I went to the dentist Monday after work, and I had NO CAVITIES!

I know that is pretty good, but nothing stellar to most people, but you don’t realize how rare this is for me.

Awesome!

This weekend was good! I kicked it off early at lunch time on Friday by starting a date with Sheena. We had fun going around town and eating lunch. The only bad part was that the main goal of the date, to watch a movie, didn’t happen because movie theaters are lame. We’ll have to see the movie some other time.

Saturday was great, too. Brian woke up early and headed to the lake by himself, so I decided to get up early, too. Can you believe it? I stayed awake after he left at 8:30 and got out of bed a few minute past 9 after snuggling in bed with Choxelbeans. She loves to sleep these days and doesn’t seem to want to chew our sheets anymore, so she’s welcome in the bed in the mornings (not overnight). It’s nice because she warms me up and helps me not fall back asleep after my alarm goes off. Anyway, I made it a point to work on the house, so I started the day off by getting Brian’s mom to go with me to the Salvation Army to buy a cool desk/table I found the day before with Sheena. It’s for the basement, and my goal was to work on organizing and setting up the basement, so that was a good start. I mostly know how I want the basement, but the 2 rugs we have down there just really don’t look good. I have shopped for new rugs, but almost 100% of rugs available to buy are ugly, and the others are too expensive for my cheap taste. Go figure! We want rugs in lots of our rooms upstairs, too. I was able to find rugs for the bedrooms even though one is too small for what I wanted, but the next size up is too big. We’re still deciding whether or not to keep it. Anyway, I still would like a rug for the office, and I found one online, but I really don’t want to pay for it even though it’s price is probably cheap to most people. I won’t bore you with other rug issues and ideas, but I’m thinking about it. That night, we met lots of friends at yummy Surin for a great dinner and then went to Edgewood Creamery for dessert. Yum!

Sunday was good. We went to church to start the day, and that was fun. We weren’t there the last 2 or 3 weeks because of vacation and visiting my parents, so it was good to be back. I also did more rug shopping, visited the new gigantic Target and some other stores down in the Hoover area.

The weekend was a success.

GOOD THING: going to a seminar thing tomorrow with some fun co-workers instead of working all day
BAD THING: dentist after work today!

If you haven’t heard, there’s been an outbreak of burglaries in Homewood lately. It’s really been a lot of them – so much that the cops have done several roadblocks in the mornings to try and catch these people because they even know who some of them are. Everyone in Homewood pretty much knows about it, and we know how they disguise themselves and what time they like to come. Anyway, it kind of stinks to wonder if your house is getting robbed each day at work. I talked to my neighbor about it yesterday, and I found out some sweet news. He has now started working fully at home, so he’s there every day! He said he makes sure to watch the street for us and everyone. Also, our neighbor on the other side (2 down) is home a lot during the day because he owns his own business, so he watches out for everyone, too. Plus, we and both of those neighbors have dogs that bark when people come around, so all that combined makes me feel pretty good!

GOOD THING: date with Sheena starting in just a few minutes!
BAD THING: stomach kind of upset today

Okay, okay, I know I said I would blog soon, but I haven’t felt like it. I will (instead) do a shorter version of all I was going to say and cram it all into one post.

Choxie had some issues in the past couple of months. These started off by a vet visit revealing really high liver enzymes in her blood. We had to wait a couple of months before she could have a blood test again to see if they were still high. If they were, we would need to start making little changes to see what could help her out. In the meantime, she stopped wanting to eat. She would eventually eat all her food, but we’d have to convince her to eat. That lasted about a week, then we switched her food and she ate for a couple of days, then she didn’t want to eat again for several days until we took her to the vet on that note. That and the fact that she got a huge gash on her chest. The vet figured out she had 2 kinds of worms (not the visible kind), and he gave her a pill to kill them. That was why she had no appetite. He said he has no idea how she got them since she takes heartworm pills (because those work on other kinds, too), but she had them, so we gave her a mega dose of something. Also, she got antibiotics to heal up the giant cut. We’ve since taken her back to check her blood, and the liver issue is fixed! Her liver healed itself he said, which isn’t that rare. There was previously some sort of blockage keeping those enzymes from going into her intestines, and they were dumping into her blood instead. Also, her cut healed SO fast. It will probably just leave a little scar. Also, she loves eating now (except when it’s early in the AM – she’s a sleeper like me). To boot, we give her a different food now that is better for her, so she’s in tip top shape. Yay!

Our vacation week at the lake was great. I took detailed notes each day just so we could remember what all happened, but I won’t get into many details here because it’s too much to type. We kind of did nothing, but we did a lot at the same time. We spent time playing in the yard with the dog, taking a few boat rides, and canoed for almost 4 hours one day where we watched birds, ducks, turtles and a deer eat for quite a while. We also drove to Prattville a couple of times to eat and made some trips into Clanton for groceries and stuff. We watched some TV, slept a lot, I read parts of several books and finally finished one that I’d been dragging through. Also, we spider hunted! We made a sweet discovery one night (well, Brian did), and we learned that wolf spiders’ eyes glow in the dark! Well, they reflect light VERY well and show up blue or green. With Brian’s headlamp, we walked all over the front yard and found literally thousands of baby wolf spiders. It was crazy. It was weirdly fun, though, and we found a salamander while we were hunting, too. We had lots of fun that week and wished we never had to work again.

The college visit I went on last week went great! We had fun that day in the car (even though we drove 40 miles out of the way – talking and early AM doesn’t mix) and looking around campus. She wants to go to that school for sure now, so I would consider the trip a success. We had lunch with my old college roommate who works there on campus, so that was fun, too. I’m excited for her if she decides to go there!

GOOD THING: listening to old school country songs online
BAD THING: nothing worth putting here

I am so excited now that Halloween is behind us because that means the holiday season is here! I love the end of the year – the last 3 month have 4 major holidays! Anyway, I’m getting excited about Christmas already. However, the one thing I’m NOT excited about is the new version of A Christmas Carol. I have no interest in that.

GOOD THING: easy work load today!
BAD THING: plans tonight, tomorrow night and Thursday night

courtesy of AutoZone and Winn Dixie

It’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged, but Brian and I have been out of town without internet access. I promise I will blog soon! I will tell you about Choxie’s latest ordeals, how our vacation went, about my college visit I’m taking someone on tomorrow, and our weekend coming up! I know you can’t wait.

GOOD THING: found some free snacks this afternoon
BAD THING: have to wake up really early tomorrow morning

So the infamous balloon boy finally spilled the beans that the whole drift away balloon ordeal was a hoax. They planned it! Any family that would agree to be on Wife Swap is kind of crazy, and now this? That family is attention hungry, and now we’re giving it to them like crazy. Stop putting them on television! (I know I am mentioning them in my blog, which is attention, but I highly doubt they’ll know about this, and no one reads this anyway, so I don’t think that this really adds to the problem.)

I saw the new Taco Bell commercial for the first time last night, and I HAVE to get one of those tacos. Pepperjack sauce? Yes, please! Black shell? Awesome! A friend in Georgia said it wasn’t that great, but I have to find out for myself.

I get my hair cut today after work! I’m so excited. I hope it finally looks better after today. I’m halfway planning on just cutting it off again, but I don’t want to give up just yet. I’m mostly planning on telling her I’m desperate for some layers and that I can’t do this one length thing anymore. That just doesn’t work well for people with thick hair, especially if it has curl and wave. Ick. We’ll see what happens! If it’s bad, I’ll just keep wearing ponytails.

GOOD THING: getting colder!
BAD THING: My gas light is on in the car, but I don’t have any time to spare between work and my haircut.

Another update? I’m crazy!

It looks like WordPress has finally figured out that when we hit Enter, we don’t want to double space. Nice going! It only took you forever. I don’t like how they took the little corner expander thing away from the bottom right corner of the text box, though. I like to see more of what I’m typing.

Today is alright. I got 2 new books in the mail – one for a collection and one to hopefully improve my quality of life and introduce new ideas for projects around the house. The book’s called The Urban Homestead, and it teaches you how to do a lot of stuff on your own at home instead of buying it, paying someone to do it, or whatever. You get the idea. We’ll see how it goes! Dave said it was a great resource, so I figured I’d believe him.

I just have one more day of work this week! I get to get my hair cut tomorrow right after work! My cousin is coming to visit us while she’s in town for a tennis tournament Friday, too. I seriously need to clean my house before she gets here, but I seriously don’t have any free time before then to do it. We’ll see what happens! How can one house produce so many dust bunnies and hair balls in like 3 days? I sweep pretty often, yet I immediately find new dust bunnies as soon as I finish sweeping. That’s what happens when you don’t have carpet, but it’s still worth it. My allergies agree more with hardwood. I’m used to it now anyway since the condo didn’t have much carpet, either.

We ate lots of leftover goodise at lunch today that were still here from yesterday’s delicious tea. Sheena can back that statement up, too, since she swung by at just the right time to sample the goods yesterday.

It is so dark outside and gloomy. I’m so over this rain.

I just called the vet and lost my train of thought, so this post is over!

GOOD THING: almost the weekend
BAD THING: rain!

I retyped this today for work, and I just found it intersting. Read it for yourself! This is by no means all the guidelines we have, but this is one document. I’m not sure if it’s official or just a compilation taken from the Book of Discipline, but either way, it’s rules we’re to go by.

General Rules of Methodist Societies
It is therefore expected of all who continue therein that they should continue to evidence their desires of salvation,

First: By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practiced, such as:
• The taking of the name of God in vain.
• The profaning the day of the Lord, either by doing ordinary work therein or by buying or selling.
• Drunkenness: buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of extreme necessity.
• Slaveholding: buying or selling slaves.
• Fighting, quarreling, brawling, brother going to law with brother, returning evil for evil, or railing for railing, the using many words in buying or selling.
• The buying or selling goods that have not paid the duty.
• The giving or taking things on usury – i.e., unlawful interest.
• Uncharitable or unprofitable conversation, particularly speaking evil of magistrates or of ministers.
• Doing to others what we know is not for the glory of God, as:
• The putting on of gold and costly apparel.
• The taking such diversions as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus.
• The singing those songs, or reading those books, which do not tend to the knowledge or love of God.
• Softness and needless self-indulgence.
• Laying up treasure upon earth.
• Borrowing without a probability of paying, or taking up goods without a probability of paying for them.

Secondly: By doing good; by being in every kind merciful after their power; as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all men:
• To their bodies, of the ability which God giveth, by giving food to the hungry, by clothing the naked, by visiting or helping them that are sick or in prison.
• To their souls, by instructing, reproving, or exhorting all we have any intercourse with; trampling under foot that enthusiastic doctrine that we are not to do good unless our hearts be free to it.
• By doing good, especially to them that are of the household of faith or groaning so to be; employing them preferably with others; buying one of another, helping each other in business, and so much toe more because the world will love its own and them only.
• By all possible diligence and frugality, that the gospel be not blamed.
• By running with patience the race which is set before them, denying themselves, and taking up their cross that men should say all manner of evil of them falsely, for the Lord’s sake.
• It is expected of all who desire to continue in these societies that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation,

Thirdly: By attending upon all the ordinances of God; such are:
• The public worship of God.
• The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded.
• The Supper of the Lord.
• Family and private prayer.
• Searching the Scriptures.
• Fasting or abstinence.