Case #1 – David and I went to Olive Garden a couple of weeks ago.  We like Olive Garden, but this particular trip was unlike no other.  I’m not sure what was going on, but I everything about the trip was just “off.”  We had issues with ordering, issues with drink refills, issues with them being out of breadsticks (oh no!!! I must have bread!) :) and after I looked at David and said, “Where ARE WE?  This is not normal.”  I finally got annoyed and asked for the manager.  I did not really know what to expect with my complaint, but he totally took care of us!  He comped our entire meal, AND gave us a $40 gift card so we would come back and have a better experience another day.  That’s pretty amazing!  Yay for Olive Garden’s problem solving skills.  I wasn’t expecting that at all.

Case #2 – I went to visit my grandparents this week and made a stop at Freebirds World Burrito on the way down.  We don’t have a Freebirds anywhere near us, so I always try to go to one when I am nearby.  I like it there!  (I just wouldn’t choose to dine in if I had any other choice — the music level is so loud that it makes you want to squint. hehe, yes, I am old!)

Anyway, the first time I went they gave me one of their loyalty cards.  I was aware that I was earning points for each purchase, but I really had no idea how it worked beyond that.  (One point per burrito, as it turns out.)  I remembered to get out my card on this trip too and I gave it to the guy to scan during my checkout.

He scanned it for me and was like, “Okay, so with today’s purchase you now have….”

“Probably like zero points!”, I butted in laughingly.

He smiled and said, “Yeah.  Now you have two points.  Did you just redeem some points or something?”

“No, that’s all the points I have so far.  I live really far away from here so I just never get a chance to come.”  (I think I looked very sad here, hehe.)

“Oh!  Well, let me see your card again.”  He took the card, pushed a lot of buttons and then hands it back to me.  “Well, now you have 11 points!  You get a free burrito next time you come in!”

Woohoo, free burrito!  It takes 10 points for a free burrito, so that saved me like a million visits to get my free one.  It seriously would have taken me YEARS to get 10 points.  That made me happy.

Case #3 – This weekend, David and I went to Jalapeno Tree for lunch before I had to head to CVS for the day.  We go to Jalapeno Tree pretty frequently anyway, and we’ve become friends with the manager there.  We were there just after they opened, and it had gotten really chilly during the night and the restaurant was very cold inside.  I was huddling up in my jacket (my usual look for this time of year!) when the manager came by.  He greeted us and then said, “Do you think I should turn the heater on in here?  Is it cold?”

I was like, “Yes!  I am freeeezing!”

The next thing we knew, he was telling our waitress to go get us two cups of soup, on the house, to help warm us up.  Nice!  She brought out two cups of their new beef taco soup. Of course, that meant that David got to eat both bowls.  He was happy about that outcome because the soup was really good!

—

So, do good things tend to come in groups of three, just like the saying goes about bad things?  If so, then we’ve had a great run!  :)  If not, then let’s keep the good things coming!

“Yo Hee Ho” was one of those songs from childhood that has stuck with me all this time.  It was from the Nickelodeon show “Today’s Special”   I watched this show every day!  The show was centered around the idea that department store mannequins come to life at night and have adventures.  :)  One of these episodes featured the song “Yo Hee Ho”, and my brain has featured this song ever since:

Why is this song stuck in my head these days?  Exciting news for us!  We are going on a 7 day cruise in April!  Yay!!!!

I’ve been wanting to go on another cruise since the second we disembarked from our first cruise nearly five years ago.  (I can’t believe it’s been that long.)  This will be a (slightly early) celebration for our 10-year wedding anniversary in May.  We are so excited!

We have fewer than 90 days until our sailing date with Royal Caribbean.  So much to do!  So many lists to make – we can’t forget to take anything! So much shopping to be done!  :)

There is fun in our future!  :)

I think my focus for this year is to try to get life in some sort of order.  My daily existence is already pretty orderly, but right now I’m thinking of things that I need to tackle to help bring order to our future.

One thing 2011 taught me is the importance of detailing the minutiae of your life on paper, somewhere, so that your little world can continue on if you become unable to care for yourself.  Every family unit runs a household so completely differently from another that it is next to impossible for a third party to step in and help with the controls.  However, my goal for this year is to try to take specific steps to ensure that if something major were to happen to me, David, or both of us, that the person who ends up handling our affairs can do so with as little red tape as possible.

My grandparents had a rough 2011 and 2012 doesn’t look much brighter.  Trying to figure out how to find order in their situation has been an un-ending and very complicated task.  I would like to think that my cousin and I have done a remarkable job piecing it all together, but how we really know if we have?  She’s done many hours of work trying to sort insurance policies, and bills, and random bits of information here and there, but it still feels like we could easily be missing something important.  The only thing of all of this that we’ve had in our favor is that we have been very close to our grandparents throughout the years, and between me living with them for many years combined with her frequent visits, we know enough about them that we’ve been able to put together a somewhat workable system to help them out.  It’s been such an arduous task that it is hard for me to think that I might be doing the exact same thing in my own life to someone who has to take care of our affairs in the future.

It is surprising – the random things that we take care of without thought every day.  I began to realize -

*if David and I both suddenly died, does any family member have the name and contact information for our landlord?  How would they even find him?

*how would anyone find out that I participate in the 401(k) program at CVS?

*who would know to cancel our Lifelock service once we no longer need it?

There’s just so many details of life beyond the obvious!  It’s a little scary when you think about it.

So, this year, I am working on a detailed list of the what, where, and how to contact.  I want to make things easier for the person who has to come behind us.  Not the most enjoyable goal for a new year, but I think it’s important!

—–

On the lighter side, I’ve been having a series of recurring dreams lately about our old apartment.  I have no idea why!  All the dreams are extremely vivid and happily pleasant.  Each time, I am aware that I don’t live there anymore, but I always seem to have an excuse ready about why I need to go inside.  Sometimes the new tenants are home and sometimes they are not, hehe.  (Although they are different people every time.)  I usually enter the apartment and just take a look around to see what they’ve done with it.  I think I ate a meal in the apartment last night.  hehe.  Sometimes I just go in and take a nap since it’s so close to work.  :)

Hope your 2012 has gotten off to a great start!

Santa and Mrs. Claus, 2011

David spent another year being Santa Claus at Walmart.  :)  He really enjoys getting to do this, and of course, I reap all the benefits of the hilariously traumatic bad Santa photos.  Poor children!  I just can’t help it if they look so funny. One of the first things I ask David when he gets home from his Santa shift is: “Did you get any good criers today?”  :)

This is really always one of my favorite holiday traditions – the funny Santa photos!  I don’t know what exactly gets the kids so worked up, but I do enjoy the laughs.  It’s ironic especially since lots of them actually know David – he entertains kids all the time at Walmart, making funny noises to them, teasing them, and stopping some of them from crying.  A few of them actually do realize who he is once they start talking to him, but the ones that are in the throes of trauma just have no idea!

Some of them are just….concerned….

I'm really NOT SO SURE about this.....

We're nervous about being here....

Now we're nervous AND mad!!

Some of them just try to put on a brave front:

My lion hat makes me very brave.

Is my family going to save me?

...They just keep smiling like everything's okay.....

I tried, but I'm just not as brave as she is!! Get me down!

Some develop a coping strategy:

If I flap my arms hard enough, maybe I'll be able to fly away....

Don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look....

DON'T LOOK, DON'T LOOK, DON'T LOOK, DON'T LOOK!!!!!

Daaaaad! I said, DON'T LOOK!

Quit laughing! I might accidentally smile after all.

Some just try to scream their way through it:

I wore my favorite pink socks for THIS?!

(love the concerned/amused random shopper in the background)

We have to go...NOW!

hurry, hurry, let's go!

Dad! This is not funny! And, why is sister laughing so much?

Without a doubt, David’s personal favorite criers were the members of our own family.  This is our niece and nephew, Leia and Parker.  Keep in mind that they normally love David:

Santa's voice should not sound familiar! Why is it familiar?

Parker's growing longer and longer in his getaway attempt....

They did settle down for the family picture – everyone is happy after all:

David's parents, two sisters, and the kids

Merry Christmas!

Here it is!

Yay! :) It was really a challenge to fit our message into the very few number of characters allowed!

We met at ETBU and when we were deciding where we wanted to get married, we decided pretty early on that the campus of ETBU was a very fitting place.  The campus already held lots of memories for us, so we knew it would be a great place to have wedding memories as well.  We were married in front of Marshall Hall, just in front of the “light on the hill.”

We’re also pretty excited about finally getting our names on something at ETBU!  This is just the first step, hehe.  One of these days we’ll be so rich and famous that we’ll have our names on all kinds of buildings!  :)

We decided to try to keep the house very simple and low maintenance.  I would love to say that we are trying to keep things as minimalistic as possible, but I think we still have too much stuff to qualify as minimalists!  (A goal to continue striving for….)

So, without further ado:

Front of the house.

Standing on the front porch, however, is a completely different view!

The front yard!

What makes me laugh about this picture is that if you don’t really know any better, you’d think we didn’t have any neighbors.  We actually do, but we’re on a corner, and the house directly in front of us is up on a slight hill, so other than the house directly to the west of us, we do have some degree of isolation.  I really loved the contrast of fall colors in this picture!  The red tree shed its leaves within days of this photo, but I really enjoyed it while it lasted.  (And, take in the view of our brand new mailbox!  That was one of David’s first projects when we moved.)

The front door from the inside - "Who Goes There!?!"

This is the inside view of our front door.  Fairly typical, except for our little green window.  (Which I love.)  The little knob in the lower left corner lets you slide the glass up diagonally, creating this amusing (to me) “Halt!!!  Who Goes There??” effect.  I feel like the little guy in “Wizard of Oz” who was guarding the door to the castle in the Emerald City:

"Who Rang that Bell???"

View of the dining room and living room (one room in an L-shape):

View of dining area from front door

Living room

Living room

I am really enjoying these floors!  David and I had often talked about how nice it would be not to have carpet all throughout the house.  The bedrooms do have carpet, but we don’t mind that since we don’t normally eat (or wear shoes) in the bedrooms.  I feel like it’s much more clean this way.  If crumbs fall onto the floor, we can just sweep or vacuum them up – and we know we pretty much got them all!  With carpet, even with the best efforts, stuff just grinds its way further and further in.  The fact that the floors are really pretty is also a nice feature.  (Of course, we have really had to adjust to the fact that these floors are much more slick than all the carpet we’ve been used to!  I’ve learned to take corners a little more slowly, hehe.  No more traction like before!)

Kitchen

This is the kitchen, which of course we saw previously.  I am loving my new appliances, but I surprised myself by really liking the design and location of the kitchen in the house.  It’s in back of the house and is a room unto itself – not open to view of the living room, etc.  I wasn’t sure I’d like that at first, but it’s really great.  We don’t have to cross through the kitchen to get everywhere else in the house, first of all, and its location means that there’s no need to drag guests through the kitchen unless there is a specific reason.  That’s nice!  The size of the kitchen is great too.  It’s very small (one person at a time, or else!) but everything is right at hand.  It’s not like I really cook that much anyway, so it fits us well.

Guest room.... aka David's Hangout

Guest room

Both of the bedrooms in the house required blackout curtains.  :)  (We didn’t have nearly as many windows in our old apartment, so we’re like moles emerging from our burrows into the bright sunlight in this house!)  I love all the natural light we get, but it’s hard to sleep through and streetlights shine through pretty brightly at night.  So, the living room area is nice and bright, and then we have the option of keeping the bedrooms dark if we want.

Bathroom

As you can see, the bathroom is pretty tiny, but here’s the main thing it has going for it:  the heated fan!  Love!  There is a regular fan and then another switch that controls the heated fan.  I am in the lap of luxury on these cool mornings, hehe.  That heated fan works so well that I hardly use it for more than just a few minutes after a shower.  It’ll break you out in a sweat in no time flat.  Most everything in the bathroom is brand new, so between that, the fans and actually having a window in there, we hardly notice the small square footage.

Bedroom

Bedroom

It’s hard for the pictures to really show how nicely the bedroom turned out.  The layout is much more spacious than what we had before, and (on the wall you can’t see) – two closets!  Yay for that!

We are pleased with our new setting.  It’s a much more efficient layout than what we had before, and the addition of the garage makes my car quite happy.

—

On another note, I’d like to state that I’ve only gone to the old apartment TWO times in error since we moved.  I have surprised myself by keeping the number that low!  Both times I realized where I was going before I actually got TO the apartment, but I was undeniably heading that direction!  :)

It’s funny though, for all the years we lived there – now it all seems like it was so long ago.  We were aware that new people moved into the apartment within just days after we moved out – didn’t stay empty any time at all.  We have passed by there several times during the past two months and it’s like the place is already fading into the background with the rest of the street.  It’s a strange truth to consider.  Life moves you forward.

Filed under: Daily Life Tagged: benefit of wood floors, new house, wizard of oz door ]]> http://standngod.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/a-tour-of-our-house-november-30-2011/feed/ 3 standngod Outsidehouse Treesoutsidehouse Frontdoor wizardofoz Diningarea LivingRoom LivingRoom2 Kitchen Davidsroom1 Davidsroom2 Bathroom1 Bedroom1 Bedroom2 http://standngod.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/the-winter-underlined-tour-cakewrecks-part-2-november-14-2011/ http://standngod.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/the-winter-underlined-tour-cakewrecks-part-2-november-14-2011/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:48:15 +0000 Athene http://standngod.wordpress.com/?p=1247 […]]]>

We are ready to laugh!

What a fun weekend we just had!  David and I went to Plano for the “Winter Underlined” Tour for Cake Wrecks.  Of course, Cake Wrecks is the hilarious cake blog written by Jen Yates that everyone loves.  Brooke and I were very excited that Jen was coming back to Dallas for her second book tour and we immediately started making plans to be there!

The date selection could not have been more perfect.

1.  it was 11-11-11, so David and I were already off for the holiday, our dating anniversary, um, Veteran’s Day.

2. we were trying to find something really fun to do for our day off together, and

3. we love making trips to Plano!

Everything was working out for us to go, and then on Wednesday I was struck with laryngitis.  boo!!!!  It happened shortly after I made a rude comment at work, so I am certain that had something to do with it.  :)  Thursday was spent in miserable silence at work, but luckily by Friday I was able to eke out a fairly decent (although often rough-sounding) conversation.  So off we went, towards cakes and Brooke and Russell’s house!

This book signing was so much fun.  John, the hubby of Jen, was there this time and he was hilarious.  (He was ill during the last Dallas book tour stop.)

John setting everything up for the show, and chatting with us all the while.

We were the very first people there and we arrived just before John and Jen.  (They ended up being parked right next to us!)  We sat on the very first row and it was really fun because John and Jen both came over and chatted with us right away, so we felt like we got to spend a lot of extra time with them.

Jen before the show.

Jen remembered Brooke right away when she saw us.  Brooke had made Jen a really cute apron last time, and Jen actually remembered that.  That’s very cool!

The bookstore really filled up by the time the show started.  John started a slideshow of some of their most favorite cake wrecks.  It was really fun to watch the slideshow with the crowd – this was sort of like everyone reading the blog in unison.  Everyone was cracking up and hooting at the various cake disasters and entertaining each other with comments.

Jen and John then took the stage:

They were perfect together!  (The audience was just rolling.)  You know how sometimes you meet a couple and they just seem perfectly matched?  That was definitely true in this case!  It’s nice to see a bit “behind the scenes” of how the blog is so successful.  You can easily tell that both of them love what they are doing, and they were hilarious together.  I wish there were a way for Brooke and Russell and David and I to all have time to just get together with Jen and John.  I think we’d have a great time.  There is a lot of common ground there!

After the slideshow was over, it was time for the book signing and cake eating!  One of the local bakers had made a huge assortment of cakes.  They were so pretty!

Baby carrot jockey carrot cake.

Red velvet cake. (Bet you can't guess which cake I had!)

White cake with lemon filling.

Pumpkin pops

Cupcakes!

Tons of cake to choose from!  Plus, they were giving out these huge pieces, hehe.  David got the lemon one (he’s been on a lemon kick lately) and it was really good.  My red velvet was perfectly moist and amazing!

The benefit to us being in the front row is that we got to be first in line for the book signing!!  We were exactly the last people in line at the other signing, so how funny that we would be first this time!

Talking to Jen :)

David and I had thought for awhile about what we would want in our book.  The idea came to us almost simultaneously.  :)

There are two stories that David just loves to tell about me – one is about the time when I discovered my fear of butterflies, and the second (and probably his favorite) is that day I (completely erroneously ) yelled out, “I don’t even LIKE cake!!!”

Perfect!  Perfect inscription on a book such as this!  When Jen saw what I wanted, both she and the bookstore employee got a good laugh.  They don’t even know the backstory; it’s just funny just as it is:

Perfect cake quote!

So, the next time Cake Wrecks goes on tour, you can know that we’ll be there!  I can’t wait! :)

(PS- Don’t remember the “I don’t even LIKE cake” story?  Click here!)

I still vividly remember the evening of 11-11-00, when David held my hand for the first time.  It was a sweet start to the beginning of our life’s greatest adventure!

And now, it’s 11-11-11 and it’s time to celebrate!  Look out Plano, here we come!  :)

This year I had three main food objectives in mind:

1. Tater Twisters with melted cheese

2. Fried cookie dough

3. Red Velvet funnel cake

I was really geared up to eat them all!!  I spent a lot of time trying to decide if I’d really be able to do it – all that sugar and all the grease!  I decided that I was up to the task.  hehe.

Our fair day was absolutely beautiful, weather wise.  You might recall that our fair day last year was a dismal mix of clouds and a relentless cold drizzle, so this year’s perfect temperatures, sunshine, and cool breeze were a perfect antithesis to what we had before.

We were completely starving when we got there, so we headed for our tater twisters first!

YUM! YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’d like to lie and say that we didn’t finish all that.  But……..  :)  There is just something amazing about salty, freshly fried potato twisters dipped in melted cheese.  I definitely felt myself hit a wall with my level of grease consumption!  (This is the point where I started to doubt my ability to reach my other food goals for the day…hehe…………)

We got there at a great time because the first show of the day (a circus!) started at noon, and then several other shows went back-to-back from that one.  We did the Circus Hollywood first, then watched a lumberjack competition (more humorous than you’d expect), a bubble show, and then the Great American Duck Race.  We normally don’t time things out that well – that was nice!

After that – it was time for more food!  We had walked a pretty large section of the fair by that point but I had not seen fried cookie dough.  We did see a vendor that was selling (regular) cookie dough on a stick so we decided to go with that.  Just as we stepped up to order, I looked across the “street” and saw the red velvet funnel cake cart!!!  I had a brief moment of indecision – cookie dough, or funnel cake?   The grease factor of the funnel cake just seemed a little bit too dangerous after all those potatoes, so I chose cookie dough.  It was very yummy!  The dough was dipped in chocolate and covered in pecans.  Yummy!

(I did later pass a lady who was chowing down on a red velvet funnel cake.  I asked her how it was and she said it was AMAZING.)

On our way to the zoo (and my giraffe!) we passed by the agricultural building where we met the actual Elsie the Borden cow.  She was cute! They were selling glasses of Borden milk, but they weren’t giving out milk magnets this year.

She looked remarkably just like this!

And, our last stop: the state fair zoo.  My giraffe was really happy to see me!

We left the fair and headed off to one of our other traditions – our after-fair meal at Olive Garden!  You wouldn’t think you’d be able to actually eat after all the fair food, but somehow, being around “real” food can suddenly become very enticing!  I wolfed down my salad like I hadn’t eaten anything green in weeks, hehe.

So, I might not have achieved all my food goals this year, but now I know for sure where to get the red velvet funnel cake.  Next year……red velvet funnel cake!!!  Next year!!!!!!  I will ration my helping of potatoes (yeah right) so I can be sure to have room!!

Sluuuuurrp!!

I was summoned to appear in court for the United States District Court Eastern District of Texas, which is our federal courthouse located here in Marshall.  Marshall is a very popular area for cases involving patents and patent infringement, (see “So Small a Town, So Many Patent Suits” from the New York Times)  so I figured the case would have something to do with patents.  I definitely had no real thought of being chosen for the jury though.  This is my third time to be summoned for jury duty, but it was my first time to be called for federal jury duty.  (My other two times were as a potential petit juror at the county courthouse, but I was in and out of both of those summons very quickly!)

When my name was called and I had to make the walk to the jury box (in front of an entire army of attorneys, by the way), I immediately thought about Liz Lemon’s adventure with jury duty on “30 Rock”:

Yep, I should have taken advantage of this Halloween shopping season to pick up all my Princess Leia costume needs.  :)

Quickly though, I found out that being a juror has a lot of advantages!

1. You get all kinds of access to great free food.  Our deputy in charge took great care of all our needs.  Our jury room was stocked full of treats, including a fridge with a never-ending supply of drinks, a basket of chips and crackers that never ran low, mints to eat during the trial, breakfast every morning (rotating between doughnuts, kolaches, Wendy’s breakfast, cinnamon buns, etc…), and special snacks every afternoon (lemon squares, cookie bars, Halloween cookies, etc.)  Now, you know me and my love for snacks, so I totally starting digging this juror thing pretty fast!

2. You get treated like a queen every time you enter and exit the courtroom.  Everyone has to stand up every time the jury enters or exits the room.  You also get escorted by the court security officer in and out of the courtroom.

3. You get tons of breaks!  I never get this many bathroom breaks in my normal life.  :)

Of course, there were a few drawbacks……

1. My jury chair tried to kill me.  It was just a teeny bit too high off the ground, so I was kind of at the point of either swinging my feet around the entire time, or I was forced to try to sit with my tiptoes on the ground.  Sometimes I would scooch over to the very side of the chair (where it was a little bit lower) for a little while, and sometimes I just slumped down unattractively to give my feet some time on the floor. I was very squirmy due to this.

2. Man, I never thought sitting down all day would be so hard!  I am not used to that at all!  I am used to being on my feet nearly all day (sitting down is a rarity) and I am generally in near constant motion.  Suddenly being in a chair for hours and hours a day was very weird. (This also led to a lot of little catnaps, I must confess!!  I am just not used to being still in a quiet room like that.  I tried so hard to stay awake.  I know I entertained the attorneys with all my head bobbing.  I really tried!!  (Everyone else admitted to falling asleep too though, hehe.))

3. I also never realized the level of FATIGUE involved in jury duty.  I was mentally wiped out every single day after it was over.  I was trying very hard to concentrate and absorb everything; it was very taxing.

The case was really fascinating.  Company Suing Shell, Pier One for Infringement (Marshall News Messenger.)  It was a patent infringement case over the processing of gift cards.  I adore gift cards so this was just completely interesting to me right from the start.  I learned so much about the entire process because the plaintiff invented a lot of the processes by which gift cards even exist in their current state.  This guy is one of the reasons why we don’t have to use paper gift certificates anymore….and why you can walk into places like CVS and buy a gift card from a huge variety of different merchants.  Really cool case.  I’m not going to act like I spent every single moment in rapt attention, hehe, but overall I really loved it.

I’m really glad that my first experience with jury duty was so positive – no Princess Leia costumes required!  I would completely want to serve again if the opportunity ever came up……..but hopefully it’ll be awhile, hehe.