Footprints on the Moon

Not only have we come around to another Sunday already, it’s also the last day of the month. Are you kidding me? One whole month of 2010 is gone already?? Where the heck is it going?

Today’s been a fairly productive day. Right now I’m playing games on Pogo and watching the Duggar family have their 19th kid on TLC. Earlier today though, I cleaned out the fridge and washed the dishes. I took out the trash and did some laundry. I even washed the sheets off my bed! I should have changed the litter boxes and gone to the grocery store but I think I did pretty good.

Especially considering how I basically didn’t sleep last night. Well, I slept, but not enough. I got hit with insomnia last night… haven’t struggled to sleep like that in a long time! I was pretty much still awake and thinking about getting back out of bed at nearly 2am! I guess the good thing is that I’m plenty tired now, and hopefully I’ll be able to sleep with no problem. I’d have to purchase a life insurance policy otherwise… I don’t think I can handle another night of little to no sleep, especially when I have to go to work the next day!

There’s an app on my phone that offers up “fun facts” every time that you log in. After spending a month or so watching these little gems roll by, I decided that I had to start saving some of them to share. You’ll see what I mean in a minute because some of them are about as “fun” as life insurance rates. Let’s just say…. their idea of a “fun fact” and mine are rather different.

It starts off rather innocently.

That’s a lot of doors!

Well, now don’t we feel special!

I’ve never even heard of a Saluki?

Now it’s getting a little creepy.

We’ve now left interesting for the realm of seriously disturbing.

Aaaaannnnddd there it is. We’ve left “fun” entirely and are firmly in “OH DEAR GOD.”

Does anyone else feel like their blog has been added to a free web directory for spammers? They seem to be coming out of the woodwork to leave weird comments lately.

Anyways! Man, Sundays sure do seem to come around quickly these days! Friday takes long enough to get here, but then before I know it, it’s almost time for bed on Sunday night. Something seems seriously unfair about that! I had a pretty good weekend though.

Friday night was a benefit for my cousin Izzy. You may recall that she lost her husband back in November. Friday night was a benefit to raise money to help her and her daughter pay the bills that were left behind. There was a great turnout, and an amazing show of support for her.

Saturday, I spent the day relaxing… I’ve been fighting a pretty nasty cough for the last week, so I was hoping if I could just rest, relax, maybe take a nap, my body would have a chance to heal a little bit. I’m still coughing, but today I had to do at least some cleaning… my apartment was a wreck! Still is, but it’s better than it was. Hopefully the cough will improve soon because I really don’t want (and can’t afford) to go to the doctor and people keep yelling at me because I haven’t gone lol

Awhile back, I bought one of those giant bags of Lifesavers to put in the candy bowl at my desk at work. As time went by and I snagged some candy out of the bowl, I made a couple of interesting discoveries.

Can’t decide between Orange and Cherry? No worries! Just choose the multi-flavored option:

Or maybe you’re watching your waistline. We’ve got an option for you too– Lifesaver Lite:

(Yes, that is a sealed lifesaver.)

I don’t know about you, but I think they need to fire up their seo software and start marketing these options! LOL

I’m finding myself quite annoyed with Comcast this evening. I realize that this is not exactly an unusual feeling for someone to have towards the cable company, but they really walked on my nerves today!

I’ve been spending my day today being rather lazy… since I’ve been coughing my fool head off all week, I decided today would be a good day to relax, rest and let my body try to heal. As such, I haven’t done much today beyond napping, and I certainly haven’t made myself presentable. I’m still in what I wore to bed last night– a pair of shorts and an oversized t-shirt. Dirty hair thrown into a ponytail and generally looking like I might belong in a commercial for best acne treatments. So understandably, I was less than thrilled when someone rang the buzzer at the front door, and even less thrilled when I discovered that it was a Comcast employee.

So he comes to the door, and he just wants to “verify what services I have.” This wouldn’t be so bad, except they had another employee out here… maybe a month ago? Who was doing the same thing. And the other employee didn’t try and tell me that my service was listed incorrectly (hasn’t changed since the day I signed up), and didn’t try to upsell me to a phone plan that I don’t need and “free” movie channels. I told him no since I’m not interested, but he still spent several minutes trying to convince me to upgrade, how easy it would be, and would only cost me a couple more dollars. Yeah, your base price for the new plan is only a few dollars more than my current total including the taxes and fees. Sounds like basically free to me… NOT. Sorry, a phone plan I don’t need and don’t want is not a good deal even if it’s “only” a couple dollars more. The thing that really got me was that his story kept changing.

First he was just checking my service because they’re working at the box, and didn’t want to change anything without verifying with me. Then he was a retention specialist, and he could offer me these services for free! He told me that they are currently in a pricing war with AT&T, DirecTV, DishNetwork, etc that’s why he could offer this to me right now. Sweet, so now I know I can call up your competition and probably get a better price. Thanks!

A few hints to the Comcast dude:

1) Don’t show up at my door unannounced and try to sell me more services.
2) When you DO show up at my door, get your story straight. I had about three different ones by the time he left.
3) No is a complete sentence. I shouldn’t have to tell you no four or five times to get you to take my answer and leave.
4) If you want to cut me a great deal? Offer me a promotional rate on the services I already have. If I wanted phone service, I’d have purchased phone service a year and a half ago when I signed up with Comcast.

I’ve been considering giving up the cable in order to save some money, and today’s visit is one large shove further in that direction.

I really need to find my camera so I can quit posting these lousy quality webcam photos! And yes, that is a Christmas shirt I’m wearing… it’s a good bumming around the house shirt.

I’ve had a pretty lazy weekend. I had good plans to do some serious cleaning, and I did a little of that, but mostly I didn’t lol My lower back has been bothering me this weekend, so I just tried to relax most of them… caught up on the TiVo, played games on the internet, did some crocheting, that sort of thing.

Sarah came over Saturday and hung out for a few hours, and after that I just hung out around the house, researching options on the internet. One option is going back to school, but after some poking around, reading about grad schools and GMAT prep I realized that I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up lol Since I’m not paying for any more schooling until I’m sure, I moved on to the next option: I’m putting together my resume, and keeping my eyes open.

Now I’m cuddling on the couch with Pudge, and watching Twilight (don’t judge!) Will probably go to bed once the movie is over.

If you’re anything like me, you spend a lot of time reading blogs but not a lot of time commenting. Today, feel free to step out of the woodwork just to say hi. Or continue lurking if that suits you best, I suppose!

I feel like I’ve been quiet on the blog this week… not too unusual these days, just feels like it this week since I was trying to blog more frequently. You know, quit letting Facebook kill my blog. It’s so much easier just to post a couple lines on Facebook and call it a day!

Plus this week, I’ve been dealing with some stuff that I didn’t necessarily want to blog about. Some things are changing at work that have left me feeling disappointed, frustrated, inadequate, hurt… It’s hard to come up with something you DO want to share when you’re consumed with feelings like that. I suppose I could tell you about how stress is a good colon cleanser, but that’s probably TMI. (Oops, too late!)

Also, if you are clicking through to my blog, you might notice some changing views. You won’t notice from a feed reader, but I’m currently theme shopping. Most people would pick out something new, get it polished up, and then make it visible to everyone. I am not most people, nor am I that organized. I’m trying a bunch of themes on for size, and I’m having a hard time deciding. There’s always that one little thing I don’t like. One of these days, I’ll pay a professional to do one up nice for me, but for now I’m broke. So enjoy the changing scenery!

I spent this weekend, in my brother’s words, “infirm.” I had big plans this weekend to really clean, organize and purge my apartment. As you might be able to guess from this picture, it wasn’t exactly possible.

Friday morning, I woke up and went to roll over. As I lifted my head off the pillow, and turned my head, there was a POP in my neck. And then there was pain. Just before lunch, I called the doctor to get an appointment. If you know me, you can start to understand how much pain I was in because I am not one who is quick to call the doctor. I ended up leaving work two hours early to go to the doctor. She gave me a muscle relaxer, a painkiller and an anti-inflammatory in patch form.

The painkiller had codeine in it, so as soon as I stopped moving I fell asleep lol I basically slept from 7:30pm until 10:30am Saturday morning with small bouts of wakefulness in between. My brother dropped off my dad’s heating pad, which you see draped around neck in the picture up here, after I’d called to see if I could borrow it. He called and said, “I hear you’re infirm,” and offered to bring it over on his way to my mom’s. Good thing too, since you’re not allowed to drive while on muscle relaxers!

So that’s been my weekend. Drugged up and sleeping on the couch (dreaming about hotels in cancun, of course), between watching TV and movies, and spending an inordinate amount of time on Facebook. Unfortunately, my apartment went in the wrong direction as far as clean and organized goes.

As far as my neck… it seems like it might be getting slightly better. I can move it more than I could before without hitting the pain. The real test will be tomorrow when I go back to work and have to give up all the good drugs for the day!

So, I mentioned that I lost my camera… I’ve searched high and low, retraced my steps… searched places I thought it could be, and places I knew it couldn’t be. I called the places I was between the time I knew I had it and the time I knew I lost it. And nothing…

My friend Amy thinks it’s missing because of one of these:

I’m leaning towards one of these:

Or maybe this:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Honestly though, I just want to find my freaking camera!! Apparently I should have done what Andrew McDonald did, and leave a bunch of picture directions on my camera, like this:

Obviously, it wouldn’t help if it’s option number two, but it might help for option number three! Someone could pick it up and see my contact info on the little lcd monitor on the back, and hopefully give it back to me! Maybe on my next camera… *sigh*

If you’ve got a minute though, go back and click through to see the rest of Andrew’s pictures (linked up on his name)… it’s pretty funny!

I’m not a big fan of resolutions… I tend to look at them as just setting yourself up for failure. I’ve made anti-resolutions, and last year I made financial goals, but those were more of an extension of a process that had started a year before than resolutions. Sure, I could make an arbitrary list: lose weight, break in some Eagle Creek luggage by traveling more, curse less, whatever… that would just be setting me up to feel bad about myself in a week or two (okay, tomorrow) when I call someone a foul name after they cut me off in traffic.

Sometime after the beginning of last year though, I ran across the idea of a one word resolution. To choose one word to set your intention for the year. I really liked the idea of that. No list of specific goals to meet (or not meet), just one word… one intention… one thing I would like to see in my year. A word to meditate on as I make decisions. Now, that I can do.

So I started thinking about what words would be a good fit for this year. I considered LOVE… FORGIVENESS… ACCEPTANCE…

I lingered for a long time on PEACE.

I’m currently thinking COURAGE is the word that I’m going to choose for this year.

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” -Mary Anne Radmacher

I think COURAGE also encompasses all the other words I considered. The courage to accept myself. The courage to love myself and others. The courage to forgive. The courage to seek and find peace.

In the end, I don’t know what choosing this word will mean for the coming year, but it can’t hurt. Courage in 2010, maybe with a little bit of Peace mixed in on the side.