Busy but oh so good!

I am currently blogging from my mom's apartment in Chicago. I will soon be saying goodbye and heading back to Peoria where I will work tomorrow and then get on a plane on Tuesday for Arizona!

I was so excited on Friday to see my last client for the next TWO WEEKS! As much as I enjoy my job, I am ready for a break. I have to go in tomorrow to get a ton of paperwork done before I can officially be on vacation.

It has been fun to spend time with Chris, Ann, and John. I wish I had a little sound bite so everyone could hear how John says my name. He draws out the ee's, like Treesa, but I also think he says it with a little bit of a southern accent. So cute!

As has become my norm, I brought my camera but didn't ever take it out of my bag. Why should I when I travel with the paparazzi! So, I have some stories to tell, but they will be better told with pictures along with them, so I will wait until mom makes a disk of her pictures for me.

Maybe I'll post some stuff while in Arizona, but it might be a week before you hear from me again.

Thinking in Facebook Status Updates

Sometimes, as I'm going through my day, status updates run through my mind. Sometimes I think it's a little sickening. Sometimes it amuses me. Sometimes I think people would de-friend me if I put all the status updates on Facebook as I think them. So, most of them I think to myself. Then I remembered, wait...I have a blog too, I can just put them there! :) Here are some from this evening:

I drank milk out of the carton for the first time in probably about 15 years!

I just went outside to get something out of my car in shorts, snow boots, and my winter coat! The thermometer read 8.2 degrees! I almost took a picture of myself after I looked in the mirror :)

I got more accomplished in two hours at home this evening than I did all day yesterday being snowed in. Exercised, finished Christmas cards, paid some bills. Getting ready to eat dinner, wrap some Christmas presents, and then watch Hawaii Five-O.

There's a peak into my evening and my mind! :)

I'm Finally No Longer Bitter about Christmas Trees :)

So, (I feel like if I start my post this way, I'm in the middle of a conversation with all my readers!) on Wednesday night I asked Emily if she wanted to shift the Christmas tree to hide the non-lit strand. She quickly agreed! This required basically redecorating the tree because we had to turn it about 2/3 of the way around and don't have enough ornaments to decorate the back of the tree. But, so far we have not had any more light strand casualties.

As in years past, I will start with the previous year's Christmas tree picture. At the end of the year, Emily threw this tree away. We had to string it up to keep it from tilting last year. She bought a new tree that is a couple feet taller. Last year we had to buy lots more strands of lights. I prepared Emily that we would probably have to buy more. We estimated how many more. Neither of us estimated this many:
YIKES! I'll admit, I was a little ashamed to admit how many lights are on the tree this year. Emily let the cat out of the bag on Facebook. The problem is, once I start one way, when I run out of lights, I have two options: 1)take them all off and start over. 2)go out and buy more. Emily, yet again, was a good sport and went out twice to get more lights. The end result. 35 strands. But remember, one strand doesn't work :)

It's like a Where's Waldo...can you spot where the original missing strand went out? After this strand, the one right next to it went out. That is when I began to lose all love for well-lit Christmas trees. Once I replaced those two, the strand up from that went out. It is still currently out, but at the back of the tree now.

A close-up of the unlit strand.

And one last shot with the pretty snow from last weekend in the background. I think this was after I replaced the two strands and before the third strand went out. So this is the Christmas tree with 3500 lights lit in full glory!

I'm still here

Just a quick note to say...I'm still here. I have been equal parts busy and unmotivated. Emily is pestering me to post Christmas pictures. I believe the exact quote was, "You take pictures of spiders and put them on your blog. You have to take a picture of the boxes of lights we bought this year." But the tree has been a little bit of a fiasco. Three different strands going out on three different days. I wouldn't even let her plug it in for about a week because I couldn't deal with it. So, until the tree pictures go up...how many strands of lights and/or lights do you think are on the tree? If you already know the answer because you have talked to me or Emily, you can't answer the question!

A Conversation with Wheat Thins Girl

Here's the conversation:
Her: "I saw someone who looked just like you this weekend and she was scary!"
Me: "Do you think I'm scary?"
Her: "YES!!!!"
Me: "What makes me scary?"
Her: "You're short!"
Me: "And you think short people are scary?"
Her: "Well, George, thinks that Midgets are scary."
Me: "I'm not a Midget."
Her: "But you're shorter than me!"
Me: "But I'm still not a Midget. And I'm sorry you think I'm scary!"
And on the next subject we went...

HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY JOHN!!!!

Today is my nephew's birthday. Very exciting. I got to talk to him on the phone as he opened his present from me. And then he got on the phone and said, "Thank you Teresa! I love you!" And then he blew me a big kiss! Definitely the highlight of my day.

A couple of weeks ago me, my roommate, and one of our friends were arguing over whose nephew was the cutest. To stop the debate, we decided that I had the cutest almost 3 year old nephew, Emily had the cutest 13 month old nephew, and Joanne has the cutest nephew under 1.

So, I guess now I have the cutest 3 year old nephew!

Select Thoughts from Teresa's brain on a Friday evening after a long week of work and two days of a cold!

That's the title you get when I'm not in the mood to be creative, just get the information out for the people to read! And by "people" I mean...hmmm...I never know who I mean. It's a funny thing when random people come up to me and comment on my blog. Oh, you read it too? Granted, I've started putting on Facebook when I blog a new post, but for some reason, I still only think that the people who comment on my blog are the only one's who read it.

On another note, when I read books, I get so involved in them, that part of me is sad when I am done. I mean, sometimes I have invested a couple weeks into reading a book. I just finished a book that was the second in a series. So, for the last three weeks, I have been reading these two books in my spare time. At the end of the book, I just want to know what happens next. I like books that have epilogues, but I want them to be 20 years down the road so that I REALLY know what happened with these characters. For instance, in this book I want to know
1. where was the location of their wedding?
2. where did they end up living (he lived in California, she lived in Iowa)
3. what about the foster kid he took under his wings? was he adopted by the family who was trying to straighten him out, but that he didn't like very much?
4. did she ever reconcile with her parents? did they come around after she had a child within the bounds of marriage (she had gotten pregnant in high school and they made her give it up for adoption)?
5. how many children did they end up having? and what did they name the child that was born in the epilogue?

I can just hear my brother's voice now...nothing happens after the end of the book. It's not real. But in some small part of my brain those characters become real while I'm reading the book, so I always want to know more.

On to the next thing...Today I was with a client and was getting hungry, so I ate a granola bar while he ate fruit snacks. He asked me, "Are you trying to lose weight?" because apparently that's the only reason one can eat a granola bar.

I lost my voice yesterday, so I got to stay home from work. I won't lie, it was nice. But I also stressed about all the appointments I had to cancel. And my voice did come back for the most part in the afternoon, but not enough that I felt I could talk a lot to clients. I never got dressed, which also meant I didn't take a shower (ewww....).

I was looking through the Bed Bath and Beyond catalog today and found several things that were slightly alarming:
1. a machine that turns water into soda (it just sounds yucky)
2. an inflatalbe Wii Racing cart
3. a "sound asleep pillow" with a built-in speaker that you hook your iPod to (iPod not inlcuded, just in case you were wondering)
4. a "rechargeable mangroomer" which is a do-it-yourself electric back hair shaver

Okay, that's all the randomness I can think of for now!

Maybe I'm dying?

Yesterday morning I noticed I had a rash on my neck. The only time I've known myself to get this rash is when I have a fever, so I kept feeling my forehead, but I didn't feel hot. Funny though, that I started talking myself into not feeling well... Anyway, when I got home last night, the rash was even worse. I took my temperature and it was 97.6. Later in the evening, I took it again and it was 97.1 The rash was still present this morning and has faded some throughout the day, but when I got home, I took my temperature again. Now it is 96.7. Maybe I am slowly dying. Is body temperature the first thing to go? I just don't know.

On a funny note, I called my mom last night. When she answered the first thing I said was, "In the 31 years you've known me, have you ever known me to get a rash on my neck for anything but a fever?" Her answer: "You get rashes on your neck when you get a fever?" : ) I guess that answered my question and than some!

Nostalgia

My first car as a junior in high school that I bought (if you can call it that!) with my own money was a 1983 red Honda Prelude. Here is an image I found on the Internet: And here is a Honda add for the Prelude. I laughed when I read it.

First of all, my car was NOT new when I bought it. It was about 12 years old. Secondly, I don't think there was much precision in my car! :) And by the time I got it, it was definitely not this pretty. It had peeling paint (the guy I dated in high school called it "the chameleon"). In the mornings, even though it was an automatic, I used to have to shift between the different drives to get it to accelerate. It no longer had air conditioning (unless you count low: one window down; medium: two windows down; high: two windows and the sun roof open). But if you had the sun roof open, you better make sure that it didn't start raining because you had to hold the button with one hand and push it closed with the other...yes, I had to pull over a time or two! I don't think the speedometer worked very well. The person who sold me the car taught me how to "judge" my speed by the rpms. I guess it worked, I never got pulled over. Until I looked at these pictures, I had forgotten the pop up lights. Although if I remember correctly, my lights no longer closed.

But did I mention it was all mine. A friend of my mom's sold me the car, so I paid $50.00 into a savings account each month for the car. And I paid the insurance and gas. I loved this car! I will always remember it with fondness. And when I see one on the road, which I did the other day (the prompting for this post), I miss my first car, even as I sit in the "luxury" of my almost 4 year old car.

Pain = No Gain?

I can't decide if it's a good thing that I can't stand or sit without clenching my teeth and holding my breath. Or that I have to talk myself into moving before I actually do it.

Yesterday I decided to enter into the land of the exerciser again. Stupid exercise tape! :) I got through it yesterday and woke up feeling somewhat sore, but my goal was to complete the tape again today. So I did it. But now I can't move.

I started thinking about the saying "No pain, no gain." But considering I am exercising so I don't gain weight, I figured the better saying should be "Pain, hopefully no gain." We'll have to see.

Last night before I left the apartment to hang out with some friends, I cracked my window so that it would cool off for bedtime. I was driving home thinking it would probably be somewhere in the mid fifties in my room. Ummm, no. It was 48 degrees! I can't really say I minded. I did close the window. But it still felt wonderful to curl up under an extra blanket and drift off into peaceful slumber! Crazy, I know!

Okay, off to find something for lunch, but I have to steel myself, get some momentum up, use the table as a brace to push myself up. Hmmm...maybe I should browse a little longer :)