Happy Birthday Suzanne!

It is amazing how many people I know who have birthdays around this time of year! Happy Birthday Suzanne! It sounded like you had a great day and a great weekend. I Hope you have many more happy birthdays.

I also wanted to update with a quick picture of the houses under construction next door. They have the stem walls up, and on friday they started filling in some of the dirt around the houses.

icicles

While there weren't any actual icicles--last night it felt like my nose was one big icicle. Those of you who know me well know that I get cold easily. My hands, feet and nose are the first to show signs of cold. Well, it is getting cold here, and I have so far refused to turn on the furnace. Last night when I came home from work it was about 65 degrees inside the house. By 8pm when I was starting to watch one of my guilty pleasure shows, the house temperature was about 60 degrees. I had on my coat, and was underneath a blanket on the couch. My feet amazingly were warm and I tried to keep my hands under the blanket or between my legs to warm them up, but I couldn't keep my nose warm. It was so cold! David heated up my Herbie (Thank you thank you thank you mom for making that for me!) and I put my nose in that until it warmed up.

I know it is kind of lame to be writing about my cold nose, but you have to understand how much this affects my crankiness factor. I should probably give in and turn on the heat so I am less cranky but it is still September for goodness sakes! I really don't want to burn through oil this winter.

anyway- long story short--I've got a cold nose. Pretty much all the time I am at home I have a cold nose. It makes me cranky. But I'm trying to tough it out.

Happy Birthday Mom (yesterday)

Happy Birthday MOM!

Sorry this is one day late, but you got my paper card in the mail on time, so hopefully I'll get credit for that ;-)

I think beautiful Black Eyed Susans would be perfect for your birthday...so here they are!

Subscribe?

I wonder if anyone subscribes to my blog... I totally forgot about that little option on the blog. At the very bottom of the page is a thing that says "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)". I've never subscribed to a blog, but I hear it is really helpful for folks who don't like to go and visit certain pages all the time to check and see if there is new content. I guess this feature alerts you when there is new content. I also gather it is different from RSS ( but I don't understand the difference). I should subscribe to someone's blog and see how it works. I can't believe I'm writing about this tool that I don't really even know how it works...I bet J.N.A. in St. Louis could explain it to me...

Here is some copied text from blogger explaining it (although even this uses some more technical language than I am used to)
"Atom is one name for two things: It's both a new standard for developers, as well as a syndication format or "feed" for your blog. When a regularly updated site such as a blog has a feed, people can subscribe to it using software for reading syndicated content called a "newsreader." People like using readers for blogs because it allows them to catch up on all their favorites at once. Like checking email—without the SPAM."

someone knows my secret

I think it was last week that David came to me in the morning and told me that he knew my secret. For a moment I got very scared because I couldn't think of any secret that I had.

He said, "I hear the secrets that you keep, when you are talking in your sleep". Oh crap...what did I say this time? Apparently I said, clear as day, "Can we go to the dog shelter after work?". That sounds about right, I've had doggies on my brain for awhile. So- it wasn't really a secret-and I had no reason to be scared...but he still scared me when he said he knew my secret.

Sidenote of explanation: I talk in my sleep. Often. So it is possible that I could say things that I don't mean or that mean nothing or that I don't necessarily want anyone to hear. I haven't had any real problems with my nighttime talking other than waking David up, so I shouldn't be too worried about saying something that would get me in trouble.

nervous

I'll remain deliberately vague about all this because I'm about to blog about work which is a patented no-no. It is not like I'll be saying bad things about work..just talking about a neutral topic.

I have a conference call tomorrow which I am supposed to lead that is supposed to have people representing 25 different universities around the country. This is for a project I am the lead on here at work. I'm nervous. I have never done anything like this before, and I always worry that my style of meeting (get to the point, move through the items, be done early) isn't conducive to certain things. When I'm on calls with other leaders sometimes I just want to move on from a topic, but people keep beating a dead horse. So, I certainly will not change my style completely, but maybe when I ask if anyone has questions or comments I'll make sure I count to 10 before I move on. I'm still nervous. It isn't like I don't know this stuff inside and out-but new stuff is scary.

update on construction next door

I took this picture on saturday, and what it currently looks like is dramatically different. They poured concrete into these molds on monday and yesterday they started putting up the form work for the walls. You can see in this photo that the house furthest from us is set back from the one by us. They were spraying what David said was a release compound on the plywood sheets and it stunk. Of course it seemed like the smell was drifting directly into our house. So we went for a walk last night after work in the hopes that the smell would dissipate by the time we got back.

Happy Birthday Emily!

Happy Birthday Emily!

If I were there, I'd bring you flowers like these

I hope you have a wonderful birthday and enjoy your birthday weekend, whatever you do.

taking a break and Happy Anniversary

You may have been wondering where I've been. Well, we've been taking a break from doing work on the house. We haven't even gotten around to caulking yet. It has been nice to come home and actually be able to decide what to do or not do. Last night I finished reading a book I had started a month or so ago. However, I think all this relaxing is making me lax about other things as well (like writing here).

In other very important news, it is our 4th Wedding Anniversary today. We are going out to dinner at a cute little Italian place near our house where the server knows us and has even invited us to a showing of his art.

But no dinner or card or flowers could express how happy I am to be with David in this relationship, making a life for ourselves. (Am I trying to make an excuse for not buying David a card..well not really, but if it helps...). A toast to my sweetie--who makes me smile and laugh more than anyone else ever has!

kitchen is really really almost finished

Plumbing is installed (David rocked!) and I used the dishwasher twice already. I did lots of handwashing and threw all kinds of stuff in there so that I could start putting things away in our cabinets. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.