Sunday: more Flurry

Flurry didn't even try to be subtle about preventing Ben from working today.

Saturday: laundry

At first this just looks like a pile of laundry waiting to be cleaned.


But then you find out that Flurry managed to hide herself in it.


She also helped Ben work today by taking a nap on my laptop case.

Friday: work

Well, I had a nice work day because I left work around 1pm. Unfortunately, Ben is still at work. :( I saw him briefly during dinner with Dusty and Laura, but he didn't stay long.

Here is Ben not working...we can always pretend.

Thursday: hardly hard

Today I was writing the sentence: "To get the connector in the back shell you need to push hard." Then I thought, "oh, hard is an adverb. Should it be hardly? Push hardly. Hardly push. Interesting. Most of the time when you add an -ly it doesn't completely change the meaning of the word."

In other news, I always find it interesting when I have two friends that become friends on facebook, especially since often I have no idea how they would no each other because I know them from two different places. It's a cool friend triangle!

Wednesday: blanket

Today after work Ben and I were cuddling with Flurry (our normal ritual) and I started to fall asleep. (It had been a kind of boring afternoon...busy, but boring. Some days are like that.) Ben asked if I was falling asleep, and I said yes, but I want to get my blanket first. So he got it for me. :D

Flurry has been extra cuddly. Probably because she has nothing better to do, but Ben and I are enjoying it!!

Monday: Flurry's lucky day

Yesterday Flurry finally decided to start cleaning herself again. It wasn't that she wasn't cleaning herself this past week, but she was just cleaning the easy to reach places. Well, during her cleaning frenzy we notice that there was a spot on her good front leg that had no fur and a bump. She kept licking and playing with it, so we figured another vet visit was in store.

We set up an appointment with the vet for this afternoon, but the vet called and said that they had shaved off that area (why? still unknown) and there is always a bump there. We could still bring her in, but it wasn't necessary. We opted for the "not necessary" option.

Sunday: census

Today I filled out the census form. I was kind of excited because I like filling out forms. But then I was rather let down. All they asked, pretty much, was what is your name, age, birth date, gender, and race. Those are boring questions. I was hoping for questions that would get an interesting "snapshot of America" like

"how often do you do laundry?"

"how many trees are on your property?"

"how many computers/person are in your house?"

"of the following list, which adjective best describes you?"

"are you satisfied with your job?"

"do you consider yourself happy?"

"do you buy tuna fish?"

Saturday: a wonderful day

Since today was a beautiful day, we got together with some friends in the late afternoon and played ultimate Frisbee. Yay ultimate! Boo being out of shape. After about 10 minutes I was completely winded. We played a bit more but then the grill was warm so we started the food. Yum picnic! Afterwards we played another round of ultimate which went better, possibly because there were more people and therefore less running.

We continued the night by going to Clay and Jess' for games and desserts. Ah, more fun. We played Nutzee and I lost by one point. I almost tied because my last card to flip was an Ace. I flipped it into my play cards as I yelled Nutzee. I almost pushed it into the middle piles afterwards but decided not to cheat. I'm actually a little saddened at myself that I even considered doing that. Oh well.

There's apparently a bat in their basement, and everyone was slowly going down to look for it. Jess and I were talking and suddenly they come up out of the basement hold a garbage bag with a black thing in it, yelling and running for the front door. Jess jumped about a mile. The black thing ended up being a sock.

It was a wonderful evening spent with wonderful friends.

Thursday: the good things about working too much

1. I'm not closely counting my hours to make sure I have enough.

2. I don't feel guilty about doing a few random things during the day (going to the vet, having lunch, getting bagels for breakfast) that take away from my time.

3. I have an excuse for not doing chores

Those are poor "good" things. :(

Wednesday: x-rays

The vet nicely sent us a picture of Flurry's x-rays. See how on the right "wrist" some of the bones are separated from the others? That's the problem.

Monday: ides

IDES OF MARCH!! I was going to say Happy Ides of March and then realize that it wasn't appropriate. Then I was going to say Sad Ides of March, but that didn't really work either.

So I decided to just yell it.

Sunday: :(

I spent all afternoon and the beginning of the evening in bed and not moving because of a headache and dizziness. :( If I didn't move it at least mostly went away. It's mostly gone now though...phew!

Sunday: happy Pi day!

We celebrated Pi day last night with some friends.

We ate pizza pies,

played poker,

had pies,

and had more pies.

It was delicious and fun!

Saturday: Flurry take 2

Flurry came home today with her cast. The doctor said it was a bit heavier and has a higher chance of irritation due to rubbing, but Flurry is getting around a lot better. She still isn't happy about it, but she doesn't seem as unhappy as last night either. She was missed last night while at the vets though.

Friday: Flurry

Well, last night Flurry was hopping around quite a bit...remember the paw problem from about a month ago? It never really went away. So I called the vet, and then brought Flurry to them for some x-rays.

She didn't have a broken bone, but she did have some bones that weren't in the right place in her "wrist". So they wrapped her up in this huge red splint which she was not happy about and was not afraid to let everyone know.

We brought her home andshe could barely walk. She ended up laying around most of the time because the cast was so big. Then she kind of discovered she could walk if she kept her left side by a wall to keep from tipping over...she proceeded to escape from the bedroom but then didn't know what to do because the wall went the wrong way. I caught her and put her in the bathroom.

Ben and I started eating, and about 10 minutes later we hear some meows. I decide to go get her and put her on my lap. I get in the bathroom and she's managed to turn on the bathtub water, get up on the counter, and get her paw free from the splint.

Back to the vet we go. By now I'm sure she is zonked out as they are going to try and put a cast on her this time. She also is staying over night. :(

Oh Flurry. I didn't even have time to take a picture of your plight.

Thursday: home

Today we came home at a normal time instead of working late. It was wonderful.

We also had some very annoying problems today due to a "/" that was left out of a part number. We figured it out, but about four hours later and with a lot of luck.

Wednesday: last night

Setting: in the bathroom, getting ready to go to work

Amanda: I must have been exhausted last night. I went to bed early and don't remember a thing until the alarm went off.

Ben: Really??? When I came to bed we had coherent conversation about how you couldn't get to sleep.

Amanda: hmm. Well, I was asleep!

Oh, the irony.

Monday: poll

I'm sad to see that sausage without syrup won. I'm happy though that it barely won!

Today was Day 1 of Crazy Days. It was rather crazy, although at least had some lulls during which I got some other stuff done. The weirdest thing today was a type of coax wire that I was trying to get the coax stripper to strip. It had something kind of sticky on the inner conductor so it didn't strip correctly and then the foil was glued to the dielectric...we had never seen that before. I spent quite some time trying get to the foil off without the dielectric and it just didn't work. It turned out that the foil was supposed to stay there.

Aren't you glad to know that now?

Sunday: PB cookies

We had a potluck at church today. It was delicious...and there was plenty of food. (Phew.) I made the super easy gluten free peanut butter cookies and they were a hit! We have a large family that is gluten free at the church, and so these cookies are a good thing to make so they have something to eat. But other people kept coming by and saying how delicious they were. It was a nice feeling.

Saturday: Henry V

Tonight Ben and I went to see Henry V. On the way there we were listening to NPR and they had their two sound effects guys do a sound effect show-down. I think that being a sound effects gal would be my 2nd highest dream job. It was rather awesome.

The play was good. It was the first time I had seen/read Henry V so I missed a lot of stuff, especially in the beginning. We went because we knew the person who did the sets, and they were great! Afterwards we got to go on-stage and take a closeup look which was cool...I'm not sure I've ever done that before.

Friday: how much?

As normal, we went out for dinner with Dusty and Laura. What was unusual is that we had to go to three restaurants before we found one with less than a forty minute wait. Phew. The Mexican place had a table for us right away, although the service wasn't great. Ben and I were waiting in line to pay our bill, and the group in front of us was dividing up their check at the register...normal for this restaurant. What wasn't normal is that after they left the total ended up being $35722.24. The guy running the register didn't look like he was having a good day.

Thursday: date

Ben and I had a date after work...we went to IHOP and then to see The Blind Side. A very enjoyable evening. Unfortunately, as we were leaving the movie theater the headache that had been threatening all day sort of exploded. :(

Tuesday: Travis

Travis came to visit us tonight! Yay!

Monday: syrup

Every time Ben and I have sausage with a breakfast food (pancakes, waffles, etc), we always have a discussion about whether or not syrup is good with sausage or not. I always say "YES!" Ben always says "YUCK!" Hence the survey on the side.

Sunday

This morning we woke up to a beautiful snowfall.

The quilt is finished!

Saturday: snow piles

This morning we finished shoveling. This is a better picture to see how high the drifts were.

Here is the awesome snow pile we shoveled.


And here I am on top of the snow pile!

Saturday1: healer damage

I was healing an instance and two of the dps were so bad that I out-dpsed them on several pulls.

*sigh*

Friday: snowed in

Today I got up, looked outside with sleep still in my eyes, and said, "The roads are clear. We can shovel and go to work." I get outside, take a look, and quickly change my mind. There was a drift at the end of our driveway that was 3.5' tall. Most of the driveway had at least 1.5' of snow. Ben and I went back inside, hoping that it would blow away. (It didn't. We've shoveled just enough to get out with the car in case of emergency.)

The benefit of working from home, besides not getting cranky shoveling, was that Flurry kept coming to sit in my lap. That was very nice.

Thursday: snow

Today we got a snowstorm! Yay! I love snow. Everything was so pretty. The only problem ends up being logistics...I ended up going to work early so I could leave early. The major roads were fine when I came home, and Ben had shoveled the whole driveway! We shoveled again 5 hours later and are debating doing it again before bed.

In case you're wondering, and I know you all are, I went with the green tea smelling lotion. Not because it's a favorite scent, but because the jar is almost gone. The smell was actually a bit distracting as I was going to sleep because it was so different from the old smell.

Wednesday: finished

Last night I finished a bottle of lotion! This is always a landmark experience for me because it doesn't happen often. It should probably happen more often, but sometimes the thought of putting on cold lotion just deters me from doing it.

Anyway, I have many more bottles of lotion to move on to...we'll see which one comes up next!

Monday2: This one's for Aaron and Heather

I love fail blogs that are weird things that show up in Google auto complete. So I thought I'd try a few of my own. While most of them weren't very original, this one made me laugh.

Monday: old food

Ben and I have slowly been trying to get rid of some of our "old food." You know, the food that is still good for eating but hasn't looked good since you got it at the grocery store?

Or the random food that your mom bought years ago and your dad gave you when you moved out of the house? (Like the 20 cans of new potatoes. They must have been on sale for a whole month and she could never remember that she had previously bought them. I wonder if she laughed about it when she got the 20th can.)

Today's ingredient was beef bullion cubes. I used up three while making a delicious French dip. It was the first time we've made it and not only was it good, it was super easy.

Sunday

I don't know what to write about today. So you're going to get a conversation from several weeks ago that I found hilarious. Since it was so long ago it might be modified a bit. Thanks go out to Amy, Brian, and Carolyn for their inspiration.

Amanda: yeah, they're the ABCs. We could do that with our kids! C, D, E, F, G...I'm not having five kids so that we can get all the way to H though.

Ben: Maybe we can include middle names.

Laura: What real words end in H? Maybe their initials could just be a word.

Amanda: Hah.

Dusty: Duh.

Amanda: But how can CDH or EFGH be a word?

Dusty: It's not. Are there any words that even have their letters in subsequent alphabetical order?

Amanda: no

Dusty: (weird look)

Ben: haha...as in lmno

Laura: hi.

Maybe you had to be there.

Saturday

Today I took over Ben's old monitors as he just got a new one. They're pretty nice.

Flurry started taking medicine for her paw tonight. About an hour afterwards she was limping worse than we've ever seen her. She seems a little better now though, so hopefully it was just a fluke.

The rest of the day was pretty relaxing. We cleaned and straightened the house, I took a nap, watched some Olympics, and played some Warcraft. I got a new Warcraft vanity pet! I also kept killing my hunter pet, but told Flurry that I wouldn't do the same thing to her...I love her a lot more than my virtual flamingo.

Thursday: short track

Here's why short track is my favorite winter event this year:

Announcer: and they're off!

Announcer: as they round the first corner we see the #1 guy in last place. That's a great place for him to be right now.

(Amanda: seriously? Last place is best?)

Announcer: two laps to go! #1 better make a move soon!

Announcer: and look at #1 now! He passed two people on the outside and one on the inside! #1 wins!!

(Amanda: wow. Just wow.)

And then I watched the relay. That was crazy too. People were everywhere, although it wasn't very exciting because two teams wiped out in the beginning.

Wednesday: things ahappenin'

Today was an eventful day!

We received the golden toliet that is going around church. The deal is that you can buy insurance up front to not get the toilet or pay $10 to have it removed. The proceeds go the youth group who are raising money for the 30 hours famine. Yay! I was hoping that we would get it at some point.

I also picked up my quilt. Here is a picture of the back.

I made a vet appointment for Flurry because she's been treating one of her paws a little funny. I'm now glad I did because she was limping a lot more today than we've seen her do in the past.

Finally, I covered up the white paint splatters on our red wall. It looks so much better and really for not that much work. I'm eying a few other places that could maybe use some similar treatment. I also found out that there is still a ton of dust on the high mantles and wall. There is now a bit less dust but I wouldn't call it clean. The remaining dust is rather invisible though, and that's all I really care about.

Tuesday: last night

Amanda: I read my book.

Ben: You did? (When did you have time??)

Amanda: yeah, the front cover.

Sunday: Olympics and quilt2

Today I watched a lot of Olympics. However, it is actually rather hard for me to just sit and watch them because there are too many commercials and random commentaries. So I moved a lot of my housework to the living room (such as laundry sorting). I really enjoyed the moguls and short track the most I think.

I also started cutting some of the pieces for the next quilt, as it is something I can easily do while watching Olympics.

Flurry wants Penny to know that she is doing rigorous testing to make sure the quilt will be up to cat-napping standards.

Friday: school buses

Today we had to do some errands, and we ended up going near the schools just as they were getting out. There were buses everywhere. We ended up behind one. It stopped, two kids got off, crossed the road, and went into their respective houses. We go again. Ten feet later the bus stops, one kid gets off, crosses the road, and goes into his house.

Seriously? I guess I don't understand this new fad with stopping in front of every single house. I can understand wanting to have a bus stop in sight of your house or maybe for elementary schools, but I really feel that older kids should all be able to get out and walk the ten extra feet. Bus stops were good places for meeting kids in the neighborhood (SARAH VANDERBILT WERE ARE YOU NOW?!?) and getting a little exercise and I'm a little sad that they're disappearing.

Thursday: snowplow

Today was Ben's day to work from home. It works well...I usually go in a little earlier. Today I got up and looked out the window. The snow didn't look too bad on the driveway, but I thought I'd shovel the end to keep it clean. Just as I start shoveling the snowplow went by on the other side of the road. I thought "oh great, it'll probably come around on this side right after I finish shoveling and bring that terrible heavy stuff with it." Soon afterwards I get to the end of the driveway and realize that the snow had drifted. It was up to my knees. Sigh. I start shoveling, rather sure that I've already shoveled this snow twice yesterday. I reach the end of the driveway and realize that there is still two feet of this knee-high snow. Then I hear a rumble in the background. The snowplow is coming back! I was so happy. It didn't even put a lot of bad snow in front of the driveway and took away most of the snow that was still left away.

Three cheers for the snowplow driver!

Tuesday: power

Tonight our power went out. It's the first time since we've been here that it has gone out while we were at home. It was almost fun. :) Then we went out to Bible Study and the roads were really bad. We probably should have canceled. One of these days we'll figure out when to cancel and when not to. The roads going home were still bad, but not quite so bad. At least we didn't have to dodge any pickup trucks perpendicular to the highway or people deciding to walk right in front of us like we did on the way there. :s

Monday: happy car

Today our car got to go to the doctor. It got some new belts, the fuel line fixed, and the air conditioning compressor disconnected. It turns out that the annoying scary squeal was from the ac compressor. So right now we don't have the squeal but we also don't have a/c either.

Sunday: superbowl

We had a superbowl party at our house tonight. It was a lot of fun. I was cheering for the Saints (for no real reason) so was excited that they won. I feel like I won something important even though I didn't really decide who I was rooting for until about five minutes into the game. Hugh got really angry the exact same time the Saints scored a TD, and the look on his face was priceless. We also had some delicious cheese fondue and a bunch of other good food. Oh, and the Doritos commercials were by far the best. We were all laughing at most of them.

Saturday: !

By popular demand, here is Amalle in her new tabard:

and no, no calluses. I've been about 10 quests away for quite a while now, so I finally finished them off this morning.

In other news, the day went much better than I was expecting. Ben and I also went grocery shopping together which was oddly fun. And we got donuts!! Flurry is now napping in my lap which makes me happy.

Saturday morning: too much WoW?

For all of you non-WoW players, it means that I have done a majority of the quests in the game.

Friday: a nice day

Today I only had to work about a half day, which was wonderful. Then I had a nice lunch with Jess, a long nap, and then pizza with Dusty and Laura.

I also managed to make myself bleed without actually cutting through the skin. I thought it was a pretty amazing feat.

Thursday: Amanda

So the latest thing on Facebook is to look up your name in urban dictionary. "How dumb," I thought. But I thought I'd look it up anyway. And it turned out to be so cool that I couldn't not share it.

"A woman named Amanda is typically very beautiful with an incredible body and nice eyes. They are known to be very loveable. Amandas are envied by other women."

I also started working on pillowcases to go with the quilt. It's interesting trying to make something with the remaining cloth. Some colors I have lots of and some colors barely have any.

Wednesday: chair

The garbage people took away our broken chair! And emptied our very full trash can! Hooray garbage people!!

Tuesday: dreams

I forgot to post yesterday, but here is what I meant to post:

I had two dreams last night. In one of them Ashley and Stanley got a housegoat. In the other my ice cream and strawberries looked like water but still tasted like ice cream and strawberries.

Monday: a pet peeve

So, one of my biggest pet peeves is finding dirty dishes in the sink. I know, I know, it seems like a dumb pet peeve. But I finally put into words why I don't like it. When there are dishes in the sink they tend to collect water even when they're there for a short time. So then when I take the dishes out to put in the dish washer my fingers get wet. Then my fingers get cold, and cold fingers make me grumpy.