Freeeedom!

So, while I temporarily feel bad for Jason, today has been incredibly AWESOME not having anything to do, so I can mess around all day and not feel guilty! I feel bad because he's stuck doing homework for the next month while I have none, however, I remember all those semesters while I was doing homework, and he was playing video games. So it helps with the guilt. :P

I whipped out the good ole' sewing machine (actually it's shiny and new!) and hemmed two pairs of pants that were in desperate need of it. One I have been wearing for months that had safety pins holding the hem up because it fell out a month after I had them altered (disgusting I know) and what's really bad, is when I took all the pins out, one of them had rusted. :(

I dragged Jason out to Joann's Fabric today, because they overcharged me (well, my mom) on some silicone baking cups, so I wanted me $4.04 back! While we were there, we picked up some thread for my pants, and a pet bed pattern which was completely out of place, but I had to get it, because that's one of the first projects I want to work on. However, I just noticed that the thread cost $5.36 a piece, but I went with that specific one because the person who sold us the sewing machine said it was better quality. I think I will investigate that more next time. Ouch. :/

Back to the projects, I didn't know what stitch to use, and I still don't know how to use the machine (there's sooo many buttons but I don't know what the heck they do) so I think I am going to ask one of the people who taught me how to knit, how to sew, versus going to classes, I'm kind of a retard when it comes to learning hands-on stuff. It took me like 2 weeks to learn how to knit properly, and a good 2-3 months to learn that I was casting on completely wrong, so everything I had made, was crap and would fall apart when it was washed. As for sewing today: I screwed up by picking a stitch that looked like was on one pair of the pants, and didn't change it to the correct foot, and jammed the damn thing, so I just went with the triple liney looking stitchy thing. Haha, see how technology has ruined me!?

The Trickster

I feel like such a sneaky devil. Twice on Saturday I got Jason to eat something disgustingly healthy and before he knew what it was, he said “its ok” or “this is really good.” Buwhahaha. The first thing was in the morning: Breakfast Cookies that are loaded with fiber and good stuff for you. I had never had / made them before then, so it was new to me too. They were a bit odd because the outside was crispy like a cookie (kind of) but the inside was very cakey/bread like but they were delish! Then for lunch I made a “meatless” tamale pie. I used soy beef crumbles, and some healthy alternatives for other ingredients, and Jason really seemed to like it, he even went back for seconds. I wouldn’t tell him what the “secret ingredient” was until he told me if he like it. When he said he did, I told him there was no meat in it, and he just looked confused… he was positive the meat was turkey until I showed him the packaging. I will get us both healthy yet! I really need to work on the recipe page so I can post some of these recipes to share.

As for the rest of today, it was spent doing homework and finals. I am officially done with school for the year! Wahoo, I hope December goes by super slow so that I can enjoy my time off… although I know it won’t, we’re busy most weekends with work (for me) and school stuff (for Jason.)

Friday, since I took the day off, my mom came up and we went shopping for a sewing machine, because a couple months back Jason had talked about splitting the cost for a Christmas / Birthday present. Obviously, that can’t happen now; but what mother doesn’t want a totally domesticated daughter? :P We ended up getting the Emerald 183 from Husqvarna Viking. I can’t even pronounce the name, but that’s ok. My mom decided that one with a computer would probably be better for me because I’d end up getting frustrated having to change all the manual dials. I did grow up with a computer attached to my fingers ya’ know. All this manual stuff kills me. (I kid, I kid, I still use a typewriter on a daily basis at work, and I’m not that old-school-technology impaired.) Anyway, it’s still sitting on the living room floor. I’m scared to open it because we have no real place to put it for now, but I’m also afraid I’m going to be addicted to it. Jason says that I’m getting all crazy with all the cooking and being domestic, but I just can’t stop! This time of year is sooo great to do pretty much anything. We’ve had our doors and windows open for the last few days now. It never gets hot in the kitchen, so I just can’t stop baking… I have more to do tomorrow! Bake, bake, bake.

Also on Friday, we decorated our hour with an obnoxious amount of decorations. Last weekend I took down all the Halloween stuff, and hung up the outside Christmas lights, but ole grinchy wouldn’t let me turn them on until after Thanksgiving. So when we got home Thursday night, guess what got plugged in. :P We put up our “new” (new to us, we bought it last year after Christmas on super discounted sale prices) tree, and decorated it. Then we decorated our small tree and put up the gajillion snowman items I have. Our living room is so bright with lighted items; we almost don’t need a lamp in there anymore! I should have pictures soon. :)

Where have we been?

Soooooo, sorry I’ve been such a putz lately. Although, if Jason updated, I’m sure you’d never hear from us again. ; ) Things have been busy around here, at least for me because since last week through next week it’s finals time! Wahoo! (Not really, that was the internet-cloaked sarcasm.) However, I did complete my second to last assignment for my web design level 2 class, and I feel that I just have to gloat. Basically the project was to research different “Web Development” jobs, and due to the fact that it is such a broad term used for so many things, list what I needed to learn, and what I already knew. I feel like I always half-ass these assignments, but my teacher just seems to love to feed my ego. Here’s what she said this time:

Assignment completed per instruction.
Amanda...this is an interesting combo of jobs and I don't agree with you. I think you probably are qualified for more of these jobs than you think. While they list an entire string of qualifications, most applicants don't have them. I think you might consider applying for some of these jobs. You have the core understanding of the field. You actually have limited to very basic knowledge of css, so I think you could do that. While you said you didn't have PHP, JavaScript, and MY SQL Server, you could learn those by the time you got an interview. This made me smile...."the rest of this made me basically go, huh?" Sometimes those lists seem endless, don't they?

You did a really good job researching all of this. Your skills may be broader than you give yourself credit for. Your writing skills for this lesson are above class average. I really liked your set up for this one and it was very easy for me to read. I liked the narrative. A+ for this lesson. Joanie.

Anyway, I have finally gotten Jason to help me with some ideas for the wedding: cake toppers! (Hey, it’s a start.) A few days ago, one of his friends, bought him the expansion pack for World of Warcraft, and with the packs comes catalogs with lots of cool crap. On one of the pages, we stumbled across FigurePrints. Basically they take your actual World of Warcraft character, and turn it into a 3-D model, that’s about 8 inches tall. We both got super hyped and super excited because seriously, how cool would it be to have the original Fendicano and Emocube as our cake topers? A bald old man in a dress and a purple elf! Seriously, HOW COOL? We could even get the White Wedding Dress and Black Tuxedo that you can create in-game for them to wear. However, this soon became a thing of the past as we learned a few things. First, you basically get entered into a drawing on a monthly basis. My guess is that you’re probably competing against at least 75% of the ten million other players who play World of Warcraft (yes, we’re not the only geeks out there… there’s plenty of us) but then, it also takes a month or more to create, and you can only do one of your own characters. Another thing is that they are made of some sort of plaster like material from a printer and then sealed, placed in a glass case. Wouldn’t that be lovely? While we were really excited to do this, I doubt we’d get the chance to even make one in time, much less two. : ( Total bummer on that note. Another thing that Jason suggested is this lovely mess of a cake. If you know us, neither one of us can be serious ever, which makes this cake all the more funny, but I don’t think I could do it. And, last but not least, I would never, ever, make a cake like that… haha I’m not that crazy. Man, there are some uuuuuuugly cakes out there.

In other news, we decided to fix our sink the other night. Jason took it apart (well the small area that we were told needs to be fixed) and we took it over to ace, just to find out that whoever installed the sink did a nice little jerry-rig to make it “work” and that left us pretty much screwed. Even the guy at ace was confused, but I think he may have also been a little high, which is scary. I found a box of miscellaneous pipes, told Jason to get it, and he ended up re-piping (is that even a term?) the entire thing under the sink. He is so handy, even when he doesn’t know what he’s doing. So far he’s rebuilt our flushing system thing in our broken toilet, and now underneath our sink. He could be a plumber without even trying! : P (He’s not too keen on the idea though.) Anyway, it’s late, and tomorrow is our cleaning day, so I better get to bed.

Alien.

We are watching Alien (my first time seeing it...) and we're at the part where the alien pops out of the guys stomach (which spawned the creativity for Jason's pumpkin this year.)  I would like to say:  I think Jason made a lot bigger mess recreating that scene than the actual scene did.  :P

Ugh.

So I don’t know what to title this because quite honestly this is going to suck.

On December 6th, Jason is losing his job. This comes as quite a shock as the night before we got the news (Thursday) we were talking about how they were hiring another contractor to make up for the contractor they were basically letting go, and joking about how I should apply for a job, and how much extra money we could have. Friday night, we go out to dinner, and he was supposed to hear from his recruiter about the new hire (or something I don’t remember, but he was supposed to hear from her) and we see we missed a call. He calls her back, leaves a message. We miss another call. He calls again, and gets in touch with her. It was like a “Hi, you have no job.” It was a good length conversation, and Jason would say bits and pieces which frustrated me because I had NO idea what was going on… but pretty much the gist of it is: Charles Schwab is having a hard time with the economy issue that they are pretty much cutting all excess expenses. On our drive home from work, only hours earlier, Jason made it sound like his job wasn’t just some added expense, and that he was really needed (along with the other person he works with.) It’s all just such a shock. What a crappy time of year for it to happen. However, there is some sort of maybe good news. They do have a position opening up directly through the company, but it starts in January. This sucks for two reasons. We’re gone for a good week and a half in January and there’s a month between when he is released from duties until he has the potential to get this job. So, it’s not even a guaranteed thing, but he’s been told that he’s a shoe in due to some recommendations from “permanent employees.” While that is encouraging, I don’t know how much I actually believe it, since this has all kind of been like a horrible car accident you don’t see coming. While I am sure we could technically scrape by the month of December with Jason having no job, we definitely do not want to risk it if he happens to not get that permanent job; so we are both really on edge right now.

My school ends just after Thanksgiving, so I have the entire month of December with nothing to do, I was really looking forward to doing absolutely nothing for an entire month, but I think, instead I will be searching for another job. It definitely can’t hurt, especially if Jason can’t find one. This whole thing is just so depressing, at such a happy time in our lives, for something so wrong to happen just plain sucks. My mom sent up some wedding magazines and brochures for weddings in Arizona, and it’s just plain depressing to look at them, I just want to cry, and I know that this will seem selfish, but I don’t think we’re going to get married any time soon. We couldn’t afford it when Jason had a very good paying job, and now... well, look at us. : (

Blah.

In more bad news, but much more mild… we had our dishwasher installed today. While underneath it was absolutely disgusting, the installer guy said that the dishwasher was leaking (super) so that should be fixed now. However, when he went to shut the water supply off, he broke the nicely rotted valve (problem one) and when he was done, he gave us more bad news: we have this hole thing and its letting out our hot and cold air from under the sink (problem two) which should be easily fixed with some spray foam stuff, and our pipes are old and crappy and the seal doesn’t hold and it’s just being held together by some sealant stuff (problem three) which, again, he said was an easy fix. I am starting to get more and more pissed off because obviously, our home inspection guy is a fraudulent piece of ca-ca, and should not be telling people their houses are “fine” when they buy them, because obviously, our house and most things in it were/are far from fine. >: [  (And don't get me wrong, I am sooooo grateful that our installer guy was nice enough to point this stuff out, and he totally didn't trash our house like the last guy!)

The dishwasher does work great. It’s so quiet, we can put like two loads of dishes in, and it has so many buttons. We love buttons!

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Today, I called in sick to work, because, well, I was sick.  The dogs slept with me most of it, and on an occasion or two, the cats joined us without too much commotion.  For the last part of it from about 3-5:30 when Jason got home, it was just me and Lucy chilling in bed.  When Jason walked in the door, I started boasting about how good the kids had been all day, and how sweet Lucy was being.  She brought me her Kong, a loofah dog, and her Man, which is basically like her baby blanket, we don't ever leave home without it, and she laid them all in bed with me.  That's when we noticed it... lying on the floor... mostly gone... a banana.  Attached to this severely bruised banana was a partial stem and a little bit of skin from a banana that was previously there.  The blame pretty much went to Lucy right away, because honestly, she's the problem child... until we saw Landon go back to the scene of the crime, and try to finish his clean up!  When we adopted Landon, they told us he liked fruit, especially bananas, I had no idea that he liked them enough to jump up to a table (he rarely even begs for food, and if he does it's from a distance away) and take a bundle of bananas (luckily I ate one for breakfast so there were only two) and eat the whole thing... skin and all.  He hasn't come up sick, so that's a good thing, but it is kind of funny (although frustrating because we keep getting reassured that we can't leave them alone.)

This is them!

I was flipping through Brittany's Sunset magazine from February 2008 today (yeah, we're all a bit behind on the times :P) and I found this ad for Real Simple Weddings. I nearly crapped myself as these are the exact color I wanted... and I never knew hydrangeas (which happen to be my faaaaavorite flower) could be so vivid. I've only seen hydrangeas that are pastel like colors. I hope we can find these, or something very similar. So pretty. :)  Want, want, want!

Well hello there, sexy.

Say hello to our sexy new dishwasher. I've never been one to get excited over appliances until I owned my own house, survived the piece of shit that we own now, and been able to pick out this sexy beast (with one steal of a deal to boot!) Technically, we couldn't really afford it, but the checking account that I've had since I was 18 has this lovely over draft protection account tacked on to it for $1,500 so that I never really "over draw" my account, it just transfers some funds, and then I pay the over draft account back with no interest, or extra fees. I really don't know how I got it on my account, but I haven't been able to get another one since, so I keep it around for days like today. We bought it because we got a "preferred customers only" invitation to a "super sale" at the appliance store that we purchased our dryer from. Now, when we bought our dryer, it was out of necessity, we had no working dryer, just a 30 year old machine that spun clothes with no heat, yet made a lovely burning smell fill our house. We walked in, picked up a nice dented floor model, and ran with it. Lucky we did that, because basically what this dishwasher broke down to was a 20% discount off of the retail price (retail price not including tax) with tax, delivery, haul away, new hook ups, and install all included. They weren't really "included" but that's how big the discount was! While we don't need a dishwasher at this point, we "need" one. Ours, along with that classy dryer I was talking about earlier came with the house when it was built so it was at least 30 years old. Many of the pegs on the baskets were broken off and rusted, the dishes never got clean, and anything plastic (utensils, Tupperware, etc.) were usually destroyed beyond use. So now was the perfect time.   The sales guy also basically told us we don't need to pre-clean at all, and it actually works better if the dishes are actually dirty.  Haha, twist my arm!  It's a really "cool" (as cool as dishwashers can be) dishwasher too.  The entire bottom rack folds down in small sections to you can put HUGE pans in it, no issue, it has three spinny water squirter things, its Energy Star rated, saves water, and sanitizes.  My dishes will sparkle!  Wahoo!  We don't actually get it until this coming Saturday though, so now we get to wait wait wait...The event was also catered, (not a huge deal just hot dogs) but the person who owns the catering company was also there so I nabbed her card. It was a multi-beneficial trip. Anywho, I need to make a grocery list, drag Jason off the Xbox (yup, he's STILL playing) and head to bed. :)

Location Location Location

I have to admit, I have become quite The Knot junkie. There is just so much to look at, stuff I never even thought about! I also started to look at wedding pictures of people from around Arizona, and oddly I found the kid I used to tutor in high school geometry. So weird. It's odd to see someone who is younger than you, so grown up. Hell, it feels weird to say that I'm grown up.

Anyway, Jason has pretty much adopted the attitude of "whatever makes you happy" about the wedding. It's already really annoying. It's really hard to get him to help me on anything. I really want to get a jump start on things so that I'm not freaking out over the next year, and we know what we will need to budget for. We (and I use the term "we" very loosely) have picked out a date of October 3rd, 2009. So mark that date in your calendar, folks! We really need to decide on where we want to have it. No matter where we have it, we're going to inconvenience one side of the family, which we both hate. However, Jason had an idea to just do it in the middle somewhere, which in theory sounds great, but then not only are both sides of the family inconvenienced, but so are we, and I really don't want the added stress of having to blindly pick a place to get married, have a reception, pick a photographer, caterer, etc. etc. because I can't physically go see it, and then have it not be anything like what is described or what pictures looks like, plus all the travel hassle on top of that. I don't think Jason quite understands that yet, so we are still debating on where to have it. I do have a few ideas in mind, but I can't seem to drag him away from the Xbox long enough to get any kind of input. (I'd like to take a moment to thank my boss for doing a game swap so that he now has an "excuse" to sit in front of the TV the entire time he's home... thanks Kurtis.)

I've looked online at a few dress places, and although I haven't found a wedding gown I like, I think I may have found the bridesmaid's dresses. Now, I just need to ask the bridesmaids to actually BE the bridesmaids. :p I'm starting this weekend with my maid of honor, I know she will say yes, but I'm waiting until then anyway. Back to the wedding gown, the wife of one of the people I work with is a seamstress, and if I have luck finding a dress pattern this weekend, I am going to ask her how much it would cost to have a custom dress made. As for the tuxes, I am letting Jason pick them out. From the sounds of it though, I'm pretty sure he wants a no button jacket (which I don't think I've ever seen) and a vest. As for the colors, I'm keeping them hush hush for now. :)

I guess I should stop killing time by posting on here, and finish up the rest of the site. Ta ta!

News for you, all smooshified.

Currently, Jason is outside grilling our dinner: turkey burgers with avocado, Swiss, and Pico; one of our new favorites.  I know, it sounds like we're a bunch of hippies.  I swear we're not!  Last week, Jason went to the doctor to have some blood test results, and they basically told him a lot of bad news.  First, he's allergic to everything... and by everything... I mean, I am actually shocked he's not allergic to me.  He's allergic to pumpkin, corn husks, pecans, grass, and sadly both our dogs and cats.  The last two were killer.  I know he says he could easily get rid of Damien, but personally, I don't know if I could get rid of Jack, I've had him far too long, and I know we both couldn't get rid of our bratty pups.  He was pretty mopey most of the day, but eventually got out of the funk, and went on living his life as though he never talked to his doctor.  Haha.  Anyway, his doctor also told him that his cholesterol was high.  I know, I was amazed too.  Even though he's packed on a few pounds since we met, he's still a bean stalk and eats like a horse... which was probably the issue.  Now he's trying to eat healthier, which is weird, because he's attempting to do it cold turkey.  I've been trying to eat healthier for months, but it really sucks when you don't have someone suffering with you.  Yeah, he was supportive through the whole thing, but support only gets you so far when you're eating fruits and veggies, and the guy next to you has a nice juicy burger, and some scrumptious French fries, drenched in fatty ranch.  (Makes me drool just thinking about it.)  Anyway, his diagnosis will be better for both of us, I am convinced!

Today was an interesting day at work.  For those who don't know, I work at a mortuary.  Don't worry it's not even HALF as cool as it sounds.  I push papers all day long, as well as a multitude of other various tasks, but pretty much I push papers.  (However, I push all the papers; I do the permits, the death certificates, and service print work.)  At any rate, last week during a service our coach (i.e. the nice way of saying hearse) was literally stolen.  That's right; some random guy got in a hearse and drove off, got out a few blocks away and just walked off.  It was pretty funny, even though I was pretty much the only one laughing.  Don't worry no one was in it, they found it, and the family never even knew because we snagged a coach from another home before they actually needed it.  So a week later, the cops show up, and start questioning it.  It actually is just like the movies.  The detective had all these off the wall theories about what could have driven the guy to do what he did.  He seemed most stuck on that it was revenge of some sort.  C'mon the guy was 80, and had Alzheimer's, what kind of revenge could someone want?  I guess he not only walked off with the keys, after driving it literally a few short blocks, but also walked off with a burial permit.  The whole thing is just weird to me.  But whatever.

While I was at work, I started looking up wedding "things".  I really want to get married in October because the weather is so nice at that time, and well, October is when all the magic started to happen.  ;)  That would almost give us a full year to plan as well.  I've signed up for a few websites to help us plan, but mainly I'm looking to The Knot for the expertise.   Today, I started looking at photographers.  It all made me just want to cry.  First, I can't believe that I am even looking at wedding photographers, for my wedding, (exciiiiting!) and second, holy crap, everything is so expensive!  We are trying to tough this one out ourselves, because we are too old to be relying on our parents, especially for such a large sum of money, but I don't know how we could afford one photographer, much less an entire wedding.  I know personally, I want to do a lot of things myself; things that seem crazy, like make all the food.  It could be a momentary lapse of insanity; I'll let you know on that later.  We really need to start budgeting better.  Currently, we pretty much live paycheck to paycheck, and every now and then we get a few extra bucks, and get so excited we blow it on something ridiculous.  :P  That's how we are I guess.  I've got a few ideas in mind of how to save money.  None of them are that great, but I was considering since I am a coupon junkie, taking all the money we "save" on things and putting it into a high interest savings account (which I just so happen to have) but it will be a tedious process and I have a feeling it won't last very long.  It probably won't add up to much, but I'm sure taking the $60 we save on groceries will get us a little bit closer.  I wish we could start like some sort of business of just being awesome, where the money just rolls in, but that seems too good to be true.  ;)  We do save a lot of money on carpooling however, because instead of filling up one car every week and both cars every other week, we are filling up one car every week and a half.  It also helps a TON that gas has dropped so drastically.

So, I think I've babbled on and on long enough.  Obviously this site is under severe construction, and there is a ton of stuff missing, but we are adding it as we can.  I hope everyone enjoys this nice little peek into our voyage.  :)

10 Things Happy Couples Do

The other day I found this list of 10 things happy couples do.  Jason and I do most of them, so I thought I'd share.  :)

By Mark Goulston, M.D.

Happy couples know that the real relationship begins when the honeymoon is over. They know that unless you maintain the garden of love, its beauty will wither and die. In a recent column, you discovered the 10 relationship mistakes to avoid. Now discover the 10 things that happy couples do:

1. Go to bed at the same time.
Remember the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn’t wait to go to bed with each other?
Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times.
They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps.


2. Cultivate common interests.
After the passion settles down, it’s common to realize that you have few interests in common. But don’t minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not present, happy couples develop them. At the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.


3. Walk hand in hand or side by side.
Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand in hand or side by side. They know it’s more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.


4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode.
If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.


5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong.
If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.


6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work.
Our skin has a memory of “good touch” (loved), “bad touch” (abused) and “no touch” (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the “good touch,” which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.


7. Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning.
This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.


8. Say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel.
This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.


9. Do a “weather” check during the day.
Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you’re more in sync when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having an awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.


10. Be proud to be seen with your partner.
Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact — hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.


Even if these actions don’t come naturally, happy couples stick with them until they do become a part of their relationship. They know that it takes
30 days for a change in behavior to become a habit, and a minimum of six months for a habit to become a way of life and love. Dr. Goulston is the co-founder of CouplesCompany.com and the author of The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship (Putnam, 2001).