A Quote to Close off 2007

And then my dear husband said to me:

"Can you let him [the dog] in? I gotta go check on the time machine."

MAJOR kudos if anyone actually knows what he was talking about.

Road Trip

We're off to Minneapolis for the holidays. Essentials for the car trip include:

1.  Snacks, first and foremost.

Top of the list would be the over-sized Reese's peanut butter cup in the shape of Santa that I gave to Drew. Surely that will give us energy late in the evening.

On the more healthy side, I plan on making and packing "ants on a log". Please tell me you know what these are. Drew did not, so I worry a bit about you Nebraskans.

Perhaps some pretzels or the pears I got in the mail from Harry and David. I don't know what those boys do to their pear groves (?) but damn they make some sweet sweet pears.

Lastly, I plan on giving in to my one real craving thus far in the pregnancy: French fries. From McDonald's. Fast food is rare occurrence in my life, usually the only time I allow it is on road trips (I won't mention that one time on the way home from an ultrasound...), so luckily the stars are aligned and tonight there will be deliciousness.

2.  iPod

Music is a must. There are few things that will make the 6-7 hour drive home tolerable, but having some kick-ass, sing-along-able music is a must. Music choices that have worked well in the past included the soundtracks to Moulin Rouge and Spring Awakening, Queen, Indigo Girls and Cake.

Drew also asked me to investigate audiobooks on iTunes. I'm not convinced that will keep the blood flowing as well as music, but if any of you have suggestions for a good, captivating book (preferably novel) in the next few hours, let me know.

3.  IPass

Drew gave me one for my birthday and I have yet to try it out. But I can't express how excited I am to not have to stop at the tollbooths and feel like a complete loser when my dog barks and scares the heck out of the poor, unsuspecting tollbooth worker.

Plus, no need to scrounge up quarters.

4.  Cooler

You may think this will be packed full of the delicious snacks mentioned above. But you'd be mistaken. On the way to the Land of Lakes, it will be filled with presents. But more importantly, on the way back, it will be packed with delicious consumables that are only found in the North Star State (or so I claim). I know this is completely ridiculous, but my need for meatloaf from Ingebretsen's, white kernel popcorn, and Simek's lasagna and meatballs overrides any embarrassment I might feel.

Did I miss anything?

Busy Busy

So I just typed the title and am having a really hard time accepting the fact that "busy" is spelled correctly. It just looks so wrong. Anyone else ever have issues like this with words? The first time I recall feeling this way was with the word "tree". It was several years ago, but I recall being so unnerved by the spelling and pronunciation of the word. It's so bizarre how our brains work.

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Anyways, so I've been bad about actually blogging again, but my excuse is that I have been very busy (!) with Christmas decorations, shopping, etc. We leave for Mpls next week and so I need to get all of the presents for non-Mpls family bought and shipped out as well as getting stuff for my family and Drew. Thankfully I'm almost done. But doing this on top of being sick with a cold and trying to avoid Drew's pink eye has not been fun.

Hopefully I'll be back with a fun post soon soon soon!

Sincere Apologies

So my horrendously long absence from the blogging world may have resulted in no longer having visitors to my blog. However, in the hopes that one of you checks this every now and again (perhaps because you are eternally hopeful and think my rudeness of not posting was not due to rudeness at all but rather a terrible mishap that caused all my fingers to temporarily seize up for two plus months), I am posting again. Hopefully, I can jump back on the horse and get back to my previous fairly decent job of regular posts.

( To clarify, my fingers are fine, have been fine and, knock on wood, will remain fine for a very long time.)

The reason for my long absence was not because I suddenly had writer's block or lacked desire to communicate with you fine people. Rather it was because for the past three months or so there has been precisely one thing on my mind and I worried that despite the effort I might make to not mention that one thing on my blog or really anywhere, somehow I would let it slip or someone savvy would be able to figure it out by my sentence or grammatical structure. And now it is not that I didn't want to share this life-changing thing, I DID, but it needed to wait and cook for a while first.

But the time has come and I am so pleased, delighted, overjoyed and excited to tell you that Drew and I are having a baby!

There he or she is!!!

I am about 16 weeks along and due May 22nd.  Drew and I had been trying to get pregnant for quite a while so needless to say we are absolutely thrilled about welcoming a new baby to our family this Spring.

Yowza!

My left ankle is now proof that burns suck! I got a rope burn on my ankle yesterday when Caper went frickin' crazy yesterday in the backyard (a friend said I could blame his behavior on the full moon...I wish). He wears a really long leash (30 some feet) when in the backyard in an effort to not attack anything that dares move along the front sidewalk. With the leash he is contained and not able to get around the side of the house and see the nasty people who dare pass his house.

Anyhow, the leash wrapped around my ankle and that hurt slightly. But now, it just burns. And I mean burns. I woke up multiple times in the night because of it. I'm amazed how the removal of the slightest layer of skin can hurt an exponential amount more than a gash from falling down.

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After the most recent flood in our basement, our boxes of CD's got a bit damaged. Nothing too horrible, but I had to throw the box away that was holding them. I then got inspired to finish putting all of our music onto iTunes. When we first became users of iPods and iTunes, Drew took charge of getting the music onto the computer. He basically put everything on that we were currently listening too. Turns out we still had a bunch of music that never got on. I'm pleased some of them are finally getting on (i.e. my Ani Difranco collection) and also reminded of why Drew may have omitted them the first time around (i.e. the Titanic Soundtrack ). In case anyone is curious about importing a bunch of music in a short time frame, it sucks. Very tedious. It also leads one to browse the internet for hours on end, while waiting for each CD to import.