Midget On The Edge

All day, the big S word came up in conversation. Weather.com kept going back and forth between snow starting at 9, or midnight, or 3AM…For once, it started EARLIER than they predicted, and flurries started falling downtown around 4:30. One I was done grocery shopping, there was a little more, and when I got home, it was full blown snow.

Today, I did my first big grocery trip based solely around coupons and sales instead of just getting things we need. I’m really pushing myself to get into this instead of using coupons here and there so we’ll have more money to pay off bills and move.

I spent just over $120 but saved over $80 between sales and coupons. I’m so proud, and can’t wait to see those numbers reverse.

All night, it snowed and iced over so that our road was impossible to travel on. It’s pretty steep, and any attempt to leave would have been futile. At the crack of dawn, the nieces and nephews were sledding, so we joined in near dinner time. We had planned to have a yard sale as part of our downsizing, but obviously it didn’t happen. We spent most of the day playing No More Heroes 2 until the kids coaxed us to join them. It was SO much fun!

Matt came over later and went sledding with us. When his truck slid several feet down our driveway, he moved it to level ground across the street and decided to stay the night.

On Sunday, Clay and Heidi came over for dinner. Our street was still bad for most of the day with cars struggling to leave, but the sun finally shined its rays on the pavement and it melted pretty quickly. I made a yummy white bean chili and bought a cake (that we didn’t eat!) and Clay and Heidi brought home made corn bread and a salad. It was delicious! Afterward, we played Cranium until after 10, and it was so much fun.

This is a sample of one of the activities. I was trying to draw without speaking or writing words and Kyle was trying to guess what action I was drawing. All my drawings looked like people getting molested. The word was “frisk.”

Copying Sara, I started knitting a very simply cover for the back of our toilet. I had never heard of it, and loved the idea; Sara’s looked so good! I didn’t have any yarn to match our shower curtain perfectly (the beige there sort of does, but I wanted more color in it) but that’s okay. I’m so excited to use this in the new apartment, and am still trying to decide if I should save it for the new place. :)

I am not a big fan of leftovers, but found myself happily chowing down on leftover chili and cornbread from dinner with Clay and Heidi.

Ice still covered a lot of the ground, and I spend the first few days of the week listening to city workers chipping away at the sidewalks. Our city is sooo not built for this.

Every couple of months, my company does a training session for three days where clients come from all over the US and Canada to learn about the shredding industry. The first night they are there, we have vast amounts of barbecue delivered to the brewery our company owns, RJ Rockers, and we serve them dinner. They eat and drink our beer and hopefully brag about it when they go home. It’s always fun.

For the first time, we had a vegetarian client, so I had to get some food for him elsewhere because the only thing he could eat was the coleslaw (which is all I ever nibble on). This gave me an excuse to ask for some other food myself, and I was permitted to get some Thai food for both me and the client. Yay!

—————————————————

Fridays are my errand days at work. My boss gave me the keys to the available apartment so I could meet Kyle there to look at it. We loved it. It’s smaller than our house, but we were planning on downgrading majorly for Savannah anyway. The apartment needs a few minor repairs, but once the carpet is cleaned, they are going to let us start moving stuff in, although we won’t be living there yet. Move-in looks like March 20-21 (our current landlord required a 2 month notice).

We had lunch at a local Thai place and made a list of furniture we are keeping and a list that we need to sell. We hope to have a yard sale next Saturday to sell some other random stuff from around the house. I spent the evening measuring furniture to see what we could keep, listing stuff on craigslist, and posting stuff on Freecycle to get rid of.

Kyle and I spent the afternoon working on our laptops before heading to Clemson to hang out with Billy for a party he was having. Half the time we were there, we played Super Mario Bros Wii in his basement while he greeted party guests. We couldn’t stay long, besides hanging out while preparing for the party, because Molly was at home and would have left a big mess if we left her in the house alone all night. I drove Billy’s new car around Clemson and reveled in driving a manual transmission again.

Sunday was a relaxing day once we got into the afternoon. We went to church and lunch with Kyle’s parents, and then headed to their house so his mom could cut his hair. After that, we rushed home because someone was due to pick up our recliner and a coffee table. The recliner guy was late, but very nice and let me know ahead of time. The coffee table people vanished off the face of the earth. Never heard from them again. Oh well.

Kyle read a comic while I colored in one of my Hello Kitty coloring books until we heard from Wiggy. She met us at Barnes & Noble in the monsoon and we hung out for a few hours, knitting and catching up. I miss her.

When I got home after work, allergy shots, and a random drug test, I was exhausted. I chowed on some fast food, caught up on Scrubs episodes on Hulu, and then passed the heck out. I woke up long enough when Kyle got home to fix him dinner and then I was pretty much out again.

I didn’t react to my shots this week. Because of the bad reaction last week, they pushed me back 1/3 of the progress I’d made…

I finally started playing WiiFit again today. All of our previous data (when I first got the game) has been lost because the Wii was repaired at the beginning of last year. It was nice to start over, and not even see what I weighed last time I played.

I’m on a mission to regain my self-confidence. Much of it has been lost over the last year, and I miss it. This is the first step that I know to take.

I finished my first fingerless glove today after work.

I did nothing at work all day. Nothing. Tuesday, a virus showed up on my computer. It shut my computer down twice in 3 hours, and our IT guy did his work. I thought he got it all, although IE was corrupted but I never used it anyway. Wednesday morning, my computer shut down 4 times in an hour. The IT guy worked on it for a few hours before giving up. Our company was due to get new computers within a month, so they went ahead and brought mine in an totally replaced my computer because they couldn’t fix it. Because of the company server and all the programs I use at work, it took the whole rest of the day to set it up. I took the IT guy out lunch for fixing Kyle’s laptop a few weeks ago. Chris is my favorite. :)

The surprise about my new computer at work is that it came with a 22 inch monitor!! Heck YES. And soon, next time the IT guys come by, they are hooking up my old monitor so I’ll have dual screens.

Windows 7 is amaaaazing. I even like the new IE! I haven’t redownloaded FF yet. :)

Today rocked. About time I had a damn good day.

I came up with a great idea for a photography project, the weather was wonderful, I was expecting Sara to get her package this afternoon, and I reconnected with an old friend who wants to hang out more often. Yay! Bad news came in the evening, however, when trouble with Sara’s package ensued.

Kyle and I watched The Princess Bride and did a lot of work on our laptops. Because neither of us felt well, Kyle worked on his website and I played around with a new site that I joined. I have lived a pretty long online life and have made a handful of Friends. Friday night, I learned of a site created that had a handful of our old online friends. The site was down, though, and I couldn’t join until Saturday. I spent all day on it.

We stayed out of church because I woke up with a migraine both Saturday and Sunday, and Kyle came down with a pretty terrible cold. We laid around and played video games. I played with the kitty. <3

Today was a rough day. After work, I got my allergy shots and had a terrible reaction. First of all, my right arm here wouldn’t stop bleeding. After 15 minutes in the waiting room after I got my shot (you have to wait 30 minutes afterward to see if you react. Standard procedure) I started wheezing. I didn’t freak out and decided to see if it would go away. It didn’t, so I told a nurse when it got really hard for me to breath. My doctor freaked out and took me to the back to give me a shot of adrenaline. He said everything would be fine in 2-3 minutes, although I’d feel jittery and nervous and I should lay down if I feel like I’m going to pass out. Luckily, that didn’t happen, but the wheezing didn’t stop either. After 15 minutes, they made me use an inhaler and everything was fine. I was jittery for another hour and felt miserable the rest of the night.

Kyle came home sick from work. He thought he was fine, but felt terrible as soon as he started doing manual work. Matt picked up Jagermeister, shot glasses and Super Mario Brothers Wii for us as a belated Christmas gift and came over after he left work early, too. We all played Mario for a while, and they played drinking chess after I went to bed.

(this photo is best viewed larger!)

I was craving Chinese food at lunch, so I grabbed some stuff and took it home to eat with Kyle. I hadn’t had Chinese food in probably over a year since I went vegetarian. This was my fortune. I think it’s one of my favorites.

While waiting on my Chinese food, I found a favorite store. It’s a resale store with really good clothing in it. They frequently run sales, and their prices aren’t that bad to begin with. I hope to be able to buy some new clothes soon since most of mine are too big.

I got a great idea from a co-worker to knit leg warmers. I currently wear soccer socks because I get so cold, but leg warmers would be a nice alternative. Instead of wearing the same 2-3 pairs of soccer socks all Winter, I can wear my ankle socks with some knitted leg warmers. I had no idea how many stitches to cast on, so I just made stuff up (I didn’t look up a pattern). They looked too small for my leg, but since I knitted them with a ribbing pattern, they stretch a lot and do actually fit my legs. I can’t decide if I’ll make these arm warmers or leg warmers.

Today, Kyle and I decided to move into a smaller apartment.

While talking with him on my lunch hour, I decided that I wanted to pay off some loans before moving to Savannah. One of them has an astronomical interest rate and I’d rather not have to worry about it. When we talked about this for a while, he suggested us finding a cheaper, smaller place in town. I loved the idea, hoping we could find a good place. My company has some apartments and duplexes around town, so I asked my boss, and they had one open that would save us nearly $300 a month in rent and utilities. All that extra money will go towards paying off loans, with a handful going into savings. Once they are paid, all the money will go into savings for Savannah.

I’m very proud of myself.

Sara made my night even better with a sweet email thanking us for the package that they finally received on Tuesday.

My brother was in town from school. He and his girlfriend were starving when I got off work, so we went to Wild Wings. I just had a beer and some fries while they ate dinner. Our server was quite a character and left us many inside jokes to use throughout the rest of our lives.

I organized the craft room some, painted half of the green stripes left in the dining room, and cooked a wonderful breakfast. After some Halo and Rune Factory Frontier, I passed out for an hour while Kyle took Molly for a walk. Our internet (or my SIL’s internet, rather, that she lets us use) hasn’t been working for a couple of days now. We spent the evening at Panera bread so websites and photos could be updated.

We bought a rug. It is huge and gorgeous and takes up the floor of the entire front part of the living room. It was only $100 at the flea market, of which we went after church and lunch to look for more of Kyle’s crazy art magazines (they didn’t have any). This rug was hanging up and I fell in love. It still smells brand new. The carpet in the house we live in is pretty gross, so it’s nice to have our feet freed from at least one room of gross carpet.

I like that I got all of our feet in the photo, except the kitty’s. The kitty was outside.

I got some bins for the cat and dog food, and took great joy in labeling them. The dining room is finally done, and now organization stage is in full swing. It makes me very happy and helps keep my mind off other things.

I was exhausted today. I ended up falling asleep shortly after I got home, so hard that I didn’t hear my phone at all throughout the messages and phone calls I got for 3 hours. I purposely didn’t go to my knitting group for the first time since we started it last year.

Today was a very, very emotional day. Not only did I inadvertently cause a confrontation for one of my best friends, but I had a very rough exchange with someone else. I was in tears for 2 hours at work after being accused of being such a hateful person. The whole thing was supposedly resolved, but I feel little closure yet.

Kyle’s computer has been infected with a trojan virus this week. When I couldn’t fix it, I got in touch with Chris, one of the guys who works for the IT company that services my company. Their office is right up the street, so he came by when I got home and worked his magic. Rough emotional day. My brain is still recovering and deciding how it feels from recent events.

Kyle took this photo. Bless his heart, he tries to get it focused right. :P

In my freshman year of high school, I had a teacher that assigned a paper that I will never forget. We were to imagine ourselves in the year 2036, where we would be age 50, and write a brief autobiography about our lives. When he returned our papers to us, they were sealed in envelopes with our names and the words “Open January 1, 2010,” ten years later.

Our teacher said most of us would open the envelopes within the week that he returned them, but a select few would save them. I saved mine, and took great pride in opening it on the first day of this year.

Billy stayed from New Years Eve until the Sunday after. We only left the house once during his stay, and it was to eat out on New Year’s Day. We were huge bums on our laptops and video game systems (our Nintendo and Matt’s Xbox). We lounged around on the sofa bed from the time we got up until we went to bed, which was well into the night.

Billy departed after a fun and relaxing weekend. It was a wonderful way to start the year.

It was the coldest day of the season so far, getting down to 18 degrees overnight. I discovered my glass bird bath, a wedding gift, shattered in the front yard because of the ice. It is supposed to be like this all week. Our house retains the cold so well; our last energy bill was really high, so we’re trying to cut back on heat, but the chill is unbearable.

I felt like crap on this day. I keep having random days where I throw up in the morning and am nauseated half the day, and it is usually accompanied by a head ache. No, I’m not pregnant. Probably stress.

I didn’t want my face in this photo. It was very, very cold, though. I wanted to make note of that with my soccer socks. I have 2 pairs of them and wear them daily in the Winter. We haven’t had a winter this cold in a while, where everything is frozen every morning.

This photo was taken in the glass from the oven. I just wanted to see how well I could make it work. :)

I spent the evening with friends after work. We were supposed to go to Greenville for dinner and visits to cigar shops, but the big threat of ice and snow scared us away. Instead, we had pizza and beer in town, visited the local cigar shop, and knitted at Barnes & Noble until closing. It was a bad emotional day, but the evening was lovely.

Wiggy took this.

THIS!