Deep Thoughts....

We're Engaged!

2009-01-02T19:38:00.002-06:00

Mike Proposed (finally, lol) on Christmas! It was really nice, he gave me a Christmas Card from Ryne and in it was a Clue that said "Daddy says you Hate this Game". That led me to the Basement to the Command and Conquer Video Game. There was a clue that said "I saw Daddy hide something in the place that I sleep when Mommy isn't home". Which of course led me upstairs to our Bed (he sleeps in his crib like he is supposed to when I am home, lol). There I found a box with Earrings in it and a clue that said "This is where I go when I am in Mommy's Car". Which led me to his car seat base in my car. There the clue said "I saw daddy hide something behind where the fishy lives". Downstairs behind the fish tank I found a box with a necklace and a clue that said "I saw daddy hide something on the back of the Christmas Tree". On the back of the Christmas tree was a wrapped envelope. Inside it was a picture of Ryne that said "will you Marry my Daddy?" So Mike got down on one knee and pulled out the Ring!! I was really surprised! Of course I said YES!! We are excited!! (And now when I talk about him I can say Fiance instead of Baby Daddy!!) Here are pics of everything!!

Long Time no Post!!

2008-09-11T10:34:00.008-06:00

Well, it has been quite a while since my last post…with Ryne getting older he doesn’t like to let me sit down and blog for an hour anymore, lol. Anyways…Ryne has changed sooo much!! He is now able to easily roll in both directions and has been for a while. So he is now able to just sleep in his bed rather than having to sleep in the thing that keeps him on his back…he is funny, he likes to cuddle clear into the corner of his bed to sleep. He sleeps until about 9 most days now, and will every once in a while cry in the middle of the night…but now that he can get the pacifier back himself, we usually don’t hear from him. He is too cute in the morning, he will wake up and play with his toys for a little bit, the he crawls to the end of his crib and pulls down on the bed bumpers so that he can see our bed, then yells until he sees us sit up…it is so cute, he never cries, just yells (its like he is saying Mom! Dad! I’m up now, time for you to get up!!). Then when he sees us sit up he just starts laughing.

He is sitting up now, and will be able to sit himself up here pretty soon!! He is also scooting, which is awesome…he hasn’t quite gotten to the point of crawling yet, but he does get up on his hands and knees. He really likes the fact that he can see something out of reach and go get it now. Lets see…what else can he do…he can put his pacifier in his mouth on his own now, so he always has that nearby, he is talking a ton now and has realized that he has a voice, so he likes to scream just for the fun of it.

We have started him on food, he eats cereal with some fruit mixed in in the morning, and then eats a vegetable or fruit for lunch and dinner. He has done really good with food, and screams like he is starving when he has eaten it all, lol. It is just like he used to do when he was younger when his bottle was gone…I’m sure that he will get used to how much he gets pretty soon and not scream like that, lol.

We have had a lot of fun this summer, we went camping at Spirit Lake for a week and had a blast. Ryne did really well for being out in the hot for so long. He went fishing with Grandma Donna and Papa Donnie, he saw (and wanted to squeeze) a big frog, and he went swimming in the lake. He really like putting his feet in the sand and on the rocks, and playing by the water. He had fun with all of it! He did really good sleeping in the tent as well.

We took him to the water park in Storm Lake as well. He just loved it, he played in the water and floated in the lazy river in his little crab, just was just looking at all the big inner tubes like hey…they make big ones of these too!! The had fountains you could walk under that he did really well with and had water shooting out of the ground that he kept trying to grab. We also took him down the little kids slide, he really liked that and didn’t mind getting splashed in the face as the bottom, lol.

We also recently got bikes, so we have a little cart for the back to put Ryne in so he can go on bike rides too! We have only taken him out once so far, but he seemed to like it, he just loves being outside. He never cries when we are outside, he will be crabby during the day and I put him in the stroller and he knows he gets to go outside and will calm down. We have taken the dog with us walking too and he really likes that, he just watches her the whole time.

We also got his hair cut for the first time...we didn't cut a lot, just all the really long pieces he had on top...so now he doesn't have the Donald Trump comb over anymore, lol. Well, that’s about it for Ryne updates… Mike and I are good, saving money for a house and both enjoying our jobs most of the time…I am almost done training, I have 2 stations left, it will be nice to be done training. Not too much is really going on…I will update again, hopefully it will not be as long as it was last time before I get around to it!! Thanx for Reading!!

Hello from IOWA!

2008-06-22T13:58:00.003-06:00

Well it is official, we are Iowans again…while we both miss Milwaukee and everyone there, it is nice to be close to family again. It is really great for Ryne, there are so many people that care for him here. And he loves all the attention. He is really starting to develop. He just talks and talks all the time, smiles at everything, he found his feet so he is always rolling around holding his feet. He is going to be sitting up on his own soon, he does really well when he is propped up. He is starting to really push up with his arms during tummy time (which he is much more tolerant of now), and we got to take him in the pool this weekend. He did really well, didn’t hardly fuss at all (just at first a little since the water is still chilly). We have a little inflatable crab that he sits in and just floats around, it is really cute. He has even let us hear his laugh a couple more times, which is still the cutest thing ever. We took him on the boat a few weeks ago and he did really good with that too, slept through most of it, but did well with the heat and sun. We have taken him to several of Uncle Gunnar’s baseball games and he does really well being outside. He was having trouble sleeping at night, but now that we are more settled in he really seems to be doing better with that.

Mike seems to like his job with Lowe’s, and thinks it is great getting off at 3 o’clock everyday (even if he does have to get up at 5). He has time for “projects” now which just makes his day…I have a job with the Police Department. They are not hiring for officer so I am in the Communication Center (which is a fancy way of saying Dispatch, lol). It is part time, which is good cuz then I can spend more time with Ryne. Hopefully later this year it will turn into a full time position so that we can save even more money. It is somewhat similar to working for Brown Deer (same types of calls, same types of people calling) and very different at the same time. There are five dispatchers working at a time. We dispatch for both police and fire, and do the city and county. So we have one dispatcher doing just fire/rescue, another just dispatching officers, two people doing the county and smaller cities in the area, and another one doing some backup stuff and helping with breaks and what not. I am training on the county station right now, which is also the main call taker station, so we answer most of the phone calls. The software is quite different, and the most difficult part is remembering what units cover which areas, and who to send. It is nice to not have to argue with people about whether or not they are in our jurisdiction, we rarely get calls from areas that are not ours. It is both nice and annoying to not have to wear a uniform anymore. On the one hand, I have to decide what to wear each day, and there is more laundry to do. On the other hand, the public doesn’t ever see us, so we can wear jeans which are much more comfortable.

Well, I guess that is about it for now, everything else is just routine everyday stuff. Thanx for reading!!

Little of this..and that....and the other!!

2008-05-27T08:37:00.012-06:00

Well as some of you probably know, Mike, Ryne, and I will be moving back to Sioux City, IA. With the birth of Ryne and some other family things that have come up, we have decided that it is best to head back to good ol’ Sewer City…while it was such a tough decision to make, it is something we have been discussing, and when Mike got the option to transfer with Lowe’s the decision was made. He got a call letting him know that there was a position open in Sioux City, however if he wanted it he had to start two weeks later. So Mike left for Sioux City on the 18th and started work there on the 19th, leaving Ryne and I in Milwaukee for the rest of the month. It has been tough being away from him, but it will be worth it in the long run. My last day at work is the 29th, and then we will be heading back.

Ryne had his two month check up, he is now 11 pounds 2 ounces and 23.5 inches long!! He is getting so big! He also had 4 shots at this visit (two at a time). He did really well with them, cried during them and for about 30 seconds afterwards, he's our little tough guy! Doc said everything looks good, he also started taking vitamins (since he doesn't get enough being breastfed) and he does really well with them, just like always...he will eat anything (just like daddy)! We go back when he is four months for his next check up.

Ryne and I went back for Nick’s (Mike’s brother) wedding on Thursday. The drive went well, took about 9 hours but Ryne was not fussy or anything. I stayed at my rents house on Thursday and we drove to Omaha on Friday for the rehearsal dinner. That went well, and Ryne got to meet his Aunt Molly for the first time! The wedding was Friday, we had to be to the church at 1:00 and the wedding was at 4:00. Ryne slept through all but 5 minutes of the wedding, so that was good. Then we went to the reception, he slept through a lot of that too, and when he wasn’t sleeping he was a perfect angel! Had no problems being passed around and didn’t cry much at all (mostly just when I tried to burp him…like he always does…god forbid we make him stop eating for 30 seconds…he gets that from Mike, lol). We left the reception at about 10:00 PM.

Ryne woke up at about 4:00 on Sunday and he was just burning up, I went to the store at 5:00 and got a thermometer and some Tylenol. His temp was 101 and you could tell he was just not feeling well. He slept through lunch and the gift opening but he was just whimpering the whole time…we were supposed to drive back to Milwaukee on Sunday but with him being sick we just went back to Sioux City. On the way he threw up a ton and we had to pull over to clean it up, then he had a huge poop. He slept on and off for the rest of the day and finally crashed for the night around 1:00 AM.

For some reason he was happy for about 15 minutes on Sunday afternoon. He was sitting on the floor playing with Gunnar and Gunnar stuck his tongue out and made a fart noise…and what does Ryne do??? He started LAUGHING!! Really laughing!! It was the cutest thing ever! We could not believe it, we grabbed the camera and got a little bit of it on video…it was the coolest thing EVER!

Ryne slept until after 8:00 on Monday and we left for Milwaukee around 11:00. He did pretty well most of the way, the last couple of hours he was fussy, but we made it and now we only have one more long drive to make. Mike and my rents will be coming up on Thursday to start the moving process. It is going to be tough starting all over, but I am excited to be closer to family…we will be staying with my rents for a while to save up some money and look for a house. We can’t wait to have a house, it will be so nice! Well thats about it for now, thanks for reading!!

B-Day wish and a Quick Update

2008-05-02T17:20:00.021-06:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GUNNAR!! I had to start this post with a B-day wish for my brother, who is 13!! A teenager!! I cannot believe it, it seems like only yesterday he was Ryne’s size!! Before I know it he will be dating, driving, and off to college!! I can’t believe it has been so long since he was wrapped like a mermaid in the Omaha Children’s Hospital! He is one of the strongest people I know (and maybe possibly the strangest as well, haha JUST KIDDING…for the most part). He has had so many things that he has had to fight through, and looking at him you would have no clue!! Through all his struggles though we have had some amazing fun and I can’t wait for Ryne to get to know his Uncle Gunnar! So before I update you about Ryne, here are some of my favorite pics with Gunnar over the years…hope you enjoy them!!

Pumpkin Fight/X-mas 2007

Gunnar 2nd B-day/Xmas 2006

Ready for a Swim/Halloween

Tough Guy/5th B-day

Doin the Macarena/Showin off his Pick Line

Goofy/1st Day of School

Sexy/BuzzLight Year!!

Family Pic/1st Lost Tooth (my favorite picture taken of him ever!!)

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Well Ryne is almost 2 months old now and he is growing SOO fast!! He is almost laughing and we cannot wait to hear his little laugh. He has been “cooing” up a storm in these last couple of weeks. He has grown out of most of his Preemie clothes and now wears mostly Newborn clothes, and can fit into 0-3 month tops (the 0-3 pants are still too big). We go to the doctor in a couple of weeks and I can’t wait to see how much weight he has gained! He is starting to get some meat on his little legs so I can’t call him chicken legs anymore, lol. We found a daycare and he will start going on the 19th, I am definitely not looking forward to that day, but the day care is nice and I think they will take good care of him. We started giving him formula once a day to get him used to it since he will pry have to have at least one formula bottle a day at day care. He seems to be handling it just fine. We have been really lucky with him eating, he has had not trouble eating from a bottle or nursing, and will take formula or breast milk!

We have realized that Ryne loves his sling, we took him for a walk in it once and was wide awake just looking at everything, now we put him in it just around the house as well and he just looks all around. We took him to his first sporting event. Some girls I work with play on a football team, so we took him to their game last week. He slept through it all, lol, which was okay I guess, it was pretty chilly and if he was awake he pry would not have liked being so bundled. He did get to wear his sporting gear though, and I must say, the kid looks good in BLACK and GOLD!! (Even Mike “the Cyclone” thought it was cute!)

He is getting to the point were he is up most of the day now which is nice. It makes it harder for me to get stuff done around the house, but I would much rather sit and play with him then do housework anyways!! He is such a happy baby, I just can’t get enough of his smile. He has started paying a lot more attention to his toys and we are working on getting him to grab for them. He has no trouble grabbing them if you put them in his hands, that is his new thing. He is always trying to pinch and grab things. Especially when he is up on your shoulder, both his little hands are just going a mile a minute trying to grab your shirt, or neck, or hair, and if he can’t get a hold of those things he will grab his hair or his ears, lol. He often looks like he is trying to do the pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time thing, its too cute!!

Well I guess that’s all for now, Ryne is getting hungry, thanx for reading and stop back for more updates!!

Growing SOO Fast!!

2008-04-14T10:27:00.008-06:00

Well Ryne is 5 weeks old and growing so fast. He weighs 8 pounds 2 ounces! He has learned how to smile (on purpose) and does it all the time now, it is so adorable!! Very rarely do we get just a little normal smile, it is usually this wide open mouth smile which is the cutest thing ever! 8-) The picture to the left is the closest I have gotten to getting a picture of it, and that is about half of it. (The damn camera just isn't fast enough...or maybe I am the slow one, lol). He is starting to stay awake more during the day now and is so alert and curious. He is always looking around and you can tell he is just trying to figure everything out.

He is starting to sleep longer at night and will now go 4-5 hours between one of his nightly feedings. Usually the first one. We will feed him around nine and he will usually go until at least 1 without waking up. Then he is up around 4 or so and up for the morning around 7. That is when he is most alert and will smile at almost anything, he is definitly a morning person...I dunno where he got that, it wasn't from Mike or I, lol. (It must have come from the Grandmas...)

Along with his smile, he has definitly learned how to cry and has been using his lungs quite often. He is going through a growth spurt and wants to eat ALL the time and is not afraid to let us know when he is hungry. Luckily he seems to cry more during the day then at night, so we are at least able to get a decent amount of sleep. I am up with him at night when Mike works, and I am sure to pump enough milk to get him through the nights when Mike does not work so that he can take over those nights and I can get a full nights sleep (YAY!!). We have realized that we definitly cannot complain though, he is a really good baby.

He is still rolling from belly to back like crazy and has become a pro at it!! He is really trying to roll from back to belly now, although I think once he does it he will realize that he is just going to end up on his stomach and then realize he doesn't like that!! We took him on his first walk last weekend, he seemed to like it while he was awake (which was about a block and a half, lol.) He also had his first shots, he was crying before the nurse even started so the shot just made him cry harder, but he calmed down and ate a bottle afterwards and was just fine after that, so that was good. Well thats about all the news I have, everything else is just the normal eating, sleeping, and pooping! I added new videos and pictures to my picture site, so check them out!! Thanx for reading!

Quick Update

2008-03-31T16:31:00.004-06:00

Well Ryne is just over 3 weeks old now. He is already growing so fast!! My mom stayed with us for the first two weeks so it was nice to have help around. Ryne has had his first two Doctors appointments and goes in for his shots this week. Everything is great with him. He has some baby achne, but that is clearing up now. He was 6 pounds 4 ounces when we left the hospital and was 7 pounds 1/2 ounce at his 2 week appointment. His belly button fell off so we are able to give him baths now. He just loves them, and showers too.

We have been doing tummy time a few times a day to get his neck muscles built up, he hates it and rolled over when he was just 17 days old (from belly to back)!! Now he is a rolling over fool. He will tolerate being on his stomach for a minute or two, then gets mad and rolls over. He is starting to make noises and you can tell he just wants to "talk" back when you talk to him. I think he will be "cooing" like crazy here shortly.

We took him to Sioux City for Easter, so we were there for a week and then drove home yesterday. It was really nice that so many people got to see him. We tried to get pictures with everyone, and got some good ones with almost everyone. Ryne did really well with everyone, it didn't bother him to be passed around from person to person all week.

Ryne has been eathing really well and has no problems switching between nursing and the bottle. He will pretty much take anything as long as it is food, just like his Daddy, lol. Mikes birthday was on Saturday, we didn't do much, we got Ryne's pictures taken in the morning, hung out at my rents in the after noon and went to mikes rents house for dinner. Well I guess thats all, I have to update, I have posted some videos of Ryne and a lot of pics on the picture site so check them out and stop back for more updates soon!! Thanks for reading!!

Welcome to the World Ryne!!

2008-03-14T13:54:00.004-06:00

Well Ryne is finally here, we are soo excited and happy. He is just perfect. Born on the 7th he weighed 6 piunds 10 ounces and was 20 3/4 inches long. I started having sporatic contractions around midnight, and started timing them at around 330. They were two minutes apart. We left for the hospital at about 530. We were 2.5 cm dialated, after about an hour and a half they decided they were going to keep me as we had progressed to 3.5 cm. We walked around the hospital for about an hour at a time, then would rest for about an hour. I asked for the epidural at about noon, contractions were pretty bad and I was exhausted having only slept for about 20 minutes the night before. We were dialated to 5.5 at that time, Of course the anesthesiologist got called in for an emergency C-section so I didnt get the epidural until about 115. I was really nervous about having one, but everything went fine.

After the epidural I was able to relax and get a little sleep here and there, my contractions slowed down to about 7 minutes apart so they started meds to move it along around 200. We had dialated to 6 by then, the nurse came in at about 3 to check me and we were 10 cm!! She said I could either start pushing or labor down for another hour. Since usually first time moms push for 2-3 hours she said that laboring down for an hour would help speed that along a little...so she came back at 4 and the pushing began. I should also mention that just before I started pushing the nurse made the comment, oh look he has the hiccups!! Mike and I just laughed and told her that he was the hiccup king and we have been joking the whole time that he would be born with the hiccups, lol.

Just 23 short minutes later Ryne Scott Musselman was here!! Yep just 23 minutes or about 8 contractions (three pushes with each contraction). Mike got to cut the cord and there were tears all around. He got checked out and was great, starting crying on his own right away and was breathing great!! He took to feeding right away and hasn't really had any problems with that. He did not show any symptoms related to my Strep B so that was great!!

He came home on Sunday and everything has been going really well. He was up about every hour/hour and a half for the first couple of nights, but has started getting into a routine where he will eat between 1030-1130 then sleep until about 430-530 then sleep again until 830-1000. So that has not been too bad. He is pretty well mannered, he doesnt cry much at all (yet, lol). He is awake more each day so that is nice, he loves to be talked to and hummed to (which I am sure is pretty common, lol).

He is a great pooper, lol. I watch the shows on TV where the parents are waiting for their babies to have their first poop, Ryne has about 10 a day, so his pipes are working well, lol. I have posted a bunch of pics on our pictures site, so check those out and stop back for more, I will pry be posting new ones every few days and may not send out an email everytime. And thank you to everyone for the gifts, congrats, and best wishes!! We are so blessed to have so many people that love and care for us!!

Just 6 more days!!

2008-03-04T18:51:00.004-06:00

Well we have just 6 more days to go, I hope. We are both really excited and can't wait for him to be here!! Went to the doctor today, I am not quite 2 CM yet, 75%effaced, and the baby's head is -1. I think he has definitly dropped, can't tell by looking at me really I don't think, but I feel like he is always doing a headstand on my bladder and go to the bathroom like every hour at least and sometimes more. The doctor was having trouble finding my pubic bone to measure my uterus because his head is nestled down in there now. Doctor said that he usually lets people go a week past their due dates, so if I make my appointment on the 11th we will set up a time to induce me during the next week(I am guessing on the 18th). I am really hoping to not make my appointment on the 11th through. I am soo ready for him to be here. I can't wait to see him.

Mike and I finally took some more pictures together, I really wanted to have some pictures of the two of us while I was pregnant, so I have posted a couple here, I think they turned out pretty good. Well I guess that is about it, not much new to tell, thanks for reading, and hopefully my next post will have pics of our baby boy!!

Just a quick update...

2008-02-20T08:38:00.004-06:00

Went to the doctor yesterday again, everything still looks good. We are 1 cm, I guess last time we were just barely a cm but we are a full cm now. We are 50% effaced and the babys head is at a 1. Dr said he could feel the head! So progress is being made, which is good. Heartbeat sounds good still. We had our first negative pregnancy experience, my strep B test came back positive. 8-( I guess for the most part I just have to have antibiotics while I am in labor every 4 hours. Seems like it is something that we shouldn't be too concerned about. The effects on the baby can be fatal if it goes untreated, but it seems like only about 1 in 4000 babys become infected if you get the antibiotics during labor. Kinda scary to think about, but we are staying positive and glad that we found out now so that we can take all precautions necessary. Here is a link with more information about Strep B...Click Here

Aside from that everything is about the same, baby is growing a lot it seems like, even though it doesn't look like it from the pictures, lol. He likes to push his butt out at the same spot all the time. Kinda hurts now, the best way to describe it is, it feels like when you have a bruise and you push on it. He just keeps rubbing the same spot and it feels like there is a bruise about the size of a quarter, lol. I really can't tell if he has officially dropped yet, sometimes it seems like he has because he is sitting on my bladder (or doing a headstand rather), and then other times is feels like he is climbing up my ribs, lol. Then there are times where he must be stretching because he is pushing on my bladder and my ribs, lol. It's all worth it though, 8-)

Well I guess that is all for now...JUST 20 MORE DAYS AND COUNTING!!

Moving Right Along!!

2008-02-12T18:42:00.000-06:00

Well we had another Dr's appointment today, we will be going weekly now until our baby boy comes. Everything is going smoothly still, no problems, and no major complaints. Haven't been too uncomfortable, thankfully the uncomfort has just been the little butt that is in my ribs. No back pain or anything like that, so YAY!! Dr says his head is down, so that is good cuz I couldn't imagine him trying to turn all the way around at this point, lol. We are dialated to 1 CM!! Mike is soo excited about that, he was telling people as we were walking out of the Dr's office, and he told some guy at McDonalds, lol.

Neither one of us can wait for the baby to get here, it is so close now. Surprisingly neither of us is really nervous, I think that is a sign that we are both ready for this wonderful change in our lives. We finished our childbirth classes, got to take a tour of the birthing center which is really really nice. And the hosital really pushes for the baby to stay with the parents the whole time they are there, and have some double beds available so that dads can stay the whole time too. If the baby has to stay longer for some reason they almost always have extra rooms that they let parents stay in (like a hotel where they dont feed you and wait on you like they do during their stay.) They have the whirlpools and showers with like 8 shower heads to help you through labor if you want to use them. The beds are really nice and fold and colapse every which way so that you can find your own comfortable position. I don't know how much of that stuff I will use when the time comes, but it is nice that there are so many options.

I think the nursery is pretty much finished, rather than all the stuff just cramped into the room. We move the play yard into our room, we got all the clothes and stuff washed,folded, and put away. The car seat is all ready to go, been bringing the swing and bouncer out into the living room to get the cats used to it so that they won't be jumping all over it when the baby is here. Surprisingly they both just sniffed them for a while and left them alone, neither one has tried to climb in them, which is great.

Aside from baby stuff not too much is going on here, we have had soo much snow lately, I can't wait for winter to be over!! We got 12 inches last week, then for the next 3 days it was freezing, had a -40 windchill at one point! Then today are getting another 4-6 inches. Wouldn't be so bad if there would have been a chance for some of the 12 inches to melt. The snow piles are huge, it is hard to see around some corners when driving, lol. And looking at the shoveled sidewalks is funny because they look like there walls on each side of them the snow is piled up so high, lol.

Well I guess that is all for now, I will pry update again next week after the Dr's appointment. Thanks for reading!!

Latest Update

2008-01-11T12:13:00.001-06:00

Well I had another doctors appt on Tuesday. Everything still looks great! These last 7 months have just seemed to fly by, we have just 2 months left! We can't wait for him to be here. He is already amazing our lives! We got the ultrasound pictures finally so I posted a couple of those, they are really neat.

He has been kicking like crazy still, he is starting to find my ribs, so that is not always pleasant, lol. We have started calling him the Hiccup King, and neither of us will be shocked if he is born with the hiccups, lol. He gets them almost on que everyday between 4 and 430 every afternoon, and he usually has them at least one or two more times during the day.

He is also growing soo fast now. my uterus was 32 inches at this appt. It was 23 inches two appts ago, and I think 25 or 26 last month. So this month he really started jumping up there!! I only have three weeks until the next appt rather than the 4 I normally have, then I will have two weeks between the next two. Then after that one I will start going everyweek. We also have our child birth classes that start in the be gining of February, so that should be exciting.

Well I guess that’s all for now, stop back again for more updates!

Christmas Vacation!

2007-12-26T07:27:00.000-06:00

Well Mike and I are back in Milwaukee and back to work. It was nice to go home for the Holidays. Our 10 days were packed full of various Christmas’s (if that is a word), the baby shower, and visiting with friends and family. The baby shower was great, we had a lot of fun and got a ton of things that we needed. Thank you sooo much to everyone that came or sent gifts. You have no idea how much we appreciated everything!! We ended up getting just about everything that we needed still. I posted two pics of the gifts we got from the Shower, and once we got back to Milwaukee we were able to use the cash and gift cards that we got to buy the high chair, mattress (and mattress pad), second car seat base, breast pump, diaper bag, and a few other little items like disposable changing pads, a basket to clean bottles in the dishwasher, etc. THANK YOU again to everyone for everything you have all done for us, we love you all for it!

Now we are having a blast setting everything up, we have gotten the swing, bouncy chair, and bed all set up now with the blankets and stuff. I started washing all the little blankets and towels and stuff, and hanging clothes in the closet. I can’t wait to have everything set up and ready for the little guy!

Speaking of the little guy, we have decided on a name: Ryne Scott Musselman. (And that is pronounced like Ryan). We also had a 3D/4D ultrasound done and should be getting our pictures shortly (the CD we got from them did not work so they are sending us another one.) It was a really neat experience and we are so glad we had one done. Giving him a name and having a face to go along with him now really makes it seem so much more real.

Christmas was really nice this year, we got a lot of great gifts, and got to spend time with people we have missed. My little brother Gunnar was totally excited to see us, and can’t wait to be an Uncle. He was super excited to feel the baby kick and was rubbing my belly the whole time I was home, lol. Well, I guess that’s all for now, I will post pics of the ultrasound when I get them!! (Below is are two pics of the Shower gifts, and a Picture of Gunnar opening his first 'Uncle' gift.

----------------------THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE!!---------------------------------

Quick Update and New Pics!

2007-11-23T19:18:00.000-06:00

Well I had another doctors appointment on the 22nd, it was pretty short and sweet. Everything still looks good, I think I was 137 at my last appointment and I was 143 at this appointment. I didn't take my shoes or jacket off this time so I pry am more like 140ish, which is good cuz I am finally gaining weight (not that I am really looking forward to it, but it's gonna happen and it's healthy!!). The baby has been moving like crazy these last few weeks, it is really neat to watch. Been trying to get it on tape and finally got it, had to put the remote on my belly so you could really see the movement, lol. Still having trouble getting it to upload though, maybe with the next update... We also got a glider, and our dresser, and a lamp to add to the baby's room. I am attaching pics of those as well, also throwing in a couple of belly pictures! (I think most people have found out the sex of the baby, but if you haven't and you dont want to know, you pry should not scroll down and look at the pics of the room, they kinda give it away!)
Don't really have anymore to write about, aside from baby planning, x-mas shopping, and work not much has been going on. Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!! Ours was not very eventful, got up in the moring and had Thanksgiving breakfast together and I made 4 pies. I had to work 2pm-2am so Mike spent most of the day playing Halo 3 and watching football. I thought about waiting in line at Best Buy for a laptop but once I saw the line at 3am I decided against it, specially since I had to be back to work again at 2pm. Luckily mom was able to get one in Iowa where the shoppers are much less devoted I guess, lol. Or there is just a shit pot less of them (I'm thinking this is the real reason)!! Well enjoy the pics!! Stop back for more updates!!

Short Update

2007-11-01T06:48:00.000-06:00

Well my doctors visit was pretty uneventful, in and out in about 10 minutes, everything looked good. Said the ultrasound looked good, measured my uterus (23cm), heartbeat was normal!! I finally for sure felt the baby kicking, its pretty cool. Mike is still waiting to feel it, but no luck yet.

We got our crib last night, Mike's parents bought it for us, it is really cute. Mike's mom entered us (all three of us) in a World Series pool, and the baby won, so she is going to use that money to buy us the matching dresser/changing table, so that is awesome, and we appreciate it.

Putting the damned thing together took about 2 hours, it was ridiculus, lol. In the instructions there is a hardware list on the front that labels part with a letter. Well then in the actual instructions, the letters were not the same as the letters on the front. Which I guess really didn't matter be cause there were no letters on the actual parts anyways!! We had to put the legs on and remove them several times to get them in the right part, then Mike didn't say anything then he couldn't find step one in the instructions, he just went right onto step 2...he says he thought the harware list was considered step one...which makes no sense...but then step one was putting on these brackets on the legs...which we ended up being able to do wihtout completely taking the crib apart again, but it was interesting, lol. Well, not much more to say this time, just wanted to upload pics of the crib. I'll update again soon!!

Baby Update!!

2007-10-22T09:54:00.000-06:00

(CLICK THE PICS FOR BIGGER)
Well, we had our ultrasound today, it was really exciting. Its so awesome to actually see the baby. The doctor said everything looks good. We go back tomorrow for the actual doctors appointment.

I just love the pictures they give you, its crazy realizing that a little life is growing inside of you, and actually seeing it is amazing. I can't stop smiling. We found out the sex of the baby, but I am not going to post it here as there maybe people reading this that don't want to know.

I think I have started feeling the baby move, I am really not sure yet though. The doctor said thats usually how it starts, that you really aren't sure. Also said my placenta attached to the top of by uterus, so that has added some padding between the baby and me, so that will block some of the movements I might normally feel if the placenta was attached in a different spot. Well, thats really all I have to say for now, hope you enjoy the pics, I know I am!! I will update after the doctors appt tomorrow. Thanks for reading!!

Latest Update!!

2007-09-26T09:21:00.000-06:00

Well I had another doctor’s appointment yesterday. It was pretty short and sweet. Got weighed, I gained weight this time, so that is good. On the first visit I was like 135 pounds then on the second one I had dropped down to 127. Which the nurse said was normal if I wasn’t feeling well, but that it should not happen on the next visit. So this time I was 133 pounds, so I gained back most of what I lost, so that is good I guess. Had to pee in a cup like every other time, and then waited for the doctor. This was the first appointment with the actual doctor, so it was nice to finally meet him.

I ended up waiting for him longer than the time I actually spent with him. He came in and chatted for a few, then checked by blood pressure and listened to the heartbeat. Heartbeat was 150 this and 147 last time, so pretty consistent so far. Then I went for blood work for my quad scan and I was done. I am really excited for the next visit; we go on October 22 for the ultrasound!! We are just hoping that the baby is in a position for us to be able to determine the sex; I can’t wait to find out! The doctor said that I should start feeling the baby move in the next few weeks, so that is exciting too.

I went and bought a couple pairs of maternity pants, which looking at my belly seems stupid since you can’t really see a difference yet. But man can I tell when I am wearing my regular jeans. They make me feel like I have to go to the bathroom all the time. So, since I had been living in sweats the last couple weeks it was nice to wear jeans again and not feel so much like a bum!

I had my first experience with the instant nausea yesterday. It was kinda ironic; I read in a couple of books that when a lot of women get sick during pregnancy they don’t have a lot of time to get to a toilet. With me though I had always felt it coming and been able to make it to the bathroom with plenty of time to spare. So I bought the movie Knocked Up and was watching that for the first time. There is a part in it where the woman is at work doing an interview and all the sudden has to throw up. I was thinking I wonder if people really have to throw up that fast, cuz that would really suck. So then my mom calls and I answer the phone and like two seconds later had to run to the bathroom to puke, I barely made it to the toilet!! When I was done puking I was thinking what the HELL was that about?? I have felt fine for the past 4 hours!! I concluded that I was having sympathy nausea for the woman in the movie, lol.

Well I guess that’s all I have for updates; I will be posting belly pics and ultrasound pics next month!! YAY!!!

My previous post from Last Month

2007-09-26T09:20:00.000-06:00

Well I guess it’s time I make an announcement on myspace since most of the families know now…Mike and I are expecting!! I am just starting my fourth month; my due date is March 10!! We are both pretty excited. It was something that we had been discussing for a while, and decided that we weren’t officially “trying” yet, but if it happened then it happened, and it did! Everyone was pretty much shocked; I don’t think there was anybody in either family that was expecting this anytime soon, lol. It is finally starting to hit us know that we are telling people.

We went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago and got to hear the heartbeat, which was pretty cool. We are going to have an ultrasound near the end of October and will probably find out what we are having so we can get most of the stuff we need bought. We have been looking down the baby isles when we shop now, but haven’t really bought anything, we’re mostly just looking at the ‘themes’ but haven’t really chosen anything.

I think I am almost out of the morning sickness phase…or at least I hope I am!! 8-) I haven’t actually gotten sick very much, maybe 4-5 times, but I feel pretty crappy for at least a few hours almost everyday. Usually a couple hours after I get up or it starts in the evening. Has been lasting a lot longer when I get it at night, which sucks when I work late shift, but like I said I can’t complain too much because I have only thrown up 4-5 times.

I am just starting to realize that my pants feel tight, which means aside from work I have been living in sweats, lol. I saw some maternity pants a few weeks ago and I am not looking forward to buying them, lol. Hopefully I will find some cuter ones when the time comes. Gunnar was upset to hear this week that I wasn’t fat yet, lol. I think his words were: “So how FAT are you now??” and when I told him you could hardly tell he came back with “AUH, that’s not fair, you’re supposed to get FAT!!” (What else are little brothers good for besides getting upset that you aren’t fat yet, lol) I just laughed at him; he is such a little goof ball, he was happy to hear though that I still had six months to get fat and that I was going to send him pictures.

I have been looking through the baby names book slowly and have picked out a few that I like, but I am still only half way through the girls’ names. We decided that we are going to keep our middle names for the baby, since mine is Rae and so is my moms, and Mike’s is Scott and so is his dad’s, we figured we would keep up with the tradition (or maybe we are making it a tradition…whichever).

Well I guess that’s all I have to say about it for now, I will be posting some belly pictures when I get to the point were its noticeable. Thanks for reading the news!!

Blah, blah, blah

2006-10-11T13:26:00.000-06:00

Well we haven’t had much going on, yea I know shocking right?? Michael’s parents came down to visit this weekend. It was a pretty good time. I worked 2pm-10pm the day they got here, so I didn’t really get to see them that day. The second day we went downtown by the lake and walked around for most of the day. Found a really nice spot where you can walk for 10 minutes or so out into the water and watch the boats, kinda cool. Then we came home, made some cheese dip and Margarita’s and had some drinks, dinner, and a movie. They left early the next morning since it’s a 9 hour drive.

Its been raining for two days now, and I am ready for it to stop. So has anyone else been watching Heroes? I really like it, that and Kidnapped. So at least there are a few shows that I watch now. We finally got DVR so I actually have been watching a lot of shows I normally wouldn’t be watching, but have the ability to tape them so I figure I might as well. Makes since to use it since I have it right?? LOL

Played a little Halo 2 with Gunnar the other day, haven’t played with him in quite awhile. We got Perfect Dark Zero, but I’m not sure how much I like it. I guess I don’t mind the campaign, but the online playing against others, kinda sucks. You have to reload too much, its annoying. But hey, what can you do? Nintendo Wii comes out next month!! That should be fun.

Decided I really need to start working with Reaper on his cat tricks, because he still only knows sit, cuz I haven’t tried anything else with him consistently. So we are working on lay down now. I still am not sure what else I should teach Dash. I really tried to get him to roll over, but he just won’t do it on his own. If I take the treat and have him lay down, then like put the treat on the top of the side of his head, he will slowly roll over and follow it, but that’s not that great…He does high five now, but that’s not that different from shake, we didn’t really even have to teach him that one either, he just did it since he knew shake.

Oh, I got my ‘hairdo’ from the Home Shopping Network the other day. Haven’t tried it out yet as I haven’t really had time, but I’m still excited about it!! I guess that’s all, I added some more videos to my myspace page, and I will be adding another slide show soon too pry, so make sure you check it out!!

Same Ol'stuff

2006-09-26T06:21:00.000-06:00

Well my 25th Birthday has come and gone, not sure how I feel about being 25. I don't think I feel 25, but I'm not sure if that is reality or just denial though…I have figured out what the most annoying thing about being 25 is though already…its everyone saying "You're a quarter of a century old now!" Yea, I have heard it at work about 75 times already and that is 74 times too many, LOL. We didn't do a whole lot, on my actual Birthday we went to Applebee's for dinner then got some ice cream cake. Michael bought me some flowers that were really pretty. Then I went to work at 10pm. Fun huh??

We did go shopping that weekend though, so it was good. I got some frames that I have been wanting, and we also got a new down comforter since I had to get rid of my last one since Dash had pissed all over it before he was fixed. That really annoyed me, but for the first week of him pissing on things we didn't realize he was doing it, the comforter was in the closet cuz it was warm so we weren't using it, so yea by the time we realized it that thing was nasty beyond cleansing. Anyways back to my story, we got the comforter, and then we got a light blue duvet cover for it that came with 2 pillow cases. Then we got Navy sheets to go on the bed, and also a navy body pillow. So it looks pretty nice with the two blues together. Then when we get the frames hung above the bed, it will look really nice. The frames for the bedroom are black and they hold three pictures each, so we got three, two that I am putting the tall way and one that will go the long way in between, (you know, kinda like an H). Once we get a bedroom set it will really, really look nice!

Hmm, what else did I get…Oh, I got the DVD Akeelah and the Bee. I dunno why, but I always wanted to see that when it was in the theatres, but never did. It was a cute show, I enjoyed it. It was the typical underprivileged child gets a chance at greatness story, but I liked it. Speaking of DVD's I cant wait until Cars comes out, although that's not until November, so that sucks, but oh well. Oh yea, we also went out to dinner on that weekend too, we were gonna go to the Outback, but we both decided that Olive Garden sounded better, even if we do go there every month or so. It was really good. Speaking of that, I got a really good recipe for Manicotti, and now mine is almost as good as Olive Gardens. MMMMMMMM…Manicotti.

Anyways, I am at work this morning, I have dayshift today and tomorrow. Then Thursday sucks cuz I have to figure out what to work...I dont have to dispatch, but I work lite shift on Friday, which means I come in at 10pm on Thrusday night...but I still have to work a shift for Thursday, so I think I might just try and come in at 5am or something, that way I can be home and asleep at 1pm. Although, then I have to try and stay asleep long enough to stay up all night...ugh, I am not looking forward to it. But what can you do?? On a lighter note, since one of the desk officers quit, I won't have to work early shift (2pm-10pm) next year. Which is good, cuz I would never see Mike if I worked that. Anyways, thats all for now I guess, yeah I know...very exciting...

Work, eat, sleep, repeat...

2006-08-27T18:08:00.000-06:00

Well I haven’t had a lot going on lately, I have been working quite a bit of overtime. We only have three dispatchers right now, well 2 dispatchers and me. I’m technically not a dispatcher, but I haven’t started the desk officer stuff yet so I pretty much am still. Anyways, I got overtime on three days this month which is 12 hours, which is quite a bit since normally I wouldn’t get any. But with there not being anyone to work I get more money, so YAY!! We had two people in training, and one of them quit last week, so we are down to one. We have another one starting this week, but we will still be down one dispatcher. Plus until they are out of training its like they aren’t there schedule wise. I mean they are working, but they can’t work with out another dispatcher, so we don’t get any help that way from them. I was supposed to be off last night but said I would work for someone so they could go to a family function, and they were scheduled 12 hours so that was an extra four hours, then the other eight hours she will just work for me. Hopefully she will be able to work the night of my Birthday, cuz I really don’t want to work overnight on my B-day…That’s no fun..

I finally got an SD card for my phone so I can put MP3’s on it now, YAY!!! Other than that not much to report. I have been tired lately so I have been sleeping until like 6:00 at night, and then having to go to work from 10:00 to 6:00 in the morning and then sleeping until 6:00 again…Yea I know, lazy, but it has been relaxing. Plus I think I’m still catching up on sleep from when Gunnar was here…at least that’s the excuse I am using, LOL.

Well I made several updates on my Myspace Page. So check them out. And you should get a myspace page if you don’t have one already so I can keep in touch more.

Back for more...Gunnar's visit

2006-08-05T03:13:00.000-06:00

Well I am officially an officer now, I was sworn in on the 31st, and got my new badges, don't feel any different, but I'm sure I will once I get through the academy and out of dispatch LOL.

Well I haven’t updated lately, like I said I would, but with Gunnar in town I just haven’t taken the time to. We have had a great time while he is here, and unfortunately he is leaving next weekend already!!! This month has just flown by, as I imagined it would. We went to Six Flags the first week he was here. We went for two days and we had a BLAST. The Superman ride was pretty damn cool. Click here to see it!! It’s a rollercoaster where you get in the seats and your feet are dangling below you, then before the ride starts they lift the butt part of the seat up, so you are “flying like Superman.” It’s pretty cool, then there is a loop where you start at the top of the loop, and you are on the inside of the loop, so when you go down the first side of the loop you are going at the ground head first. (In the bottom picture on the website is the loop, and all the people on that car are upside down) Its great you are just glued to your seat with all the force.

We all really liked the Raging Bull roller coaster. Click here to see it!! On that one you are sitting almost in like bucket seats, but there is like no car around you, so you don’t have anything on the side of you are anything, its pretty cool. We bought the picture on that one, we all put one arm in the air like we were ridin a bull. I will scan that pic and post it as soon as we hook up the printer. Then there were all the common roller coaster types, the corkscrew, dangling roller coasters, standing roller coasters, sitting roller coasters, forward coasters, backward coasters, wooden and steel coasters, you get the idea.

We also went to the water park, which is free which is great. It was more fun than I thought it would be, I figured I would get board after a couple of hours, but we were there from about 11:00 till about 5:00. They have a ton of slides of all types, ones you need tubes for and ones you don’t. It was a good time. They also have the best 3D show that I have seen. I have only seen a few in a theatre, and they were all ok, I mean things were 3d, but they didn’t seem like they were right at you. Not this one though, the Six flags one is about Marvin the Martian, and you really feel like the objects are going to hit you. So that was cool, and a nice relief from the sun for 20 minutes.

Hmm what else have we done…besides video games…went mini golfing (I won) and went to the batting cages, have been rollerblading and bike riding quite a bit, went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (it was alright, first one is better) and we are going to the state fair today. Maybe the museum tomorrow, if Gunnar wants to, it seems pretty cool. Aside from that, its been mostly video games and playing cards or watching movies at home. Oh, and Gunnar has found several new foods that he likes. He really liked the Manicotti that I made, and he liked our variations of Chicken and Rice, he likes Buffalo Wings, and he really liked the Cajun Steak from Applebee’s (minus the onions and mushrooms, which is how I get it as well.) Oh and he also really liked the Spaghetti from the Noodles restaurant. Well I guess that’s all for now.

Officer Bluex232, nice ring to it?? Well yea I wont use it on the street or anything, just online, lol.

2006-06-30T06:35:00.000-06:00

Well I finally found out that I got the officer position at work!! It is the desk officer position, I was hoping for the patrol position, but I think my computer background really pushed them to putting me in the desk position to start with. So I will start in the station most of the time, and eventually with move over to patrol. I am going to the academy in January or February! I am really excited. I am starting some training a couple of weeks this month, and then in September I will move onto mostly desk officer positions aside from going on calls since I won't have gone to the academy yet.

We are also getting our keys this afternoon, so we will be moving some stuff later today. Our washer and dryer came in so we are starting with that first! I can't wait to have it all set up!! So over all the last few days have been pretty significant, and really exciting!!

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, what ya gonna do? What ya gonna do when I come for you!?!? HA HA

Just a ahort update...

2006-06-27T13:06:00.000-06:00

I went to see cars...what a great show!! I can't wait until it comes out on DVD!!

Well, we went yesterday and actually looked at the apartment that we are getting. I am really excited and can't wait to move. On the plus side, they are supposed to call us and let us know for sure when we can get the key, we may be able to get it a few days early since we are just transfering. That would be GREAT!! We have packed the majority of the things that we don't need, and have started somewhat packing the things we may need and are just leaving those boxes open.

We also bought a washer and dryer!! We didn't expect to do that yet, but we went to look at them, and decided eh, what the heck, might as well just get them now and be done with it. So yay for that, they are supposed to come in in the next few days, and since Mike works at Lowe's we are just leaving it at the store until we move, no point it movin it twice right?? On top of that since Wisconsin is a 'gas state' we had to special order them (because our new place needs electric but everyplace has all gas in stock), so with Mike's discount we saved a couple hundred dollars! Anyways, they are both front loaders and stackable (which won't matter in this place but might once we get a house). We also figured out that we can decorate the new place however we want, meaning we can paint the walls if we want, which could be a fun project at some point, but we don't know yet.

Oh yea, as you can pry tell, Gunnar finally buzzed his head. Something he has always said he was NEVER gonna do, it looks good. I guess dad tried to get him to keep the mohawk, but he wouldn't. What a weirdo, how many little boys wanted mohawks when they were little but their parents wouldn't let them?? I would imagine a lot of them did, but not him. Anyways, thats all for now.

Tractors are so dumb.

First of many more updates...

2006-06-15T06:36:00.000-06:00

Well I have not updated in a long time, but I am planning on starting again. So, you can start checking back again because I know everyone has been just dying for more updates… 8-)

Well I am moving at the end of the month, I can’t wait to have a bigger place. We are moving into a 2 bedroom townhouse. It will be so nice, we will have a washer and dryer, which is GREAT!! I am also excited about having two floors, plus the garage, balcony, patio….YAY!!

Gunnar is coming to visit at the end of the month and he will be here for about a month. I am excited about that, we are gonna go to Six Flags, the zoo, pry the children’s museum, and possibly a water park or two, we’ll see. Mostly, I’m sure that we will be playing video games a lot.

Work has been going pretty well lately. I applied for an officer position, I am still waiting to hear for sure, but I’m pretty sure that I got it, hopefully I will hear by the end of the week for sure.

Since I haven’t been on lately, I figured I won’t type too much, but I have post some pics that I said I would post a long time ago, and I will update more in a day or two, so check back soon!!! Also we got another kitten, he is all black and his name is Reaper!

Longer Gunnar Update...

2005-10-28T10:59:00.000-06:00

This is going to be a long post...here are a few pics and the emails dad has sent (newest on top)...

Hey

He had a very rough night. Lots of bladder spasms and not much sleep for either one of them. They really happen when we are irrigating the bladder. All this is is pushing 30 ML of saline into his bladder and taking it back out. We unhook his one of his pee bags and put the saline in with a large syringe then suck it back out(With The Syringe), it only takes a few minutes. We give him some medicine about a half hour before we do it and it seems to knock him out enough to get through it without much pain... So Far.

The big news for the day is that we are out of the hospital. We are at the Children's House. We will be here until at least Tuesday, he has a doctor appointment on Monday at 4:00 PM. Guess we will find out then when we get to come home. Not sure what we are gonna do for the next four days. I am sure there is a lot to do here but we don't want to overdo things either.

There is talk of finding a Wal-mart and buying some needed medical supplies and maybe some food.

Well guess that is it for today. Will keep everyone updated on how his doctor appointment goes.

Buy-Buy

Don, Donna, Dawna & Gunnar
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey,

Not sure where to start on this one. I'm sure he would say the best thing was playing BINGO over the hospital TV and winning a Transformer. They broadcast over the one of the hospital channels on the TV. You get BINGO and you call them and they have you on the air to verify your BINGO and to let you pick your prize. He was kinda bummed cuz they had a Lord Of The Rings game that they had on the teen prize table for people over twelve. I told him it did not matter if he won or not cuz everyone got a prize and that he has too damn many toys anyway.

He got his epidural out. The doctor thought the area looked a little red and swollen so they took it out. Couple of bad things about this. One was that it was taped all the way up to his neck the other is that after it wore off he could feel it when we irrigated his bladder, it caused bladder spasms which are very painful. This is kind of a big deal as we/he will have to do this several times a day for life, so hopefully the spasms will decrease in intensity. They are going to give him some Valium before the next one at about midnight tonight will see how that goes in the morning.

He got one of his abdomen tubes out. It was the one that was just kinda floating in his gut area to soak up anything that may have been leaking on the inside. He has only got a few drops from it over the last couple of days. He still has three pee bags that he will come home with. These will be taken out at some point over the next month or so by his doctor in Omaha.

He got unhooked from all of his IVs. He still have several ports in him, one in each arm so they don't have to re-stick him if they need to hydrate or give him medicine, but he is mobile now. With these out, he really has to remember to drink. Was drinking water, Sprite and Fanta (SP?) orange soda most of the day.

He walked a bit with our help. Which leads into the next item.

He pooped. Once in a bed pan which kinda sucked and another couple of times we walked him into the bath room. This was a requirement before they would release him, the pooping not the walking.

He Ate Some Solid Food.

He had some chicken pot pie looking stuff with rice, a salad, bread, butter and an apple that he is saving for later in case he gets hungry. Tomorrow he really wants to have Subway, so we may try to get him down there for one meal. I think I said this before, the hospital has a Subway in its cafeteria area. Personally I am about sick of Subway as it is the only thing I have had to eat since last Thursday, they have other stuff to eat in the hospital, but as many of you know I am a picky SOB when it comes to food.

He talked to a bunch of people on the phone today. We found out that we could use our cell phone from the room because he is not hooked to any monitoring equipment, wish they would have told us that a few days ago. If anyone wants to talk to him give him a call, at a reasonable hour please, he can be reached at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

We are hoping to get out of the hospital either Thursday or Friday. The nurses think it will probably be Friday. We have to stick around for a another three to five days to make sure everything is going OK, then we start the trek home.

I am sure that I have forgot to mention something that I will remember right after I hit "Send". Take care everybody, keep those emails coming, Donna and Gunnar will be reading them once they get back here in a few days.

Bi-Bi

Don, Donna, Dawna & Gunnar

PS

Someone asked about "Cute Nurses". Will have some pictures of these ladies to send soon, for those with inquiring eyes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey,

First if you would prefer not to get these updates, let me know, I
will not be offended.

As you can tell by the attached pictures Gunnar got his nose tube out
this morning. YEAH!!!! This allowed him to get out of his room and
go to the play room. He met a couple of other boys there and they
played Monopoly and some other games.

He got to eat today or should I say drink. He got a whopping 30cc's
of water tonight. Woohoo!! Guess he has to start somewhere. He was
not allowed to guzzle it, he had to take sips through a straw and if
he keeps it down the should get more tomorrow. Gunnar 109.jpg is a
shot of the big event. His first thing to eat or drink since last
Wednesday.

Donna seems think he has really lost weight. I am sure he has lost
some, but I am not sure how much. Picture Gunnar 108.jpg was tonight
before I left. He weighed 72 pounds when he entered the hospital, we
are not sure what he is at now, we will try to see what he wiehgs now.

I forgot to mention "The Incident" yesterday. At one point he got
some plhegm or something in his throat and could not breathe. He was
gasping for air and about gave mom a heart attack. It probably only
lasted for about ten - fifteen seconds before we could get him calmed
down, but to him I am sure it seemed like 10 - 15 minutes.

We started to learn how to flush his bladder. We will have to do that
several times a day from here on out. Lots of changes for everyone
going forward.

That be it for today.

Don, Donna, Dawna & Gunnar

PS

Dawna, I will burn you a CD of all of the pictures and send it to you
when we get home.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey,

Nice subject huh?

Well he is starting to fart so the nurses and doctors at the hospital
are excited and thinking his nose tube will come out tomorrow. That
is one of the things they really want him to start doing as it means
his bowel is really starting to wake up. Tonight he really ripped a
good one and you should have seen the smile on his face, Ear to Ear.
Fortunately for us he has not eaten in so long there was no smell
associated with it. Once the tube comes out he will get very small
amounts of water and some chicken broth over the next couple of days
and then it is on to some real food, Jello. They are not sure when he
will eat any solid food, it might not be for quite awhile, maybe even
until after we get home.

His nurses this morning were amazed that he slept through his entire
exam, but anyone who knows him knows that he can sleep through just
about anything.

He got a blood transfusion today. O positive is his type. He was a
little low so they set him up with one pint. It took three hours to
transfuse, he slept through the whole thing. Donna thinks he will be
in longer than seven days because of the low blood count.

He played Play Station 2 for several hours today. He was thrilled.

Tomorrow he is expected to be able to go in a wheel chair and go the
play room another milestone he is looking forward to.

That is about it for today. will let you know how he is doing over the
next few days.

Don, Donna, Dawna & Gunnar
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey,

Dawna went home. :-((((((( Tears all around

Things went pretty good today except for the part above. He had/has a
bad case of the itches, which they say is because of the epidural,
they gave him some medicine for them, not sure that it worked that
well, he was/is scratching the hell out of himself. He went to
scratch is back and got the tape on his arm stuck to the stuff
covering the epidural, that was a scary moment as the epidural is
probably what is causing him to have very little pain.

He is in pain when he coughs or laughs, so we try not to be dusty or funny.

He is not on oxygen anymore, he was on it at times if he was napping
and stuff.

The doctor says once his bowel wakes up, he will get the nose tube out
and get something to drink and maybe some Jello. It could take
several more days. He is very weak and quiet probably due to lack of
food, which we were warned about beforehand by the doctor. They keep
him hydrated through his IV.

We were able lift him into a chair today. He sat there for several
hours watched TV and played his Game Boy.

The pictures are before and after shots(Yeah No Shit Right?).
100_0209.jpg is right after he was wheeled into recovery.
100_0226.jpg is of his bags (Not Those... Sickos!) He has several
bags draining from his abdomen region and one from his nose that is
hooked to a vacuum that sucks stuff out of his stomach.

I have a bunch more but did not want to overload anyone. Have more
graphic pictures of everything for those who request them, other wise
you will have to wait until we get home to see more. The purple glove
one is a thing to help his lungs get back up to speed.

That's about it for today.

PS

Laura I see we did not win the Powerball. Dammit I was looking
forward to an early retirement.

Dawna we love you and miss you already.

L8R G8R

Don, Donna, Dawna & Gunnar
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gunnar update 4...

2005-10-24T14:33:00.000-06:00

Well, Dad wrote an email, but for some dumbass reason, the library has the computers so locked down that you cannot even copy and paste things!! WTF?? He also sent some pictures (which I'm sure you can tell) that I am attaching, one before and one right after he got to recovery (he was freezing... 8-( poor little guy). I tried posting more, but couldn't get it working, I'm not sure if that is because of the library computer or if it is because of Blogger...I dunno if there is a max amount of pics you can put in one post...

Anyways, I left Baltimore on Saturday, it sucks that I can't be there still, but I guess thats the way it goes...Gunnar is doing good, he is now able to sit up in a chair. I guess he has been up yesterday and today...he still isn't walking or eating anything. The doctor is still waiting for his bowel to 'wake up' before the tube in his nose comes out, then he will be able to slowly start eating.

He is still really itchy from the epidural, they gave him some medicine for it, but I guess he is still pretty itchy. He had big scratch marks on his back when I left, and I guess he still does.
I guess he actually got some tape from his arm stuck on the epidural when he was trying to scratch, but luckly the epidural didn't fall out. That is probably what is keeping him from having pain, so we want that to stay in, the last one he had umpteen years ago fell out shortly after surgery, so he had to have tylenol as I remember...I dunno though could be wrong on that one. He is not on the oxygen anymore, he was on it all the time at first, then he was just on it when he was asleep, but I guess now that is gone, which is good. One less thing that he has hanging around his nose.

Well thats about it for now...work has been good, I'm actually starting to learn/do stuff so thats cool. I guess I will update more in the next few days.

Gunnar surgery update 3...

2005-10-21T21:23:00.000-06:00

Here is dads email for today, pretty short and I will leave it at that since its almost midnight here and we still have to get stuff packed up since the childrens house has openings tomorrow. Will update more as needed...

"Hey,

Things went fine today. He has had a fever, which they said was
normal for this type of surgery. They took some blood and urine
samples to check for infections, still no word on that. They are
pumping a bunch on antibiotics into him so I think that helps. He
should be able to sit up tomorrow and might even get out of bed.

He still has not eaten anything solid since Monday and nothing since
Wednesday and won't for a couple of more days, since surgery he has not
even been able to take a drink. Not sure how he is lasting, I thought
2 1/2 days was bad with no food. Everything goes in through IV, well
almost everything. He gets Tylenol through a suppository, Yikes! He
has not complained tho.

He has been in almost no pain. YEAH!!!! They said it must have been
a perfect epidural. He has a patch on for bladder spasms, not sure if
it is working or if he just has not had any.

Dawna flies out tomorrow, sure that will be tough on everyone. We
will also be moving to The Children's House so we should be able to
send some pictures.

That be it for today.

We out Don, Donna, Dawna & Gunnar"

Gunnar surgery update 2...

2005-10-20T21:18:00.000-06:00

Today was a pretty long day, it seemed like we sat in that waiting room for a few days. We were there from about 9:15AM or so until about 7:00PM. His surgery got started at 10:00AM so it was pretty long. Dad is currently typing out the family email which I will be posting in here as soon as he sends it. We have taken a few picks, dad will be able to download them on Saturday when we get to the Childrens House so hopefully I will be able to post them shortly after. Just realized tonight that there were no spaces in the last email, for some reason blogger is not letting me cut and paste the spaces, so I tried to fix it tonight but am to lazy to go back and fix it for that one so...yea...deal with it. Why?? Cuz its my blog and I said so...

Well, here is the email that dad sent out...

"Day II

Started out with a phone call from Donna at 5:45 AM saying they weregoing to take Gunnar at 8:00 AM instead of 9:00 AM. We had the alarmset to 6:00 so the other 15 minutes of sleep might have been nice. Guess I can't bitch cuz Donna and Gunnar only had about one hour ofsleep. Guess that is the price you pay for insisting that you are the one that has to stay with him every night.

Gunnar's first room was a small room that he shared with some littlekid who had kidney surgery. They decided to take the medicine tube out of Gunnar's nose at about11:00 PM last night if he promised to drink some medicine. Guess theygot the first one down fine. Two hours later they woke him up for the second dose, he got it down with only a couple of "Hibbity Jibbity"faces and shivers. A while later they woke him up for the next dose,he sits up and after about 5 seconds, he hurls all over the place. So for the next hour or so they were cleaning up the place and giving him small does of the medcine. Can't say I am sorry I missed that. So he had a pretty exciting night with little sleep and fluids flying of of him from both ends.

At some point during a lull in this action Donna decided to pull out the chair they have there that pulls/folds out into a bed. Shethought she had it setup and when she sat on it, WHAM!!! The whole frikken thing collapses. Wakes the dad up of the kid on the otherside of the curtain by scaring the shit out of him. He comes runningover to make sure she was OK. So he helps her set the thing up right. Strange as we are from the Midwest and he is from the middle east.

So we get to the hospital and see him for a bit, then they come and take him about 8:30 or so, the surgery is to start at 9:00. We get tothe waiting room and they tell us they are running behind and that they pry won'g get started till around 10:00. So they start at about 9:55 AM and we hear from the operating room about every two hours or so. Everything is going fine. YEAH!!!!

About 6:00 PM we get the call that they are "Closing" him up. YEAH!!!! The doctor came out a bit later and said that everything went great, some of the work our doctor in Omaha had done previously saved him about two hours worth of surgery. YEAH!!!! But everything went Great!!!!!!!! They wheel him down the hall about 7:00 PM, we are not even watching so he almost slips right past with us without even seeing him. He is in the recovery room until a little past 8:00 PM and then moved his room, a private room with cable and video games.

Wait until he becomes coherent and finds that out. He did manage to watch a little bit of Survivor. He has several tubes sticking out of him. They gave him an epiduralto help with pain, he is on oxygen, not a mask just one of the tubethingies you always see on TV. He is thirsty. He can't have anything to drink. He is hungry. Hecan't have anything to eat. They will be feeding him through another tube that he has down his nose and throat. Not sure why they did not leave the first one in and use it, but I am not a doctor, just acomputer guy.

PSMakes me think of something he told his teacher at daycare a couple ofweeks ago..."I can't wait for my surgery so I will be a real boy." Well little man you are there. Anyway things are going fine. Will send more as time allows.

Some info about our doctor. http://urology.jhu.edu/johngearhart/index.php

Some info about the procedure. http://www.urologyhealth.org/adult/index.cfm?cat=03&topic=170"

Well since its getting late I will leave it at that, more updates to come...

Gunnar surgery update 1...

2005-10-19T20:07:00.000-06:00

Im in Baltimore, Gunnar is at the hospital, to make things easy here is the email my dad sent out to the family...

"Hey,Well it was one long ass day.Gunnar is supposed to be check in at noon today. The hospital callsabout 9:00 AM and says, don't come over cuz we don't have a room andwe should wait for them to call and tell us they have a room...

Nice!!!!

So we wait until about 3ish and they call telling us they have a room. Off we go.

The cargo thing on top of the vehicle is not compatible with theparking ramps around here. The one across the street from the RonaldMcDonald House kinda scraped entering and I thought it was gonna teara light off the building when we left, so instead of parking in a rampacross the street from the hospital we have to park a few blocks awayin a parking lot. Not a big deal during the day, but at night, this is not the best neighborhood.

We get checked in and because we were not there at the time we weresupposed to be, they gotta stick a tube down Gunnar's nose and throatto give him the medicine to clean him out. Guess there was somegagging on his part and Donna about passed out. Dawna of course had no problems with any of this, me of course I waited in his room.

They tried several times to get an IV in him with no success. They had to call in the IV Specialist and they nailed it first try. Hmmmmm whynot have them do it in the first place. Dawna said they were abouther age. Gunnar had to help them out by telling them where not tostick him, cuz there is an "Artery" in one of the places they talkedabout sticking him.

We (Dawna and I) bugged out about 7:30 and he was sitting on the "Portable Crapper" giving it hell.We got to the parking lot with no problems, then we had to find our wayback here. Once we got here we took the bug covered cargo thingie offand took it to the room, hope all the critters on the front of it are dead.

The surgery is at 9:00 tomorrow...We'll keep everyone updated."

So that is what has been going on. Work has been good so far, I have just been reading policies and stuff for the first few days, when I get back into town, the real work will begin. My captain called me into his office yesterday to review my psych eval, and he told me that he also wanted to mention that he thought I had the best interview that he had done in the last 8-10 YEARS! He said that he was very impressed with it, that I was very confident, that I seemed very wordly for my age, and that I was not cocky about it. He said that he could see me moving up quickly in this department if I decided to stay there. I thought that that was pretty awesome. He said some more stuff from the eval about how I really seemed like someone that would make a great cop, so that was neat. Other than that nothing is really going on, so I guess I'll be done for the night.

Back for yet another update...

2005-10-12T14:12:00.000-06:00

Milwaukee has been going pretty good. I just got a job working for a police department up here as a dispatcher. Its a part time job, but the plus sides are that the job is in my field so its a good place to start; and I will be working half as much as I am now, but will be making more money than I am now. For the first three months however the job is full time, so that will really help with the bills, and hopefully I should be able to save up some money for Christmas, so that will be nice.

Mike got me a Kitten for my birthday! As most of you know I am not really a cat fan, but working at the pet store and being around them, I have realized they aren't that bad, and since I can't have dogs where I am, a cat is the next best thing. We named him Dash. He is the cutest thing, he is white with blue eyes and he has light orange rings around his tail and his ears and nose are light orange too. Once I get internet at home, I will post pictures of him, as well as pics of our family trip to Washington/Baltimore.

Speaking of Baltimore, I am going to Baltimore for Gunnar's surgery next week. I am really glad I was able to get time off for it, cuz i really wanna be there for him. This is going to be a tough surgery for him I think, but in the long run I think it will be worth it. Well I guess thats all for now, the library computer is going to make me sign off in a few minutes, so I will update more, pry after Gunnar's surgery.

back home...

2005-08-31T12:11:00.000-06:00

Well I didn't get a chance to update anymore on the trip, but thats ok. Gunnar had his appointment and the news was so so... We found out that Gunnar's bladder is about 1/3 of the size it should be, Dr. Gearheart suggested Gunnar have a bladder augmentation in which they take the bladder and cut it open to form like a half sphere, then they take part of the intestine and use it to form the other half of the sphere (to make the bladder bigger). Then they will take his appendix and attach one end of it to the new bigger bladder and attach the other end to his belly button. Then instead of going to the bathroom like normal, he will just have to put a catheter into the hole where his belly button should be like 5-6 times a day. This gives him a 95% change of being dry, which means no more pull-ups! While the no pull-ups thing is good, the whole having to cath himself is a little scary for him, and it was pretty unexpected as Dr. Donovan (his normal urologist) had never mentioned this possibility. So everyone is still talking it over, it turns out there is a 19 yr old that lives in Sioux City that had this surgery 7 years ago, so Mom, Dad, and Gunnar went to meet him and get a better idea of everything. I guess the guy was really nice and Gunnar seemed to like him, and he was able to answer a lot of questions having gone through it himself. So Gunnar is now saying that he doesn't want to have to wear pull-ups the rest of his life, so I think he is leaning more towards this surgery now. But they are still talking about it so we will see what happens, hopefully all goes well. Well I don't have much time so thats about all for now, I'm still going to the library to get internet access, so I will update more when I get a chance.

Greetings from Baltimore…

2005-08-07T18:10:00.000-06:00

Well Milwaukee has been going well, I am working at a pet store right now, which I love cuz I love animals as you all know. I am interviewing for a police dispatching job as well, so hopefully I will get that. Gunnar has an appointment at the John Hopkins Children’s Hospital tomorrow, so the family came up on Friday and stayed the night. We left for Baltimore on Saturday, it was getting late with the loss of an hour cuz of the time change, so after about 14 hours of driving we stopped in Pennsylvania and stayed the night, then got up this morning and drove the last 150 miles to Baltimore. We went to Washington DC today site seeing, it was pretty neat, and none of us has been there before so it was new to us all. We just parked and walked from place to place, pry a couple of miles overall. We saw the White House, Capital Building (from a far) Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, and the Vietnam Vets wall. It was really neat to actually see all this stuff. We were thinking of going to see the ocean but decided we didnt want to drive that far so we decided on this instead, which was a good decision cuz it was a great time. Washington monument is pretty huge, makes Sioux City's Floyd Monument look like a pencil. The weather was pretty good, a little hot, but overall today was a fun day. Tomorrow Gunnar has his appointment which should take a few hours, then we’re gonna see some more stuff in Baltimore. Tuesday we will leave for Cleveland, and site see Tuesday then go to Cedar Point Amusement Park on Wednesday and Thursday. We are all pretty excited.

I still don’t have internet at home, so I have been going to the library periodically to check email and stuff, so I haven’t had any updates yet. But the Children’s house we are staying in has internet so here I am. Well I am gonna get going, just wanted to update everything. I’ll possibly update more later in the trip.

update

2005-06-22T13:35:00.000-06:00

HAPPY FATHERS DAY DAD!!

I sent my dad his gift yesterday, so I can't say what I got him since he hasn’t gotten it yet, but he should like it, and since I didn’t get a chance to post about it at the time, for mother’s day I sent my mom a dozen assorted color roses that came with a nice glass vase and chocolates. I heard an advertisement on the Glen Beck radio show about www.proflowers.com so I ordered her flowers from there; I guess they were really pretty. They don’t cut the roses until the night before they send them, this way they bloom in the vase and last a long time. I didn’t get to see them but from what I heard I would recommend them to anyone wanting to send flowers. Plus if you go to Glen Beck’s radios show website you can find a link to proflowers.com that will give you a discount for being a Glen beck listener. I can't remember if its www.glenbeck.com or www.glennbeck.com and since I don’t have internet access while I am typing this you will have to figure it out on your own.
Oh yea, dad took a picture of Gunnar with a fish he caught, and one of the guys he works with started photoshop-ing it and put it on site that he frequents. So others started messing with it, long story short here’s the link… http://forums.newbeetle.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51122&perpage=15&pagenumber=1 …check it out some of them are pretty good.
Things are changing fast lately; I am going to move to Milwaukee for a while. I was planning on going to Kenosha to do the police testing and stuff but then I realized that they don’t test for at least another year, and I don’t really want to wait that long. So I’m still not sure where I will eventually go. I am still looking in Arizona, as well as around here. I have been calling a lot of places around here and it seems like every place around here goes 1-3 years between testing, while in Arizona they seem to test a couple of times a year. At least they have in the places I have looked there.

I am leaving for Milwaukee for a few days after work today, and by the time this gets posted I will be there. I am going to start looking for apartments in the next few days, so that I can find a place before the 1st. I am hoping to move on the 28th and 29th. Milwaukee is not a permanent thing, probably just for six months give or take a few months. Well see how everything goes once I get there. Luckily I found out that there is a Per Mar in Racine, which is bout 40 minutes outside of Milwaukee so I wont have to look for a job and all that up there. I am transferring to that office and the have a new account in Milwaukee, so I won’t have to commute anymore YAY!

My car seems to be running well, I really like it. I can’t wait until I can have money to spend on it. I wouldn’t mind getting the windows tinted, and getting a bra for it. But with moving and all, that won’t happen for a while. Oh well though, I still like it a lot.

On a less happy note, LaFawnduh died…8-( It was unexpected, so I was pretty upset. I have thought of getting another bunny, but I think I’m gonna wait until I get to Milwaukee at least. I want to get a puppy, but I’m not sure if I will have a place that allows them, so if they don’t, then I will pry get another rabbit. I don’t want Hugh to be lonely.

Hmm, what else??? I have read a lot of books in the last month or so, I have been reading about 2 books a week. Most of them have been by John Grisham, by him I have read ‘The Client’, ‘The Rainmaker’, ‘The Testament’, ‘The Summons’, ‘The Painted House’, ‘The Partner’, ‘The Last Juror’, ‘A Time to Kill’, and ‘The King of Torts’. I have also read ‘Night Sins’ by Tami Hoag, ‘Brimstone’, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, ‘Final Justice’ by W.E.B. Griffin, and ‘Weep no More My Lady’, ‘The Cottage’, and ‘The Lottery Winner’ all by Mary Higgins Clark. They have all been pretty good, and most of them very good. I think I liked ‘The Partner’ and ‘Brimstone’ the best, but it’s hard to choose one John Grisham book over the others. I am thinking of reading Harry Potter 4 again since the movie will be out in a while. I thought about this a while ago, but never got around to doing it, so now may be a good time. I have to day that during college, I forgot how much I really enjoy reading, I mean books that I don’t have to take notes to that is…I think the only books I read in college for fun were the Harry Potter books, and maybe a couple that I read while I was working at the Help Desk.

Speaking of books, I am going to get back to mine cuz I really can't think of anything else to type a bout. Oh, I have seen a couple of movies…wait…no maybe I have just seen Star Wars…hmm…I can't think of any others…but yea, Yoda kicks ass…8-)

One final update...well for a while at least...

2005-05-13T00:06:00.000-06:00

Well I don’t have pictures of the new car yet, but I figured I would post and let the few of you who read this know that my internet (regular phone) at home is going to be shut off on Friday the 13th. So I will most likely not be posting on a regular basis, and I will not be checking my email everyday. I dunno how I’m gonna get along for the next few months without internet, but I am getting rid of it so that I have about 70 bucks more a month if I need it for bills or otherwise to save for moving in August. Hopefully I will have enough saved by then to move and put deposit down somewhere.

Man am I bored. Tonight is going so slow, its only 8:30 and I feel like I have been here for 12 hours already, and it’s only been five and a half. Three more hours to go, well two and a half I guess, BOOO. So yea to help pass time I am typing this to email to myself to post later tonight when I get home. I really wish we had internet access at work, I mean it really sucks not to, but I guess I have just gotten used to it since I have had it at most of the jobs I’ve had where I am sitting at a computer the whole time. While I’m not just sitting at the computer at this job, there is a computer here and it would be nice to have something to pass the time a little faster. Ah well, no use complaining here. On a happy note, next week I am working at the building by Kirkwood, so my drive will only be 20 minutes everyday, YAY for saving gas!!!

So I was driving home the other day and I was on a street just off Gilbert, and this deer was slowly walking across the street, so I stopped to wait. As I came closer to it, it started to turn around and go back the other way, as it did a car in the opposite lane approached, so the deer started to freak out, not knowing where to go, so it ran back into the middle of the street, then changed its mind and decided it wanted to go back towards the trees. So it tried to turn around on the cement, and BOOM, its feet went flying out from under it and it slammed onto the ground…well then the deer was scared shitless, so it tried to scramble up as fast as it could, and as it was getting up its feet slipped again and it went head and neck first into the ground again…finally it made it across the street and into the woods…it was so funny, seriously the deer looked like Bambi when Bambi was trying to walk on the ice, it was great…

I can’t wait to get home and watch the shows I taped; Dr. Phil was an update on the Dr. Phil family, so I taped that. Then there are the normal Thursday night shows, Joey, Apprentice, and ER. Hopefully channel 7 is clear enough this week to see on the tape. It’s really weird that I will leave and the channel is clear, come home and the channel is clear, but the tape is all messed up…it is really annoying. Well, I guess that’s all I can think of to ramble on about…I guess I wasted a half an hour or so, back to work I go!!

Pimpin my ride...

2005-05-10T10:24:00.000-06:00

Man oh man have I been busy lately. That accounts for the lack of posts lately…but I have quite a few updates to report. Hmm, the good news or the bad news first…lets see…well I think I will go with the good news first…well I guess its not really news, just things I’ve been up to really…anyways. Work is going alright, still working mostly 2nd shifts, and I only have one building left to train at. I went home last weekend (the 29th) and got to spend Gunnar’s birthday with him. We had a good time, played some games, and spent some time out doors. Went over to my grandma’s and had a game night on Sunday, had a lot of fun. Overall I had a pretty good time back home; it was nice to see everyone.

It is now official, my rabbits now have an gender identity crisis, Hugh, is definitely a girl, known by the fact that she got nipples, and Lafawnduh is a boy since he now has balls...yea that may have been a little too much info, but oh well. Lafawnduh has become a lot tamer, he actually runs around the house now and doesn’t just hide under the bed, and a couple of days ago I was sitting on the floor and he hoped up on my lap looking for food. So that’s nice, he didn’t really ever get out much because it took me 20 minutes to catch him when it was time to go back in the cage, now that its not like that I can let him out more.

As for the bad news…yeah…I hit a deer on the way to Sioux City. It happened about an hour and 40 minutes out of Iowa City. My poor car…8-( The deer on the other hand, made it across the road and them some, cuz I didn’t see it other than its head hitting my windshield…It must have been running with the interstate, against traffic. What happened was, a big ass Ford F-150 was coming on to the interstate right after the on ramp there was a semi that was pulled over, so the F-150 got right over into the left lane where I was. He was going slower than I was and so I started to slow down then the deer came out of nowhere right between us from the left. So I think that it was in the middle grass area and the truck was just blocking my view of it, by the time I saw it there was no way I could have stopped in time to miss it. So I tried to just slow down as fast as possible, and turned towards the left to keep off of the road. I hit the deer while I was pry half in the left lane and half in the shoulder. It was no fun, but surprisingly it wasn’t anything like I expected. I guess I thought the car would jerk a lot more but it didn’t really, I didn’t hit the air bag or anything and the only noise was the loud ‘poof’ of the airbags going off.

So yea…I had to have Mike come and pick me up, they towed the car to the nearest city which was Newton. The mechanics there said that it was still drivable, that it didn’t look like it was leaking anything, and that it didn’t look like it punctured the radiator or anything. They didn’t look under the hood cuz they didn’t want to end up not being able to shut it again, but they drove it down the road a ways and it did alright, so I drove it to Sioux City. Mike followed me half way to Sioux City, and my parents met us and followed me the other half just in case the car broke down or something. Took it to Prestige (the Auto Body place) in Sioux City, and they had it all weekend, told me on Tuesday the 3rd that they were totaling the car. The damage wasn’t too bad for a deer I guess, the hood was smashed, the windshield smashed, both airbags deployed, my grill and bumper were all dented and broke, my headlight was all out of place, and my fog light (the one I spent a few hours trying to figure out how to replace the weekend before) didn’t work anymore…oh yea the irony…

So yea, I got about $1200 after they paid off what I owed. So hopefully I will get my new car today!! I am looking at another Grand Am, a 2004 and it’s a really neat silverfish gray color, it’s hard to explain, it’s not the normal Grand Am silver or gray, but I really like it; and I am really ready for it. I have been driving a rent-a-truck all week and it sucks. When I went to get a rental, all they had was a Dodge Dakota king cab, a Ford F-150, and a minivan…so I took the Dodge cuz it was the smallest. Anyways, back to the new car, hopefully my payments will be a bit under $225; otherwise I won’t be getting it. We figured the payments would be like $187 with out an extended warranty and me putting $1200 down (now I’m going to put $1300 down), but I want the warranty, so hopefully that will only be around $1000 for the 3 year. So yea, I am going back at 6:00 tonight and hopefully will be driving a new car home!! Once mom sends me the pictures of my wrecked car, I will post them on my website. I will also post pics of the new car if I get it…more updates to come…8-)

UPDATE: Well I got the car, so I should have pics up soon!! Here is a pic of what the car looks like... http://tinyurl.com/e3eho

blah, blah, blah...

2005-04-10T10:02:00.000-06:00

Man am I loving the weather…but then again who isn’t?? Nobody cuz it’s great!! It really reminds me of why I want to go someplace that is warm all year long.

Work has been going well still. I switched to second shift now. I am also starting to work at different buildings, so that is a nice change. It also lessens my drive by 15-20 minutes some days, so that is always good. Anything I can save on gas is great with the prices now. The night shift is not too bad, it’s usually 3-11 (or 1500-2300 hrs as we say at work), and a few days its 430-1230 (or1630-2430). I’m still working on the military time thing still, but it’s getting easier. Time seems to go by faster because we have to do rounds for the most part every hour to make sure that the buildings are secure and that nobody is where they aren’t supposed to be. Nights seem to be a little more exciting as well, I mean its always fun to get the megaphone out and chase people out of the parking lot with the sirens, lol. Okay well I’m pry easily entertained, but I get a kick out of it. We had the fire department come out the other night because there was smoke in the basement, so that was somewhat exciting a nice change of pace.

Hopefully I will be going home at the end of the month; Gunnar’s birthday is the 30th, so that should be a good time. Hard to believe he is going to be 10 already!! It seems like just yesterday he was in the children’s hospital in Omaha wrapped like a mermaid with tubes going in and out of him. In ten years he has been through more than most of people I know have been through in their whole lives…and he doesn’t let it faze him at all. I really miss him a lot, I wish I could be there more often to spend more time with him; after all he is only this young once. But we have great times when we are together, so it works out for the most part. Hopefully it’s nice when I go back so we can get outside some. It was pretty nice the last time I was back, but we didn’t get out a lot.

In other news, my fish is STILL alive…ok…I don’t really care for my fish…I got him thinking that I would like it, but I don’t…so I really don’t take care of him, I mean I feed him…like once a week anyways…and I change his bowl…when its almost empty…I really cant believe it is still alive. I mean, I don’t want to kill him on purpose really, but I really don’t want to help him survive…is that horrible?? I feel bad after a while, and then I start taking care of it for a few days really well, and then im like god I HATE YOU FISH!!! I really don’t have a reason to hate it either, I mean it’s just a fish, and it just swims around, and its blue even, but I dunno, I just haven’t bonded with the fish like I have my other animals…I thought of getting another one, and thought maybe they would fight to death, but I figured that one would kill the other and I would still be stuck with a fish…so yea, if anyone wants my beta fish, fill free to take him off my hands…may be I will take him home for Gunnar…im sure mom (the pet Nazi) would LOVE that!!! Well I’m almost off so I guess that’s all for now…

Passenger relay, sir I need you to take my phone and let him know what I say….Okay we got a wad, pretty big...
~There’s a pretty big wad
Brass fittings, I think I can reach the circuit wire
~Brass fittings he thinks he can reach the circuit wire…no dont, that’s your classic decoy…what else?
Fuck me...
~…oh Darn…

So is it raining or snowing today...

2005-03-26T21:31:00.000-06:00

Well it’s a pretty dreary day outside, so I figured I would update the blog. I finally got a full time job working as a Security Officer at Per Mar Security. It’s a pretty decent job. Working days for another week, then I am switching to second shift, which shouldn’t be too bad. The drive is about 40 minutes right now, but I think when I switch to nights I will be somewhere closer to Iowa City, and it should only be a 20-25 minute drive. It’s a pretty easy job with decent pay and hopefully some overtime. Right now I am checking badges and only letting authorized people into the building. During the day we have to stay at the desk the whole time, (at nights you make rounds and stuff) so I don’t move around a lot right now. Only when the supervisor stops by around ten to give me a short break if I need to get a pop or something from downstairs. I start work at 7:00 so it’s pretty busy until about 8:30-9:00 while people come in for work, and lunch time gets pretty busy as well, other than that it isn’t too busy. I have been reading when it’s not busy, and just finished a book by Tami Hoag called “A Thin Dark Line.” I may review it later.

I recently watched an episode of Yes, Dear where Jimmy wrote a song of things he thinks about at work. It mostly just consisted of random thoughts that crossed his mind during the day, some of them meaning full, some of them not. So I am thinking of putting a “things I think about at work” section at the end of each entry.

I'm, going home for Easter after work today (by the time I post this I will already be home) and hopefully the roads won’t be too bad. I’m taking a new route home since I am not leaving from Iowa City. I feel really bad for leaving the bunnies at home alone, but I couldn’t bring them to work with me and let them sit in the freezing cold car all day, and I didn’t want to drive home to get them cuz it would an another half hour on to my drive, so then are at home…8-(

I saw quite a few movies this month so I guess I will review those…

THE PACIFIER
For the first…oh I’d say fifteen minutes of this movie I was thinking holy crap this is gay…but after that it wasn’t too bad. The story line is a naval marine is sent to watch over a family. The father of the family created a device that some powerful people wanted, and after they killed him, there was fear that they would go after the family to find the device. It wasn’t as funny as I had hoped, but all around it was a good family flick with some really funny parts as well as some not so straight parts…I pry won’t buy it, but when it’s the Saturday night movie on ABC I will pry watch it. (C-)

CURSED
Cursed was an alright movie, again not as good as I had hoped, but then again I am a big Wes Craven fan, so I was comparing it to all his other movies that I like. The movie is about werewolves. A brother and sister are in a car accident that drives another car off the rode, when they go down into a wooded area to help the woman she is attacked by ‘something.’ The brother and sister both get scratched. The brother is convinced that they were scratched by a werewolf while the sister disagrees. In the end they are trying to kill the ‘main werewolf’ to get rid of the curse. I found myself wondering what is going to happen next several times, and I was on the edge of my seat a few times, but overall not as scary as I had hoped. (C)

ROBOTS
This was a good movie, and of course great for kids. About a son robot that wants to become an inventor. He heads off to the city to make his father (who is out of date and needs better parts) proud. When he gets to the city he tries to go and see the great robot inventor to show him his ideas. Turns out the company is being run by someone who is trying to make money by melting the out of date robots that cannot afford updates. He makes some friends and vows to get the head of the company out of his depression and back into the studio before the villain melts the out of date robots. Overall this movie will have you laughing through a good part of it, so go see it if you haven’t. (A-)

THE RING TWO
I was really excited to see this movie. While I think The Ring was probably more scary then the sequel, I would contribute this to the fact that you don’t really now the whole story when you watch the first one. In the second one, Rachel has moved to another town with her son in hopes of forgetting her experience. When a teenager dies of unknown causes, and rumors of his face being unusual, she begins to investigate. The story line revolves around finding out what happen to samara before her adoption (which leads to a visit with her birth mother); while samara decides she wants to live again using Rachel’s son. I really enjoyed this movie for the most part. Like I said it was not quite as scary as the first one in my opinion, but I still recommend it.

Well that’s all for now, I’m gonna start a new book. We have a book shelf here that other officers have brought books to read. This time I chose “Mitigating Circumstances” by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg. I haven’t read anything of hers, but it looked alright.

Dark Samus = Owned...

2005-02-09T11:44:00.000-06:00

So again I haven’t updated in quite a while, yea I know, nothing new there…but I think I haven't for the mere fact that nothing is going on…I have been job hunting for the past month or so, and have yet to find a job. I have only heard that Walmart is hiring about 75 thousand times. And yes, Walmart probably is hiring, but I don’t want to work at a Walmart type job, you know? I mean, I understand that I need a job, and that Walmart is a job, but seriously, how many of you would go to Walmart?? Besides the fact that I am not really in need of money…not saying that I have a lot of it, but I have all my bills paid for the month, and I still have a good amount of money in the bank, so while I cant afford to go on like this till august, I think I can afford it for another couple of weeks while I continue to look for a job that does not suck giant ass. I mean this is going to be the first time in my life that I will be working 40 hours a week without having to worry about school or anything…I don’t want to be stuck in a miserable job for the next 6 months…while many of you may not understand or agree with this, it is the way I feel.

Anyways, enough of that… I watched the Super Bowl this year…I think it may have been the first time in…umm…FOREVER!!! So yea, at least there were a few good commercials to make the time go faster….here are a few of my favorites...Bud Light... Michelob... GoDaddy.

I'm also almost done with Metroid Prime 2 Echoes…I’ve gotten to the last boss…I only hope that I have everything scanned so that when I’m done I’ll get the complete hundred percent. Its hard to say though, since the last guy has to be scanned 5 different times as he changes phases, and then once he is dead you have to defeat Dark Samus (with what ever energy/ammo you have left while a timer counts down…yea I know, say it with me now…HORSESHIT!!) who also has to be scanned 2 times…so yea I could get to the last phase of Dark Samus, and then realize that there is something that I didn’t scan…how shitty would that be?? Not sure?? Well it would be very shitty, believe me…so yea, I have not even gotten to the second phase of the final boss…so I think I'm gonna be working on it for a while…I’ll let you know when I beat it and how freaking cool the ending is with 100% scans and resources…supposedly you get to see Samus outside of her suit, and from what I hear she’s pretty hot, so that will be cool…we’ll I’m not that excited about the hotness, but about the ending anyways, lol. I’m definitely going to get some screen shots of it.

UPDATE:
Well I meant to post this yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to, so yea…I beat Metroid last night, it was pretty sweet. I forgot to scan part of the last boss, so I only had 98 % so I am going to go back and beat the boss again so that I can see the 100% ending. So that’s the task for today. Well I guess that’s all for now. I will post some screenshots of end of the game in the next day or so...

I'm 23 which is near 25 which is almost mid 20's….

2005-01-14T16:29:00.000-06:00

Well hello faithful readers (all 3 of you). Today is an alright day, it’s my last day at the helpdesk and I was told I have to go out tonight and drink cuz of it, so I will be doing that later with a few people from what I hear. I got to watch my shows last night, so that’s always a plus. ER was pretty good with the whole Abby getting kidnapped thing. Luckily she was returned safe and sound, just a little shaken. Yes I know you can all sleep at night now knowing that. Joey was kind of a half ass episode but that’s alright. On a lesser note, Vincent broke up with Will, and I vowed to never watch the show again if they don’t bring him back!! Will doesn’t get many good boyfriends, so it’s about time we held onto one.

I’m definitely ready to get this snow thing done and over with. It makes everything a pain in the ass…walking any where sucks cuz the sidewalks are either icy or un-shoveled (is that a word?? I don’t think so…oh well), and driving sucks cuz everywhere I have to park is as well un-shoveled which risks getting stuck anytime I go anywhere. My parking spot was all cleared out, it was shoveled so that I didn’t have to worry about getting stuck…for 2 days anyways. Then some jackass with a big truck thought that the snow pile between the parking lots was there to drive through, so half of it ended up behind my spot again…then we had freezing rain, which froze the snow making it un-shovelable (pretty sure that’s not a work either, but you get the idea). So yea getting my car out has been a pain in the ass for a while, but *sigh* I suppose I can live with it, as long as I get to complain about it sometimes (or all the time). Speaking of my car, I think something is wrong with the power steering.

So I told Robby I would come over last night to watch my shows, so I go to leave, and my driver door was frozen shut. So after climbing in the passenger side, I was on my way. He said he would come help me open it when I got there, so I get there and I'm trying to push on it while I wait for him to come out, and its not even budging…so when he gets closer to the car, I go to open the back door to tell him something, and to no avail, it would not open either….that’s when I realized the doors were still locked….yea…that was my jackass moment for the week. So once the doors were unlocked, we managed to get the door open in about 5 seconds; it was still frozen, but it didn’t take much effort with two people working on it.

So I'm almost done with my crime scene book that I have been reading its quite interesting. It talks about the crime scenes that the author has worked, as well as explaining how to take evidence the correct way, and how to interpret it all. The chapter on fire arms was quite interesting discussing all that you can gain from examining the wound and area around the crime. It also went into great detail all the parts of different guns and ammo, and what made what work, and what caused what reactions, overall pretty fun stuff. Well I suppose I should find something constructive to do now…

You love my stinky ass!

Let me kick it freestyle for you…ay o traffic, traffic, looking for my chap stick, feeling kinda carsick, there’s a ford maverick….

2005-01-11T15:26:00.000-06:00

Saw a few movies over break, they were pretty good. Malibu’s Most Wanted was the funniest of them. It’s got Jamie Kennedy (as B-Rad) in it, acting as a white guy who wants to be the dopest rapper there ever was, and he thinks his rhymes are the illest…his dad it running for governor, but B-Rad is only hurting his campaign. So one of his dad’s assistants decided to hire someone to take him to the ghetto and scare him white. So he hires the 2 whitest black actors (Taye Diggs and Anthony Anderson) to act like thugs to kidnap him. It’s got some pretty funny parts, so you should see it.

National Treasure I saw a week or so before break, but it was good. It’s about a map on the back on the Declaration of Independence that may or may not lead to a treasure. It’s the common 4 people looking for a treasure, till one of them gets greedy and decided ha wants it all to himself, so the other three are trying to get to it (if it exists) first. So yea, I really liked it, I was a little hesitant that it may be one of those BraveHeart/Patriot type movies that only Dad likes, but it wasn’t. It’s worth seeing.

Also saw Darkness, about these people who live in a house where the darkness is “alive” in a sense. Apparently some ritual had been started some years before, but never finished, and now the darkness is trying to finish it. It wasn’t too bad of a show, the ending was a little weird, and I was a little confused, but it was alright still.

Elf was an alright show. There were some funny parts and some dumb parts, just about a baby that crawls in to Santa’s bag and ends up at the North Pole, finally learns he is a human and wants to meet his real dad. Hmm, seems like I saw something else but I can’t think of what it was, so it must not have been that good.

The Bachelorette season premier was on last night, I don’t much care for the girl they chose, but it looks like it should be a pretty good season. I watched the first two seasons all the time, but I haven’t really watched one since then, but I might have to start again.

Lots of password resets today, that and Webmail over quotas…pretty uneventful day so far, almost fell pretty bad this morning….thank god for them putting the yellow poles where they did at my apartment…I came down the stairs, which were pretty slick and was walking in front of the bottom floor apartments where it was not slick because they have the walkway to the upstairs apartments over it….so I take the first step off and completely almost had one of those feet fly up over your head falls, luckily though, I was able to grab the yellow pole and catch myself….

Well that was pretty uninteresting, as I figured when I started writing, but oh well. I guess that’s all for now.

I got sumtin' to say, and I need the world to hear it. I'm a lyricologist. I can rap about anything… Shrink, shrink... Blinkity-blink... Tried to make me think... Wanna go to my sink. And vomit... Clean it up wit' Comet. Earth is my plonet...See? I'm the shiznit.

This ain't no picnic Bitch!!

2005-01-10T13:21:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I figured that since finals/graduation and the holidays are over now, and have been for a while, it was time for the posting to begin again…hopefully on a more regular basis again…so yea…

The holidays were good, gave some gifts and got some gifts. Went home for a good chunk of time, Sioux City is the same-o same-o….boring and smelly…but you get used to that I guess…spent a lot of time playing games and stuff with Gunnar. He got the Lord of the Rings Risk bored game…..OMG….I will never play that game again! Mom, Gunnar and I played one game from 5:00 till about 10:15….which is about four and a half hours too long. Played and beat a great deal of Halo2, which means we were up playing till about 5:00 A.M. on more than one occasion….So yea, Gunnar can play Halo2 till 5 in the morning, but he couldn’t make it to midnight on New Years from what I hear…go figure. We got a family dog, she’s cute, a dark brown cocker spaniel puppy, we named her Trinity. So I also spent a lot of time puppy sitting, which equivalent to caring for a walking, potty-training, chews on everything 1 year old. But it’s all good. New Years was a good time, went to a couple of parties, and had a few drinks and a few laughs.

I return to Iowa City to find a pile of rubbish at the end of my building, turns out they are replacing the stair case to the second floor apartments, which is great!! I hate the ones there (even if they are sturdy enough to last a lot longer, as I was told….). Another plus…they are at the opposite end of the building as the ones now, which means they will lead right from my parking spot to my apartment, no more walking to the other end of the building to get to the stairs, then back to the other end to my apartment…if that makes since to anyone 8-).

Mom called the other day to inform me that Dad got into an accident with the new car…first off, Dad is OK, and the other driver was OK, having said that…I think its somewhat funny…before you go thinking I'm being mean, let me explain…Dad is anal about the new car…he doesn’t want anyone to drive it (I have driven it once, and Mom has to pull teeth to drive it), when he goes to a store or something, he parks in the spot that is farthest from the door to avoid anyone parking next to him posing the risk of a ‘door ding,’ he doesn’t like to leave it out of the garage because it might get rained on…I think you get the point; so the fact that HE was driving when the accident happen is somewhat humorous to me. I guess he went to the doctor, came home to let the dog out and on the way back to work got in the accident. But as I said everyone is ok, the car is fixable, and Dad’s ‘accident with new cars’ track record has improved from 24 hours to about 8 months so props for that!! 8-)

So going back to work was not something I was looking forward to…as I can pretty much guarantee others weren’t as well…but what can you do...I guess thats all for now.

It's not easy being a cast-iron BITCH. It takes discipline, years of training... A lot of people don't appreciate that. ;-)

Long time no type....

2004-12-13T10:29:00.000-06:00

Alright, so I gave up posting for a while will all the stuff I have had to do lately. So its finals week now, I have a final Wednesday and Friday, and then I am done…done for good, and it is GREAT! So yea not too much has gone on in the last few weeks, Thanksgiving was pretty good. I went home for the week, had my graduation party the weekend before Thanksgiving, got a good amount of money, which is pretty much spent now after having to buy new tires. I mean I saw the tires were low, but apparently they were a lot lower then I thought. Yea when I went to fill them I guess there was like 4 psi in one of them, 12 in two of them and I think like 6-8 in the last one…so yea, they were all cracked and shit on the outside, so I had to replace them all. So that was half of my graduation money right there. So yea, home was nice, took Gunnar to play pool and bowl, and played a bunch of video games with him. I also got him hooked on Napoleon Dynamite, lol. Jennifer flew in for the holiday too, so that was a good time, had lots of drinks, and lots of laughs. Ended up going to Steinbach’s to visit Laurie, and got pretty drunk each time, so that was fun. I played more pool in Sioux City in that week than I had in the past 2 years! I definitely need to get a pool table. Had a turkey neck, scalloped potatoes, veggies, and pie for thanksgiving dinner. It was pretty good.

I bought my cap and gown last week. Four and a half years here and that was the cheapest thing I have had to buy! $16.25!! I'm not complaining, about the cheapness, but I am complaining about the expensiveness of everything else. But oh well no reason to complain now, its done and over with. So the family is coming down this weekend for the graduation ceremony, man I hope it is not too long. The rents are going to stay the whole weekend; I think everyone else is leaving Saturday. I'm gonna go home with the rents Sunday, and stay home till….well I dunno when I’, coming back, I guess whenever I get bored there, or have a good reason to come back. So this is not a whole lot of updates, and I probably have more, but I don’t feel like going into that right now.

It's a big, blue, green man with a weird goatee, that has to have some significance to it. *hugs*

I sound like Barry White's illegitimate, white grandson...

2004-11-04T15:27:00.000-06:00

So apparently, updating my blog had become one of my many Thursday rituals. Since I am up front at work all day, I have several, I usually start with sorting out the laptop check out binder (which btw is lost right now) then I move on to sorting the laptop check out accessory box/lid and winding all the cords in there up and stuff, then I pull off the pieces of tape off those stupid sleeves we use to hold the check in forms in. I guess updating my blog falls in after that, followed by reading other peoples blogs then cleaning up the walk in desk that I am at. Yea I know another fun filled day at the helpdesk huh?

So yea I went to Minnesota last weekend, it was a pretty good time, went to the Mall of America (or MOA as Jim would call it…). Guess what they have there….yes indeedy…Long John Silvers!! YAY! I soooo miss having them in Iowa…what a pain in the ass. Umm we went and saw Taxi, which was pretty funny I thought, I soooo can’t wait till I have lights and sirens and can drive real fast. Its gonna be great! Hmm what else? That’s pretty much all we did, stayed in Saturday night to watch Eminem on SNL. Got to hear another one of his new songs, which is always fun. He sang ‘Loose It’ second, but he looked like he was drunk and high during it, so that kind of sucked, but oh well…

This week has been pretty uneventful. Just work and school, nothing too exciting, went to the gym to see what it was like; I think I am going to get a member ship. I really need to start getting stronger…cuz yea, I have to be able to kick some fat guys ass just in case I get into that situation…right now I could pry kick some scrawny guys ass…but that pry wont come in handy much.

So Bush won the election, which I think made a lot of the people I have come in contact with so far mad, but what can you do? Well besides voting I mean, lol. I got my ‘Vote for Pedro’ shirt, so I was able to wear that on Election Day, so that was a good time; a few people got a good laugh out of it. I have been watching that movie like every other day, lol. God I thought it was pretty gay the first time I watched it and now I can’t get enough of it, lol. So yea….GO SEE IT (or obtain a copy of it any way possible, lol). Hmm, I guess that’s all the updates I have, so according to my schedule it is time to go read other peoples blogs…

Men are like cats, ya know? Sure, we'll play with a ball of yarn, unless you want us to play with the ball of yarn…. Trick is, hide the ball of yarn. But don't hide it where you can't find it, ya know? Like, 'Hey, what's the ball of yarn doing in the fridge?' Whatever. Ya know what I'm saying?

Whatever I feel like I wanna do, GOSH!!

2004-10-28T10:55:00.000-06:00

Reviews, reviews, reviews…today I bring you reviews. I thought that since I have seen so many movies in the past week I should review them all. So here goes…

The Grudge
This is another Japanese film much like the Ring. It starts off telling the legend that if someone dies out of extreme anger and violence, they will basically hold a grudge in the after life and kill anything they touch. So in the movie there is a house that has ‘a grudge’ on it, so the movie basically is about people that died in the house who are now holding a grudge and killing people. It’s a pretty damn good movie as far as I am concerned. There are moments of humor, as well as those moments of horror that we all love. You know the ones I’m talking about…the ones where you jump so much that you look around, just to make sure that no one saw you. There were people in the theater actually screaming…it wasn’t some teenager being a dumbass, it was real people screaming real screams of terror…the 10 year old that was sitting in front of us managed to watch the first ten minutes of the movie, then hid in his hood with his head down the rest of the show. Hmm, I will have to see if Gunnar can handle this one...mmwwwuuuaaahhhh. Overall, a pretty decent scary movie…even if it does have Sarah Michelle ‘I'm a skanky whore’ Gellar in it. 8-(

The Day After Tomorrow
This movie is about global warming causing severe weather conditions through out the world. I thought this was a pretty good movie as well. Its pretty much just chaos across the world…softball size hail in Japan, tornados in L.A., major floods in New York all leading to an ice age that will freeze the majority of the world. There isn’t much else to tell, the movie is pretty action packed with the father trying to save his son before it is too late. The only bad thing I have to say is that it totally recreated all of my tornado nightmares. Five already big tornados coming together to form one massive swirling vortex of terror, yea I could have done without that scene, other than that, a great movie.

Napoleon Dynamite
This is movie is not too bad, it’s pretty much just about this kid named Napoleon Dynamite. When you first watch it, your kind of thinking, hmm...this is a little gay, but as it goes along, it gets funnier, and when it is over, you may not think you liked it, but the next day you sure do want to watch it again, lol. So back to the movie, he is pretty much a tall geeky kid who has geeky friends, and a geeky family. He goes through finding a date to prom, and helping his geeky friend run for class president. Overall, I laughed a lot, and I think…wait no I'm pretty sure…wait, I'm definitely going home and watching it again later, lol. So yea, I recommend seeing this movie, if you don’t feel like paying the 7 dollars, download it, or rent it, but you should see it. (Rich concurs).

My Baby’s Daddy
Ok, the previews for this movie looked GREAT!! I was ready to laugh my ass off…rrrrrright…I think I laughed twice…I could not believe how stupid this movie was. Now I am normally an Anthony Anderson fan, but this movie was such a let down of his. Seriously, they took every funny part in the movie and stuck it in the trailer, I would have been more content to just watch the trailer and have that be the whole movie. So yea, all three guys get their girlfriends pregnant and have kids on the same day…the girlfriends are all annoying, and that isn’t even one of those ‘jealous girl’ comments, they were fucking annoying…matter of fact the whole movie was fucking annoying, and I would not recommend it to anyone…that’s all I have to say about that.

Napoleon Dynamite : Hey can I use your guys's phone for a sec?
Secretary No. 1 : Is there anything wrong?
Napoleon Dynamite : I don't feel very good.
[takes telephone and dials number]
Kip : [making nachos on the other line] Hi.
Napoleon Dynamite : Is grandma there?
Kip : No, she's getting her hair done.
Napoleon Dynamite : Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
Kip : What do you need?
Napoleon Dynamite : Can you just go get her for me?
Kip : I'm really busy right now.
Napoleon Dynamite : Just tell her to come get me.
Kip : Why?
Napoleon Dynamite : Cause I don't feel good!
Kip : Well, have you talked to the school nurse?
Napoleon Dynamite : No, she doesn't know anything. Will you just come get me?
Kip : No.
Napoleon Dynamite : Well, will you do me a favor then? Can you bring me my chapstick?
Kip : No, Napoleon.
Napoleon Dynamite : But my lips hurt real bad!
Kip : Just borrow some from the school nurse. I know she has like five sticks in her drawer.
Napoleon Dynamite : I'm not gonna use hers, you sicko!
Kip : See ya.
Napoleon Dynamite : Ugh! Idiot!

They're baaack....

2004-10-22T14:47:00.000-06:00

“Dawna got flowers today, did you know that? Hey I think Dawna got flowers today. I wish someone would send me flowers. Dawna did you get any flowers today? I think Dawna got flowers today and the word is that they are from Jason Alexander, hahaha… (you pry don’t get this if you don’t work in the building).” Yes that is what I heard all day at work yesterday. Jim sent me flowers at work (for no special occasion, just because), and I think the whole campus knew…well ok not the whole campus but at least the whole building, I swear word travels fast in this place. So everyone ran out to the front to see what was going on, so yea I was pretty red…I get embarrassed so easily, lol. But they were nice flowers, and it was a nice thing to do, so I guess everyone wins, lol. Jim got into town last night during E.R. which I must say was not the best episode ever...(Btw it was Corday who left). We watched Poltergeist, and I got the 2nd and 3rd ones at Wal-Mart last night for only $10!! YAY!

Today is Friday, that is great!! Had jogging class this morning, made it the whole way with out walking today, which is an improvement from Wednesday, but I think I walked on Wednesday mostly because there were lots of hills and stuff. So yea, today did seem much easier compared to Wednesday. Self defense class was pretty fun, learned just basic stuff, kicking, punching, elbowing, and kneeing. It was a pretty good time. Hmm what else? I am answering emails today, that is a nice break from the phone and walk-in let me tell ya. I think I would like to be on it everyday, lol.

Hmm, not much else going on…

Don't kill me, man - don't kill me!
~I'm not going to kill you. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to tell all your friends about me.
Who are you?!
~I'm Batman.

Another week closer to graduation....

2004-10-21T08:07:00.000-06:00

Ok so yea I think I forgot I had a blog this week. Sorry for all you faithful readers. So I had two tests this week, did OK on them, would have liked to have done better, but I can live with it. Surprisingly after looking up all the answers on the internet for Political Sociology then just add the few notes from lecture I was able to pull off an 80. This is why I said I did OK, but compared to the class I think I did pretty good. The highest score I have heard so far on the test is 89, so I guess it’s not too bad since everyone else I have talked to has gotten in the 70’s and 60’s. The professor would not tell us others grades, or the average because he didn’t want to ‘stress us out over our classmates grades’ but in reality I think more people are stressed by not knowing how everyone else did. He did however say that our class had the worst grades that he has ever had a class get, so that is a plus, for me anyways.

So yea my Jogging and Self Defense classes started this week, so that should be fun. I made the mistake yesterday of walking to and from campus after jogging class which was the first class that we actually jogged…so yea my legs are killing me today. I woke up late, so I couldn’t get on the bus that would get me to work on time. Yea, I thought about walking, until I stood up out of bed, yea then I felt how my legs felt and that was the end of thinking about walking. So yea, I was late to work; I did get to ride to work in style though, since on the way to the bus stop I saw Vanessa, who offered me a ride to work, so I arrived in the bright yellow cougar this morning, lol…much more stylish than the sunshine bus…

So yea it is Thursday again…I’m pretty excited to see my shows tonight. Joey should be good, but I don’t think there will be any big breakthroughs on that tonight, and the same for will and grace…although last week Will did get a key to Vince’s (his new boyfriend) apartment for his birthday. I really like Vince, he is funny, cute, and he is a cop…so yea. The guys lost big time last week on the apprentice, but my guy did not get kicked off YAY!! He did go to the board room, and for a split second I was worried, but he made it, and that is good. So who will be fired tonight? Who will be the final 2? I am hoping for Stacy R. and Kevin, but I wouldn’t mind if Andy were one of them either, he is my third choice. Then ER the greatest show on television…and tonight, someone will never return…now its possible that it will be Carter, who I am sure will be going to Africa to be with his wife, but I’m not sure they will get rid of him this early…it may be Neela, who by the way did come back from Mexico. I really like her though, so I don’t want to see her go. Hopefully it will be the new intern that possibly has OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder).

So yea, Jim is coming to town tonight, so I might actually have someone to watch ER with, but I doubt he will get into town in time for that. Speaking of Jim, he got the LG VX7000…that is soooo the phone I wanted (I have the 6000 now)…not only did I want it, but 2 days before he got it we were at best buy and I pointed to it and was like oh, that’s the phone I want…now Jim says he didn’t hear me, so I have tried to not make too big of a fuss about it….ok well that’s a lie…I told him I refused to talk to him on it, and that when he came into town this weekend the car he wants was going to be sitting in my parking spot…of course I cannot get a new car, so that kind of sucked, not that I want the car he wants cuz they are totally not cute, but oh well, it was fun for a while. So yea now I have to wait for the 8000 to come out…hopefully that will be around x-mas time, maybe I could talk the rents into a pay for half my phone for my x-mas present…hmmm I will have to see.

I also have my Self Defense class tonight, and we will hopefully be learning some stuff today, so I'm excited for that. Good god I can’t stop coughing, stupid jogging outside in the cold. I have been coughing non stop since jogging class yesterday. I really can’t wait to start jogging inside. So hmm I guess that’s about it. I can’t think of anything else that has happened…

I got beat up once by three kids. They took my lunch money. Maybe they got hit by a truck, and they're upstairs right now.

Must See TV night....

2004-10-14T07:56:00.000-06:00

Student/Walk-in is where I be….yes that’s right folks that means its Thursday! I love Thursdays!! Well other than the fact that I am up front all day…tonight is Must See TV night! YAY!! I will head home from work around five…read some of my book for class, then about 630 I will start making dinner cuz the action packed night of TV is about to start!! We’ll kick if off with a little Joey at 7:00…will his sister move into the open apartment? Will she forgive them for not telling her it was open? Find out tonight! This will be followed with a little Will & Grace….which is a far better show now that that dumbass husband of Grace’s is gone!! Will jack get another dancing gig? Will he come up with the greatest new Gay TV sitcom? You’ll have to wait and see!! At 8:00 the Apprentice starts…who will be fired tonight!?!? (Let’s hope its Maria!) Will the guy’s team ever loose? (I hope not!). And then comes the best show….that’s right folks…ER!!!!!!!! Oh how I love that show….but what will happen tonight!?! Will Neela come back from Mexico? Will she get the little girl there with out social services finding her? Will Luka and Samantha and Alex live happily ever after? Will Abby loose another patient? Will one of the new interns screw up? Ohhh I can’t wait!!! Im gonna make brownies while all this is going on if I can get over the excitement!!

Ok enough of that…hmm what else has been going on? Not too much, I went on my first bar crawl last weekend…it was pretty fun, it would have been a little better if we had started at the beginning of the crawl rather than starting at 9:30…but that’s ok…Jim’s old apartment was the ones having the crawl…so he drove into town and we went when he got in…hmm what else? Umm the rest of the weekend was good, went to Olive garden and had the soup, salad, breadstick lunch, which is always great!! Played a little mini golf, and did some studying…Oh and I bought Aladdin…with the music video by non other than….Nick & Jessica….oh how I love them…they are so much in love that you feel that warm tingly feeling just watching them….man I miss the newlyweds….stupid expensive cable…

I had an essay test yesterday, I was really nervous cuz he gave us a study guide with essay questions and then said there would be so many of them on the test and we would have to choose so many…so I didn’t get all of them on the study guide done, so I was worried I wouldn’t know the answer to enough of them…luckily I did, and I think I remembered most of the points that I had made on the study guide…now I just have to hope that those were the things he wanted…that’s the shitty part about essay tests. You can get what seems like a good answer, but if it is not what he wants your screwed, and there really isn’t a way of telling what he wants….ah well well see I guess. I have another essay test on Monday…we get to have a cheat sheet for that one though, so this weekend I am typing up al my notes and squeezing them down to size 4 font, hehehe. Hopefully it shouldn’t be too bad, I am mostly worried about the questions about the book, cuz I haven’t read it yet….hmm maybe I should be doing that now, rather than writing this…hmmm yes I think I shall go read now…

A whole new world
~ Don't you dare close your eyes
A hundred thousand things to see
~ Hold your breath- it gets better
I'm like a shooting star, I've come so far I can't go back to where I used to be

Making changes......

2004-10-07T08:59:00.000-06:00

As you can pry tell I am changing the look of my blog (well I am attempting to anyways), so things may not be perfect for a while....deal with it!! 8-)

Freeze warning in effect until1 PM for the following portions of Iowa City...S. Lindquist Center....people in room 15 should be extra cautious..

2004-10-05T09:12:00.000-06:00

BbbbbbRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! I am freezing at work!! Is the fucking air conditioner on or what!! I seriously feel like I am in Antarctica. I feel like one of the little penguins waddling around down there. I really understand why they waddle, other than the fact that they don’t really have a choice based on their body form, but I don’t want to get any part of my body to far away from the other parts because I know they when the part comes back my the rest of my body it is going to be freezing!! Stupid cold weather…

So yea I got this comment on one of my previous post, that looked like a spam comment or something, it looked like it had advertisements at the bottom or something. So I tried to delete it and I accidentally deleted a comment from thechris cuz Blogger is stupid and has the trash cans in a way so that it looks like you are deleting one post, but your really deleting another. So I told Chris about this and blamed my deleting his post on the comment spammer. So Chris went to the guys blog and wished armpit lice on him, lol…then I realized that it was really just a post from someone random who was pry just trying to be nice, but I mean if your posts look like advertisements, and then your blog has an advertisement about a saving wildlife foundation or something, I guess you could expect people to think that your spamming. So I felt a little bad about that, but I got over it, lol. I guess the guy just goes through the new Blogger thing at the top of the page (not this page cuz I disabled mine) and looks at random blogs and posts if he likes them. So yea I think he was also the one that commented again with ‘get a life’ pry after reading the lice threats, lol.

Yea still cold, and I think the windows start up sound just came out of my speakers, but hmmm, my windows was already started….maybe it was a delayed reaction, the computer was running pretty slow this morning, but I dunno. I would imagine that it would have happened by now since I have been here for an hour and 32 minutes (Yay!! 32!!!). I also just got attacked by a giganto fly! Mark won’t let me start a fire in the garbage can…BOOOO to Mark!! Mark is now the Fire Nazi. FIRE NAZI!!!

Ok well I guess I will go back to freezing at work, since it is a pain in the ass to type when my fingers are this cold….

I love you Jack.
~Don't you do that, don't say your good-byes.
I'm so cold.
~I don't know about you, but I intend on writing a strongly worded letter to the White Star Line about all of this. You're gonna go on, and make lots of babies, and watch them grow. You're gonna die an old lady, warm in her bed. Not here, not this night. Do you understand me? Winning that ticket, Rose, was the best thing that ever happened to me... it brought me to you. And I'm thankful for that, Rose. I'm thankful. You must do me this honor, Rose. Promise me you'll survive. That you won't give up, no matter what happens, no matter how hopeless. Promise me now, Rose, and never let go of that promise.

Captain's log, stardate -318250.1435058693

2004-10-01T09:47:00.000-06:00

OMG!!! Shatner is in the building!! Can you belive it!

Well I really don't care but everyone else at work does, Robert has volunteered to give us the play by play...you can find it here....

CONFIRMED: Shatner in Lindquist

Sadness....

2004-09-30T22:23:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted it in my blog yet, but as you pry know Mike and I have been on a break with hopes of getting back together. We still talked a lot, and did stuff together a few nights a week. Well up until about 2 1/2 weeks ago that is, the day after my birthday we got into a big fight, and he basically told me he didn’t think we should see each other anymore. I just kinda sat there for a minute, and he pretty much just told me to take him home. Having been with him for so long I kinda of expected to talk about it a little, or something, but he just said it and wanted to go home. He didn’t act like it affected him or anything, I mean I didn’t expect him to break into tears like I had, but I expected a little emotion, or a sorry, or an I will miss you, but I got nothing. When I asked him, he said he was upset, but he sure didn’t make a believer out of me. I mean I am sure that he was a little sad, but I mean after four years you think he would be more than just a little sad.

I think that is what hurt me the most; it felt like he didn’t even care, like we had been dating for just a few weeks or something. So I have been going to work and going to school with this wall of happiness on the outside with deep hurt on the inside. There have been so many times that I have felt like I am alone, like I have nobody…I have wanted nothing more than to stay at home in bed and do nothing, yet I know I cannot. So this last week has not been too bad, but it brings me to the point of why now? Why let it out now? Well I have talked to Mike about 5 times since this happen, a few times were to just fill him in about the heritage situation, and the others were the few times that he called me just to see what was going on, those conversations lasted about 5 minutes each. I talked to him again tonight, and I realized that it has finally set in that we are not together and are not getting back together.

In December I will graduate, and may move to Arizona, and could never see him again. It hurts my heart to think about it, but I have finally let it set in. It’s set in that I may never see him again after December, that I will be graduating and entering the “real world” alone, and that I will have to start a new relationship all over when I am ready for one. So tonight, I will pry cry myself to sleep, but it will be different from previous nights, I will shed my last tears over him. I know I will pry have feelings for him for awhile, but I am tired of hurting all the time, and I have to begin put it to an end.

What's here? A cup, clos'd in my true love's hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:
O churl! Drink all, and left no friendly drop
to help me after?

nO mORE pASSWORD rESETS....

2004-09-28T21:05:00.000-06:00

So my will power to remain only a student and not a helpdesk employee during class paid off yet again yesterday. Our T.A. could not figure out how to get the video to work on the projector…he got the sound going, but couldn’t figure out how to change the video over. I considered going up there and showing him how to do it…but then thought of all the other students in the class, and how I figured they would enjoy a day off…I didn’t want to ruin that so I just sat back and watched, and alas….class was cancelled!! YAY!!

Well everything was broken at work this morning…that was a great time. People calling in saying they couldn’t get here or there…the emergency line ringing non stop…wonderful, wonderful helpdesk days! Rebekah would be glad to know that she did not miss much by going to class, things were pretty much up and running pretty well by about 8:45. everything that is except ISIS (for about 10 minutes), which was somewhat ironic, because when everything else was broken just 10 minutes before, ISIS was working fine….the share point site was available long enough for people to see where they worked around 850, then went back down about five minutes later.

So what was the most annoying thing about everything being broken? Two words….VOICEMAIL….yea…here is how the typical message went… “Um, hi, my name is (blah, blah) and I can’t get into my Webmail. I have tried it several times, and it was just working last night, and I tried to log onto ISIS and that worked fine, so I know the password is correct, but I just don’t know what else to do. So if you could give me a call back, maybe there is something else I could try, I mean I just don’t know why it is not working, especially if ISIS is not working…my HawkID is (blah) and my password is (blah) and I know the password works cuz like I said is it working for ISIS, and my student ID number is (blah). So if you could call me back I would appreciate it thanx bye…oh wait my number is (blah-blah-blah).” Yea just when I thought HA you didn’t leave your number dumbass…they realized it and left it, and yea there were several people that did this…kinda weird. Then there was the guy that said in the mean time he was going to “try to find a back door to this HawkID thing” that was not allowing him to log on…..rrrrrriight. Good luck with that one buddy…On top of that I think that everyones hawkid password expired today!! ARGGGH!!

Holy shit has anyone else noticed the stench of campus lately?!? Yesterday it smelled like a giant ASS!! Seriously I think someone took the biggest shit yesterday right in the middle of downtown. It was horrible…now today it smells like garbage…oh how I love Iowa City…

Come on, think. I want you to reach back into those minds and tell me, tell us all, what it is you fantasize about. World peace? I thought so. Do you fantasize about international fame? Do you fantasize about winning a Pulitzer Prize? Or a Nobel Peace Prize? An MTV Music Award? Do you fantasize about meeting some genius hunk, ostensibly bad but secretly simmering with noble passion and willing to sleep on the wet spot?

one class down....only 5 more left!!

2004-09-22T18:58:00.000-06:00

OMG!! Why is gmail so SLOW today!!!! Its driving me NUTS!!!

Ok so I have not posted in a while, I think it’s because I have been busy…as you can tell from the previous post, I got a new bunny. I named him Hugh after Hugh Hefner of course. He is the cutest thing, and he loves exploring the apartment. I am still trying to work on the potty training. I have gotten a litter box thing for the corner of the cage, but for some reason he has taken a custom to pooping right in front of the cage door. Yea, nice I know. He also does this thing in the middle of the night were he chews on his cage, and pulls on the bars so hard that his teeth slip off of them, causing him to go flying backwards, and the bars to make a loud noise. He likes to do this when I am trying to sleep or go to sleep.

Classes have been going ok I guess, today is the last day of Web Search Engines. Yay for that…not that it was a hard class, but that is just one less thing I have to worry about. I have a group presentation today, and a final test, which from the sounds of it is going to be opinion questions, so I don’t know how the hell she is going to grade it. I had my first test Monday night in Social Inequalities, I pry should have studied a little more for it, but I think I did alright. I can’t decide if I am looking forward to the next test, it is all essays. But that means there will be only a few questions, and we can use the front side of a piece of paper to put notes on and bring to class. So that will pry make it easier.

Political Sociology….yea I don’t know what to say about that class. I really don’t have any idea what is going on. Our test is in a month and I have no idea what to study. No one else in the class seems to know either, well at least the people I have talked to. He is supposed to put a study guide on WebCT today, so hopefully that will help. I don’t think anyone really pays attention in the class…well except this one girl, who always has this hairdo. She has short hair, and she always takes those really tiny hair clips, and twists sections of her hair up and clips them, so her hair is pretty much flipping and flopping this way and that way. It makes me laugh…she is also one of those girls that always comes to class with either a fruit juice or a cup of coffee (or cappuccino, or something of that nature).

And what is with people wearing 4-5 shirts at a time? Mostly it is guys but sometimes its girls, but the other day I was sitting in class bored and started noticing that 5-6 guys (of about 12 guys) had on at least 4 shirts! They are all tee shirts and t hey are all different colors! I don’t get it, it feels like it is 150 degrees out, and these guys are walking around wearing all these shirts. I understand that I am a cold person and have my sweatshirt with me, but I still at most wear two shirts, and they are not the same type of shirt. I can even understand wearing something like an undershirt and a tee shirt, but I don’t understand more than 2 shirts. So if anyone has a reason for this I would like to hear it.

Your penis is so strong
Your penis is so smooth
Your penis has got a rhythm
Your penis makes me groove
Your penis is a dream
The biggest one I've seen
It's oozy and it's green....EWWW

meet Hugh.....

2004-09-20T21:46:00.000-06:00

i will post more tomorrow, but here is my new pet!!

Hugh

happy birthday to me, im tweeennnttyy three!!

2004-09-14T08:31:00.000-06:00

Since it is my birthday today, I am working on a this is your life post, so look for that later today....and here it is.

FYI!!! This is going to be a long post…

Birth
Twenty three years ago at 4:09 p.m. the miracle of birth was happening once again. Yes in St, Luke’s Hospital in Sioux City, IA my mother was giving a painful natural birth to yours truly. It had started 14 hours earlier, with moms water breaking in the basement of my grandma’s house (were the rents were living at the time). I came into the world being strangled by my own umbilical cord (yes, I know…somebody loves me). The rents got to hold me, and then it was off to ICU to make sure I was breathing ok. Dad wanted to name me Donna (like my mom) and she said no, my grandpa suggested Dawn, and dad said he saw something on TV about Dawna, and mom went to high school with someone named Dawna, so there I was. And there we were one small happy family, Donnie (Don now a days), Donna, and Dawna (yea say that ten times real fast!).

On the Move
When I was 9 months I started to walk (before I started to crawl, yea that’s how I like to do things), after walking came running, which I would do when the rents and I would walk down to Uncle Johns (a record store, where apparently the jingling of change meant the regular masturbator was at it again…yea nice, I know). Every time we walked there I would run…then I would fall…on my face. There was a period of time were I had sores on my face from it all the time, by the time they would heal, it would happen again. But I guess anything worth doing is worth doing right!!

My Love for the Garbage Men
At the rip old age of about a year I threw my pacifier in the garbage, I didn’t need that old thing anymore (I was destined for great things)….then I caved and wanted it back. Mom would not give in, so I stood at the front door screaming at the garbage men to “BRING BACK MY GARBAGE!!!” (Yea I bet they don’t get that too often). Us being the rich family we were, I guess when I was bored one day dad cut out arm holes and a head hole in a diaper box (back then they came in big ass boxes, not bags) and I wore it around as a robot….those were the days. Lol, I also used a ten gallon bucket as a swimming pool.

Carol Anne Enters my Life
I don’t have much about age three, except that I got Carol Anne (she is sitting in the chair in this picture), my cabbage patch doll that I still have to this day, and yes, she still goes places with me. I mean I don’t carry her to the mall with me, but when I go out of town or something, she is with me. If there was a fire and I could only grab a few things she would pry be the first. 8-)

My Hy-Vee Experiences
When I was 4 my mom and grandma took my to Hy-Vee with them, well they were walking and talking, and I stopped in the isle while they kept going…when they got to the end of the isle, they noticed I wasn’t there and turned around….and there I stood at the other end of the isle with my hands on my hips….I yelled as loud as I could… “DON’T YOU KNOW THAT SOMEBODY COULD KIDNAP ME!?!?” Yea I was good at embarrassing people. My grandma did get me back though another time when we were eating at the Hy-Vee cafeteria and she spilled a big ass glass of freezing cold lemonade on my lap. I screamed a blood curdling scream so loud that the cooks came out thinking that someone got burned. I walked out of Hy-Vee looking like a Charmin commercial with 500 napkins stuffed in my pants.

Kindergarten
I went to kindergarten when I was and the teacher called me Jordache because that’s what my dress said. Here I met Sandy, who called me pretty girl…yea she flunked kindergarten and had to take it over…enough said. I had a birthday party and invited every girl in the class…22 in all; I thought it was great, the rents thought it was a nightmare I'm sure. Someone squished and killed one of my pet mice, Minnie or Mickey; I don’t remember which one…I learned to ride a bike this year and started going to Patti’s as well (my babysitter). I also got Buffy this year (full name Princess Buffy) my first and only dog. She was a tan Cocker Spaniel, and she was just a puppy.

Relocation
When I was in second grade we moved, and I Sandy re-entered my life. We lived right next door to her, so I became friends with her again. That lasted about a year or so, then we had a fight, and didn’t play as much. I also got into tee ball. The coaches’ kid, Beth, and I were a great combination as pitcher and 1st baseman. New Kids on the Block were my life… (I heart(ed) Jordan Knight!!). My bedroom walls were painted Pepto-Bismol Pink, and I had the bright pink bedspread and sheets, bright pink curtains, posters, bright pink phone…I had books, shirts, movies, and cassette tapes…everything you could think of. My parents took me to a concert in Minneapolis (I think) and it was an outdoor one…from what I remember we were so far back they looked like little ants, and people were being crushed under the stage, and the paramedics were all over the place rescuing people, lol.

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome
In 3 (I think) grade I fell down a big ass hole (no, not a big asshole, a big ass HOLE). Dad played softball, and they were building new lights for the fields, so they had big holes dug to stick them in. They had these big blue plastic covers that were on them, that were supposed to be held down with these metal poles, but the one by our field was not. My cousin betted me I wasn’t strong enough to lift up the blue thing, me not knowing what was under it was up for the challenge. So I lifted up the end of it, and looked back to say ‘see I told you I could do it’ when I slipped and fell in letting the lid close behind me….yea the whole was like 10-12 feet deep, which may not seem quite so big now, but when your only 3 feet tall, its never ending. I thought I was a goner! Luckily my dad had just looked over and was going to yell for me to put the lid down, so he saw me fall. The game was stopped, and they had to lower the tallest guy around down the hole by his feet to get me out. Yea dad was pissed cuz the thing wasn’t locked and we spent quite a while in the managers office of the complex. The next morning, mom found a tick sucking away at my head; the thing had grown to about the size of a dime over night. I think we got it out with a match, but I'm not for sure.

Middle School
Ok well let’s skip ahead a few years to get this ball a rollin’. In sixth grade Gunnar was born, one of the best years so far!! (see my website for more on him). I had my first boyfriend, Jacob Johnson. We were only boyfriend and girlfriend as school though, because he refused to talk to me on the phone, I don’t know why…I did hit him in the balls with a soccer ball in gym class really hard one day, and that was funny. We dated all year, didn’t talk all summer, and then I guess just both assumed that it was over when 7th grade started… yea strange I know. My next boyfriend was half way through 7th grade (Quintin, who died in a motorcycle accident a few months ago) we dated till high school.

High School
High school wasn’t too bad, played softball, basketball, volleyball, ran track for a year, and was a cheerleader for 3 years. Became really good friends with Jennifer, and became to hate some of my previous friends. The boyfriend situation is way too long and complicated, so I won’t go into that. I got my first job at Hardee’s, which was a pretty good time most of the time. Worked with some pretty good people that I really miss sometimes, like Marvin 8-(, as well as some skanky hoe’s that I wish I would have punched when I had the chance, I need not name names here, you know who you are. I bought my first car, the Plymouth Sundance. It was a 1990, red, and I loved it. Now it is pry dead somewhere, lol.

Ok so now I'm at the University of Iowa, and that’s all the updating I want to go to, this is too long, already, so I wont bore you with the last 5 years of my live, 18 is enough right!?!?

the power of christ compels you....

2004-09-10T17:29:00.000-06:00

Work is boring, and I find things to be annoying today….my shirt has a lot of wrinkles, I don’t want to go to class today. I am addicted to reading this girls EBS live journal. I have no idea who she is, and she is like 16, but I read it almost everyday. I don’t even remember how I found it…its kinda weird, but oh well. She is a cutter, and has 4-6 fuck buddies, that she is ‘in love’ with one day, and hates the next. In my opinion they are all fucking her over. Now she wants to be emancipated so that she can go to Florida and live with one of them, who is going to college and makes a lot of money and will take care of her. Hmm, yea we’ll see how that works out…

I watched Exorcist the Beginning today. It was alright, but the first one was still the best….I mean, the new one was different, it reminded me of the mummy….this archeologist guy that used to be a priest gets asked to go on this dig where a church was found underground, and is said to have this ancient artifact in it. So he goes, and there is this tribe of people there, and a few other Americans and strange things start happening. The church appears vandalized, and there is a possession, but it doesn’t actually come out until about 20 minutes before the end of the movie, the rest of it is storyline. Which wasn’t too bad, but I would have rathered there be more time with the possessed person. I mean there was no green vomit, no spinning heads, and no one banging them self with a crucifix. The closest thing to it was some mad guy that carved a Nazi sign on his chest and then slit his own throat, which by all means was cool….but it still didn’t top the original.

I also got to watch the must see TV. Thursday night, it just wasn’t the same without Friends, but Joey was pretty good. Better than I thought it was going to be. I absolutely cannot wait for ER to start, just 2 more weeks!! (On a side note, Carter is most likely leaving the show after this season….8-( he is the only original doctor left on the show, and it will suck to see him go). In place of ER (for the next two weeks) was Medical Investigations, which I will admit was pretty good, its about people that have to figure out rare medical cases, for example the one last night had people turning blue and dying….come to find out there was some bad food products that a restaurant was serving, and all the people that sat at a certain table came down with it. I know it doesn’t sound that great, but it wasn’t too bad.

Not much else going on, I need to do the dishes, and vacuum my apartment….I want to wash my car but don’t want to spend money on it, and the fish bowl is really foggy (I feel sorry for the fish)….I wish I would have ordered my playboy shoes I wanted, but didn’t think I could afford it. My Qwest bill finally came and was for two months, and my back is peeling 8-(. On a lighter note, my birthday is Tuesday…23….not too exciting. I guess that’s it for now….

so i am not doing a 'movie' quote today, but this episode was on last night, and its one of the best, so yea....there ya have it.

You don’t know my name do you?
~Of course I know your name.
What is it?
~It ahh rhymes with a female body part…
What is it?
~Mulva?..........Gipple?..........Loliola?....................................Oh!! Ohhh!! DOLORES!!!!

happy Labor Day weekend...

2004-09-07T12:28:00.000-06:00

So I went to Spirit Lake this weekend, man am I sunburned…o well. I am never going camping again though, every time I go there are horrible storms….ok so those of you that don’t know, I am scared to death of tornados, I was traumatized as a child, and now it’s a phobia of mine. So yea we went out on my grandpas’ boat Sunday, and it starts raining…rain I can deal with, but we get back to camp, and people are saying that a tornado touched down in Lake Park which I guess is like 8 miles away, and that the storms are heading our way. So we pack up some stuff, and try to get everything put away in the tents so that if something does come through its just suit cases flying around rather than clothes, and we head to Wal-Mart. As we are leaving, the DNR (the camp ground authorities or whatever you call them), come pulling in with their lights flashing telling everyone to get off the lake and to get out of there. (Yea, Dawna is panicking now). So we get to Wal-Mart and I’m feeling a little safer, when they come on the intercom and are like ‘Code black! Code black! Everyone needs to get to the center of the store! There are severe storms heading our way! Code black!’ (Yea, Dawna is panicking again) It didn’t help that the assistant manager (who was like 4 feet tall) was running around frantically telling people to… ‘call so-&-so and have them contact him ASAP, and get everyone in the middle, and keep people calm, and get to the office and secure this stuff, and blah, blah, blah.’ So yea there wasn’t a tornado, but I still am not going camping anymore, cuz this happens every time, and I’m not exaggerating, every single time. Its horse-shit.

So mom and I were sitting at the table when she informs me that she needs to fart…so I told her to fart then, and she said ‘no, I don’t want it to be loud and the people next to us to hear it.’ So a few minutes later we go to the bathroom….there are three stalls, I went in the first one and mom in the second one. Im in the stall doing my thing and I hear this loud, wet fart, so I go ‘Niiiice’ (at a slightly louder than ‘normal talk’ level) and started laughing. Then mom started laughing, and kicking her foot under the stall. So we get done and we walk out of the bathroom still laughing our asses off when mom says…

MOM: I can’t believe you said that!!
ME: (still laughing my ass off) Why not?
MOM: that lady was pry so embarrassed! She barely made it to the toilet…
ME: What?!? That wasn’t you?!?
MOM: (laughing even harder now) NO!! Didn’t you hear the lady come running in there and slamming the door shut twice cuz it didn’t shut the first time, then like a second later it was like (*gross farting noise). She pry barely made the toilet!
ME: OMG!! I thought it was you! You just told me you needed to fart! So I figured it was you!!
MOM: No!!!

We just both started laughing hysterically…so yea we ran back to camp so the lady didn’t see who it was that said it, and we laughed our asses off for the next hour or so… it was so funny!!

So yea, the rest of the weekend was ok, lots of frog catching, and playing cards, and sun of course. Well I guess that’s all for now.

So you’re from Africa right, then why are you white?
Oh my god Karen…you can’t just go around asking people why they’re white!

Back to school, back to school, to prove to dad that im not a fool...

2004-08-26T10:56:00.000-06:00

Man I haven’t posted in a while, not because I’ve been busy, but mostly because I have been lazy…it always happens when school starts. So I went home last weekend, surprised everyone since they thought I was working all weekend. I got in about 1130 or so, Gunnar was asleep on the love seat, in the living room. Since the futon in the basement finally broke, I slept on the couch in the living room. I woke up at about 800 with Gunnar standing next to the couch about 6 inches away from my face. The second my eyes opened enough to see, he jumped on me and gave me a hug. He was pretty happy to see me, like he always is. So we went and jumped on the trampoline about ten minutes after I woke up, then had McDonalds for breakfast. My godson’s birthday party was that afternoon so I got to go to that, he is such a cutie!

Not too much else went on, just spending time with the family. Got an ice cream cake for dad’s birthday, jumped on the trampoline a lot more, had some Navarette’s, and went to see the Village again. I got some school stuff from staples, and a few other little things I needed. We left Sioux City about 830 Sunday, which got us back to Iowa City about 2:00 in the morning. Yea that was real fun let me tell yea, especially having to work at 8:00 and then go to classes from 10:55-1:20, then again from 6:30-900. Yea it was a pain in the ass to stay awake in my night class.

So I have been to all of my classes, they seem alright. I am not sure if im looking forward to the capstone course, i have a feeling that the class is just gonna be boring, and full of stuff I don’t want to do. We are setting up our portfolios, so I have to revise a paper that I wrote last year, and I have to come up with a mission statement paper, and listen to a bunch of speakers telling me what I can do with a sociology major. Which will pry be boring people talking about how they love sociological theories, and all that crap about Weber, Durkheim, Marx, and blah, blah, blah. Seriously every class I take talks about these people over and over!! I mean I understand they have a lot of theories, that were the basis of stuff today, but I mean I feel like I could have just learned all this stuff in one class, and now I am ready to move on to some others. Not that I will ever need to use any of this stuff anyways.

Web Search Engines. Wow, what an easy class, its no wonder why it has a waiting list. Seriously, we do searches on the web. That’s all. Assignment 1 was to use three different searches on three different engines, and compare the results, to see if they are the same or different, and which gave the best. Luckily it is actually a graded class! Not like most of the 1 hour classes that are pass/fail. So it should be an easy A! YAY! You can never have enough of those!

Political sociology is going to be a boring class that I care nothing about, but the professor seems like an ok guy, he reminds me of Mr. Miyagi! You know an older really smart Asian guy that seem serious, but always comes out with that quiet smart-ass sense of humor. Social inequality should be an alright class as well, other than the fact that it’s a night class that is. It shouldn’t bee too bad though, he said he never lectures the whole time, there will always be a movie, or a group activity to take up some of the time, so that should keep me awake and somewhat attentive.

I got a beta fish last night, it is blue of course. I haven’t figured out what to name it yet, so I will update that later. It seems to be happy swimming around in circles in a bowl that is three times the size the one the pet store had it in. it is still a little scared when I walk over to look at it, but it is already starting to get used to me. I bought some of these big plastic rock looking things to go in the bottom cuz I didn’t want a five pound bag of regular rocks, but I cant decide if I like them, they are not very heavy, so if the fish swims to close to the bottom, they move around a little. I don’t know, I might get rid of them.

Work has been alright, boring at times, and busy as hell others. Um, I got most of my books so far, I need two more, and after those I should have spent about $140 bucks on them this year. By far the cheapest year yet, and there was only one book that I already had, but it was just a $16 book, so I still would have ended up with a pretty good total for books. This is nice, cuz that’s another $200-300 that I wouldn’t have had to come up with.

Well I guess that’s it for now, I know I know, too much excitement for one day huh?

Ease up on the steroids, the juice will make the jewels shrivel like sun dried tomatoes...

it's what my taste-buds like....

2004-08-19T18:06:00.000-06:00

Ho hum, I am bored at work today, I am on walk-in this morning, and it has been pretty dead. I finally did the dishes last night, almost every dish I had was dirty, because I had been putting it off. The last couple of days I have been washing just a few dishes so that I could just turn around and use them to eat a meal. Yea it sucked, but doing the dishes is one of the worst things to me. It always has been. Even when I was little, and I would help my mom clean, she would always ask if I wanted to do the dishes or clean the bathroom, and I always chose the bathroom. I didn’t mind cleaning the stinky toilet or a grimy bathtub, as long as I didn’t have to do the dishes. Maybe that was my life calling, maybe I should forget about this college thing and become a janitor, lol. Or maybe I could graduate and become a professional janitor. I’m sure whoever cleans J-Lo’s toilet makes a hell of a lot more money than I do….so yeah.

I had polish sausages for dinner last night, I would have liked to have had them on a bun, but I didn’t feel like running to the store, so I just ate them with a fork, which is what I do 90% of the time anyways. I managed to not set the smoke alarm off which was a good thing. The last few times I have cooked I have set it off cuz I forget to turn on the vent/fan above the stove. I wish I wasn’t such a picky eater, cuz I really get sick of having the same 5-6 meals all the time.

This is what my meals consists of:
~Spaghetti
~Tacos
~Goulash
~Pizza
~Polish sausage
~Chicken Sticks/Strips/Patties (which I deep fry and they all taste the same they are just different forms)
~Chicken Pot Pies
~Chili

Those are the meals I have when I feel like cooking. If I don’t feel like cooking then it is Ramon Noodles, cereal or a sandwich. Every once in a while I will get a piece of steak or some pork chops, but that is maybe once a month at the most. I have looked for various recipes and stuff, but when you don’t like most of the common foods, it is hard to find some good food. I mean I don’t like onions, mayonnaise, mushrooms, peppers, shrimp, BBQ sauce/seasoning, bananas, cake, Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese/Korean/etc. food, shrimp, sour cream, cream cheese, bagels, nuts (almonds, pecans, cashews, etc), beans (I make my chili without them unless someone else will be eating it as well), anything other than steak cooked on the grill, fish (unless it’s a stick or from McDonalds), hamburger (unless it’s from McDonalds, don’t ask me why), bananas, cake (unless its an ice-cream cake) and that’s just the things I can think of right now. Then I have my weird food (dis)likings, for example: I like oranges but not orange juice, apples but not apple juice, peanut butter Capt. Crunch but not peanut butter or peanuts, raspberry yogurt but not raspberries, strawberries but not strawberry juice, sliced black olives but now whole ones, carrot cake but not carrots or cake for that matter! I dunno, it’s just kinda weird.

On another note I am definitely gonna be Bryan’s record of 49 seconds in the great, HawkID Password Reset Challenge 2004....Bring it on!

You better bring it....Oh, it's already been brought-en.

Heed the warning bell for they are coming….

2004-08-17T11:44:00.000-06:00

You have 5 un-played messages….those are the words I heard at least 4 if not 5 times yesterday, believe me, it’s not the best thing in the world to hear. I did however answer more voicemails yesterday than I have the whole time I have worked here. Great accomplishment or pain in the ass? I’ll let you decide. So I came in at 8 this morning and checked the voicemail and what did I hear on the other end of the phone? None other than…. you have 5 un-played messages. It’s going to be a great day, lol. It always seems that the largest amount of voicemails seem to come while you are only on the phone for like 2 minutes, but when you get a 10-15 minute phone call then there is maybe one voicemail, I just don’t get it. Why does everyone have to call at once? Its like they all get together and see who can be caller number 9 as if there is a great prize awaiting them….but hey what can you do?

So I went to see The Village last night. Let me just say that I thought it was awesome, and recommend it to you all. It’s an M. Night Shyamalan film; his other big flicks are the Sixth Sense and Signs. I really enjoy his movies, they are not the average scary movie, but more so they make you jump in your seat, and scare you not in that horror movie killer type way, but they actually give you the creeps, and have you looking over your shoulder while you’re sitting home alone. The Village stars Joaquin Phoenix (who played Merrill in Signs) as a quiet villager (Lucius). Bryce Dallas Howard in her debut role as Lucius’ love interest (Ivy) who is blind. Adrien Brody who does a great job as a villager (Noah) that has some sort of mental disorder. It also stars Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt and Brendan Gleeson in supporting roles.

So the plot is basically this group of people lives in a very small village that is surrounded by woods. It’s an old village, which doesn’t have electricity or anything. No one in the village is allowed into the woods because “those we do not speak of” live there. They have an understanding that the villagers do not cross their boarder, and those in the woods will not cross the villages boarder. The color red is also not allowed because it attracts those in the woods. Things change when a group of children find a dead animal that has had its neck broken and its fur removed. It is one of those movies, where just when you think you figured out what will happen next, you’re taken by complete surprise, and the story moves in a different direction. So overall, I think it was a great movie, and everyone should go see it. So go……right now…….what are you waiting for?

Ivy, try your very best not to scream... This color attracts Those We Don't Speak Of. We must bury it.

Remember: You can't have sex and live...you can't drink booze and live...the killer can only be killed by a virgin...

2004-08-13T08:59:00.000-06:00

Yay! Its Friday….this week seemed soooo long! So another Friday the 13th is here! I wish I had cable so that I could watch the Friday 13th marathon that I'm sure is on some channel. When I was little I would go to my grandma's house every Friday the 13th and watch it with her, so I still like to watch them now. Since it was such an occasion in regards to my post title, I decided to remind everyone the three basic rules to surviving a horror movie, just incase anyone should need them this weekend. I am ready for the weekend, cant wait to sleep in; I am really tired this week.

I have had some real winners on the phone today. I had to tell someone 6 times that they could not use their z-account (which I assumed is like a pay pal account) to purchase a pc from us. Apparently they felt that they could change my response by telling me that their ‘dad said if they used their z-account it would be tax free’ and that ‘it is not for them but for their student organization.’ (Yea cuz my dad likes to give me advice on why I should use my own account to make purchases for my student organization as well) Then she asked for the phone number to the helpdesk, and said she would look at the pc’s some more. Not 10 minutes later she called back, (I assume hoping to get someone else, but getting me yet again) asking the same question….dumbass.

I have really not been in a cooking mood lately, so I had one of those instant chicken flavored rice packages for dinner last night. I also got to watch Studio 7 last night. That’s another show I am really getting into. Its kind of like Jeopardy meets Survivor meets the Weakest Link. *Side note: I forgot to put my sweatshirt back in my backpack after washing it, and I just realized I am freezing.* There are seven people that each have a ring. They each have to answer questions one at a time. (The questions are about things that have happened in the last few years, each round the events get more current. They are political questions, music questions, book questions, etc. pretty much everything.) If they do not know the answer they can give away their ring and ask someone else for help. Once two people miss a question then everyone else votes one of them off. It does this until it gets down to three people, then the next round, is usually a memorization test. (The show lasts like 3 days or whatever, so they get the topic for this and study for it) The last one I watched was a super bowl thing. They had to say in this order: A) the number of the super bowl B) the year of the super bowl C) the winning team (full name) and their score D) the losing team (full name) and their score. They had to start at the first super bowl, and go as far as they could with out making a mistake, the two that go the farthest move on. Then the last round they have to answer seven questions as fast as they can, they can pass if they don’t know the answer. Who ever answers 7 questions correctly the fastest wins. The one I watched was pretty good; it was so close they had to go to a ‘photo finish’ and the guy one by like 1/4th of a second.

I also I went to Mike’s last night to do laundry since my apartments don’t have laundry. Got most of it done….I washed my USB memory key. I don’t know how it got in there, I checked all my pockets before I put them in the washer, but when I took the clothes out of the washer, and there it was. Sitting at the bottom all alone….I just stood there and stared at it sitting in the bottom of the empty washing machine like a young child stares at their hamster that just died because they squeezed it too tight. (or would that be squooze it too tight? Nope, it’s squeezed….according to word anyways, and I’m pretty sure I agree lol.) I wasn’t sure, but I really didn’t think running it through the washing machine was good for it…I had never spoken to anyone that had washed one before, so I didn’t know if they still worked after that…but it musta been my lucky day cuz I ran back to the room and plugged it in and it worked! Which is great!

While doing the laundry, Mike and I watched Monsters Inc. the little girl in that show is sooo cute, running around saying ‘kitty’ all the time. I should really buy that movie. We also watched the Full Monty….that show is great; I recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it. I also got to read my Cosmopolitan style special edition, which is great since I make sure to only wear the latest styles….okay, I don’t, but I still like to read about them, lol. Hmm, that’s bout all that happened yesterday….

….He's fat, you're thin, and you're both fucking ugly…. Anti-wrinkle cream there may be, but anti-fat-bastard cream there is not….

I feel like an idiot. But I am an idiot, so it kinda works out....

2004-08-12T14:30:00.000-06:00

Well I finally got the pics of my apartment on my website. Check them out! Turns out my website has been working the whole time, and I am just a dumbass….had I just right clicked and chose ‘login as’ I could have used it. I guess I got so used to it just asking me to log in, I assumed it was broke….yes I know I now feel like useless piece of shit. Okay, not really, but it sounded good at the time. But hey, nobody is perfect….yet. So I realized that the pics are really crappy quality, I pry should have used Photoshop on them a little to make them more presentable, but I really didn’t feel like it, maybe had there only been 3 or 4 pictures, but there are more, so oh well. I am also going to post the picture of out bums home, but for some reason I don’t have that one scanned yet. Yes I said the bums’ house, there is a bum that resides in the bushes by the parking lot…on the bright side, he is a wealthy bum. He has short hair, and shaves…he also has nice tennis shoes, and a CD player with head phones. I guess he is one of the luckier ones. Apparently the more wealthy ones live in bushes, and the less wealthy ones live in parking ramps downtown. It seems a little mean, but sometimes I just want to through a scrap of food off the balcony to see if he will come out of the bushes, lol. Don’t worry though; I am restraining myself from doing that.

I should also say thanx to Rich from work for taking over the piece of shit win95 laptop I was working on today so that I could go to lunch on time. It seemed like it was really going to be a pain in the ass, so hopefully it wasn’t too bad, thanx Rich!! Speaking of work, if anyone needs any desktop file organizers, just ask Jason and Robert, because they are hoarding the free ones that were on the table outside work today, hehe. It was quite funny to watch both of them go back for a second helping of them. Not too much else going on at work, Chris tried to explain to me the point to D&D. Yea I still don’t think I get it….

So I really can’t stand the girls that call in to the helpdesk acting and sounding like they are completely helpless. I mean I understand that not everyone understands computers, and I can deal with that. But the girls that act like the world is going to come crashing down if they break a nail. They call in needing a password reset, and you ask them for information and they squeak out these answers that sound like they are coming from an eight year old. You just want to ask them if they are old enough to write down the password, or if I should tell it to their parents instead just in case. Maybe I am still just being bitter about the ex-roommates still having their heads up their rents asses still….I wonder how they breathe up there. I don’t know I guess I’m just in a mood about it lately.

Hmm, not too much going on right now, I talked to Jim last night for quite a while, I hadn’t heard from him in a while so it was nice to hear from him. I also watched a little more of the Osbourne's first season last night, I really need to get the second season of that. Especially now that I can’t watch them on TV anymore, as you can tell from the apartment pictures, I don’t have cable, I use bunny ears instead. And that just rocks my socks….yea….no it doesn’t, but it is free, so I don’t complain too much.

I had Taco John’s for lunch today. I normally go home for lunch, but I decided that I didn’t feel like cooking anything so I went out. I haven’t had Taco John’s in quite awhile, so it was nice to have something different. Hmm, I guess that’s all for now, maybe I will write some more later….

I have decided to link to the movies that i quote from now on, I guess that is just an FYI....

I need this like I need another tail.

I met this lawyer, we went out to dinner, I had the lobster bisque, we went back to my place, yada yada yada, I never heard from him again....

2004-08-11T15:21:00.000-06:00

Holy shit is work boring today. The morning went really fast since I helped one person for almost two hours, and my lunch was at 1130. Luckily he was a nice guy that seemed to know a thing or two. He was trying to get all of his email accounts set up to go to outlook, since he was trying to juggle 3-4 of them at a time. Unfortunately I was only able to help him with the Iowa one, as I could not find the exchange server names for his army email accounts. But hey what can you do? I also have had several calls about the Qwest DSL not allowing you to use outlook with any email accounts other than the one Qwest gives. I did now know however that there were two different packages you could buy, one that came with an email address, and one that did not. So basically any one who gets the cheaper package cannot use outlook. What a fuckin rip off, I have had my DSL services for two years now. It started out as msn broadband, but the recently just switched me over to Qwest DSL. I am not sure why. My outlook has worked fine in the past, and I am going to have to try it tonight when I get home to see if it still works (I have not used that email address in quite a while), if not that sucks ass, and they will be getting a call from me, not that it will do anything or anything.

Hmm, what else? My air conditioner is still not fixed, and I keep forgetting to call them back to see when they are going to fix it, since it had been almost 2 weeks. I was going to call them this morning, since mike didn’t work till noon he could have gone over there if someone has to be there, but of course I go busy with phone calls and walk-in, and didn’t get a chance to call them. They are also going to have to look at my toilet, again. I had to call the emergency maintenance this weekend because it would not flush, they came and jammed this big pole thing in there and cranked it in some more after that, and then it worked. Now it only flushes if it feels like it, sometimes I have to flush 2-4 times before it cooperates. I feel like I am living in a King of the Hill episode. If only there were a way to get all the heritage people locked in my apartment after eating a shit load of beans and have them suffer the ungodly effects of a broken air conditioner and toilet, maybe then the repairs would be done.

So I don’t quite understand the people that come into the helpdesk here to check their emails, I mean is it that hard to walk an extra 20 feet and log into a computer? Even if they are going to be ‘just a few minutes.’ I mean I personally would rather take a load off while I checked my email, rather than stand at the counter. But whatever.

Hmm, not much else to write about, I am still extremely BORED!!!! Two more hours left then I get to go home, I feel like I have been here for 15 hours already. I missed the second half of trading spouses, last night. Apparently it is on at 7:00 the second day rather than 8:00 like the first night. What a crock of crap! I am going to have to start taping it. Oh well, I can deal with it I suppose. I can’t wait for all the fall programs to start, Yay for ER and NYPD Blue!!

So this post really has no point and I have chosen to bounce from one useless topic to the next. Speaking of geckos, Wiener finally ate her dead, frozen, baby, almost hairless, mouse. She seemed to enjoy it, and just kinda sat there not moving for about 10 minutes afterwards, I am assuming because she felt so full not ever having eaten anything so big. My website is still not working, which sucks major ass….I told my mom that I wanted bluex232.com for my birthday. So hopefully in the next month or so I will have that and it will be nice.

Alright, I have rambled enough for today. Oh yea, I made a haiku for chris' website a few days ago if you would like to read it check out theChris and click on Help Desk Haikus. I figured I would give anyone who wants something else to read an idea. Yea I know you could care less, lol.

…..You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?

another weekend come and gone....

2004-08-11T08:13:00.000-06:00

Well the last few days have been pretty uneventful. No big surprise there. I finally got everything unpacked, my feet were killing me. I bet I would at least five miles around my little apartment putting everything away and cleaning. I felt like my mother, she is a big cleaner….my mom cleaned my room for me my whole life, even in high school. This in turned caused me to be a slob however, because I used to just throw everything around, and mom would clean it up. I mean I would help her, but she would do most of the work. Anywayz, enough about that, I took pictures of the apartment (I have them with me if anyone really wants to see them), so people could see them, I will post them on my website as soon as I figure out why I cant get to the ftp site to edit it. I guess I should say as soon as my dad finds out, since he is going to contact his ISP to find out what is up. The apartment looks pretty good though I think, it’s nice to not have everything be cramped and actually be able to find a place to put everything. I wouldn’t mind having some shelves on the wall that I could put my black light stuff on. Right now it is just sitting in a box because I don’t have room to put it anywhere.

I also talked to Jennifer a ton this weekend, (her last name is Lake, and I started calling her Jenefler Cheverlake after a while, so I if I start referring to her as that you will now know what I am talking about). Jennifer is my best friend from high school. We did everything together, and I hadn’t talked to her in a few weeks. She recently moved to Arizona to be with this guy Todd. Wait let me back up a little farther. About a year and a half ago, the two of them got an apartment together in Sioux City. For some reason Todd’s mom stopped liking Jennifer, and after a few months, Todd one day out of the blue with no warning had his family there to help him move out. Jennifer had no idea he was even thinking of moving out. He really didn’t have a reason either. So they have been talking to each other on and off since then. I guess they have really been getting along lately, and so in May she decided that she was going to move to Arizona to be with him (he had been there about 4 months). So she moved down there and was living with Todd and his friend Quintin (a high school friend and my 8th grade boyfriend). A couple of months ago Quintin was in a motor cycle accident and died, so it is just Jennifer and Todd now. So anyways, at the funeral (back in Sioux City), a girl named Leah started talking to Todd, now Todd says he had been friends with her for a long time, even though when some one asked him what her name was he said Sara. Ok, so normally there would not be an issue if this was any other girl, but she was one of those girls with the skanky rep. So Jennifer had been asking Todd if he was talking to her when they got back to Arizona, he said no. Well come to find out, he had been talking to her the whole time and lying about it, when had he just told Jennifer he was talking to her there would not have been such an issue, but no that would be to easy. So then he started hiding his cell phone so that Jennifer could look through the recent call lists, not that she ever did that anyways, but whatever. So this caused lots of fighting and stuff, then it turns out one of Todd’s friends was coming for a visit from Sioux City, and at the last minute who decided to come with him? Well Leah of course. So yea, they are broken up now (Jennifer and Todd) and Jennifer has found a place to live.

So long story not so short, the point of this was that her apartment is a two bedroom, so I am thinking about possibly going there to do the police academy thing in January or February. I was also looking and found out that ASU has a Criminal Justice graduate program, so I might go there for two years, I figured if nothing else I could do the police academy thing, become an officer and do that for two years while I go to grad school, then get into the crime scene stuff, I am not completely sure yet though. Dad is jealous of course, cuz he has been wanting to move to Arizona for a couple of years now, but mom doesn’t want to with me being in Iowa still, cuz she will never get to see me (*tear). But she informed me that if I was to move there she would not have a problem moving there. No previously she had told my dad that if he found a job there where she wouldn’t have to work, then she would be willing to move there, I wonder if this stigma still applies, or not. If I were her I would stick to it, she has a job now, but if I had the opportunity to not work and live someplace warm, I would take it pry.

Hmm what else….I watched misery last night. I also watched another episode of trading spouses. I really enjoy that show. I hate the fact that it is in two parts, two days in a row. I could handle it if it was every Monday, but it is Monday and Tuesday. I always tend to forget bout it on Tuesdays, and then I miss the best part. I made a note on my fry erase board so I will remember tonight, 8- )

I also watched Fahrenheit 9/11 yesterday. It wasn’t too bad, talked bout lots of stuff I didn’t know happened. I really should pay more attention to what goes on in the world, but I really think it is all boring, I mean I know I should vote, and have an opinion on who is the next president, but I really have no interest. I mean I try to pay attention and watch the news and read the paper, but I just get bored with it, I dunno why. Someday I will pry get into it but for now, honestly I really don’t care.

….At the feed store do I say, "Oh, now Wally, give me a bag of that F-in' pig feed, and a pound of that bitchly cow corn"? At the bank do I say, "Oh, Mrs. Malenger, here is one big bastard of a check, now give me some of your Christ-ing money!"

FINALLY, FINALLY, Finally, somebody gets it.....

2004-08-06T11:51:00.000-06:00

just wanted to post again today cuz i just got the best call....

ME: IT Helpdesk
HIM: Hi, I have a problem....
ME: Okay, whats going on?
Him: Well, I have an Apple Powerbook.....oh, I just figured it out! Thanx a lot!!

....apparently the customer knew he had a problem, but couldnt figure it out...I guess just stating out loud that he had a MAC made him realize what his problem was, hehehehehe.

Death becomes you.....

2004-08-06T08:32:00.000-06:00

So I went to the pet store last night and decided that I would try a couple of pinkies to see if the geckos would eat them. They come frozen in a zip lock bag, and are actually a little cute; they are really small and have little tiny whiskers. So I let them thaw out a little, and then the hunt was on. I fed one to Mike’s gecko first (dont ask me why I have Mike's gecko at my house, cuz I don't know either). I dropped him in the cage. The gecko looked over at the pinkie and slowly started moving in, with its tail raised slowing moving back and forth (they do this to distract the prey so they can sneak up on it better). So it got next to it, and it kinda licked it a couple of times, then looked at me like ‘is it ok to eat this sucker’ then looked back at the mouse and snapped. The poor little helpless frozen baby mouse was down in about two chomps. It was awesome. Weiner on the other hand would not eat the mouse. So I am going to try to get him to eat him later today, he will have to get hungry eventually. Mmmwwwwwhhhaaaaaaaaaaa!

I also finally got some more Manhunt in. Man it is awesome, I mean of course I love blood and guts, so that pry has something to do with why I like it. So the object of the game is still not quite clear to me. I mean you have an earpiece through which some unknown guy talks to you and directs you as to where to go; meanwhile he is making a movie of you killing all these people. I am assuming right now that the object is to make this guy a good killing movie, and eventually the guy will get you to a point where you can escape to somewhere else where you aren’t being hunted. The best way to go about the game is to sneak up behind people and execute them making as little of noise as possible. Each weapon kills them in a different manner, and depending on how long you can stand behind them with out them noticing the more violent the death is. For example, the baseball bat, if you stand behind someone for just a second, you just kinda hit the guy on the head. If you stand behind him for about 10 seconds, you will first choke the guy with the bat, till he falls to his knees, and then whack him in the head so hard the head just explodes and brains go flying everywhere. It’s awesome, lol. The knife is pretty cool too, the less violent attack is stabbing them in the stomach, and the violent attack is stabbing them in the back of the head, then whipping them around and stabbing them three times in the face. With the larger knife you actually cut off the guys head, and then you can pick the head up and throw it at other guys, lol. It’s pretty funny. The game is actually somewhat difficult, the guys actually fight you back if you can't execute them, and it doesn’t take just two hits to kill them, you actually have to hit the guys 10 to 12 times to kill them, and they hit you back as well.

So the unpacking is really moving along now, I decided last night to really start unpacking the stuff that I didn’t want to unpack. Got all the books taken care of, and organized the pantry/bathroom closet area so that I could fit some more stuff in there. I decided that it would now be the pantry/bathroom closet/desk drawer. Since I don’t have a desk anymore I needed someplace to put my paper, and other crap that was the desk at the old apartment. I got the bathroom pictures hung up, my Eminem poster and calendar hung up, more ceiling stars (cuz you can never have enough, hehe), cleared out all but three small boxes, and got the new stools that I bought set up. Hopefully I should be able to finish up tonight.

I am still getting used to this no cable thing, having cable last year really makes not having cable this year worse, but I am dealing with it. I do get to watch Roseanne once a day still, surprisingly it is on one of the channels I get, and I get 7^th Heaven once a week (yes I know it’s a gay show, but I just can’t get enough of it!). Those were the shows that I watched most, so at least I still get a little bit of them. With cable I could watch up to three episodes of each a day depending on what times I was at home. I am also getting into the show Quintuplets. I think it is new this year, but it’s pretty good. Its about teenage quintuplets, and their parents who are trying to get their life back after spending the last 15 years just raising the kids, and the neighbor who (and I’m not quite sure what the situation is) but there are like two hot wives and one guy, who are always in the hot tub naked. It’s a pretty funny show. I hate how much That 70’s Show is on. I really can’t stand that show, and it is on all the time. I have tried to get into it, but I just can’t do it. Oh well I guess. I suppose that’s all for now.

Are you here for the Feeding? It's not 'till tomorrow. You should come back - it'll be a bloodbath……
……..UNLEASH THE FURY!!!

must..KILL...construction...workers! they deserve a slow & painful death!

2004-08-04T11:36:00.000-06:00

Oh…my…GOD!!!! The noise! I can’t take the noise anymore. They are doing construction on the sidewalks out side of work, and omg the noise in our office is horrific!! They might as well be jack hammering right in our office! Walk in especially sucks because you have to yell at the damn customers for them to hear you! Now I admit it is nice to yell at some customers, but doing it all day long just ruins the fun of it, and of course today is the one day that I am actually on walk in ALL DAY LONG!! At least with the phone calls you can turn the volume up in the ear piece and talk really close to the phone to hear and be heard. I can’t wait for my lunch break which is at 11:30 I think. Wait let me pause to enjoy this moment of silence. The noise has stopped momentarily, and it is GGGGREAA……damn it its back, not that I expected it to really be over, but you know that you always have that small little piece of hope deep down inside. You try not to get your hopes up but you cant help it, you try not to think good thoughts because you don’t want to jinx it, but you always do…..(the noise has stopped once again for now). I really can’t wait for today to be over. Well at least the work part of it, oh wait now it is just teasing us with short little bursts of noise….noise……noise…..noise….and now its back full blown. >8=3 ( (notice the angry eyebrows and flared nostrils…and no Chris there are no BOOBIES!!). I can tell that we are not the only office having this issue for when the noise down here stops for a moment I can hear more noise in the distance….ohh Yay a phone call….hold on…………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………ok well that was fun, email question, on a lighter note, the noise had stopped for its longest period yet! HURRAY!!! YIPPEEEEE!! YEE HAA!! UH HUH… UH HUH… UH HUH, UH HUH, UH HUH!! Ok enough of that. Speaking of phone calls, I got one today from a guy who said….”I was just looking up my hawk-id information, and it said I was in the Iowa domain and I needed to call this number.” So I asked him if he needed the hawk-id and he said “no, it I have it but it said that students in the Iowa domain had to call this number. I figured it was a required thing.” So overall the guy needed nothing from me and I told him that if he had a problem with something then he would have to call this number…. It was quite interesting and he was quite embarrassed, lol.

Yesterday was a pretty uneventful day as most of my days tend to be. Worked and went home hoping to find my air conditioner working, which it was not. God trying to sleep in a 90 degree apartment sucks major ass!! But I am dealing with it; thankfully I have an ice pack to cuddle with. My dinners are consisting of all cold foods so that I don’t have to heat the apartment even more with the oven or stove. (Update, still no noise!! My hopes of it being over with are really getting high now even though I know it will start again. One of the workers must have had to relieve them selves or something). I finally played my Manhunt game last night; I got it at the Mall of America, but hadn’t played it yet. It is a pretty good game so far. Grant-it I have only played the first level, but you are an inmate that was sentenced to death. The world thinks you died at the scheduled time; however you lived, and wake up on the metal table you supposedly died on. You have to go around the city, sneaking up on people and killing them, I have so far come across plastic bags to suffocate people with and glass shards to stab people with. It is somewhat violent, and from what I remember, the creators were asked to tone it down before it was released. I would like to see the even more violent version. The guy at the store where we bought it told my parents that it was “rated M, and a pretty violent and extreme game” when my little brother put in on the counter. He reluctantly sold it to use when my mother told him that that game was for me not Gunnar. Apparently he wasn’t sure if I could handle it either….mmm hmm.

I still have 5 or six boxes that need unpacking; I am really putting it off. I am using the excuse that I don’t have a hammer and nails yet, (and the noise starts yet again…kill me now PLEASE!!) even though very little of the stuff I have left to put away needs either. Oh well though, I like to unpack the wall/ceiling stuff (like those glow in the dark planets and stars) and electronic stuff first, and then all the other crap (like books, school stuff, desk stuff, shoes, yada yada….) last. I guess that’s just the way I do things, either that or I am just being lazy, you can decide for yourself if you want to. I for one think it works out nicely however others have told me that I am doing it wrong….

My cold is going away some, I am averaging only a half a box of Kleenex (or half a roll of toilet paper today) a day rather than a full one. My sore throat is pretty much gone as well. The throat spray stuff that my mom got for me was about nasty. It was supposed to taste like cherry; I thought it tasted like sucking on a band-aid. I mean I don’t eat cherries often at all (and no I don’t mean it that way for all of you dirty minded people out there) but last time I checked they don’t taste like band-aids. It was also quite a task to not numb your tongue in the process of using the spray, you had to open your mouth, stick the spray nozzle as close to the back of your throat as possible. I still sprayed my tongue 98 % of the time.

Well yea I suppose that’s enough for now.

so today i wont quote a movie, but Seinfeld rather.....

Ah, could you do me a favor? Will you shut up?!?

L'Etoile du Nord

2004-08-02T10:11:00.000-06:00

So this post will pry be my longest yet since I have a lot to say about the past 6 days that I have not had access to my blog. I will just section it out in days….

WEDNESDAY: Wednesday I woke up at about 5:30. I made a couple of CD’s for the car ride, and headed out at about 7:00. The drive wasn’t too bad, it went by pretty fast, and I listened to the Kiss greatest hits CD. I remembered how much I really like their songs. There were several songs that I used to love when I was younger but had since forgotten about them. On another music note, I can’t get enough Hoobastank. I have always liked ‘the Reason’ but I am in love with that song now. Ok back to the drive, I was extra excited to see the 70mph sign on 35 once I hit Minnesota. It made it even better that my parents were stuck on some small little road going 55. hehe. I went the wrong way just before I reached my destination. My directions said to stay straight onto 169 N. I stayed straight, but was in the right lane when I should have been in the left lane or something and ended up on 169 S. I ended up just meeting the rents @ Valleyfair and went to the hotel from there.

Then we hit the Mall of America. It was a pretty good time, my Uncle Beaver and his daughters (Sam and Sarah), and their friend (Nola) met us there. I got some jeans and a couple of shirts. I was quite bummed to realize that the Playboy store was not there. So now I am just going to have to order whatever I want for my apartment through the catalog or website. Boooo!! After the mall we went back to the hotel and ate. Gunnar and the girls swam, the water was really foggy looking, and I decided I was not clean enough for me to swim in. I should really get over this dirty water issue I have, some day I may be in a situation where I will have to get in dirty water and I won’t be able to. Oh well though.

THURSDAY: we got up and got ready to head to Valleyfair, we got there at about 930. The park opened at 10. The crowd wasn’t too bad, the lines were usually about 10 minutes long or so which isn’t bad at all. Gunnar did his usual ‘I don’t want to go on that its too scary’ thing that he always does the first day. We just make him go anyways. He has been on all the rides anyways, he just gets nervous. We started the water rides about 1 or 2. We rode the Wave first which is the one where the big boat splashes down under the bridge and people on the bridge get soaked. Ok this is a ride where you usually get wet, but this time we got completely soaked, seriously, there was not a dry spot on any of us. The look on my uncle’s face was classic, my family expected to get pretty wet cuz you normally do, I guess they had never been on it, so had no idea, it was great. it was even better since we got even wetter than normal, hehe.

We also went on the new rollercoaster, Steel Venom. It was pretty awesome; I had never been on a coaster like this. The Boomerang in Worlds of Fun is the closest thing to it that I have been on (but id wasn’t a hanging rollercoaster). I really enjoyed it, all except for the huge ugly bruises that I got on my arms from it, when you went backwards the second time, it stopped for about a second at the top of the track, which forced you to slam into the chest harness in front of you, it killed my arms, but it was fun anyways. We also rode the go karts before we left. This is where the drama started happening.

As we were leaving Gunnar decided he wanted to go on the Chaos ride one more time since we were walking past it, so I went on it with him, while the girls went out to the car to wait. As we (the rents, my uncle, Gunnar, and I) approached the car, Sarah came running over saying that this guy was beating up his girlfriend and we needed to take her home. as we rushed over there was a girl sitting in my uncle’s car that was bleeding from her head somewhere, amongst the commotion, we found out that my cousin Sam who is 15, had gone and sat down next to this girl on the ground to comfort her and the guy had picked her up and thrown her to the ground and told her to stay away from his girlfriend. Well hearing this my uncle got pissed cuz someone had touched his daughter, so he was yelling back and fourth, my mom told me to get the license plate of the car they were in, so the guy started yelling at her. Asking if she wanted to a piece of him, to which she replied ‘BRING IT ON CLETUS!’ (I had to add that part cuz my mom gets a big kick out of it, hehe….for those of you who don’t know why watch the Nutty Professor). So my dad called the cops. I found it quite amusing that they guy was yelling ‘CALL THE COPS I DON’T CARE, CALL THE COPS, DO IT, ILL KICK YOUR ASS’ (I’m sure there were several swear words in there too, but I decided to just stick with the story rather than fill it with F’this and F’that), however the second the cops showed up, they were in the car and sped out of the parking lot. The cops got them, but I guess he wasn’t in the car (which was registered to someone else), I think that when the cops pulled up everyone looked at the cops and the guy jumped in another car with his sister, while his friend sped off in his car to get the cops to follow him. So the girl of course (who was 16 and had been dating this almost 18 yr old for 10 months) was not cooperating with the police and told them that his name was Anthony and she didn’t know his last name cuz it was Asian, and she didn’t want to call her parents because they would kill her and blame her for the whole incident. Meanwhile the guys brother stood around (while he “checked his oil”) listening to what she was telling the police. When they approached him he told the police that he didn’t see anything and that his name was Anthony as well as his brothers name being Anthony….yea is was just one big cluster fuck of people not telling the police anything. Come to find out the reason that all of this happen was because the girl wanted to go on a water ride, the guy told her that if she did she wasn’t getting in his car, so she decided to just watch the ride and he got pissed….yea that’s really something to beat your girlfriend for huh? So yea that drama lasted for about an hour, and then we went back to the hotel and went to bed.

FRIDAY: Friday we went to valley fair again, we rode the rides again, and my uncle and the girls left earlier then we did. Before we left, dad decided that Gunnar and I should get those character pictures drawn of us (I will have them posted ASAP). So we got one and then the rents decided to get one of them too, they are pretty funny. My mom laughed for like two hours afterwards….ok let me explain, my mother is the happiest person on the face of the earth….seriously she is always smiling and laughing, it’s like the joker (which she was for Halloween one year, hehe). I think she smiles in her sleep. When she was getting the picture drawn, the guy told her that she could stop smiling cuz he was done drawing that part and my dad said ‘no, she cant’ and she was like ‘he’s right I cant, I cant help it!’ it is crazy how happy go luck she is, Gunnar is like that a lot of the time too. My dad and I on the other hand are not, we are grumps, and are in bad moods a lot, but you get used to it. After Valleyfair we just went to bed.

SATURDAY: Saturday was the drive back, it wasn’t too eventful, took us a while to figure out which way we needed to leave, and the traffic was moving slow for a while. We stopped at Cabela’s on the way….I got a shirt, and then we went to eat and drove the rest of the way to Iowa City. We packed up some more of my stuff, had some pizza and went to bed. Gunnar called me gay, it was hilarous, i did something and he was like 'dawna you're really happy' and i was like 'what does that mean?' and he goes....'well theres two ways of saying gay.' ....yea nice, huh? hehe. Not really an eventful day.

SUNDAY: Moving day! Yay!! We managed to move all of my crap in about 3-4 loads, it was nice that I called early and they said I could get the key before noon, so we had all my stuff moved before other people started moving in, it was nice not to have to fight traffic. We also went to Wal-Mart and got some stuff that I needed for the new place. Dad put my futon together while mom and I unpacked some of my crap, got most of the clothes put away and the kitchen stuff is done. The rents left about 7:00 which sucks for them cuz they didn’t get home till bout midnight. Mike when to Hy-Vee with me to get some food, then it was bed time.

So I apologize for the long post, but hey I had a lot of time to cover. So I guess I’ll stop for now….

Come on Cletus! It aint nuthin' but a short walk. You might walk over, but you limpin' back! I aint no easy win!

if size doesn't matter, why is bigger better....

2004-07-26T08:58:00.000-06:00

Man, Monday already....the weekend went pretty fast. Friday after work we went bowling and played some black light mini golf. Gunnar and I both got the ball in the prize hole so we both got to choose a prize. We chose these bendable sticks that have lights in them, not to exciting for me, but Gunnar enjoyed them. Mike won one game, I won a game, and Mike and I tied the last game. It was a pretty good time. I sucked ass at bowling though. I used to bowl on a league in middle school, but man I could tell it had been a while, hehe. But it was a good time anyways, after that we came home and had dinner then watched the Butterfly Effect.

The movie was really good I thought. About a kid who had blackouts as a child, gets to college and finds a way to bring back the memories, then he tried to change the past to make the present better. It’s not really a scary movie, but pretty suspenseful and full of unexpected events. I was not sure how it would be watching Ashton Kutcher in a non-comedy movie, but he didn’t do too bad, there were a couple of parts where he was angry that brought back the thought of Dude, Where’s my Car, but overall you didn’t really notice that it was an actor that is mostly known for being funny.

Saturday we went to Perkins for breakfast then went to Wal-Mart to take the TV back and get the pictures developed. I will post the pictures on my website soon. After that we came home and played some Gauntlet. I really like that game. It was one of my favorites for regular Nintendo, and it’s pretty good now. Blue Wizard kicks ass!! That’s about all we did Saturday. Sunday we slept until about 20 minutes before my parents got into town. We all went to Happy Joe’s for pizza (where I dropped pizza on my lap and had a run-in with a pole), and then stopped at the pet store so my dad could look at dogs, then that’s about it. They left shortly after. Gunnar was upset that he had to leave, I told him he would see me in three days, but he said he would miss having so much fun with me (*tear).

On a happier note, my 32 inch monitor kicks so much more ass than my old one!! It’s great! Mike and I slowly drug it into the bedroom last night to hook it up and check it out. With a few adjustments it was working great! I can’t wait to have everything set up in the new place! I thought about setting it up to run the TV off of it too, but then realized that I really enjoy being on the computer and watching TV so I decided against it, besides my TV is a 27 inch, so it’s not too much smaller. I can learn to live with it, hehe.

Then I started packing for the move. Yes, I know I should have started at least a week ago since I am leaving town Wednesday and won't be back until moving day, but I like to procrastinate, so what can you do? I got four small boxes filled, and packed my breakable stuff. I still need to do the kitchen stuff and the bathroom stuff. Most of the living room stuff is stuff that doesn’t need packing. Mike is going to pack up the electronic stuff while I am out of town so that he can still use them while I am out of town, so that’s stuff that I don’t have to worry about. So I pry got about half of my packing done that I will do before I leave so that’s not too bad. I really can’t wait to move. I decided that I am going to go with the Playboy bunny theme for the new place with a few Eminem posters thrown in. I think they have a Playboy store at the Mall of America, so that should help me out some. And since I will have a little bar area I am thinking about getting the bunny bar stools. After packing Mike and I played a little Gauntlet and went to bed. I suppose I have rambled enough for now....

I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world....without you. A world without rules and controls. Without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there, is a choice I leave to you....

and another thing....

2004-07-23T11:03:00.000-06:00

In a recent discovery I have decided that I think I have HAVS or Hand arm vibration syndrome. I believe it has come from playing video games this week. Fortunately it is only in one hand, but unfortunately it is in the right hand, which is my dominant hand. So if it were to just fall off one day I would be screwed. I couldn’t type my blog anymore, and I definitely couldn’t play any more video games, because the right hand has to do all the important things like jump and shot and kick and punch and aim and dive and….good god my world is crashing down. One of the treatments are keep warm!! I forgot my sweatshirt today!! I am freezing! Omg my hand is going to fall off and there is nothing I can do to help because I am at work without my sweatshirt! I also have to avoid temperature changes!! It is going to be hot outside, how can I go home? I’m freezing and it’s hot out side and I can’t have temperature changes!! Great now I am going to have to turn the rumble feature off on the controllers, what fun is that? None. I guess I will go home and cry about it all night long.

On a lighter note, Dad suggested I mention the movie the Surviors for those of you who do not know about or want to know more about 'Honky Mo Fo', or for those of you who want a good older movie to watch. Here is some info on it. It's a pretty funny movie as I recall.

So I'll quote that movie I suppose....You shot my gun god damn it!! You're not suposed to shoot a person's gun. Aw god that pisses me off!!"

I'm not a girl, DUH!!

2004-07-23T08:59:00.000-06:00

If you would like to read the 'shizzled' version of my blog today
click here (it may take a minute to load....deal with it. And if you want to want to post a comment you'll have to come back to this page to do that too) I added the shizzle link to the links on the left, so if you want to read future post in shizzle form you can do so....yes I know where do I find the time to make all these wonderful things possible....

I worked Wednesday morning, and then Mike dropped Gunnar off at work and we walked around downtown and saw some of the Herky’s. Then we walked home and had some lunch. We started playing Mario Party 5 at about 5:30. We ended up playing it until 4:30 am stopping only for dinner, bathroom, and thirst quenching breaks. Holy hell was that a lot of video game playing. My eyes were killing me all day Thursday! Some time during this game playing we were talking about something and Gunnar blurted out mo’foe!! I just kinda sat there for a second and the conversation went like this….

ME: mo’foe!?! Where did that come from? Do you know what that stands for?
GUNNAR: no, what?
ME: it means mother fucker.
GUNNAR: (covered his mouth) well I didn’t know, I thought it was a last name.
ME: hehe, whose last name? Honky’s?
GUNNAR: who is Honky?

So I had to explain to him what honky meant, and told him that he shouldn’t say that either, hehe. It was pretty funny. Then later we were playing and something happen and I said that it was ‘gay.’ To which Gunnar replied, that’s gross!! And this is how that conversation went….

ME: why is it gross? Some people are that way. What if you were gay would you be gross?
GUNNAR: but I'm not and I’m not gonna be cuz I don’t like boys that’s gross.
ME: well what if you can’t help it, some people say they are born that way.
GUNNAR: well what if you were a lesbian, then huh?
ME: I'm not a lesbian, you are a lesbian.
GUNNAR: hey, I'm not no lesbian, im not a girl, duh!

Hehe, it is so funny to hear him talk about stuff like this, I never thought I would have a conversation about mo’foe’s and lesbians on the same day with my little brother….well at least not at his age, hehe. I thought about bringing the topic up the next day when he and Mike were joking around about slapping each other and Gunnar said ‘I will slap you the hardest, I slap like a girl!’…..hehe, I just called him Sheila instead, lol.

Today is Friday already, the week seemed to go by pretty fast. Gunnar and I went to Olive Garden yesterday and got the soup, salad, and breadstick lunch. It was pretty good. Surprisingly they had soup that I actually liked. This is unusual because I am the pickiest eater ever. Then we went around and got some pictures of some of the Herky’s around town. Gunnar chose about 10 that he wanted pictures with, and of course they were scattered around town, so it took a couple of hours to get to all of them, but he had a good time with it. Then we went and rented a couple of movies, and had pizza for dinner. We rented ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ and ‘Butterfly Effect’. We started watching the ‘League’ last night, but I fell asleep before it was over….I guess the being up until 5:30 the night before caught up with me.

I literally woke up at 7:52 today; I had to work at 8. I got to work just a few minutes late, but man it sucked. I hate not having time to get ready. It also caused me to forget my sweatshirt too, so now I am at work freezing my ass off! But oh well, at least I am only here half a day. Well I guess that’s all the new news I have for now. Maybe I’ll add more later.

Skinner, I want you dressed at all times, eh? Or it's my boot up your arse.

you are the dreamstar....

2004-07-20T18:51:00.000-06:00

Man am I tired. Just got back from wacky waters. Gunnar and I were there for about five hours today, which isn’t too long, but man after half and hour in that wave pool and I am pooped. Never realized how much energy doggy paddling for so long took up. So we had to come and go from the wave pool my legs were killin me, hehe. Gunnar was in a life jacket (which he didn’t want to wear cuz it “made him look like a baby”) so he didn’t get tired, but I sure did. I mean there were life jackets that I could have worn, but come on....I didn’t want to look like a baby either, so I sucked it up and doggy paddled. You could rent big inner tubes to take in the wave pool, but they were five bucks a pop! I thought that was a little steep, so we didn’t get one. We did find one floating around bout an hour before we left, so we used that for a little bit. Gunnar was too light, and every time a big wave hit him he just flipped over, which was too funny. It was a pretty good time. The water slides were alright, the one that was just a straight slide with a big drop strait down almost was the best one....but it killed your chest at the bottom. The ‘swirly’ ones were a little on the slow side, but they were fun. Surprisingly the mini golf and the bumper boats were free, so we did both of those too.

We ended up goin to the res yesterday afternoon, it was a nice day to go, it wasn’t scorching hot and it wasn’t too cold either. I didn’t get in the water because I hate dirty water. I don’t swim in lakes or rivers or any other nasty pieces of water there are that are filled with mud and fish guts and shit like that. I guess having a pool I got spoiled and this is the result. However I’m sure that the water at the water park was just as dirty or pry even dirtier than the lake water, but at least it looks clean, hehe. Well I guess that’s all for now, I better get back to entertaining Gunnar cuz If I don’t he will be asking what we are going to do next.

Since I haven’t been able to decide on my own closing line yet I decided that the movie quotes thing has been working so I am sticking to that from now on.

....Disturbing the peace? I got thrown out of a window! What's the fuckin charge for getting pushed out of a moving car, huh? Jaywalking?!

covenant drop ship approaching.....

2004-07-19T08:16:00.000-06:00

So Gunnar has been here for two days now. We haven’t done much besides play video games. Saturday we went to the mall while the rents were still here. I was looking at video cards for my pc to hook it up to the TV at Best Buy. My dad called my uncle who has a computer store to see if he recommended a certain one. Turns out my uncle has a 32 inch destination monitor that he will give me for $100!! The whole point of me wanting to hook up to the TV was so that I could use my wireless keyboard and mouse further from the pc sometimes, but with my little as 15 inch monitor, I had to sit at the desk still because I couldn’t see anything from farther away. I’m thinking with the 32 inch monitor I should have no problem now, hehe. Now all I need is a computer that’s not a piece of shit to go with it.

Gunnar got the Spiderman 2 game for x-box. I have to say it is a pretty good game, much better than the first one. In the first one you moved around buildings and went into them and just kicked everyone’s ass. In this one there is a Grand Theft Auto edge to it. You have hero points that you have to earn for each mission so you have to move around the city looking for people to help. You have to stop the bad guys, rush people to the hospital, and several other things. For each thing to do you get some hero points. Along with the hero points there is also an actual task you have to do for the mission, get photographs, fight various villains, get through “obstacle courses”, and other things. Overall I have to say it is a pretty good game, which is good coming from someone who doesn’t really care for Spiderman. I mean I saw the first movie, it wasn’t too bad, but I pry wont see the second one, until I have the opportunity to see it for free. So after playing Spiderman for bout 2 hours, I watched Gunnar and Brian play Lord of the Rings: Return of the King for x-box. They played that for about an hour and a half. Then Gunnar and Mike played Halo for bout 2 hours. Then since it was bout 2 am I decided it was time for bed, so we made some popcorn and fell asleep watching Bruce Almighty.

Woke up Sunday at about 9:30, which is great for Gunnar who is usually up at about 6 am everyday. Gunnar and I started playing halo about 10:30; we started at the beginning of the game, and played till bout 1:00. Then we ran to Wal-Mart to get some pull-ups and some food items we needed. Came home and made some grilled cheese sandwiches, and then started playing Halo again. We played from 2:00 till bout 11:30 straight through. Man my eyes were killing me, I made a mental not to myself to blink more next time. We fell asleep watching Dude, Where’s my Car. Man that’s a great movie, hehe.

I’m at work now, till 1:00, which kicks ass….it will be nice not working all day. We are thinking about going to the res later today, if I can talk Gunnar out of leaving the house that is….then I’m sure we will be finishing Halo today too, we got to the last level last night so I’m sure that will be the first thing we do when I get home, lol. Yea it’s a great time!

and theeennnn…….no and then …..and theeennnn…….NO AND THEN.....and thennnnnn…..listen lady I refuse to play your Chinese food mind games, I’m going to come in there and put my foot up you ass if you say AND THEN ONE MORE TIME!!!
……

and THENNNNNNN!!!

we are in the old kingdom now....

2004-07-16T11:28:00.000-06:00

I watched the last episode of Kingdom Hospital last night. It was pretty good. It was a pretty good show over all I think; of course I am a Stephen King fan so that may explain part of me liking it. I mean nothing screams hit mini series like a little dead girl with a giant anteater for a friend, a med student that cuts off dead patients’ heads, a priest that gets crucified on a chain link fence, and a crazy doctor. It was not really a scary show, more of a comedy/suspense show. I wouldn’t mind reading the book after watching the show, because the books always seem to be better. The Rosanne mini marathon was on as well, I have become addicted to that show lately. It was nice that they were playing the episodes from the final season as they don’t play those ones very often. I irritated me though that they didn’t play the last episode!! I mean they played the 8 episodes before that and then the marathon was over with only the last episode of the show left. Yea talk about a let down, I mean the last episodes are always the best ones. But hey what can you do? Call and complain to the nick at nite people? I doubt they care what one person in Iowa cares about.

So my summer loan check finally arrived at the school. I went and signed that today before work, so hopefully that should arrive in the next week or so. I asked for $2000, surprisingly the school approved me for $1800. My school bill is like $800 or so that will be about $1000 that I could really use right now. I found out that my FAFSA getting tagged for citizenship was just a random thing, which sucks ass cuz not only have they had my FAFSA information since April and didn’t send me a notice saying it was flagged, but of course now my birth certificate is nowhere to be found. Getting one from Des Moines could take up to 6 weeks!! What is the point of even filling it out this year? I am so going to get screwed this year in financial aid. Man I hope the loan company will hit me up big time this fall, especially with the high rent I will be paying.

So my parents informed me that they want to come down tonight rather than tomorrow, which mean I will have to clean the bedroom like a mad man after work, but I guess that’s okay, if they weren’t coming down I would pry wait until Mike gets off tonight so that he could help me….which would mean I would be up until 3:00 in the morning cleaning and doing laundry. Now I will be up until 3:00 in the morning playing video games instead, which is much better than cleaning. I can’t wait to see Gunnar, it hasn’t been too long since I have seen him, but he was really upset the last time I left, so that makes seeing him again even nicer. I feel really bad when he cries because I am leaving, but I will get to see him quite a bit for the rest of the month so that will be good. So I probably will not be entering too much in the next two weeks because every waking moment will be spent eating and playing video games. It will be a good time.

I also forgot to mention the other day that Mike got rear ended. Okay, this is somewhat good thing. Let me tell you why. Mike has not had insurance for about a year and a half. I have been telling him for a year and a half that he needs to get insurance. Of course he does not listen to me, he never listens to me, that is why his car has been towed as well, but that is a story for another time. So after the guy rear ended him they pulled off the side of the rode, and were exchanging information, and of course a cop pulled up. Mike totally lucked out and the cop told him he would give him a day to get insurance….so he got insurance the next day. But had he listened to me in the first place, none of this would have been an issue. I will not be surprised though if he does not get his truck fixed.

iowa city here i stay....

2004-07-15T14:46:00.000-06:00

Well I should be in Valleyfair right now, riding rides and having fun, but I am here at work instead. God damn Burger Barf. But on a good note mom went to work today, she was off for a full week with this food poisoning. So it’s good that she is getting better finally. I guess she said she lost at least ten pounds because she has only been able to eat two potatoes and a piece of toast in the past week. I mean damn that must have sucked, I hate being sick, and she had it really bad….so get better soon ma!

So there hasn’t been much going on with me lately, I have been pretty bored at work. I guess I am tired of looking at the same damn things everyday on the internet. I was listening to a lot of Phil Hendrie for a while….he is pretty funny most of the time. I have also been making helpdesk Southpark characters. It makes the time pass quicker let me tell ya. I found a website with a create a character that I was messing around with, I was working up front with Fadi, and decided to make one of him, then Chris and Warren wanted one, then Robby wanted one, I needed one more to make an even number so I made one of Kate because she has her distinct pink feature…then Colin wanted one so I need two more. I made one of Robert with the headset cuz he wears it more than everyone else at work, and. So I still need one more to make a complete square. You can see the unfinished product here. If you want to be added to the picture let me know and I will make it happen, lol, I don't want to deny anyone their right to be a part of the Southpark Helpdesk, hehe. But tell me your favorite color and something that would make you unique to the others, hehe, cuz we are all unique in this friendly, friendly world.

Hmm, what else? Warren and I had a pretty good time messing around with msn messenger (nicknames and making things backwards). That wasted a good hour, hehe. It was a good time. Well I guess that is all for now, I may add more later!

its all out in the open....

2004-07-13T14:28:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was an ok day; I went and looked at the apartment that I am going to get. I am really excited to move, I need to get the hell out of the apartment I am in. I told the roommates that I was moving out….it was quite an interesting conversation, this is how it went:

ME: hey guys I just wanted to let you know that I found a place to live today
BRIAN: You did!?!? (With a touch of shock in his voice)
ME: yea I did so I will be moving out in August.
BRIAN: the BEGINNING of August?
ME: ahh, yea. I move in on the first.
BRIAN: well who are you living with?
ME: umm, im living alone.
BRIAN: your LIVING ALONE?!?
ME: yea
BRANDI: well were is it at?
ME: on S Dodge, like half a block away from here.
BRANDI: oh.

Silence….

ME: So I am not sure how you want to work out the deposit.
BRANDI: well how does that work, I mean they won’t give us the deposit if some of us are staying will they?
ME: well,no….but because I never gave heritage any money you guys each gave $300 and I just gave you guys the difference, so I need to just work it out with you guys. I figured that I gave you each $75, and since you will not be getting it all back I figured you guys could give me $60 back. That would be $45 that I didn’t get back total, if we all didn’t get $45 back that would be $180 total that we don’t get back from the $900, which I thought seemed about right…..

There was a moment of silence….

BRIAN: so we wont actually see our deposit until next year but will give you yours? Cuz I wont see any of it until then, so I don’t know if I will have the money….
BRANDI: wait so you want $60, so we will each give you $20 right?

A stupefied look came upon my face, and I sat there for a moment….

ME: umm, no….it would be $60 each; I gave you each $75.
BRANDI: oh, well….could I like give you weekly payments?
BRIAN: so we give you sixty, then we keep the deposit next year?

….

ME: umm, yea I don’t get any of the deposit money at the end of the year. And sure if you can’t give it to me all at once, that is fine, but whatever you can give me would be great cuz I have to come up with a deposit for the new place.
BRIAN: ohh, I see….ok well I will have the money for you then in August.
BRANDI: I will give you whatever I can by then.

(which I think was code for how ever much money my mommy can give me I will give you)

I considered talking about me taking the phone and internet with me as well as pretty much all the furniture in the living room, but I decided that was a conversation for another day, I would give them some time to let this set in. hehe. I found it amusing how surprised they both were, I think they thought that them telling us they would not switch rooms, would force us to just work things out. Well that’s not the way it is working, lol.

So today I went and signed the lease for the new place and paid the deposit and first months rent, the rent isn’t due yet but I figured since I have the money now I might as well pay it.

So mom is still sick today, so I don’t think our trip to Valleyfair is going to happen tomorrow, which sucks ass, but hey what can you do. This just adds to my hatred of Burger King however since she has narrowed it down to that being the only thing she had eaten differently from my dad and Gunnar. So now I’m at work in the partial dark because we are saving energy. Yea it’s great. On a happier note I got to watch speed last night. I was totally in love with that movie in middle school. I seriously knew every word to it, and I could just blurt out at least the first hour of it without the movie even playing, it was ridiculous. Hmm, well I guess that’s all for now.

drinkin, smokin, tryin to free my mind....

2004-07-11T14:09:00.000-06:00

So I got a call from Chris saying that him, Robby, and Colin are coming to pick me up to go to the helpdesk bbq. So I put the alcohol in my backpack, and grab the chips I was bringing, and head for the door when I hear from outside 'DAWNA STEP AWAY FROM THE CAR!' I walk outside to see Robby on the PA system in Colin’s car. I just shook my head and got in the car, the guy walking his dog down the street got a big kick out of it, lol. We passed a rummage on the way to Colin’s and Robby said over the PA, 'HOW MUCH FOR THE BIKE?' The look on the ladies face was classic, hehe. So we head to the bbq and the drinking begins right away. Robby brought out the beer bong and all hell broke loose....Colin’s roommate (who we woke up) got talked into doing his first beer bong ever 10 minutes after getting out of bed....his first couple were a little messy, but an hour later he was walking around like a beer bong champion, hehe. Robby took about 5 and Chris took 2 I think. This was before more people started showing up, lol.

People slowly started showing up and the party got more festive with a big game of Frisbee and lots of grillin. The slip-n-slide got set up and then broke, so a new one was bought. I had no intention of getting on the thing, but I ended up going down a few times. Several of the more bold people were sliding and then doing the beer bong right at the end. I stood clear of this, with my bong free life that I am leading, hehe.

So I was actually surprised that I was able to finish all my purple passion. I haven’t drank in a couple of months. I gave Warren one, and the other 7 were mine, mmmwwaaahhhh!! So as the night grew on the tipsy-ness started to grow stronger, but nothing to serious. The cartwheel competition took place finally. I got second place, congrats to Rebekah!! It was a fun time.

So I tasted several new things at this bbq. First was Jason’s bourbon, yea, it tastes like burning. Seriously if you want to know what burning tastes like, this was it. I also tried some of David’s alcohol, which I think was called Easy Times, but I wouldn't swear to that. It looked like Jack, and it kinda tasted like ass. I mean a personally have not tasted ass, but if I had to guess what ass tasted like I would say this alcohol. Then I again I hate the taste of most alcohol anyways, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it, so it must not have been too bad....either that or we have a lot of ass eaters here at the helpdesk, I’ll leave the answer to you. hehe. Chris’s homebrew, it wasn’t too bad, I think it had a little too much of the “beer” taste for me, but I could pry get used to that. It was a really dark beer; I had never tried a dark beer so that was kinda cool.

Speaking of Chris, lol....Chris was a puker last night, I dunno how it happen, one minute he was sitting there like normal eating the fly burger, I went inside to make a smoothie and chatted a few minutes and the next think I know Chris comes through the living room pukin all over the place....now since this was not my house I did find it a little funny. However had it been my house I might not have found it so funny, lol. So by the time I went back outside the party had died down for the most part and only a few people were left. I hung around a little while longer then Colin’s roommate said he would give me a ride home on his way to work. So I got home about 10-1030 I think and went right to bed. Too much fun for me, hehe. So over all it was a pretty fun day.

Woke up this morning at about 5:30 am, I finally got back to sleep and was able to sleep till bout 9:30. It has been raining all day, and it pry will all day. So ill pry stay in and watch TV and play some video games. Not too bad of a weekend as far as I am concerned. 8-)

I'll close with a quote for Chris....from Wayne’s World....if you’re gonna spew, spew into this.

well ring me like a wet mop….

2004-07-09T08:21:00.000-06:00

It started raining literally 5 seconds after I walked outside on my way to work. Of course the umbrella was in use by someone else already today. So I walked to work as fast as I could in the rain....I might as well have jumped in a swimming pool. I was soaked by the time I got to work. It was ridiculous....some people at work suggested the hand dryers in the bathroom. I tried to at least dry my ass off so that I could have a dry seat, but after restarting the dryer three times and seeing no results what-so-ever, I gave up realizing that unless I took my pants off, I would be there for an hour just drying my ass alone. So I rang out my socks in the trash can and have my shoes sitting upside down under my desk, and my sweatshirt and backpack are both hanging up to dry. So now I’m sitting at work freezing my ass off and I am pretty sure that a small puddle is forming under my chair. Hopefully I will be dry by lunch time, but I wouldn’t count on it.

On a happier note, I called Heritage first thing and told them I would take the apartment....I decided on the second floor. I am going to look at in on Monday just to check it out. I was asking them if I would be able to pay three or four months of the parking, and then pay the rest of the parking sometime during those three or four months (since you are supposed to pay for the parking all year up front) and the lady said she would check for me....she came back on the phone and told me that as an incentive to get the last two apartments rented they were offering FREE PARKING FOR THE YEAR!!!! Yay for that!! That’s just that much more money that I don’t have to come up with! I was pretty excited if you couldn’t tell already, lol.

So my mom has been home sick the past two days, I hope she is feeling better soon. I am really looking forward to our trip to Valleyfair next week, then Gunnar visiting the following week! It’s gonna be nice to get away and enjoy the summer. Well that’s all for now, I will post more later today.

efficiency sweet efficiency....

2004-07-08T07:54:00.000-06:00

I went and looked at two apartments yesterday; I may have found my ‘home’ for next year. It’s only a block away from where I live now (its on S. Dodge St.), so the move won’t be bad, and the parking is only $15 a month. Of course this is from Heritage (who I rent through now) so I didn’t expect the parking to be bad here since I only pay $20 a month now. It is just an efficiency apartment, with a bathroom and a small kitchen that is separated from the ‘living space’ by a counter. It has a shelf area in the wall for a pantry type section and some cupboards above the stove and sink. It also has a walk-in closet, which I think I’m supposed to be a lot more excited about being a girl and all, but as we would say around the helpdesk here it doesn’t really ‘rock my socks’ like it should. I am more excited about the apartment itself. It is $460 a month plus electric, which the guy said previous renters said was 15-20 a month most of the time, so that is good. Plus it is still on the free shuttle bus route!

The other apartment I looked at yesterday was an efficiency as well. It was across the street from the post office. It was $495 with gas and electric paid (which isn’t too bad) and $40 a month to park plus a $25 processing fee (which sucks). Plus the parking was in the Pentacrest apartments lots, and so was the laundry, so that sucks a little too. The ‘living space’ was really small and the kitchen was almost non-existent. There was a sink and a stove in the corner with maybe a foot deep tiles area in front of them then the refrigerator was right in front of the stove, leaving you enough room to open the stove and that is all. It was basically an apartment that I would hate living in and would only do so if it was the best deal I could find. But with the parking so high, it definitely rules this apartment out.

So as of now the S. Dodge street apartment is the winner. The only thing left to deal with is the fact that I really cant afford this....I mean as it is now I try to take enough loans out to pay my rent all year and every summer I run out of money cuz I never get the full amount of money that I ask for. So I am hoping that I will get enough money to at least get me through January, and then I will be able to work full time and hopefully make enough money to make it through the rest of the year....

Hmm, well that wasted a small amount of time here at work. I guess now I go back to surfing the internet for a few more hours. I am on orientation this afternoon so that will be a nice change....ill pry add more to this later.

So I worked orientation this afternoon, and realized that I love orientation! I could work that everyday....it is so much better than answering phones!! Lots of eager parents, wanting to buy their kids computers, asking questions about things that they really don’t have any idea what it is....its grrrreatt! So yea that was the highlight of my day. I went and played basketball with Mike and then we jogged almost a mile, then came home and lifted. Then the Mask was on TV. God I was so obsessed with that show in middle school, it is a great show, hehe. So yea that’s all for today....of course I will quote Jim again....Somebody sssstop me!!

up your ziggy with a wah wah brush....

2004-07-06T17:32:00.000-06:00

Yes that is what god said to me today. No lying today was crap. Started off calling for apartments first thing in the morning, was only able to see one, and set up appointments to look at two tomorrow. It really pisses me off the way that they screw people for parking!! Man, my first year in an apartment, the parking was free, last year it was $20 a month (you had to pay the whole 240 ahead of time). But man this year it sucks, I have gotten anywhere from $40-$75 a month!! GOOD GOD!! The place I looked at today was 40 bucks a month plus a $25 processing fee for a total of $505 for a year!! It is ridiculous!! I mean christ, give the students a break! Not all of us have our mommies paying our rent for us....and yes that was a crack on the roommates! So yea I have come to the realization that if I don’t get a shit pot of money in loans I will be homeless halfway through the year.

This of course brings me to my second problem of the day....so I call the registration office to find out why I still have not received my award summary for my fafsa. Of course the counselors are not available at the time so they will get back to me. Three hours later I call them back only to be told that my fafsa was flagged for verification of my citizenship! Hello!! I have been a citizen for the past four years, why the hell is it different now?!?! According to them of course, they sent me out a notice saying that they needed my birth certificate to verify this. Yea I have two words to say to that....say it with me now....HORSESHIT!!!! The only thing I have received from the university all summer is my damn u-bill. Well at least I received the important stuff right? So yea on top of the fact that I will be paying double rent next year, I will also get jackshit for financial aid, because the frickin registration center has had my application for almost three months now, which is of course a first come first serve basis. God I hate my life.

And the final shit of the day, some one came in with a wireless card today wanting it connected to the network. This is fine and dandy. So I try to install the PROset software only to be told there is an older version on the PC. So I uninstall it and reinstall the new version. Mind you the entire thing is in Chinese or Japanese and the girl could not tell what it said herself, let alone my unilingual ass trying to figure it out. (Good thing we have little pictures on our website, lol). So I get it all set up she puts in her password blah blah blah....it doesn’t work. So I try looking at the settings but between the two of us could not figure out what all the stick figure letter looking things meant. So I decide screw it I will just uninstall and reinstall it all over again (because I have had problems with the damn thing before and usually a reinstall of it works, I figured this was the case). So blah blah blah, same thing happens, test her hawkid and it works fine, so as I am going to look at her account more she comes up with....“Oh, maybe it doesn’t work because my account doesn’t work.” Come to find out she didnt have rights to anything....56 minutes later all I could say is shoot me now. Lesson learned the hard way today? No longer blame the software.

So enough bitching for now, now I’m at work doin the 5-8 walk-in thing. Haven’t had any customers since the wireless one. On a side note we got new fish at the helpdesk today, I still stand by my vote that we should have gotten a piranha (as long as it wasn’t on like the one Mike had at one time, that thing was ugly). I found the first new fish death poll on the board today humorous especially after one of the fish starting lying on the bottom of the tank. I also got some gummy worms today, this made me a little happy....i also found one little lonely bear in with all the worms. It hurts me to think of how terrified the little gummy bear must have been inside the package with all the big gummy worms. I petted his head to make him feel a little better....then I ate him.

So I guess that is it for today, I am still working on my closing line so tonight I thank Jim Carry and close with....and that’s the way the cookie crumbles, I’m Bruce Nolan, eyewitness news....back to you fuckers!!!

whole lotta nothingness....

2004-07-05T21:14:00.000-06:00

Well I forgot to post my entry for yesterday, so I just posted that one, now on to today, lol. Didn’t sleep in much today, woke up bout 930 and started calling property management places, left about 20 messages at different places. I had no idea there were so many rental places in Iowa City!! Only about two were open. Decided I wanted eggs and toast for breakfast at about 1130; I am obsessed with jelly toast lately. I have also been obsessed with those flavor-ice popsicles. I seriously eat like 15-20 a day. A box of 100 is luck to last me a week, it is ridiculous, lol. Played a game of phase ten with Mike (I won, we are tied now 2-2), and watched a little Jurassic Park. We went and drove past a few of the places that I got off of the property management answering services, to get an idea of what was out there. Found a couple of places really close to campus which is good, now I just have to hope that they are still available tomorrow. I really hate the fact that almost every one of these places closes at 500. I mean, even staying open until six so that people like me that work 8-5 almost everyday have a chance to do anything. I am hoping that I will be able to look at at least a few places before work tomorrow, but I don’t know how many places are going to show me an apartment right away.

Went to Walmart to get some tide and dishwashing soap (I was a little upset that I could not find my normal unscented tide with bleach, I hade to get some dams mountain breeze fragrance one, but I guess I will deal with it, lol. Then I decided I was in a healthy mood and got some fruit cocktail. Hmm, stopped at the carwash to get quarters for laundry and stopped by the pet store which was open and busy as hell to get some meal worms. I wanted to get some frozen pinkies which are baby mice, but they were $1.50 a pop!! I could get a live mouse for 20 cents more!! So I stuck with the meal worms. I can’t wait to get a place that will allow pets; they have such cute dogs there!! I really liked the black cocker spaniel they had, had a few brown spots on his head, and just loved attention! I can’t wait to get a dog! Anyways, enough about that....made Sloppy Joe’s for dinner haven’t had them for a while, and watched a pretty good movie on Lifetime about a woman who hired some people to kill her husband before he killed her. Of course she got caught and got 40 years for conspiracy, while the guy that actually killed her husband got 5 years....yea makes sense to me too.

So the roommates finally came home today, they were here for all of 30 seconds then left again. I have been waiting all weekend to give them a piece of my mind and of course they leave. It is ridiculous how much they have been avoiding us since they finally gave us the final answer of them not switching rooms. So I was a little bummed, I wanted to let them have it, lol. I watched a little Road Rules tonight (the one where the have to eat all the cow parts and puke up a ton of nasty shit is great, lol), and then most of Ransom and some Who’s Line. I also lifted weights again. I guess Mike and I are gonna watch Dogma a little later, I really think it is going to be stupid, but I guess I’ll find out....I am also still thinking about my trade mark closing line for my posts, but still haven’t decded on one, so for now I will use Maury’s....until next time America!

Happy firework day!!

2004-07-05T20:40:00.000-06:00

So today was the 4th of July. Not too exciting for me. I slept till noon though, which really made up for getting up at 430 yesterday. Mike and I played some basketball at the park by our apartment. It was pretty warm out. We decided to walk/jog to the pet store to get some meal worms for the geckos. So we walked a few blocks then ran a few blocks the whole way to the pet store which is over by the Sycamore Mall (we live on South Johnson). We got there tired and hot only to realize that DUH, the pet store is closed on the 4th!! Yea, nice going to us!! So we walked around the mall, where nothing but the theatre was open, to cool off, then walked back home.

Not much going on after that watched a little TV and lifted weights (gotta work on those muscles, lol). Listened to some fireworks going on in the street, and then pretty much went to bed. Fell asleep watching Court TV like usual.

History in the making....

2004-07-03T06:31:00.000-06:00

So I woke up at 430 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. For a split second I wondered why I was awake and then I realized it was because it was frickin 500 degrees in my room, I think the walls were sweating it was so hot. After laying in front of every fan in the apartment and tossing and turning for an hour I realized I was awake and was not getting back to sleep now. I turned on the TV only to see David Hasselhoff running down the beach half naked with two blonds. I pinched myself hoping it was a nightmare, unfortunately it was not....no it was the slim in 6 infomercial....I shut the TV off.

I have been thinking about setting up a blog for a while now, and with nothing else to do in the wee hours of the morning, I said why not go for it? What’s the worst that can happen? Embarrassment, humiliation, and ridicule....oh well. So I guess I should first fill you in on what is going on now so that you have some idea as to what I am talking about when I bitch about things....well the main thing going on right now is my break up with Mike. After 3 years we are taking a break, which means that we are going to need different rooms. After asking my roommates (who are dating and have separate rooms) if they would share a room, we got an answer of NO. Reasoning? Oh, their parents wouldn't approve of them sleeping together....yea, I've got two words to say about that....HORSESHIT!! So now I am looking for the cheapest 1 bedroom apartment possible. The downfall of this? I pay $243 a month now....one bedroom’s = $400. So yea, good luck to me.

Hmm, well that’s pretty much all that is going on in my life right now, other than working 40 hours a week. The fourth of July is tomorrow, this will be the first year that I don’t do fireworks, which really sucks but what can ya do....my family and I are taking a family trip to Valleyfair and my little brother is coming down to visit in a couple of weeks so I am really looking forward to that. I have also been adding a lot of stuff to my website lately, after several complaints I finally added an about me section. Well I guess that’s all I have to say right now, so....

LATER THAT DAY....

Ok, so there I was hungrily putting a pizza in the oven and two minutes later the power goes out. Of course having an electric stove, this did not make me happy, after about a minute the power came on long enough for me to celebrate the fact that my pizza was going to cook, then went out again....this time for 2 hours!! I felt like I entered the matrix and was unplugged from life as we know it. I had nothing to do but stare at the wall, which let me tell ya, gets old really fast. I tried to take a nap since I had been up since 430, but with out a fan it was just too hot. I thought about going for a jog since I am trying to jog several times a week, but decided I was too lazy at the time. Since all of my friends were either working or out of town for the weekend I did the only thing else that I knew how to do....I called mom. Finally after wearing down her and dads cell phone batteries (they don’t have a phone line in the house), god decided he had punished my block enough and the power came back on. Finally I could eat my pizza!! YAY!!! I also got to watch My Girl, which is a plus, it was one of my favorite movies when I was little, and I hadn’t seen it in forever....hmm I guess that’s all for now....