the ice is melting...

As you may have heard, Oklahoma got pelted with ice and freezing rain all weekend. It has been a wreck everywhere and the devastation is really sad. We were very fortunate to have kept power the entire time. Every person I talked to had lost theirs and several are still without power. It's just so sad and people are having to be very resourceful. The good thing is that the ice is gone, for now anyway and the rain has finally stopped. But we're supposed to get hit by a sizable snow storm Friday night. Yay. I'd much rather have snow than ice, at least it doesn't weigh down power lines and destroy homes and trees. The trees are enough to make your heart sad. They just split and splinter and fall apart under the weight of the thick ice.

Thought I'd give a quick update, not much else is going on. Oh, wouldn't you know my office was like one that actually kept power too. That's a bunch of crap. The other good thing about this storm is that my honey had to stay in town for a day and a half extra. It was really nice getting to stay in bed and snuggle that extra time.

Anyway, say lots of prayers for those who are doing without right now. Generators are scarce and it's cold.

Peace.

wonderful

You know it's not a good start to the day when you can't sleep until the alarm goes off and you get to work and there's no coffee... It's gotten better already thanks to the receptionist's hubby. He loves us so much that he brought the two of us coffee. Yeah Gumdrops!

I had the greatest weekend!!! And I'm so excited to share it.

Friday afternoon was more wedding dress shopping. I think I found IT but I have to go back with my MOH and see if she feels it as much as I do. IT was fabuloso. IT was made for Tara. Love IT.

My dad, his g-friend, and Toddles showed up later that evening. I had plans to make this pasta from the Pioneer Woman. Would you believe that I went to three grocery stores trying to find f&^king basil and still didn't get some! I know I should have my own growing but sheesh, you would think that you could find freakin basil. So anyhow, I made the pasta, minus the basil and my dad brought a bottle of wine. We ate and drank and drank and played video poker. It was a wonderful night! Oh, I made an apple crisp with ice cream too. I'm goooood.

We got up Saturday morning and went to show dad and Y the lodge for the wedding. They both loved it! We went to the casino after that. My lucky ass father won $250 in 30 minutes. Turd. It was time for the fair shortly after that. You would think that since they tore down Bell's that there would be more parking but there wasn't. I finally found a spot to make my own row and we set off to find some yummy lunch. I knew I was having a corndog first and it was just what I was craving, Dad and Y got one too. We walked around and ate some more junk, I had fried pickles, T had a steak sammich and some roasted corn, and Dad had a gyro. After we were stuffed Dad wanted to walk by the newest extreme ride, the SkyScraper. Boy oh boy. Bad idea after fried anything. He talked me into riding it with him. It is 165 feet tall, has two sets of seats on the end of this giant pendulum looking thing and it spins you around in gigantic circles and pulls 4 g's. It was freakin awesome until we stopped at the top and it was swaying. You could feel the dirty carnies pulling on the harnesses of the next riders below us. It was a rush and I'm glad I did it. Totally effing rad. I'm sure it beats that stupid slingshot thingy too. After that we were all tuckered out so we headed home. We grilled some brats and potatoes for dinner, played poker with our friends, and hung out. It was a perfect day!

Sunday, Dad and Y headed out. He is heading back to Cali today. Sigh. But he'll be back for Turkey Day in what, 9 weeks or something. Shit. No even going there.

We had plans to go see T's mom and that side of the family. I protested but he made me go. I wanted to lie on the couch all day and watch football and eat queso. She made his favorite dinner and we all sat around and played with the niece and nephew and the guys played horseshoes. The kiddos are so dang cute! We hung out there all day and a storm rolled in, which we could see great because she lives about 20 minutes outside of town. Me, T, his mom, and her b-friend all went to Chili's for dinner. I love their silly chicken crisper things. I hate to admit it but I ate all of them last night and didn't touch my broccoli and had just a few of my fries. Mmmmm... fatso.

T stayed in town because I was being whiney. We went home and rubbed each other's feet and watched the end of football and talked. It was the second perfect day in a row! I'm so lucky! Now if I can get him to wake up and take me to lunch before he heads back to the Lou I think I could die. Not really but I'd be super happy.

Happy Monday. :)

You know...

I enjoy playing poker and I enjoy my ladies group, but for goodness sake, I hate losing.

Last night we had the biggest group since we started and it was the biggest cluster f#$k ever. Oh. My. Gosh. I was trying to get drunk but it wasn't happening fast enough.

A lil shout-out to B&C, congrats on the baby girl. She will be one lucky girl!!! When do we get to paint the room blush?!?!!?!

Guess what?


Yepper, you guessed it! The wet stuff is back. My darling SIL just sent me this pic... If I could really find them, I would totally wear them as a fashion statement.



Annnnd.... I am officially diagnosing myself my sun poisoning. I looked it up and I have the same awful red spots associated with over exposure to the sun. No wonder my burn hasn't faded yet. D'oh! My face peeled but the rest of my body is still scathing red.

Ouchie!

Well... we finally got a break from the rain, I think we actually got three days without any of the wet stuff. The 4th was a nice mid-week break, although it messed up the rest of the week. It felt like a mixed up Saturday or something.

My honey was here on Thursday night. We stayed up late watching episodes of Rescue Me on DVD before I had to make myself go to sleep. I got off work early on Friday and we got our things together for the lake. We made it to C&C's parent's lake house in time for dinner and the sunset. I wasn’t too pumped about going because I didn’t know if we’d be able to swim since the water is up so high and I had heard the debris was pretty bad. We hung out with The Gang on the deck that night, drank beer, played games, and watched the boats go by. We all crashed out pretty early, T and I got the luxury of sleeping in C&C’s new travel trailer. It was really nice!

Saturday was a hot one! We got up early (for us anyway) that morning and hung out around the house. We played with the kiddos and once they went down for naps, the adults headed down for some swim time. The guys stayed in the water most of the time and us ladies caught some rays. I caught waaaaay too many rays and ended up burnt to a crisp. As the day went on, I kept getting more and more red until it was evident that I would be in a good amount of pain because of my negligence of sunscreen. I kept saying, “I want to get burned” but I forgot how much it hurts. I had the chills by the end of the night and ended up wrapped in towels as we sat around that evening. I had a hard time falling asleep because I wasn’t in the mood to get drunk and when I laid down, it felt like I had pins and needles all over my body. We thought that C might have a sunburn too but he woke up with a 103 fever and realized that he had picked up whatever his wife and kids had that week. (Needless to say, I took double my normal vitamin C this morning!)

We came home early Sunday and went to breakfast. After we stuffed ourselves we headed home for nap time. I think we slept for about 4 hours! I think we were both drained from the sun and fireworks that kept us up.

It was a nice weekend, I’m always glad to get out of town for a few days.

Oh! We found out that we’re going to Montana in August. Thank gawd for Marlboro - otherwise we wouldn’t get much of a vacation this year. That is going to be a great week!!! I get to fly to the Lou, drive to Knoxville, OH for a weekend of dirt track racing, drive back to the Lou, and fly home that Sunday. Then I get to work for 2 days and it’s vacation time again! I fly out Wednesday for the Marlboro ranch in Montana and stay for four days. I’m getting so excited! This is going to be a long 5 weeks. I hear that it’s one of the best vacations ever!

Hope everyone had a great weekend too, guess it’s time for me to go re-apply the lotion and aloe because my skin is getting tingly again.

weekend

What a boring weekend. Friday night was the only fun night I had. I joined some friends for some cheap gambling at the horse races. Didn't win any money but I had a great time. Got a little tipsy afterwards, not bad though.

I stayed in the rest of the weekend. I slept all day Saturday, literally. I watched the documentary by Spike Lee, When the Levees Broke. Wow. That was eye-opening and very moving. I cried a few times through the 4 hour pic. It makes me realize that the media really controls what we see of actual "news". And how badly our current government sucks and really let the city of NOLA down.

It's still raining... I'm telling you - we're going to float away.

friday fun #4

Rainy Day - from Five on Friday.

http://friday.criminalgrace.com/

This week these questions just seemed appropriate.

1. Does the rain make you feel blue? Absolutely. It has been raining for 4 weeks and I'm in a funk.

2. Do you find that rain ruins or improves your day? If it were hot and humid, the cool rain would refreshing. Lately, the rain just ruins my day.

3. Have you ever danced/splashed/ran in the rain? I have - all of the above. Just recently, S&S and I were running at LaFourtune and it started pouring, we ran about 1.5 mi in the rain and it was so much fun.

4. What do you like to do on rainy days? Sleep. Well, eat and sleep. But I like to do that every day.

5. Do you save for "rainy days"? No way, I don't save for any day.

weekend

I’m back from the Lou! We had an amazing weekend and it was great to get away for a couple of days. Sometimes I just enjoy the break from my doggie, Pedro, whom I conveniently left at the kennel for a few extra hours today.

Friday was a hectic day. I ran errands at lunch, went and picked up the new White Stripes CD for my road trip. Good CD, not completely in love with it yet but I need to take it home and really rock out to it. We were short-staffed at work so it made the afternoon go by quickly. Bossman finally let us go around 3:30 (I know, we’re spoiled) so I ran to get gas and hit the highway. I hit traffic twice before even getting out of Oklahoma so I thought I was in for a long drive. Luckily the traffic stopped me long enough to let some nasty storms pass and I didn’t have to deal with that the whole way. I arrived in St. Louis, well actually a suburb of St. Louis, to find my honey and his roomie hanging out. It was about 9:30 and Toddles was rearing to go to the casino as he had cashed in his coin jar and had play money. After a quick shower and change, we headed out for the night. We started out at Ameristar with no luck so we headed to Harrah’s because I hadn’t been there yet. The crowd was better but the casino was nastier. You have to have a card to play at the casinos in Missouri so I waited in line for my turn to get a tracking device. They asked the funniest questions - how tall are you, when did you graduate, what is your zodiac sign - I joked about my future child’s name but they didn’t think it was very funny. We hung out there and played for awhile. We found two really cool games, one was War - casino style, and the other was this video poker with bonus hands. They were both a lot of fun and before you knew it 3:30 a.m. had rolled around and my little eyes were tired. On the way home, I could hardly stay awake but managed to chat until we got to the house.

Of course we slept in on Saturday. We were both completely wiped out. I think we got up around 1:00 and got ready for the day. We tried this little burger joint for lunch that I had read about on A Hamburger Today called Pete's in Wentzville. It was okay, certainly no Ron’s but still tasty. T is so funny, everything needs more meat and it disgusts me when he says that but I can live with it. After that we went back to the house and crashed out. All of the things we wanted to do were nixxed because it started pissing and pouring. So we napped... It was nice - our bellies were full and it was thundering, you couldn’t help but get sleepy. After a couple of hours of downtime we decided to go shopping. He took me to World Market because I hadn’t been and really wanted to. What a neat place! I got a whole bag of fun stuff for $30, I can’t wait to go home and unwrap it today. Then we went drove around and finally found Trader Joe’s. I had wanted to stock up on some Two Buck Chuck wine (Charles Shaw $2.00/bottle) and look around but by the time we got there they were about to close so I just grabbed a half a case of vino. I’m excited to try that as well, I’ve heard it’s pretty decent for the price. We grabbed some yummy dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory after making 3 laps down restaurant row. I had lasagna and T had some meat lover’s thing, along with some nice Chianti and a salad. It was reasonably priced even though the menu was somewhat limited. We just enjoyed being able to sit and talk and drink. After our meal we headed back to his side of town to the little bar in the neighborhood that we enjoy so much. There were two guys playing and one of them happened to be the dude who sold T his car. When I bummed an ashtray from the table next to us, one of the guys decided to turn around and chat with us. He was a St. Lou transplant from Louisiana. Right off the bat he asked us, “what’s the hold up?” on our living situation, to which we both laughed. Toddles and I had talked a bit at dinner about me moving there and if it’s going to happen it won’t be until September. We sat and listened to the music as we couldn’t really talk over it because of the volume. We drank our delicious drinks and made googlie faces at eat other until the bar closed. It was a perfect evening. No friends, no family, just me and my man - the way I like it now and again.

We stayed in his room most of Sunday, except for lunch and T actually picked something new to eat. We went to Qdoba and stuffed ourselves silly and headed back to the house in time to watch the race. I fell asleep like always and T woke me up in time to get home at a decent hour. I hate leaving and I now know how he feels when I beg him to stay - it sucks! I won’t do it again, I really promise this time. It’s hard enough as is...

So, that’s my weekend. It couldn’t have been more perfect. Well, except for the rain but what’s a person to do? We just deal.