Mike Vrabel

I have tears in my eyes as I write this, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ve never been a girl who fawned over Tom Brady. I thought there were other players on the New England Patriots who were more worthy of my attention than he was.

The player who comes to mind most readily is linebacker Mike Vrabel. He was a genuinely nice guy off the field, and a fantastic player on the field. He seemed like one of those guys who is always happy and somewhat surprised in his lot in life.

And now he’ll be playing for the effing Kansas City Chiefs. Not the Patriots anymore. And my sadness in the trading of Mike Vrabel is stronger than any other sporting-related emotion I’ve had in a looooooooong time. It ranks up there with the 2008 Super Bowl. That kind of sad. I don’t know when I’ll recover.

My credit cards are going DOWN!

Now I want to have both of them 100% paid off by the end of June. Don’t ask why, since it’s an arbitrary date, but I want both of those little (comparatively) debts gone. Now.

Which is why I just made a $500 payment to each one, even though the minimum payments were nearly $50 and $30 each.

I’d like to thank February for being a light spending month for making this happen.

Shiny new toys!

Almost sounds like the band called Shiny Toy Guns. Listen to “Le Disko” if you feel like strutting down a futuristic runway. That’s what I do.

Anyway, I am the new owner of three cool new things. One is not shiny but somewhat toy-like, another is very shiny and not toy-like at all, and the third is none of the above.

That’s right, if you hadn’t guessed already (and I’m fairly certain you didn’t), I am the new owner of a Garmin nuvi 260 GPS device, a 20-quart brew kettle, and a new-to-me/us cupboard! Be excited!

I got the Nuvi for my recent birthday, and have been playing with the voices and settings ever since. I don’t go places that require navigation on a too-regular basis, mostly since I don’t drive very often, but I’m excited. After a lot of discussion, I’ve decided on the British English female voice to guide me on my journeys. Her name is Serena according to the program, but the BF and I are calling her Victoria. Like Beckham and the Queen (not the current one, obvi). Sweeeeet!

Next up: the brew kettle. This means I can finally start brewing my beer with the kit the BF got me for Christmas! We’ve been saving all our bottles, and tonight will probably be the maiden night of brewing at our household. Let me know if you want to try a bottle when it’s done!

Lastly, my Mum gave the BF and I an old particleboard/laminate cupboard she had collecting dust and other assorted nastiness in the basement. The washer and dryer are finally out of our kitchen and in our shiny new bathroom (OMG YAAAAAY!! SO MUCH SPACE!!) so we decided to build some shelves to hold our food. We have  no cabinets, so storage has been a challenge until now. Mum came through and offered up the cabinet, which we will paint cool colors (yellow, teal, orange, and green) to match a sweeeet chip/dip set friends of ours gave us for housewarming (note: it’s WAY cuter in person than it is on the site. Ours has royal blue, not purple). Watch for pictures!

Plan B

I just read this article on Boston.com, and I have to say that I’m impressed with the format. It interviews a series of people who speculate on what their Plan Bs would be if their current jobs fell by the wayside. Then it finds someone with that Plan B job as their Plan A and asks what their Plan B is… and so on.

At this point, I don’t know what my Plan A is (I’m really only in my job now because it pays the bills, but I don’t know if it’s really right for me), so I can’t determine what my Plan B is, but I do know what I’d like to try for Plans A-Z.

Link love

Wedding link love

Clearly, I’m not getting married. Well, that might not be clear, but since I’m still calling the BF “the BF” and not anything more exciting, nor have I posted a fully bolded, capitalized, size 15 million font post about my engagement, you can rest assured I am not getting married.

But I am still obsessed with weddings. Rose thinks I’ll be a wedding planner someday, which is something I considered in college. I thought about having to work on nights and weekends, and didn’t like that idea very much, but I think I’d be really happy doing it, and have given it some more thought. We’ll see what happens.

At any rate, these are some of the sites I check for the latest in wedding goodness:

• Brides.com
• TheKnot.com
• Weddingbee.com
• WeddingWire.com

And blogs (the ones at the top are the ones with new content in my Google Reader, then it goes into the other subscriptions… I probably read them all this morning):

• A $10,000 wedding
• We Met in a Bar
• Brides.com Wedded Bits
• For the Modern Bride (feed link)
  
• Twirl Talk
• Weddingbee (feed link)
• 12k Wedding Blog
• 2000 Dollar Budget Wedding
• A Practical Wedding (feed link)
• Blue Orchid Designs (feed link)
• MERGEweddings.com (feed link)
• Once a bride…
• The Adventures of a Bride to Be
• The Broke-Ass Bride
• The Everyday Bride
• The Pissed Off Bride

Am I missing any of the big ones? Any not-so-big ones that I should know about? Let me know!

My hope for this blog is that it starts as a “technically-single-but-not-really-girl-learning-the-ropes-of-being-a-grownup” blog to a bride blog (I have lots of inspiration from the ones above!) to a mommy blog. That should cover the next 10 years, at least, right? Good stuff.

Public service announcement

The holiday on March 17 is Saint Patrick’s Day. Sometimes, that can be a lot to write out. Please know that the proper shortening is “St. Paddy’s Day,” not “St. Patty’s Day.”

The saint was Patrick, also spelled Padraig, not Patricia. Hence “Paddy,” not “Patty.”

Sláinte! (To your health!)

The new buzzwords

I just posted this in my company’s internal password-protected blog, and I’m hoping it might actually make people smile. It’s been a little tense in the workplace this week… not fully sure why. Just lots of stress floating around. Yuck. I’m strangely cheery today, but it’s probably because it’s a) Friday and b) coming up to Sunday, when I get to go to a bridal show with my dear friend Rose.

At any rate, this is what I originally meant to post: “29 tech phrases you should be punched in the face for using.” I’m guilty of more than one of them, but I find them to be generally hilarious. Now, I’m just waiting for them to enter the realm of management-speak, when I’ll have to run screaming from the room.

LOL!

Spending freeze

I hereby impose a spending freeze on myself, effective immediately and lasting through one entire week.

Now, one week to you might not seem like a whole lot, and I’ll be honest– it really isn’t. However, I am a big fan of baby steps when it comes to making big changes, and one of the changes I want to make is to my general financial situation: pay off my debt. I have student loan debts out the wazoo, and a couple of credit cards that, while they’re not ruining my life with interest rates and whatnot, are having a somewhat negative effect on my credit score and general happiness. So I want them gone ASAP. I’ve stopped using them, which is a big step. Now I just have to pay them off entirely and I’m golden.

Anyway, while I do spend within my means and on things I both need and want, this spending freeze is just to see how I can do. I’ll still pay for the things I need, like groceries and bills, but I will not buy anything from the vending machine at work, I will not stop for a quick cup of coffee, and I won’t buy any clothes, no matter how amazingly they may be on sale.

For a week. Then we’ll see what happens.

Updates, updates

Welp, I withdrew from ballet. You could say I quit, but there was paperwork involved. It wasn’t fun and the Wednesday night instructor didn’t understand that we’re all a bunch of ex-dancers (or newbies entirely!) who just wanted to come out for some fun floor exercises and learn combinations. None of us were aiming for the stage. Oh, well… it gives me yoga back!

Our mo-fo-ing bathroom is almost done. Still. I swear, I’m ready to punch the plumber in the throat. Seriously, the laziest man I’ve ever not met but had in my house. Who uses my kitchen utensils for his plumbing needs. The landlord told me last night that the glass door she wants on the shower is going to run her $700. WTF? $700 for a glass door to a shower?!? Absurd. Anyway, I told her we’d just use the rod and curtain we have in our old bathroom for a while. I just want to be able to use the new one already, for crying out loud!!

And the big one, the one I’ve been holding out on… I am miserable in my job. I hate every minute of it. I have a hard time getting up in the morning, knowing that I’ll have to go deal with stupid drama that could easily be solved at any other company. My commute is long and my boss and I don’t see eye-to-eye when it comes to work styles. He has a hard time making decisions, and because I don’t have any real authority or autonomy, I have to wait for his decision before moving ahead. I’m always in crisis-containment mode and can’t get ahead on any long-term projects or maintenance I have going on. I don’t even have a job description, and I’ve been here since the beginning of June. I can’t just write it myself, since I barely have an idea of what my main areas of focus should be. I’ve talked to him about our dissonance twice, and have also brought it up with HR when that failed. I’m at my wits’ end.

So I’m actively seeking new employment. In the worst economy I’ve ever experienced. If you know of anyone who’s hiring, let me know. I’ve applied all over, and just need something. Anything.

Thanks for listening…

Colorado pictures!

So you all know how entirely obsessed I am with the Colorado trip I took last month. I finally got my ass in gear and uploaded (some of) my pictures to my computer, then put ‘em up on Shutterfly! I like Sfly’s quality in printing, and know I’m probably going to order obscene numbers of prints, so I put them there instead of Flickr. Actually, I’ve never used Flickr, so I’m going to have to get on that.

Here’s the link: http://steamboatsprings2009.shutterfly.com

Enjoy!