When we moved into our house, the former owners had the place all out landscaped. Never having had a fully landscaped yard, I thought, "Wow, how awesome is it that we have all of these lovely flowers and things!" As it turns out, you have to stay on top of those things or they quickly lose their awesomeness. SO, this morning mister and I got up and overhauled the front and back yard. We pulled (a lot of) weeds, pruned bushes and vines, mowed, swept and weed ate/eated. Now, I have a raised rash on my arm that I believe may be the result of an unfriendly, skin irritating and hopefully non-poison oak/ivy plant. It doesn't itch, so that is a good sign...

After all of the yard work (and after showering) we decided to go to guitar center so Cory could look at amps. On the way back, we passed a vintage Hartz chicken sign that said "Hartz chicken Over Yonder." Upon further deliberation, we decided to turn around and eat there. Although I generally do not eat fried chicken, we agreed that I can definitely get down on their yeast rolls and the vegetables on the buffet. We got really worked up about this and were pretty jazzed, actually. It turns out, that Hartz is, in fact, "over yonder," however, it is also closed down. Cory insisted that they should correct the sign to say, "Hartz Chicken is CLOSED Over Yonder," so as not to unduely raise the hopes of passers by. Seriously, who eats the buffet at a fried chicken place anyway?

For dinner we went to Eastern and had Chinese food. When Cory opened his fortune cookie, he received the following fortune:

"Your natural charm will attract someone special"

he laughed and said, "Done! This must be an old fortune cookie."

OH. MY. GOD.

he kills me in the face!

Today is June 26 and all I can think about is the fall! It's almost feverish how badly I want October to be here!

I plan on doing the following things during my most favorite of the seasons:

Greek Festival
Pumpkin Patch
bake goodies
get a fun halloween costume
pass out candy to my new neighborhood kids!
renaissance festival
bake goodies
decorate the heck out of my house
bake more goodies
bake bake bake
thanksgiving at my house?


ho-ly shit.

The summer program at work is winding down. As a result, the very necessary overtime I need to put in to wrap things up has become much more of a voluntary thing. Sure, I need to work late to get x done, but no one is making me. SO, my ability to make myself work late is somewhere near my ability to make myself work out -- not good at all.

I seriously need to hit the gym, too. My bras no longer fit and the girls are hanging on for dear life!

Does anyone have some spare initiative laying around? I could really use some.

Some lunatic picked up a discarded apple core previously eaten by Tiger Woods and is selling it on Ebay. Currently, the bids are up to $36,000. What I want to know is who on earth would want that? Seriously, I think that is really sick.

Congrats to whoever wins the gross half eaten apple core with Tiger Woods spit on it! Way to be a creeper.

George Carlin died.

Although I really appreciated his work in the more adult aspect of entertaining, I think my most important memories of him are as the tiny Mr. Conductor that lived inside the mural at Shining Time Station. That show pretty much rocked my socks back in 1989.

This weekend I was reunited with Laura and her ridiculously gorgeous and well-adjusted baby Rory and it was awesome! It makes me sad that they live so far away.

Earlier today I perused the webbernet to see my options for jobs that are more fun, and it really seems like there aren't that many. Why do I have to be so lazy? I just want a job where I don't have to work that much -- WTF?

Finally, I joined the YMCA on Sunday, and I even bought socks (I did not have a single, non-argyle pair) and worked out and everything!

Mondays are lame.

Today must have been "run into people you know" day.

More importantly, Cory wrote me the cutest song anyone has ever written in your /my / anyone's life today.

OMFG.

Today is Wednesday, and I am going to Fogo de Chao for lunch with all of my clerks. This is super duper exciting because, although I do not really care for meat, I am pretty sure I will find something there to accompany their tremendous salad bar that will sufficiently cause me to slip into a food-coma for the afternoon. YAY

Happy Wednesday!

I would like to begin by expressing my astonishment with the number of ladies I went to school with who either have babies or will have babies soon. Did I just not get the memo? I mean, I really don't want the memo right now anyway, but seriously! What is with all of these well adjusted people having babies?

You may not know this about me, but I am in a perpetual state of bruised-ness. When one starts healing, I get another! This weekend's came in the form of a three foot by 2 1/2 foot box filled with an unassembled barbecue pit falling on my shin from the back of my SUV. I now have a hideous and huge green bruise that takes up most of the front of my leg from the knee down. Conveniently enough, I have accessorized with a much smaller but still obnoxious purple bruise on my knee cap -- w00t!

Otherwise -- this weekend was god-awful fantastic! Just ridiculously awesome in pretty much every way. We invited my family over on Saturday for a Father's Day bbq with aforementioned killer grill which was hugely successful. I made fresh lemonade and was a hostess and it was all very exciting! We also met our neighbor across the street, Clarence. He has lived there since 1967 and he wears a straw hat and an old man cowboy shirt. I love him.

Yesterday, he brought us homemade icecream and it just illustrated what I have been looking for in a home all this time. Having super cute old man neighbors makes my day.

Also of note, we took Rambo for a walk last night and the weather was beautiful and all of the sprinklers in the yards and neighborly people waving made me swoon.

Yay for being REAL homeowners with our awesome entertaining house!

i'm too young and I don't understand yet.

Wow. I have to level with you: I do not like this whole "not blogging" thing. Someone you know has really got to get back to the once-a-day or at least once-every-two-days bit. Since I started this thing, my blogs have mostly consisted of complaining about work and rambling about my new house. This is definitely not fair to my readers! So, for your viewing pleasure, I will post about the good parts of my days this week.

Monday was hella productive. I was able to accomplish a ton of administrative paperwork-y things that I have literally been putting off for a couple of months. While I still have more to do, Monday really was a good way to start the week. Aside from the ridiculously relieving feeling of accomplishment, I actually got to leave the office at 5 PM. It was really super cool.

Tuesday we had a Golf / Spa day event for the attorneys in our corporate and tax sections. Once I got over the random monsoon that pushed tee time back an hour, it was smooth sailing. We had champagne with strawberries and lots of fun cheeses at Isle PediSpa while the ladies -- and one guy -- got their mani/pedi on. I was even able to squeeze in a mini pedi for myself! Afterwards we went out for dinner at El Tiempo cantina and had lots of margaritas and mixed grill. As usual, there were a couple of attorneys who were not ready to end the night so we went across the street to the Velvet Melvin and closed the place down. It was late.

Wednesday (aka yesterday) we had a lunch at the Daily Review cafe and Elizabeth and I crammed 11 people into our two small SUVs. I am pretty sure the valets thought we were ridiculous. Our evening event was a grilling class at Melange catering and it was SO neat. I was able to get home at the fairly reasonable time of 10:30. This gave Cory and I a little, very much needed, time to hang. It also helped that I was not completely inebriated. I am sure he is tired of carrying me to bed.

Today has been pretty good so far. Waking up was not terribly difficult, traffic was a piece of cake and I am looking forward to a yummy breakfast of oatmeal! Tonight we are going to Bath Junkie for a Womens' Initiative event where we will design and create our own bath salts. I am pretty sure there will be champagne involved, and really, how can that be bad?

Tomorrow I have no events and fully intend to get out of here at a reasonable time which better be close to 5PM because mister petty and I have some SERIOUS hanging out to do. I might even create an itinerary of awesomeness for our married couples evening... or maybe I won't.

Have a fabulous Thursday!

I have what I would have previously called a "real job." This is not to say that any other job is less real than mine -- it is just different. Definitely not a job you could have in high school or even in college.

This morning, I felt so dreadful I did not want to get out of bed. Why? Because I am 100% overwhelmed at work to the point that I no longer have power over my nights and weekends. That pretty much defeats the purpose of the office job, right. Of course, when I say "office job" I mean office job in the non-professional sense of the word because I am not a professional. Except that I am, and I work too much.

Apparently, along with working too much, I also complain too much. Sorry about that.

Yesterday, we celebrated my mama's big 6-2 at our new house. I made chocolate meringue pies and had flowers and wore a sundress and it was just fantastic. Although I was stuck working from my blackberry for part of the afternoon, I would say it was a very successful day of celebrating mamas.

Now that we have had company, I am going to have to get down to business with the painting. That way, when everyone comes back they will see how I do not want my house to have the color theme of a taqueria.

Now, if only I could find a way to keep my job from destroying my life...

OH. MY. GOODNESS.

Right now, I am sitting on my couch in the living room of my NEW HOUSE, watching my NEW TV and typing a blog from my lap using my new WIRELESS INTERNET.

Okay, so for many of you, tvs and wireless internet are not a big deal. For me? HUGE DEAL.

I seriously cannot remember a time when I have felt this happy. I think everything has really come into place.

I took the day off from work today so we could have the carpets cleaned and get the cable and internet set up. I ended up working most of the day anyway, so I wouldn't really call it a "day off" so much as I would call it "a day that I worked from home while dealing with house things."

On top of being in my wonderful and amazing new home with my wonderful and amazing husband and our fabulous new stuff, our kitties are officially "indoor / outdoor kitties."

With all of the amazingness and happy feelings I have going on right now, we have spent a ton of money fixing things and cleaning things and buying things and hopefully by the end of this week we will be done with the spending for a spell.

Good news: Elizabeth is taking our clerks to Dallas tomorrow and I will not have any events so I will have evenings to devote to "home making."

Coming soon: planning my mama's birthday party for this coming Sunday!