Thursday, October 14, 2010

Crash time





off to crash for a few hours of sleep and then    3 DAY WEEKEND!!!!   CAMPING GET AWAY WITH CRANKYBEAR!!!        I can't wait and I get to drive my new truck!!!  
See you all SUNDAY!!

Go, Go, Go

Have to get the coffee intake going for another L O N G day.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

FNG Blues

By FNG I mean the "f*cking new guy/girl"     Today is the second time I have come to work to open the store and found a hot mess.  The showroom was a disaster when I came in this morning. All of the lamps were on, computer was left on, pillows everywhere, she left a bunch of stuff laying around like shoes, coke can, notebook.  She didn't do any end of night reports.  I don't understand what happened.  I can understand if she was busy, but it doesn't take but an extra 5 min to print reports and shut things off.  EVERYTHING except the overhead lights was left on.   Maybe she thought since it was her birthday that she didn't have to do anything.   If she was having trouble with anything I told her to call me.  I was home, I would have talked her through whatever and handled it today.   I don't understand what makes it ok to just not do what needs to be done.  The sad part is she will come in today and I will ask what happened and she if she has any questions about anything and she will say she has no questions that she knows what she is doing. 
Well I guess I am done complaining about all of the extra work I had to do this morning to get the store ready to open.  I don't worry too much about the store, but the way it looks directly reflects on us(the people here everyday). So while I don't get paid a whole lot, I still take some pride in making sure that things are done.  Right now I am headed out to clean all of the greasy finger/face prints off of the windows.  EEEWWWW.

And another day..

Monday, October 11, 2010

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Sunday Comics

I love Garfield.  Maybe I will stop off and buy a newspaper today.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

New car blues

I want my new car. Ok, well, not new but new to me.  I wasn't expecting to get a new car so soon, but I can't pass this up.  My car is falling apart around me and I need to ditch it while they will still give me something for it. So I took my booty into CarMax and looked....I didn't really see much I liked or was willing to pay that much for.  I went home and looked online to see what else I could find and to my surprise found something that met ALL of my criteria.  SUVish, decent gas milage(at least better than my current), 5 seatbelts, cargo space, low miles, and good price.  I found a 2001 Pontiac Aztek in amazing condition, 49,364 miles on it, cargo room, 5 seatbelts, better gas milage than my car and price $8,995.   If I don't jump on this now than who knows when I will find another deal like this again.  This is a rare find. Also one owner with and clean history report.  I went and saw it last night, looks better in person, and drives very nice. I also had them apraise my car....   I would have been LUCKY to get $1,500 for my car....they offered me $1,700.   WWWOOOOOOHHHHOOOOO.   
Tuesday is "D" day  (deal day).  I am taking Crankybear with me and we are going to see what can be worked out....  I think I have all my ducks in a row and I want to walk in prepared.  I have to call my insurance guy monday and give him the vin and see how much the Aztek will lower my insurance.  He already said that with the safety features and ratings it should lower it a good bit considering my car is a death trap...lol.  I did a lot of research today on safety ratings for both vehicles and realized that my car is scary unsafe and the aztek is much better.     Really I kind of feel like a grown up now. I personally think that the aztek body style is ugly, but I am not buying it to be pretty or cute...I am buying for the practical application of the features it provides.  I think Crankybear would have stepped in and squashed all of this before now if I had been looking at something small and cute just because I liked the way it looked.  I think it would be awesome to get a little sporty something that is FUN to drive and doesn't leave much room for others, but I do have kids and a dog and we like to do things together so that is not a practical option, plus it would probably cost a lot more.  
I can't wait til Tuesday.   I took the kids with me last night to see it and ride in it....they love it!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Good Morning Sunshine

So let us start the day right.  Singing *I love coffee, yes I do. I love coffee, so should you.*  It is early and I am already swimming in coffee so I thought it would be fun to learn something new about coffee. (besides the fact the Jamaica Blue Mountain is wicked expensive :) )
  1. "Coffee Smellers" were discharged wounded soldiers employed as spies to "smell out" unlicensed coffee roasting during the coffee monopoly in Germany.
  2. There are 24 steps to the "coffee process".
  3. Coffee is the second most traded product in the world after petroleum.
  4. October 1st is official “Coffee Day” in Japan.
  5. Black coffee with no sugar contains no calories
Well now that my cup is empty I will leave you with a few pictures I found and head out for my day of picture taking.  YAY!!

I love the vintage look of these....
Almost forgot I wanted to share a link to a cute site I found with info on coffee   Coffee facts

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Creativity......where did you go??

Some how I feel like I have lost my creativity, so in hopes of finding it I am taking my camera out with me tomorrow.  Plan A is to try and find and take pictures of faces I see in inanimate objects. Plan B take a bunch of pictures with magnifying lenses on and see if I can get close enough to make it hard to identify what it truly is a picture of or get a funky angle on it so we are looking at something in a way we wouldn't usually look.   Either way I will have spent the day trying to open my eyes and mind to the world around me.  I gotta quite letting all of the monotonous day to day stuff drag me down.  My photography has suffered, my painting has suffered, my crochet has suffered, my brain has suffered.
Tomorrow----Picture day!




This is a funky angle picture I took while we were at Luray Caverns.

My life's blood.




It's gonna be a long day, let's see how fast it can go or at least see if I can stay awake.
Also today is a big first. Toad is wearing her FIRST pair of dangling earrings. I had said no to most but these aren't that big and they are cute.  My baby is growing up so fast.






They love each other I think.  LOL  

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Mid-Week Meltdown

Woo hoo for wed!  
Hopefully Toad will feel better, we took care of what we needed this morning and now I am off get some cleaning done, make lunch for my sickly one and get ready for work.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Germ Attack

Wow.  Toad is already sick.  I picked to girls up from school today after hanging out at JoAnne Fabrics and of course the first thing Toad says is "mom, my head hurts".  So I proceed to question her in an attempt to diagnose what may be causing this, normal questions like "when did it start? where does it hurt? DID YOU GO TO THE NURSE? is anything else bothering you, or has anything else been bothering you? She answers everything and then tells me that she didn't got to the nurse, so I ask why and she says it was because her teacher would not let her.  Now I completely understand that teachers may have to say no about kids going to the nurse if they are "frequent flyers" but there are some children that SHOULD go to the nurse.  Toad has to take a fair few medications to get through the day, there is quite the array of uppers and the downer she takes at night, so when she says she has a headache there is a little more going on than just a simple wish to get out of class.  When a child (you know) takes meds to get through the day complains of a headache, dizzyness, chest pains, or serious fatigue that SHOULD be a red flag to say "HEY, send that kid to the nurse, where in turn the nurse will check the child's blood pressure.  Maybe I am just over cautious or over protective.  Luckily this seems to be nothing more serious than possibly the flu i.e. fever, chills, headache, tired, loss of appetite, general crappy feeling. So we will all hope for Toad to get better quick and in the meantime I am going to have a little chat with the school nurse (who will hopefully talk to her teachers) about this whole "not sending kids to the nurse thing".
In other news I have a headache from today's mess, the dog is barking at nothing, the weather is cold, and I am heading to bed. Goodbye Tuesday!



This is how our dog says goodbye to rough days.
(that REALLY is our dog)

Monday, October 4, 2010

In Honor Of Mondays

Because we all hate Mondays. I think it's time for an LMAO moment...so let us see what I can find.
Drum roll please....              and this weeks LMAO moment is work related, but I am sure we have all thought these things at one time or another.

So it is the end of Monday and I admit I probably could have found something much funnier, but in my time crunch I skimped and turned a possibly cool idea into roadkill.  Eh.  Maybe I will come up with something better....I just hate mondays and was hoping to find something to lighten the Monday blues.  It may still work, I will see if I can find something awesomely funny by next Monday.    

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Goblins, Ghosts, and Pretty Kitties?!

What happened to the good old days when costumes were simple?  We took the kids shopping for Halloween costumes yesterday and oh boy is all I have to say...   We stopped by walmart, which of course did not have anything they were remotely interested in. Toad has decided she wants to be Hermione Granger from Harry Potter and that stayed as firm as cement, Monkey on the other hand wanted to be a cheerleader, then changed her mind while we were at walmart.  I thought I had her convinced to be something scary and gross, but that changed too.  We left walmart, grabbed Crankybear and headed to Party City.  Toad found the items she needed to pull off the hermione costume very quickly(robe, wand, tie, scarf) I have to find her a white button down shirt, but I have time.  Monkey found a Zombie Doctor costume that would have been AWESOME except it only came in 2 sizes med and large.  She is too tiny to pull off a medium so we kept looking. She tried on almost every mask in there and scared herself a few times, and then asked if we could go look at the wall of costume pictures again.  So we wondered through the maze of parents with children running crazy back to the wall. First monkey points to a cute sailor outfit, NO. She has a sailor costume she could wear from her last dance recital. They had a tap routine for "The Good Ship Lollipop" so I told her if she wanted to be a sailor she could wear her old costume. She promptly said no she didn't want to be a sailor and pointed to a Pretty Kitty costume.  Something went very wrong. Somehow we went from guts and gore to cheap black velvet and pink feather boa.  I am confused.  We found a person working and asked if she could bring us out a small(4-6) for Monkey to try on.  We wait and get in the dressing room, put the top and bottoms on her and she runs off to show Crankbear and Toad. She comes running back a few minutes later saying something about the headband and sure enough there on the floor of the dressing room is a small plastic bag with a headband and choker.  She is absolutely adorable. I think I am going to have to head to party city alone and pick up a costume for me.  The kids are getting big enough that I can dress up and in something hideous.  This should be awesome, I saw a great werewolf costume.  We will see how funds are when we get a little closer to Halloween.  The kid's cotumes tapped me out.....almost 2 hours and $60 later they are happy and ready for the holiday and I can't wait to get pictures.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Fall Flavor!

The weather has been chilly and windy (with some insane rain), the leaves are turning colors, and during my trip to the store today I found out that pumpkin pie spice is a HOT commodity.  Don't get me wrong, I can bake but when it comes to pies I leave that to experts. I needed the spice for making Pumpkin Pie Fudge.  I had no idea fudge could be so good. It is like eating pumpkin pie heaven, smooth, creamy, perfect pumpkin pie flavor, and super easy to make.  The kids did most of the work on this one....I had Monkey greasing pans for me and Toad stirring the mixture while it boiled, really all I did was time things and say when to put stuff in, and the stirring after we added the marshmallows(the mixture got insanely thick and hard to stir at that point).  I think for the next batch I am either going to pick up some candy molds and line them with plastic wrap or use ice cube trays lined with plastic wrap.  I think we have 4 or 5 ice cube trays that NEVER get used. 
I will have to see what I can find, I have a coupon for 50% off of one regular priced item at A.C. Moore for tomorrow so I think I will stop in and see what kind of candy molds they have.  It would be cute if I could find little pumpkins or "punkins" as the kids say.
Toad also decided tonight that for Halloween she wants to dress up as Hermione Granger from Harry Potter. Sounds like a better plan than the puppy dog with the bloody stump of an ear.  Monkey wants to be a cheerleader. I have to start looking for costumes.  Hopefully tomorrow I can steal away to Party City to see what they have.  The kids also have swim lessons tomorrow....YAY.  Only their second week in class but I am sure it will be a great class, these kids are fish and this will be the one time a week they get to swim until next summer.  Well I am off to the kitchen to finish up a few things and then off to bed to dream of pumpkin pie/pumpkin pie fudge.
BTW- here is a link to the recipe I used for the Pumpkin Pie Fudge