Trip

We leave for Utah in three days.  I'm excited and I'm looking forward to a great birthday.  A day that involves no work and traveling on airplanes.  Also, the weather will be nice to me and let me travel without any issues...  But considering my track record with my birthdays being perfect days (huge sarcasm there), we'll see how this one goes.

2010 - Taco Hell

I had worked through the whole day and didn't have time to celebrate my day with Jared.  So, when he asked where I wanted to go to eat for my special day, I chose Taco Bell because it was relatively close to the school and it'd be quick.

2009 - Liquor

I spent this day at the liquor store.  I could legally buy alcohol.  But the liquor store was a big letdown, they didn't even card me.  Also, the green apple schnapps gave me heartburn...

2008 - Flat Tire

My birthday was on a Sunday; Jared and I had spent the weekend in Salt Lake.  We went to the Cheesecake Factory and returned to a car with a flat tire.

2007 - Oh Brother

My brother was taken to DT for drug paraphernalia.  Also, one of my posts leads me to believe I was mad at Jared for not giving me enough attention (typical diva me).

2006 - Sick

My first chance at being an adult and what did I do?  I got a full-time job at McDonald's (pretty adult of me, I know).  I was also sick that week.

2005 - Teenager

Need I say more?  Still trying to find myself in the wrong crowds (I don't think I ever found myself).  I also spent the weekend in Georgia (so it wasn't all that bad).

Under-Estimate

560 pages later, and I realized I forgot to include the last two years in my page count.  So, I did not get enough supplies...  Oh well, I'm sick of this project now.  I'll pick it up another time.

A couple of things I have learned from my blog past:

* I was a crazy, emotional, and over-dramatic teenager.

* Not having a whole lot to do resulted in more random posts about nothing useful.

* I'm crazy.

* Wow...  Glad the past's in the past.

Yeah, it sums up to be just being super psycho crazy...

Project Print

I've decided to print my blog so I have a paper record of life according to my blog.  Now this isn't such an easy task considering I've been blogging for almost 6.5 years.  Funny fact, I've actually been dating my husband longer than I've been blogging but only by a few months.  So, my blog does kind of go over the beginnings of my relationship with Jared.  However, we had 5 years of growing up together before dating.  So, we had that typical boy/girl relationship where you beat the crap out of the opposite sex to impress them (oh, is that not typical?)...

Anyways, back to my project.  I have 700 pages to print out, place in sheet protectors, and add to the awesome binders I bought the other day.  And fyi, Blogger was not my first blogging site.  I've only been using it since 2009.  Before that I had used LiveJournal.  And while I definitely enjoyed the option of privatizing or creating friends-only individual posts, it seemed LJ just couldn't keep up with the 'new' factor...

Guess I'll get back to my project.  Or maybe bedtime is in order...  As much as I try to stay up late on the weekends, it rarely happens.

Finally

I finished my second scarf.  I used thinner yarn this time and had to double it up.  So, there were a couple of mistakes in it, but I think it turned out well.  It's a red scarf for the UW Badgers.  And it's for Jared.  He's been asking me to finish it for the last three months.  It took me almost four months to complete.  I definitely took a while on it...

My pictures of the scarf turned into pictures of Gizmo.  He wouldn't get out of the way.  He likes attention...

Bed

Jared and I will soon be the proud owners of a brand new mattress and head board.  I am so excited to have a comfy bed and something that'll let us sleep comfortably...

It kind of looks like that.  It's a king size, so we hopefully won't fight over bed space.  Surprisingly, the hardest part about shopping for a bed set was the head board.  Jared didn't want one to begin with, but I wanted one.  And then we couldn't agree on one due to very different tastes.  We did find one that had drawers and storage under the bed, but that was over our price range.  I just wanted something nice but simple.

Next up, we'll have to buy Gizmo a staircase, so he can get on and off the bed easily.  For those who laugh, he has arthritis in his one and only front leg.  And I really don't want to hurt him any more than necessary with having a higher bed.

Inception

So, after being told by a million people to watch this movie, I finally watched it last night.  And let me tell you, it lived up to my expectations.  It was a really good movie.  I know a lot of people were disappointed because the idea wasn't original.  But whatever, it takes a lot for an idea to be original these days...  The story-line was awesome.  The cinematography rocked.  Did I mention the music was awesome?!  Yeah, if I find myself loving the music/soundtrack, then you can bet I loved the movie.  Inception was directed by the same guy who directed the Dark Knight.  Also, Dark Knight's composer composed the music for this movie (also did Sherlock Holmes - no wonder I liked the music).  So I highly recommend it.  And if you watch it and decided it wasn't worth it, then obviously we have very different tastes in movies (and music :p).

Urg!

I have decided the at-home H&R Block tax software is a piece of shit...  I have spent the better part of 6 hours preparing taxes.  And yes, I know I'm one of the very few who has to claim partial residency to two states, and almost no one will be in the same situation as me.  But still, the software should work for all cases.  So, why won't it file my Utah taxes correctly?  Because it's a piece of shit and the developers released broken software...

Now all I can hope for is that the software we produce at work works 110% better than this.  Granted, there's a major industry difference...  Also, I'm really hoping that the technical customer service support is better (since that is my job) than what we dealt with tonight.

I look forward to taxes being done and over with.  I'm also looking forward to the new bed we plan to get with our tax return.  It's about time, a ten year old mattress that has body imprints just doesn't cut it anymore...

PetSmart

So, there's never a dull visit to PetSmart here...  The last time Gizmo and I went, someone brought his horse to get his picture taken with Santa.  That was a funny and interesting visit.  However, today's definitely wasn't funny.  And in hindsight, I'm glad I got distracted by the parking spot that was covered in snow...

While in PetSmart, a semi ran into a parked car which made the car run into another parked car in the parking lot.  This second car that got hit would've been my car if I had paid attention to open parking spots while trying to park my car.  Fortunately, I ended up parking a little further away.  So, while leaving PetSmart, I got to go to my car which was parked next to the wrecked car, but mine was left unscathed.

Apparently, the semi had run into this car only a couple of minutes before I left.  And the driver was cussing and smoking in the lot while he waited for the owner.  I know snow makes parking lots a lot smaller for all vehicles, but you'd think someone who drives big vehicles for his profession would have better parking lot driving skills.  Oh well. 

Post-Blizzard

And here are the pictures post-blizzard.  Let me tell you, trying to run errands before the blizzard starts was not the best idea.  For starters, I got off of work early but right when the blizzard was starting.  We had to drive across town to pick up my car.  We decided to not take the belt line since that's where most of the cars were.  There was one spot where Jared's car got stuck.  It took a few reverse-and-floor-it-forward attempts to get him unstuck.  And then the wind really picked up.  The right turn was 5 feet in front of me and then I could see absolutely nothing.  So, in an attempt to not drive off the road into a snowbank, I almost missed my turn.  Also the road became a one-lane highway since there was three feet of snow covering one side.

And then morning came.  Trying to take the dog potty was horrible.  Three feet of snow everywhere.  Couldn't see the sidewalk.  Walked around a little, and then I noticed there was a big mound of snow covering the parking lot from the garage to the normally small hill.  Needless to say, I worked from home today.  And then we decided to take a few pictures after work before the sun went down...

They shoveled the sidewalk!!

This is supposed to be a comparison picture with the one in my previous post.  You can see how high the snow is now.  It was originally below my knees, now it's above my waist.

The wind sculpts the snow quite well.  My first thoughts when going outside this morning were, "I'm in a freezing Egypt" (because the snow really looks like white sand).

More wind-snow art.

Anyways, we have some good news that we'd like to share...  We have officially paid off our first credit card.  We went to the bank to transfer our other credit card balances to one card with a really good interest rate.  One of the exciting things was finding out that we'll have all of our credit card debt paid off in 1-1.5 years with the rate we're paying them off now.  It was happy news!!  And then we'll be able to start looking into a house.  I'm so excited that we're getting out of debt (slowly but surely)...