Footprints on the Moon

I cannot begin to express how badly I need new pots and pans. I don’t even mean that I need a fancy set of berndes cookware or anything. Just a decent set of pans. All of mine are the ones that come in those “Back To College”, “First Apartment” kits you always see out around this time of year. Since I haven’t been back to college in a few years, they’re getting a bit old, and trust me when I tell you that these pans were definitely not created for long-term use. The pans are so bad that I burned my dinner 3 nights ago, and I’m *still* trying to soak off the burnt food. I think it permanently fused with the crappy material on the bottom of the pan! I might just cook more if I had decent pans (or a decent kitchen)!

I’m currently in the middle of a cell phone search. Dad and I have successfully split our shared phone plan into two plans, so now the next step for me is to find a new phone. This includes figuring out which kind of cell phone I would like, and then whether it would be more cost effective to purchase it through my provider, or elsewhere on the web. I found a site called mpire.com, and they provide reviews and prices for all sorts of products. Of course, the first thing I did was plop the words cell phone in the search bar.
Lo and behold, I landed a page full of price comparisons for cell phones. I see a couple of the phones I’ve been looking at, so I’ll have to spend a little more time looking in depth at that. Many of the models list prices from 8 different stores! My mama taught me to be a bargain shopped, so you can bet I’ll be looking for a good deal.
And it’s not just for electronic products… you can find price comparisons for everything from health care products to furniture. As a consumer, and one who is willing to buy pretty much everything over the internet, I think I’ll be bookmarking this one.
In the mean time, I still need to decide what kind of phone to get. Since I had to drive all the way back across town last night to exchange phones with my dad (he had mine, I had his), I think one of my requirements is going to be distinctive…. sigh!

Man, yesterday I had what I’m going to call “some kind of day”. It wasn’t a bad day, but it seemed like every time I turned around, something was not quite right. The first thing was that it was raining, and my umbrella was in the drawer at work. Luckily, it tapered off enough that I didn’t get too wet. Then I get all the way to work and realize my access badge is at home, still attached to the pants I wore the day before. Annoying, but not the end of the world.
I packed a lunch, and about 20 minutes before lunch I realize…. my lunch is sitting next to the microwave. At home. But I have cash on me, so I buy lunch instead. Then I find out that if I wanted to keep my cell phone number, I had to do something about it before the end of the night. But they wouldn’t let me take my number. So we had to do business over the phone, and eventually got it hammered out, but not before lots of frustration.
I had started dinner before the cell phone company called, and forgot all about it, so dinner was burnt. I was not willing to start over, so I trashed it and headed out to grab dinner instead. While I was out, I decided to pick up a few things I needed to finish up a package I wanted to get out in the mail. I got home, ate, and put my package together… only to discover that I was 2 short. Dang! I ended up putting in a space filler instead because I was NOT going back out for TWO.
So there you have it. Not a bad day, but a day full of things being just a little bit… off.

As I believe I may have mentioned once or twice ( ) I’m planning on going to Vegas in November. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking to purchase the tickets for my airfare, and other transportation. At the time I was really wishing I had the use of a trip planner to help me out. It would have been much easier to call them up, and say hey, I want to fly to Vegas on this date, and return on this date, find me something cheap.
Heck, even using a price comparison tool would have been helpful… much easier than going to each site separately and seeing what I could find. I’ve spent a good bit of time looking, and I’m confident that I paid a good price, but I would have been upset to find I’d missed some good travel deals. We haven’t yet picked out our hotel, though, so there may still be some need for help yet!

I had a pretty good birthday… I didn’t get any diamond rings or anything like that, but I did get some cash, some frog patio lights, frog chimes, and a mini fridge. Which is still in the trunk of my car because I don’t want to attempt to carry it up to my apartment lol
I made a pit stop at the company picnic, had Killian for a couple of hours, and had a good visit with my sister-in-law. It was all good. One thing that stunk though was at lunch. We had all been talking about the pronunciation of our last name because apparently Ash-lee says it wrong. There is also one way that people pronounce the name wrong all the time, and Gloria piped up and said oh just say it that way. I said, “says the outsider…” And everyone laughed. I didn’t think anything of it.
Until Ash-lee left and I got online, and my dad’s away message said “Happy Birthday to Ryan from Dad and Gloria. Happy Birthday to Jenn from Dad and ‘the outsider’.” So that upset me. I can see why she took it the way that she did, but that’s not how I meant it at all. What I was thinking about was that the name pronounced like that is one of my pet peeves because I’ve been correcting people my whole life and it drives me insane, and I was amused at the difference that she’d only had the last name for a little over a year, and she doesn’t care how people pronounce it. But obviously, it didn’t get expressed that way. I basically have two modes: verbal constipation, or verbal diarrhea. Either I think so long about everything I want to say that it never gets said at all, or I don’t think at all about how to say things, and just say it the first way it pops into my head. And of course, when that happens, *I* know what I’m trying to say, but it doesn’t come out that way to other people. So that got me upset because I don’t want Gloria to think that I think of her as an outsider because I don’t, she’s family. But what’s a birthday without a few tears, right?

Did you know that you have the opportunity to Win an 80GB Portable Harddrive? You actually only have a limited time left– the contest only runs until tomorrow, August 21st. Sorry guys, I’m a slacker. But there’s still a chance to get in on it, so head over to GeekySpeaky to see what you need to do to enter for yourself.

Though, you know, if you don’t get around to entering, no skin off my back. That will just be one less person to compete with, as I really want that Portable Hard Drive for myself. I currently don’t have any system at all for backing up the files on my laptop, and as well all know, friends, that is what is known as a bad idea. I’ve also downloaded a bunch of digital scrapbooking things to play with, and I’d like to move them off the laptop before they seriously bog things down. So either enter for yourself, or cross your fingers for me to win it. Whichever.

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Happy Sunday everyone! It was a lazy, lazy day for me. I did a little bit of cleaning, and I got dinner, and made tomorrow’s lunch and other than that, I did nothing. It was fabulous. I took a nap for the first time in a loooong time, and it was quite lovely. I was afraid it would make me not want to sleep tonight, but we’re inching up on bed time now and I’m getting sleepy, so things are looking positive.
This picture is me, testing out my new bed set. Wait. What new bedset? THIS new bedset:

Isn’t it cute?? Ignore the rumpled, wrinkly look, this is straight out of the box. I’m really happy with it, it looks really nice. And do you see that bit of white peeking out behind the shams? That would be the pillowcases to my new 600 thread count sheets. They feel divine… I can’t wait to go to bed tonight, it’s going to be wonderful! lol

As usual, don’t forget to visit DigiCass to see everyone else who has participated today!

I live in an apartment with a buzzer system, and for the most part, I like it. I like the extra bit of security, being a single woman living alone. What I don’t like is how easy it is to lock myself out. Yep, I did it… for the second time, and I won’t even mention how many near misses there have been. The neighbors kind of look at you like you’re insane when you ring their buzzers to be let in. I’m doing better on not locking my keys in my car though– there was a point once where I got SO good at locking my keys in the car that my parents would tell me that if I was going to Miami, I better look up a Miami Locksmith before I left because surely, I would end up needing it.
Though, I should admit at this point that my car has kind of taken that out of my hands. It’s next to impossible to lock keys in my car because the driver’s side door has to be shut in order to lock. You can’t manually lock it with the driver’s side door open either. This is very, very good for me! Now I just need to figure out how to keep from bugging my neighbors every time I lock myself out of the building. I have a spare key, but it’s usually inside my apartment, and that doesn’t help very much.

I went to Germany for almost a month when I graduated from high school… I absolutely loved it. I’d spent the previous four years taking German classes in school, and planned to major in German in college at the time. We spent a week traveling in and around Munich, and the rest of our trip living with host families in Hagen. I met some really great friends, and honestly, the only thing I felt was missing from our trip is that we never got the chance to visit Berlin. That was a decision we made as a group, and I was one who voted against Berlin, as well, so I’m not upset about that. It’s just on my list of places to see in this life time. (I went to Germany, and didn’t see a piece of the Berlin wall until I was in Costa Rica. How funny is that?!)
I’ve been looking at my scrapbook from that trip, and man, I miss it. I loooooved the feel of Germany, and I loved the people I met. Unfortunately, I’ve lost touch with all of them now, and I don’t know how to get back in touch. When I hear about accidents, tragedies, deaths, etc in Germany, the first thing I do is get online and see how far it is from Hagen. Even though I haven’t talked to Robert in years, I’d still be devastated if I found out something happened to him, or any of the rest of them, for that matter!
I want to go back…

Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday Dear Me (and Ryan)… Happy Birthday to Me!!

Yours truly turned the ripe old age of 24 today! Did you send me a present? If you haven’t, don’t worry, I accept belated birthday presents as well

I had a pretty good day. I did a bit of shopping this morning, and then had lunch with my dad’s side of the family at 1 o’clock. I went with the plan of asking if Ryan and Ash-lee would let me have Killian, and I got him! Yay! I went from there to the company picnic at work… I missed most of the “good stuff” because of the birthday lunch, but I still got to show Killian off to some of my coworkers. Ash-lee came to pick Killian up about 8:30 or so, and stayed and talked until 10. I’m glad that I have a sister-in-law that I get along with so well!

Shoot! I just realized… I forgot to take Ryan’s card to the lunch this afternoon, so I was planning on giving it to him (or to Ash-lee to take to him) when I gave the baby back and I totally forgot about it again! Grrr!