yay!!!!