Oh my neck....

Ok, this whole neck thing is getting old....I have done everything I could think of and still it bothers me. Yesterday and today it has been especially sore..was it because I took a 15 mile bike ride, or the 3 hours in the garden or did I sleep on it funny again? Who knows but this is getting old....fast. Today I tried the 3 advil at a time (Dr. Erin said I could take up to 4) and tried the heating pad. It seems to have helped a little bit. So, I am going to keep that up for tonight and see how I am doing in the morning. I have held off on exercise for the last couple of days but I think that I am going to have to hit the gym again tomorrow.

Not much else going on here. The weather was so cool today that I had the windows open and no air on....they say that it is unseasonably cool here but I like it. I am so glad that the week is almost over and am looking forward to a long weekend. I am looking forward to being home for the second weekend in a row with nothing to do really...it should be nice. And, the Tour de France starts this weekend!! YAY, I am super excited (I know that none of you probably watch it but it is awesome). You know I love me some Lance and the whole teamwork and other aspects of the race just really amaze me. Craig watches it too so I am sure we will be those dorks for the next 3-4 weeks :-)

In other news...I finally gave up on the nails. Today I had the acrylic taken off (which was sort of painful) and got a regular manicure. The lady told me that my nails looked really good considering I had the acrylic on there for 3 years. Hopefully they will hold up. The whole reason I even got the acrylic to begin with was because my nails always broke and it was painful. We will see. It feels so weird right now. The tops of my nails are super sensitive and I don't have any nail that goes past my finger so I feel everything with my finger now that used to be blocked by my nails. It also makes it harder to text :-p

Anyway, nothing exciting here!

Ouchie...

That is sort of how I feel. Just achy. It is achy in a good way though...well, all except for that stupid neck muscle that will not chill out. It was getting better on Friday but two plane rides and two nights of sharing the bed with someone else and it is starting to hurt again :-( Hopefully it will be back on the rebound soon.

Friday I got home at about 3:30 which was preceeded by fun events :-) On the way to the airport in Charlotte we hit traffic because of an accident and were pushed for time at the airport. Since my senior's flight was 35 mins before mine I dropped her off before returning the rental car. Once I pulled off I realized that she forgot her cell phone...UGH. So, after returning the car and getting through security I had to make it all the was to E20. It was pretty far considering I went in at the B gate and my flight was at A1. Luckily I made it down there fine and then made it to my flight, so it wasn't too much drama, especially compared to my normal travels :-)

When I got home on Friday I decided to go to the bank to open a savings account for Craig and my trip. He had mentioned once that he had a hard time saving coins cause he would always want to know how much he had so I had looked into savings accounts with no minimums. Well, it turns out that there is a special program in Ohio that is called SaveNOW. You can make as many deposits and you want, up to $500 at a time until you reach $5,000 and after 10 months the state of Ohio sends you a questionnaire. Once you fill out the questionnaire they give you 3.25% interest as a bonus. This is on top of the bank's .75% that they give for this type of account. You can pull the money out at any time and after a year it just turns into a regular savings account. Not sure how many of you have checked the interest on your savings accounts (other then ING) but they are around .4-.5%...not even a full %, so 4% sounds great! I also thought that this would be easier for Rebecca's idea of putting my savings from Kroger in there (which by the way was $24 today and my total purchase was only $39)...this way I can just transfer the money without having to go to the bank. We will see how it goes....

After the bank Craig and I went for a bike ride...not your run of the mill easy bike ride either..this was a 15 miler on my mountain bike...which is not easy if you are not going down a mountain. It was a good workout for me (and probably the reason that my neck is still sore). We were going to go again tonight but we ran out of time today. They have trails here like the Silver Comet Trail but they are more far reaching.

Last night we went to the Crew (Major League Soccer) and today I spent 3 hours in my garden. It had been pretty neglected since I have been gone for 3 weeks. Craig watered it for me if it didn't rain (which it does pretty regularly here but not enough to be annoying) but he didn't pull weeds or sort it all out. If you remember, I had planted peas, snap peas, green beans, carrots, zucchini, a pumpkin, and some pepper plants. Well, I picked enough green beans and peas for a meal so that was fun. The zucchini is out of control but no actual zucchinis yet :( And, apparently a pumpkin that I broke the stem off of when I transplanted, ,has survived and we have a nice long vine now! What did I spend 3 hours doing? Well, first I had to weed the whole thing, then I gently moved the zucchinis so they wouldn't invade other plants, I thinned the carrots and then I set out to untangle the peas! Oh the peas...that was probably an hour and a half by itself. The peas grew to be about 4ft tall and since I didn't have stakes for them to vine up they were one big tangled mess. They were all attached to each other and growing in every direction. Now they are all sorted out so I hope they will produce more veggies. Finally, my strawberries have sprouted little runners. If you put them in soil (or lay them on it) then they will root and grow a new plant so I did some of that. If it works I will have turned 4 plants into about 20...weird huh. We will see!

So, I am thankful to have been home all weekend and I think that I made the most of it. The eating healthy thing is still going....I felt like I made really good decisions last week with all of my eating (other than ice cream twice) and I am trying to eat non processed food almost exclusively when at home so we will see how it goes. There are still a couple meals (breakfast) that I am trying to figure out but I am definitely making progress. I am now reading this book. It is really good and sort of scary at the same time. I heard that they were trying to make a movie (or had) but the food industry is trying to block its release. Basically it is about how scientists try to break down food into nutrients and tell us which nutrients are good and bad but because food is made of so many different things, it isn't really practical to break it down like that. The prove being that no supplement works as well as the food in which the vitamin is contained. It also talks about how low fat diets have pretty much done nothing to prevent heart disease or other chronic diseases linked to diet and how all those "studies" are really not accurate because it is really hard to isolate anyone's diet. I don't know, I just saw him on Bill Mahr one night and what he said seemed to make sense so I thought I would check his book out. It also went along with my eating less processed stuff so I am checking it out. He does use the word "nutrition" too much but other than that I like it, 70 pages in! I will let you know if I like it in the end and anyone is welcome to borrow it!

Ok, this much be the longest post EVER so if you are still around, then I hope you have a good week! Only 4 days this week for me and I have so much to do that I think that it will go by really fast!

Exhausted

This has been one of the most frustrating weeks of work. On the one hand I have learned a lot but on the other hand, there is so much that needs to be done at this location that it is not even funny! I don't have much confidence in the Controller here but maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt and I worked 12 hours today..UGH....oh, and my neck still hurts!

This is a little random but I got curious about my stats on my photography website since I had stopped advertising and had been doing less with clients and I now have at least one visitor from every state except Vermont and New Mexico..so if you know someone from either of those states and they visit my website I will send you a prize. I also crossed another thing off because I sold something out of my etsy shop finally. I had sold stuff that was in there but never through them so I was excited. Now I need to update it.

I can't WAIT to go home tomorrow. Unfortunately I have to leave here at 7:45am and will not get home until 3:30pm but whatever, I will be home!!! I can't wait!! It has been so long since I have been home longer than 24 hours and I have so much to do! So many sewing ideas coming :-)

And finally, a sad day...Michael Jackson :-( I am convinced that it was due to the fact that he weighed 90 pounds and was rehearsing for 8 hours a day. I had one of his posters when I was young...I got it as a prize for some fundraising event and I really did love his songs. I was always sad that he seemed to lose it a little later in life but I am really glad that nothing about all of that has been mentioned in the wake of his death.

Slacker

I feel like a blogger slacker lately :-( I have just been all over the place and my routine is a little out of whack. I am in Darlington, SC now for those who keep up. Yesterday I left Craig's house at 5:40am (after getting up for a shower and stuff) and I got to the office here at 3pm. Ridiculous. This place is so hard to get to. Everyone said to fly into Charlotte and not Florence but it is the same price...geez...that was 4 hours of driving I wouldn't have had to do. The place here is a disaster....literally. I could spend the rest of the summer here every week and I am still not sure they would be clean....geez again. The good news in all of this is that I will be here (1hr from Myrtle Beach) when my family is coming in a month and I was planning on going so that means I will not have to pay to fly here. We are going to fly into MB that week..YAY. It also means that if we get the girls weekend together, there is a good change I will be here then too. Bad news is that I have less time with Craig :-(

Not much else is going on with me...I am ready to be home for a weekend in Ohio and out of this crazy southern weather :-) I have done well eating this week on the road and I actually feel a lot better. Hopefully I can finish out the week strong.

I STILL have a crick in my neck, though I am pretty sure I pulled/strained/pinched something. The pain goes all the way to the mid part of my back...on the back of my shoulder blade. Weird huh? It has also been almost 3 weeks now! I am about to put on ICYHOT (sexy) and take a muscle relaxer that Dr. Erin said I could probably take...sweet dreams!

My little bb is growing up!

Seriously, how cute is she??? I love her to pieces. I got to see her this last weekend and she is so much fun. She calls herself "nana"....close to Ariyana...we don't know where the second N (or the first one I guess) comes into play but Alyson said that all little kids call her that so it must come from somewhere.

She is a little parrot now and just repeats things once she warms up...can say lots of animals and all their sounds, she knows colors and will pretty much repeat whatever you want her too. She is still working on my name...she mumbles a little and then there is "lissa" at the end....it is cute. Yesterday when I asked who the cutie pie was she pointed at me so I guess that is a point for me :-) Then again, if you asked her if she loves mommy she says no...and we know that is not true!

The next time I am in town my mom is going to bring her to Atlanta to hang out on that Friday (my mom doesn't work Fridays). I can't wait!

101 things in 1001 days - 1 Year Anniversary

Well, it is a week late but I was on vacation. Here is my list and I updated it. I have gotten through only 13 things in a year so I really need to get moving. It is sort of funny that I looked at it right around the year anniversary (it was a coincidence) but I decided that I wanted to start working on number 50. I decided it on our trip and I told Craig that I thought we should start savings our change and then take a vacation using only cash. He sort of laughed at me at first but then everytime we got change I put it aside and he started to think that it was funny and that he would participate. He says that he needs the quarters cause he uses them but that he will save the rest. It is sort of cute cause I talked to him last night and he said he had some more change for the pot. I am going to get or make some sort of cute little bank for us to put it in. We collected all the change when we got home and we have about $20 so far. I also have a change bank here in Atlanta and it had $53 in it...so we are on our way. I wanted to set out some more specific rules for us to follow:
--we can use points to pay for airlines, hotels, rental cars, etc and it counts as cash cause it is free.
--we can use credit cards to make reservations or if we have to pay for a flight with one we can but we have to send the payment to the credit card company within 24 hours.
--once we decide we are going we cannot use any cards and can only use the cash we have with us.

Can you guys think of anymore rules? Right now we only have $75 which is about a day trip but hopefully we will be able to save a lot more. I always seem to find $1 bill stuffed in pockets or my purse (not in my wallet) so I think that I am going to throw those in there too. Wish us luck :-)

How is everyone else doing on their list a year later?

Happy Note

Since I don't like to write crappy entries but I need to every now and again to vent, here is some happy news.

Tonight Craig got to do some freelance photography for the newspaper he works for :-) It is for a special magazine type publication that they do once a month and it is for one of their feature stories. He got to cover a cooking club meeting...which is funny because he doesn't cook. I haven't seen the pictures yet but he sounded excited when he called me on the way home and I am sure he did a great job :-)

Too tired to think of a title

I am sorry but I am....it has been a busy few days and I got up at 4am (of my own choosing) this morning....

Sunday was probably the worst flight experience I have had ever...with only one exception that I can think of and I was with Craig who doesn't really fly. Before he met me it had been 5 years since he had flown and he just doesn't like dealing with it all so that made it worse though he was better than I was. We had two connections, one in Salt Lake and one in Cincy. We got to our first connection with no problem and even had time for a quick breakfast. Then about 20 mins from the end of our flight it all went wrong. I was starting to feel sick (I don't like landings in general and this one was rough, plus I hadn't done as well as I had hoped with eating healthy so I was already weak in the tummy), and the little screen that shows you were you are was off a little and it looked like we were going in a circle. We were still going down so I didn't worry, plus i was trying not to throw up. We landed and the flight attendant came on and said we were only 4 mins late, cool. Well, then the pilot came on and said that we had actually not landed in Cincy and we were in Louisville...um, what? He said there was a storm over Cincy and that we had been diverted. He also said that no flights were going in and out of Cincy so our connections should be safe and we were going to wait here and we were going to get more fuel and sit tight. The plane became a boat and rocked back and forth like I have never experienced and it poured. Finally around 4:20 (we landed at 3:30) they said we were going to take off and we pulled out. Then at 4:40 they said we couldn't go (meanwhile, I looked up our connection...you know, the one that was grounded cause no flights were going in and out of Cincy, and it was boarding...liars). At 4:50 we took off....it was a short flight but when we got to Cincy they pretty much said if you were going to Dayton just go to the main ticket counter...great. I talked to the gate agent when we got off the plane because I didn't want to go out through security if someone was wrong...but they weren't. We went to the main counter and I got in the medallion line to make it faster. I get to the counter and she tells me that there is only one flight left that night and it was booked so they were going to do ground transportation to the airport in Dayton. They wouldn't give us a car because she said they can't accept the liability so they were doing a taxi. Can someone please explain to me how putting someone in a cab with a stranger to go an hour is any more safe than giving them keys if they have a valid driver's license? That cabbi could have taken me anywhere. Craig was just ready to be home at this point so he wanted to rent a car. The problem with that was that we would have to ride a shuttle to the rental car place and we would have to see if they had cars and all that. We decided to do the cab thing and went to the taxi desk. The lady processed our voucher and then the guy at the counter said we had to have 4 in a cab. Um, SO NOT MY PROBLEM! I don't know anyone on the plane that is not in my party..how do I get two more? Luckily two came up but then the guy said he had to walk us down to the cab (after the lady had just handed me the paperwork but then he took it back cause we only had two). I lost it and was not real nice to him....I felt bad and later said it wasn't his fault. I had been up since 5am though and hadn't eaten since 8am...I was starving (6pm by now) and me hungry is not good. FINALLY we get in the cab, with our randoms and we have to hold half our stuff on our lap. Now, Cincy's airport is actually about 20 mins into Kentucky and the Dayton airport is about 20 mins north of us...UGH! So we are finally on our way and then we pull off an exit in the ghetto. We are all confused as to where we might be going....then the cabbie says he needs gas. I am sure he didn't expect to be doing a 2.5hr roundtrip. When we pulled in the car was smoking and he had to go back in the store like 3 times. Finally he poured something in and we were on our way again. Finally at 7:30 we got to the airport. Also, the lovely voucher we got from Delta didn't include tip...so basically we couldn't land in an airport where other planes were landing and taking off, so I missed my connection so you send me in a cab with strangers and I am out the tip on an hour long fare? WTF. I mean I have been annoyed by things that Delta has done before but this was really stupid. Why should I be out money? Part of owning a business is making sure your customers are happy. Oh, and my other favorite part is that when we landed in Cincy finally I checked our itinerary and they had booked us on the 2:10pm the next day. I know it was all automatic but it cracked me up that they would think that a full 24 hrs late was acceptable. It renewed my desire to write them a letter and it was a crappy end to a great vacation :-(

So, fast forward to last night and I have to go back to the airport to come to Atlanta. I get to the gate and they announce that they will give $400 if you will give up your seat and go in the morning on the 6am so I said I would do it. It must have been really oversold because normally they make you wait until it boards but this time I was on my way home before my flight was even supposed to take off. When I went to the counter when she called me name she said "did you volunteer" and I said that yes, I was the first one and she said "just wanted to make sure because you are gold" I guess gold medallions don't normally volunteer...huh. Oh well, the plane this morning was bigger and had first class so I got upgraded. 4am was really early this morning though and I am tired now.

Other than that, nothing too exciting at the end of the vacation. I am going to try to organize the 645 pictures that I took on vacation and get some posted and I will talk about that later...hopefully I will get to work on some tonight but I am going to have to go to bed at a decent hour if I will be functional tomorrow.

Still Alive

Hi guys!! Still alive. I was unplugged for almost 5 days and it was awesome!! I was in Canada and didn't have any internet at the hotels we were staying at so no blogging :-) I am not back in Montana and we are just chilling in the hotel room so I wanted to drop a quick note to say hi! I will definitely get all the details down when I get back to Ohio. In short, we liked Canada (Banff and Jasper) a lot more than we have liked Glacier. One of the major roads here is closed and so we can't get to a lot of the stuff that is so good about the park. Canada's parks though were so beautiful and we could get to almost everything. I highly recommend going there! It was so quaint and relaxing.....it made me want to visit in the wintertime and just cozy up at a fire!!

I missed everyone's blogs so I am going to try to peak at a few while Craig cleans out the car :-)

I am outta here.....

Whew....it has been a rough day. I was going about business as usual when all of a sudden I was running for the bathroom...uh oh! My stomach hurt the rest of the day but thankfully some medicine slowed it down significantly. It worries me slightly because we have to get up at about 5am tomorrow and that always makes me nauseous, plus we have a lot of flying to do tomorrow. Luckily it is just Craig sitting next to me so I will not have to bother someone else...and hopefully I will feel better anyway :-)

Good news is that I lost (before I got sick) 1.8 pounds in the last week...yay! It hasn't been as hard as I thought...hopefully I can keep it up and hopefully vacation will not ruin it :-)

Next was the nail ordeal...oh my god! I decided to try a cosmetology school because I used to go to the Aveda salon in Atlanta and I loved it (except it got too hard to get an appointment and they don't use hair dryers for highlights so with my long ass hair it would take 4 hours...no thanks). I decided to get my eyebrows waxed cause it has been a while and I wanted to get some shape in there. Well, Belvie...bless her heart (cause that is what we say in the South when we feel sorry for someone) was this nicer older lady..not old, just older who was going to do them. She talked A LOT and she took FOREVER. The shape is good but there were a few stragglers that she didn't get. I saw them right away but wasn't going to dare ask her to get them since she spent 5 minutes deciding whether to "take the hair" on top of my brow. She asked what I thought and I said it looked the same either way. She was really nice and seemed lonely but at the same time, it shouldn't take over 30 mins for an eyebrow wax..I saw another girl get hers done at the second nail spa I was at (more coming on that) and it took about 5 minutes. Next I was on to get my nails done. I have had a really hard time finding a good place here and was hoping that this would be my answer. Yeah, not so much. Again, I realize that the nail thing is very trivial in the scheme of life so don't think that I am that shallow... So, she takes off the polish and then I tell her that I want them shorter and she sort of looks at me..then clips them with clippers...um, you can't do that with acrylic...it will crack. She cracked one and then didn't want to continue....she wanted to use the nail file....and she said it would take a really long time (normally they use this little drill thing...like a sander.....and I have never been anywhere that they didn't use it) because they couldn't use the drill. UGH. So I got up and said I couldn't spend that much time (after the 35 min eyebrow wax and the fact I had work to do) and I would go somewhere else. My nails were hideous and I was upset (trivial, I know) so I drove to the nicer part of town and couldn't find any places..i saw one day spa but you never know about those places...so I came home to look on the internet. I FINALLY found a place close and not ridiculously expensive. I think that I mentioned before that I go to a nice place in Atlanta and it is $18 to get a fill in...one of the places cost $65!!!! WTF? So, I called the place, made an appt and went. I had to wait like 20 mins for my appt but it made me feel good that it was packed with lots of normal people. When I finally got them done she did a great job..of course I ruined two or three of them already but, not her fault. So, I found a place ($24.50) but I am not sure that I am going to continue it. It just stresses me out and it is a lot more expensive here. I might just get the acrylic off and see if my nails are any healthier now. I just wish that one wasn't all rigid from my ezcema. Sigh....

Next up was going to get Craig a phone. His died....literally. It will die after 20mins of being off the charger then you put it on and in 5 mins it says it is charged and normally it will last through the night..we use it for an alarm, but this morning when Chloe came in for some loving like she has had a habit of lately about 5 mins before we get up, I noticed that the alarm wasn't going off...hmmm. yep, dead. I actually was pretty proud of him because normally he takes forever and at one point he was talking about getting a bb, which he doesn't need...AT ALL and would never use so it would be a waste of money but he was fast today.

Now I am just chilling and waiting for him to come by and help me with my suitcase (he was already coming for something else) and then to bed. Early day tomorrow.

I think that Craig is bringing his computer on the road and we have free internet for at least 4 nights so I will try to keep up the blogging :-) But, just in case, I hope everyone has a great week!! Hopefully I will have lots of great pictures when I get back!

Seriously, hump day already!

I used to work with a girl who didn't like "hump day" so every Wednesday I would say "happy hump day" (can't wait to see what ads show up next to this)...she didn't mind it from me and it became our little joke, and I have no idea why I just told that story.....

OMG today has been a doozie. I have actually been really productive but I can't believe that my day is almost over and I am only going to have two more days left until it is vacation time and then Atlanta time. A think that a bunch of us are going to play trivia on Wednesday (17th) at Twisted Taco in Midtown if anyone is interested...just let me know.

This morning it took me 3 hours to get to work...yep, 3 hours to go 35 miles and about 2.5 hours of that was to go 4 miles. This time involved me making several phone calls, answering several emails (we were literally still for a while) and stopping once to pee...my gosh, I drank my coffee 2 hours before I stopped...it goes through you! Eventually my email was too overloaded and I couldn't do that anymore so I looked on fb and twitter (which I still don't completely get). When I finally got to the accident I felt sort of guilty for complaining. It was a big rig truck but without the back that had crashed...they had a little bobcat (small bulldozer for you city folk) that was picking up pieces of it from the forest..sad. When I saw the front of the truck there was a big black box looking thing where the driver was supposed to sit...I don't think that he made it.

Other tidbits:
--NCR which is National Cash Register...remember my post about inventions, well, they have decided to relocate to Duluth, GA. It is sad for the area because it is the last Fortune 500 company that was here.
--I was looking at my stat counter thing today and noticed some hits from other countries using a google search for melissa midwest...turns out it is some sort of porn. Not sure what because I didn't click on it at work but I thought that was funny...you dirty Germans!
--I started another blog (I know I have 3 now, but they are all really separate in my opinion and lots of people have more than one, right?). Anyway, here it is and it is to help motivate me to get healthier. I think that so far it is going pretty well but the next few weeks will be challenging. I thought I would mention it now because I probably won't talk that much about that stuff on here because I am sure that you guys don't all want to read about it, so, if you do then bookmark the other site and see you over there.
--I have about two people at work on my fb list and now a girl at one of our locations saw me comment on someone's status and sent me a friend request. UGH, I hate it because she is nice but she is basically my client and as much as I talk (complain) about work, I don't want her on my fb page...that is for friends...or at least people who can't get me fired....I am going to ignore it but it just sucks because it isn't like I can say "sorry, I don't friend coworkers" since she saw me comment on another coworker's status..I guess I just won't do it anymore and maybe she will think that I am just never on fb...

UGA Dress and Vacation

How cute is this? Wish I had a little girl!! I also need to think creatively about how to take pictures of this stuff...I usually am just snapping really quick to get it done...ugh, the photographer in me is embarassed!

Oh, and I can barely believe that I haven't mentioned it but I only have 4 days until I go on vacation. I think that is seems different this year since Craig and I are leaving and arriving in the same cities together....it seems less stressful. I also have been distracted by trying to figure out this whole healthy thing before I have to buy new clothes....4 days!!! I guess it is a little better when it sneaks up on you like that though!