sunday

Today, Choxie woke us up an hour early – again – but it’s so cute, it’s not bad.

We went to church – Sunday School was good, and the sermon today was cool.

We went to Firehouse Subs for lunch because Camp Taco was closed when we tried to go there.

We had impromptu band practice today with 2 new people – Stuart seemed pleased, and we’re practicing again Wednesday.

Choxie and I both just woke up from a nap on the couch. Fun times. She’s now rolling around on her back down on the rug because that’s what she does when she wakes up.

GOOD THING: Brian and I both like the same baby names for the most part.
BAD THING: Our couch looks like it’s been dragged across someone’s floor thanks to the dog.

work

Today at work, I have painted my toenails and am listening to Manchester Orchestra’s new album and some live recordings. Toot toot! I also did everything I needed to do as far as work goes, but I’m just saying – this stuff was AFTER that. Things have been mailed, websites checked, registrations logged, emails sent, phone calls made. Things are done, don’t worry.

GOOD THING: Beach trip planned!
BAD THING: worried about getting carsick on the way to Mississippi today.

favorites

Wanna see something hilarious? This is what Brian’s little cousin posted on Facebook this week:

My Top ten Favorite songs of all Time
1. More than a Feeling – Boston
2. American Pie – Don Mclean
3. Don’t Stop Believing – Journey
4. Living on a Prayer – Bon Jovi
5. Don’t Wanna Miss a thing – Aerosmith
6. Drops of Jupiter – Train
7. Rosanna – Africa
8. Lady – Styx
9. Peace of Mind – Boston
10. I ran so Far Away – Flock of Seagulls

I admit I sing along with several of these if they’re on the radio, but this surely would never come close to any list of favorite songs I’d ever comprise, even if I were limited to cheesy and/or 70s/80s rock.

I promise I’m not trying to make fun, but I thought you’d like to expand your mental picture. This cousin is a boy, 15 or 16, has reddish brown hair, glasses, is about twice as skinny as me, super short, and plays the clarinet in Hoover’s marching band.

GOOD THING: Paranormal State marathon!
BAD THING: Choxie didn’t like the giant great dane puppy that tried to play rough with her at the dog park today.

work

Work is so super slow today, and it seems like no one is here at all. On that note, Tim is gone, and a new guy (Drew) is coming next week. I don’t know him yet, but I’ve seen him in person and have checked out his Facebook page. I think he will fit in just fine and be great! He seems like he could be pretty funny, which is always good.

I basically don’t have anything else to say. There is nothing good online lately, and no one is here to talk to. I have a huge stack of magazines on my desk that Suzanne brought me, so I’ve been flipping through those. It’s about to get busy here at work, but until then, it’s definitely the calm before the storm.

On a different note, I am not a fan of the Zac Brown Band. I checked out 4 or 5 of their songs today, and they’re all just typical country songs that are the same as all the other ones out there. In general, the whole country music thing seems to me like one big commercial act. I know that can be said about lots of music and other things, for that matter, but still. There are always a few exceptions, of course.

GOOD THING: only 1 hour left of work
BAD THING: 1 hour left of work haha

love love love

this picture
this band

band of horses

i love their beards and their tattoos and their music and they style in photos. all their band photos (that i’ve seen) are cool.

horse feathers

So, today is Thursday! I am debating whether or not to go get my vaccinations today. It mostly boils down to whether or not I want to take the time away from this afternoon and simultaneously miss Oprah, which happens to be an interview with Jay Leno. Since I’m boycotting him, I can’t determine whether or not that would include other shows he’s appearing on.

Today at work has been good so far. I’m a little too antsy to sit at a desk all day, but that happens a lot. Other than that, the day is good. I finished the one thing that totally had to be done today earlier this morning, so I have a light load for the rest of the day. Actually, we’ve started a women’s Bible study group around here that is voluntary and meets on Thursday afternoons, so I have that to do in about 30 minutes.

Yesterday, Choxie caught a chipmunk! It’s only the second one she’s ever cought, and the other one she caught was due to some help from Brian. This time, we just saw a dead chipmunk out in the yard, and there’s a giant hole dug up by our big tree where she likes to dig and sniff at times. Before I knew about the kill, I was wondering why she had dots of dried mud all over her face and mostly on her eyelids. Now I know! It’s funny because she doesn’t really want to do anything with it after she kills it, but she loves the whole chasing/hunting part, which makes sense since she’s a hound dog. She has carried it around the yard a little, but she doesn’t try to eat it or rip it up or really even do anything with it. She’ll pick it up and run with it for a few feet, then drop it and just forget about it.

I just made copies of my 2 Manchester Orchestra CDs for a friend that happens to work downstairs. I hope she loves them!

Before lunch, I was stretching/yawning in the hallway, and before I quit, I somehow ran my elbow directly into the door jamb of my office. It hurt pretty bad, but it was alright. Now that it’s been about 30 minutes or an hour, it’s killing me! I probably bruised it good.

GOOD THING: Thursday, and after lunch!
BAD THING: politics talk at work again!

finally friday

Today, work was busy, but it helped the clock tick faster, so that’s cool. After work, I went to pick up some Arby’s to eat at home before getting my hair cut. The girl that cuts it told me my hair looked really healthy and that the ends looked so good she didn’t cut any length off at all, so my hair routine must be working out okay! It helps when I have time to fix it, but I usually always sleep later than I should, so I do about a 50% job on it.

After that, I decided to swing by the Salvation Army to see what’s new (where I found a sweet dresser that I don’t want to pay for). While I was out, Lauren called and wanted me to stop by her new house (since it’s super close!) to help her decide on some paint colors. I think we figured some things out, so we’ll see what it looks like after they’re done painting! I guess I’m one of the few people to see the house in it’s before state, so that’s cool. I just realized their living and dining room is about the same color of pale yellow that our dining & living room used to be. I had to get rid of it, too. Anyway, after that, I went to the chiropractor’s office only to find out he’s closed for a week! There is a makeshift sign on the door that apologizes for the inconvenience, so I think something came up that was unexpected because I’ve actually had a conversation with him recently about how he never ever closes down for a whole week at a time, and that is exactly what they did as of yesterday. I hope everything’s okay.

When that didn’t work out, I just went home. Later, Brian and I went to Moe’s BBQ then to Publix for some ice cream, chocolate milk and a movie rental. We rented 9, and I think it was stupid. Brian liked it. I think it had no point, and nothing major happened to keep me interested. At least it was kind of short.

Choxie dog is super tired out, which is awesome. She was going crazy about 30 minutes ago, so we put her outside. Around 10 or 10:30 is when she is ready to head to bed for the night, so that is why she’s curled up in a tiny ball on the couch next to her fox (carcass).

Sunday School is cancelled this week! I get to sleep late! If it wasn’t raining this weekend, we would’ve gone to the lake. I haven’t been there since the weekend after Thanksgiving!

Last night was Brian’s mom’s birthday, so we went to da club and danced to some hot beats. Well, kind of. We did go to The Club, and there was a live band, and some old people at a table near us were dancing at their seats, but it was far from any club. They had the dance floor lit, which looked cool, but no one at all was on it. There were only 3 tables of people there! It’s always the prettiest view of Birmingham at night, so that was nice, and the music really was good for listening during dinner. They played pretty good songs as far as old classics go. We did get to see one old lady who was about 80 dance her way to the bathroom. That was funny.

GOOD THING: freedom!
BAD THING: nothing!

amos lee

I seriously love some of his songs. His voice is awesome. Arms of a Woman is so pretty.

This reminds me. I would like to point out that my friend RJ, no longer RJ (Renee Jett – now Henson), had the best wedding reception music possible. Amos Lee was included, as well as Ray LaMontagne, Ben Harper, etc. It was perfect for her and so pretty. That was after the super sweet blues/funk band. Those guys need to advertise and play somewhere every weekend!

GOOD THING: week is over half over
BAD THING: upset stomach

long time coming

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

antisocial

Warning: this one is long, but maybe it will at least be a decent read. Maybe not.

Brian and I traveled to Berry College this past weekend to go to Mountain Day, which can be best described to someone who didn’t go there as an alumni weekend/homecoming/annual celebration. It’s to ceelbrate the founder’s birthday, and the students who want to can participate in the “Grand March” on the big hill. Parents, friends, alumni and professors can watch them participate while eating a BBQ picnic lunch. People bring their dogs and children and catch up with people they haven’t seen in a while. That is, if you like to do that sort of thing. We obviously do not really enjoy stuff like that very much, so every time we go, we wonder why we decided to go haha. We knew a few friends would be there, so we wanted to hang with them, but those friends are people who we’ve seen during the past few months. I didn’t really catch up with many other people except for a few hellos, but it was still good. I still enjoy seeing those people in person versus on Facebook even if we didn’t have a full out conversation. I would love to have conversations with everyone, but it just never happens. Mostly, I really wish more people would’ve been there, but that is how it always goes.

We killed some time at Kaitlin’s house trying to stay awake by goofing off before the big reunion event that night. We dreaded going because of the whole forced social awkwardness, but when we got there, it really got better. I chatted with a few more people, there was a band, candy was thrown all over our table, and we got free drink tickets! Kaitlin and I got some white wine and armed ourself with buzzes after we ate our dinner, so everything was funny after that. We decided we would go back and use our second free drink ticket, but they’d run out of alcohol and shut the tent down! What the?! That was kind of sad. I did get to bring home a pot of flowers for my front porch that was used as table decoration there, and our class tent won 3rd place in the tent decorating contest. Thanks, planning team!

We went back to Kaitlin’s aftewards for about an hour and goofed off until we decided to drive back home, and that was fun. I got some yummy gas station French Vanilla coffee on the way home. Brian and I listened to lots of music, and I danced to lots of songs in the car. We love Owl City! We knew that already, but Brian’s work friend Emily made him an actual CD, so we had it for the listening. The songs are so cute and fun even if they’re kind of cheesy sometimes. It was just happy music for the car all about regular things and animals and nature and love and stuff.

Sunday, we were so sleepy but got up for church anyway because we love Jesus. After church, we ate Mexican food for lunch. The best part is that we went home and ended up napping after that! Even Choxie napped with me in the living room after she listened to me play my guitar while Brian slept on the bed. We both eventually conked out, too. Brian had to go be a photographer for work that evening, so I left to go buy some beads to make some necklaces. I decided to try and sell some online. After I make a few more, I’ll list my measly inventory and see what happens. If someone actually buys one or two, I’ll go buy more stuff to add to my page, but I’m not wasting my time or money until that happens.

This coming weekend, we’re going to visit my parents and go get apples! It should be a fun day. That trip is fun enough just with my parents, but my mom told me that my aunt and uncle, my two cousins and a friend & boyfriend are coming along. We’ll see what happens! I can’t wait!

GOOD THING: less work to do this month than I thought
BAD THING: the cold, dark weather makes me very tired!