Why Hello There!

Long time no blog huh? It's funny how hard I fight to keep blogging when I am in the habit, but once I break the habit, it can be just as hard to get back into it. But the time is here to bite the bullet and get back to it. Hopefully I will have both the time to blog now and the time to do things to actually blog about. To get me started though I have some house work we did this spring and summer to catch up on.

As to why I haven't been blogging? That is easy, work. It's been busy, bordering on insane, but also fun. I know it sounds nuts, but I actually really enjoy my job.

Anyway, time to get back to blogging.

10 on Tuesday 11.30.10

Also called 10 things I learned by blogging everyday this month.

1. I don't have something worth blogging about everyday.

2. Being "forced" to blog takes a lot of the fun out of it for me.

3. The more I post the less time I have to put into each post.

4. I think that overall my content suffered this month, instead of 10 good posts and 2-3 great posts I got out 30 marginal posts, I don't think that adds up the same.

5. I thought the pressure would make me put more thought and effort into planning and coming up with content, that is not how it went.

6. I like to write posts ahead and schedule them, that felt like cheating for this. The point was to blog each day, not schedule something to publish each day.

7. It is a specially bad idea to do this during a month with holidays and other activities, though what month doesn't have something like that?

8. When I am not looking forward to something I put it off, hence my mostly late night posts this month.

9. I am glad it is over!! :)

10. No I will not try it again next year.

Blogging Anywhere

Now that I have this iphone and my new blogging app I can post from anywhere. Right now we are in the checkout line at Wegman's. By the way we might have found a house we like but nothing has been done about it yet.

My new best friend

Last night we went and picked me up an iPhone. I am in love already. Plus look I can blog from work now. Yippee for more blogging.

Finally

I have been putting it off and putting it off, but finally I decided to make a new background and color scheme for my blog. I so often forget about that these days with all the time I spend in google reader, but it's nice to know that my blog is pretty again.

I have been lite with the photography lately but that should change this weekend. We are headed home for some more family time!

Oh and Rebecca, CONGRATULATIONS on passing the bar!!!

Mike has stuff in his ears

Mike getting his ears molded for custom ear plugs. Rockstars to be specific. Testing blogging on my phone.

I can't seem to post without pictures

My blog is going to die if I keep waiting to have new pictures to focus a post around. I didn't realize how much I relied on that until I now don't have it. I am going to try to post some old pictures that I haven't really blogged about yet instead!

On another topic let me say that yesterday was an odd day at work. I can't really go into it, we aren't supposed to talk about it. What I can say is how much your reaction to not having the option to do something can tell you about what you would have done given the option. Strange.

Never moving again

Not me, you know I want to move again, the blog! This moving archives thing is a PITA!! I got two months over this weekend, and one today. But I used to write a lot more often in 2004 which is nice but it sucks when I have to move each of them over here. Makes me miss those months when I only posted 5 times instead of 20!

It's fun to read everything though. Like all my posts about how much I love running. They even got me motivated enough to hit the gym this morning and do 30 minutes on the treadmill. I know I never love the treadmill as much as running outside, but it is something. And maybe I can work back up to running outside? I do really miss that.

Okay only 7 more months to go and I will be done transferring, one a day and I will be done by next week! There is still a lot of other stuff to deal with too, like photos. Bleeh.

Two years down

I have managed to get two years of archives over here from my old site. It's a pain in the butt though. Since most of them didn't have titles and of course none of them had labels so I have to add all that stuff to each post. But I only have about one more year to go. Maybe I can get that done this weekend since I finally don't have to work?

Speaking of archived posts, I have to read each one (or at least skim) to pick a title and labels and I just finished the two months where I was anxiously waiting for the offer for this job, quitting my old job, finding an apt in CA, packing all my stuff, moving, Mike's arrival . . . wow. It's amazing how quickly I forgot how stressful all of that was. Sadly reading it made me want to move again, I hate moving while I am doing it, but for some reason I love the idea of it.

New Home

I have finally decided to move my blog to blogger (odd concept right?) finally I have tags and automatic archiving. I am going to keep my old website for old photos and all my wedding stuff. From now on blog posts will go here.

Next comes the REALLY fun part, moving all my archives over. I have all of the 2007 posts done. Just a few years left to go.

Other than the labels and archiving why did I decide to move? Well as much as I know about CSS and html I was getting a little tired of doing all the coding myself. I also wanted it to be easier to post photos within my posts but I didn't want to recode all my old pages. I wanted to have direct links to each post. I wanted sidebars.

I just hope this is worth all the trouble.

Blog Change?

I am thinking that I want to revamp this website again, and then I think about how much work it would be and I wonder if it is really worth it. Should I just start a blog on blogger or something and be done with this? Just leave this page here for photos? I don't know. I might also just be cranky because I am making my way through my first overnight work shift of the shutdown. I miss Mike, I don't like being at work this late, ALONE! I have plenty of work to do, paperwork. But I have 10 more hours to fill up so what is the rush? I did finally get together the pictures from Redhouse & Calistoga and put them on a page. Though you have seen some of them already below.

Okay here is my real thing. I don't really have much to say. I am not a writer, I don't aspire to be. My blog posts are boring records of the day to day crap that makes up my life, they are not thoughtful or insightful or even all that interesting. Who reads this? Who would WANT to read this? I really don't. So part of why I am thinking about changing all of this is to make it more focused on pictures and not on words. I love taking pictures, I love learning about photography, and though I am not great at it I am certainly better with images than words. Maybe I just need to get a life?

Where has my memory gone?

On my way out to lunch today, I had all these great thoughts about posting here. They are totally gone now. I have no idea what I was going to write about. Where has my memory gone in my old age?

Our flight leaves in exactly 9 hours. I so don't want to fly. I am dreading it. I haven't had to since I moved out here in May and I haven't missed it. Hopefully there will be some blog worthy stories and photos when I get back. Maybe I should take a notebook and pen with me so I can jot down any ideas I get, since real-time blogging will not be an option. (Which by the way is something that the world really needs to work on! I need internet access at ALL TIMES!!)

Packing went well last night, except for Mike rolling around on the couch/bed/floor talking about how bloated he was. He went to the gym while I was at work and bought protein powder so he could have a nice muscle building shake post workout. Which he did, with one banana (3g fiber), 1 cup blueberries (4g fiber), 0.5 c strawberries (2.3g fiber) and milk and protein powder. Add a dinner of two tacos on low carb whole wheat tortillas (21g fiber each) and the boy had over 51 grams of fiber at dinner. No wonder his belly couldn't handle it!

Oh wait the idea came back to me. The weather! Okay boring topic . . . but still. Is it possible to get really sick of perfect weather? Every summer day here seems to be an endless string of bright sunshine without a single cloud visible in the sky. I never have to worry about rain coming in the windows while we are at work (not that we leave them open, this isn't small-town America), if the sun will come out at all, or that lovely afternoon buildup of oppressive heat and humidity that is so overwhelming that you pray for a huge thunderstorm to wash it away. I grew up in a place like that, in a weird way I miss the low gray skys, and I truely miss the dark thunderclouds, the cool fresh smell of the first crash of rain. The other day Mom said it was a beautiful day and she wanted to open the windows and let in the smell of the fresh cut grass. You don't get that smell here in the summer, everything is dead and brown. You don't relish a beautiful day, because they all are. Maybe I will feel more at home here when we get to the winter rainy season.

Internet Access

I won't have internet access at home until next wednesday. I will put up a big update then. With pictures. Happy Birthday Val!

I am still alive really

Vacation was great at times really eventful and other times, rather dull. I will try to post a full wrap up with pictures this weekend, if I have time. Why might I not have time? Turns out I have to travel to CA AGAIN next week. But this time for work. We leave Sunday night and I will be coming back on Thursday. Literally just in time to meet Becky at the airport. Hopefully while I am out there I can avoid going out on those long business dinners at least a couple of times and stay in the room and catch up on stuff. Or go to the gym at the hotel.

Turns out we are supposed to get 5-9 inches of snow today. Not good news, that means the trains will be all messed up this afternoon and it will be a bear to get home. Though maybe they will tell us all to go home early? That would be really great. My apartment desperately needs to be cleaned. My roommate is a very sweet person and I really like her but our ideas of clean are just SO DIFFERENT!! I need to get the place back a little closer to my level of clean.

One of the guys at work was telling me yesterday that someone at work was talking about my webpage again. That just makes me feel weird. I don't mind people reading it. I know this is a very public thing, but I do mind people talking about it, and I mind people giving me a hard time about people talking about it. It is just a webpage, and only like 3 people read it, and not all that regularly. Dooce I am not.

I disappeared

Okay so I disappeared for a little bit. I did feel guilty! I really wanted to have the few pictures I took this weekend at the party ready to put up when I got around to updating but alas, they are not ready, even though there are only 3 of them! But this is not just me being lazy. Really though you might not believe me I have been working, a lot. In fact I am working right now, at home on a Tuesday night at 10:10 pm, okay not RIGHT now, but I have been for the past hour or so, and I will be for another 20 or more minutes. Sad huh? But this project needs to get done, and if I can just catch up a little bit it will help a lot I think. So I plan to be doing this every night this week for at least an hour or two, working that is. Though tomorrow night I have to make time to go to Sam's Club because I am out of chicken and cereal, two things I can't live without.
When I do get those pictures done I will have more time to tell you about the party. Let's just say for now we should have taken the earlier train because I got damn bored at the end. Other than that, okay.

Better this year?

I hope my football team does better this year. I am already thinking about it. I even already set up the Tivo to record it. And The Penn State Football Story!

I am bored of this Olympic Theme already. I might upload my new one soon. See still boring!

New colors

Like my Olympic color scheme? I decided I am going to just make up a bunch of different stylesheets and rotate them during the year. They may be related to the seasons, or a holiday or whatever. I really liked the pink one I had, so it will likely come back for at least Valentine's day. The hard part of this is really finding a new font to embed with it. Since this one won't be used again for a least 2 years I didn't worry about a new font. Though I already started a fall one and I found a new font for that.

I decided

Well it didn't take me too long to decide what I want to do. I was suprisingly upset about the idea of not having a webpage to update anymore. But I am going to make some changes. I am going to try and stop just regurgitating my day on here and try to come up with something to actually say. And if I don't have anything, don't update!

Also I am going to make some rules for anyone who reads this who works with me. And if you don't want to follow them you can just not read it! Those rules are:
1.) Just because I talk about something on my webpage does not mean I want to talk about it in real life. This especially includes my diet, my political beliefs and my relationship.
2.) Don't go around telling everyone that I have a webpage. If they are really bored they will find it themselves.

Okay I want to explain the first rule a little in terms of why those three things are not to be brought up. First the diet thing. I have had issues with food for a long time. Not like starving myself in the hospital issues, but using food to both comfort and punish myself. It started in about 7th grade and continued until about 3 years ago when I decided to finally really start to exercise and slowly start to eat better. Instead of just not eating to lose weight. While not everyday is perfect they are all better than they were in high school. Unless you have had a weight problem (and I know I never really did being when I started all this I was about 5'8" or so and 150 lbs that is just chubby not really fat) or thought you did you can't really understand. And unless you are a girl you can't understand the pressure that is put on you from childhood all the way through your life about being pretty. No matter what else you are, if you are not pretty (ie thin) you are not worth anything. This was very hard on me as a teenager. I KNEW I was pretty smart, my grades didn't lie. But when you have frizzy hair, glasses and are a little chubby you worry a lot about the looks thing. And I did. And I didn't deal with it the right way then. But I am now. But for me it is a VERY PRIVATE thing on a day to day basis. And though I may mention my continued struggles with my sweet tooth and my inherent lack of athleticism here usually that is all I want to say about it. I don't want to talk about it beyond that. Except maybe with someone who really understands and knows me. Like Becky.

Okay the second issue of the first rule. I have my political beliefs, you are not going to change them and politics is just one of those topics like outer space and the deep ocean floor that I have little interest in and no desire to talk about.

Finally my relationship, and by that I mean the one with Mike. I don't really want to talk to most people about that, and I don't even write about the "relationship" part of it on here just to avoid the topic altogether. And that is not because I am unhappy with it, I am very happy with it, when I get to see him! The thing is people often feel the need to ask me when we are going to get engaged. And refer to Mike as my husband to be. Maybe we will end up there, but that is not up to YOU it is up to US! That is a very large decision and not one I want to feel outside pressure about, and by outside I mean anyone other than the two of us. No one can understand the reality of someone else's relationship or their level of contentment with it. So don't try and place your experiences or baggage on our relationship. I have enough internal issues as it is without feeling like other people are pressuring me to give Mike an ultimatum for something I am not sure either one of us it ready for right now. And hey we might be ready for it tomorrow or it might not be for years or never. But I don't want to be one of those girls, I just want to enjoy my relationship and the fun we have and not ruin it over a couple of pieces of metal, a party and a piece of paper.

Boring?

Some days I just feel like my blog must be so boring. Especially today when I read other people's and they are having monumental things going on. The woman who writes this one blog that I like to read, like to read so much I even went back and read her entire archive, just got some really bad news from her boyfriend. Not only do I think mine is boring in comparison but I also want to do something to make her feel better which is strange because I don't even really know her, and she certainly doesn't know me. How strange the internet is.

And my friend Sara had a serious biking accident this week. She is okay, but her new bike that she got for her birthday in June is pretty messed up.

Another 1.25 miles run before a break. And this with a painful cramp in my side and cramps from that girly thing! I was impressed that I pushed through the pain this morning.

My first birthday gift came yesterday from Becky. It was the small case for my digital camera! YEAH!! I love getting gifts!!

NY Weekend

The weekend was pretty good. We just had deli sandwiches for dinner Friday night and went to bed. Saturday we were supposed to go to the beach, but we were debating a lot because it didn't look all that nice out. We decided to go and it turned out to be a nice day out there. We drank a little and laid around on the beach getting pelted with sand. Then we went back to the city and went out to dinner at Ariba Ariba a mexican resturant by Mike's apartment. I had the seafood enchiladas again, they are good! Then we went to this bar down in the Village to meet his friends. It was a weird place, but I really liked it. Not like the college bars they often drag us to but a nice grown-up martini bar type of place. Very pricey! $12 per martini!

Running went well again today. 1.12 miles without walking! That is my plan for as long as it works. Add 0.125 miles per week. By mid August I will be up to 2.5 miles at least! If I ever feel up to it I will add more. But you aren't supposed to go up by more than 10% a week so for a while that is as fast as I can add. I can't wait until I can do my whole run without walking!

My little webpage here is starting to face a storage problem, due to my love of posting pictures! Now I am debating if I want to pay someplace to host it where I get a lot more storage or not. Anyone know of a cheap place to host it? I am not sure I want to pay $10/month for it. If I do that I also need to think of a name or address, any suggestions?