11 years ago today

I received my honorable discharge from the United States Marine Corps. Gosh....ELEVEN years! That's crazy. I was only 22 years old.

I hired a personal trainer to whip my ass into shape before the wedding. Yeah, I know, I used to be a trainer but I'll tell ya what....we aren't doing any weight machines, just calisthenics (some with light weights) and boy is it working! I'm getting more toned, losing the bulky muscle and actually losing size again! Maybe I wasn't that good as a trainer afterall? Hmmmm. Anyhoo, my trainer's husband was in the Marine Corps also and every week he and I share old war stories after my training session. Well, neither of us saw a day of the war during OUR tours, but we love to reminisce about the good old days.

In other news, I've made a BIG DECISION recently that is sure to change my life in every way, shape and form. I can't discuss it yet (I know, I'm a tease!) but watch out...big changes ahead!! Cue the train whistle...."WOO WOOO!"

Weekend Recap

This is a nice recap to MY weekend. I spent all day Saturday and half of my Sunday at a sales conference.

I certainly hope YOUR weekend was better.

The Best Show EVER!!!!

Have you seen this show??? If not, Tivo it NOW!

I watched two men get grilled this week with awesome questions. One guy was asked, "Have you delayed having kids because you fear that your wife is not 'The One'?" He answered Yes. The same guy was asked, "Have you ever done anything that would make your wife not trust you anymore?" He answered Yes. He asked a different guy, "Are you a member of the Hair Club for Men?" Yes! He was!

So seriously. Stop what you are doing and set your recorder to record "Moment of Truth"!

It's -1 in Chicago today so I'm doing my part

Go fake or don't go at all!!!!

Almost Forgot!

Jen just reminded me about...

# 8. (to add to the below mentioned list)

10 hours into the New Year, Brian and I headed over to my friends for a New Years Day brunch and we forgot to take our ski rack off our SUV and drove right through the gate at my friends garage in her building. Awesome! Literally started out our year with a Bang!

Smooooooth sailin'

We awoke this morning around 5:30am to the tune of B's phone ringing. It was one of his tenants. The pipe burst on the 1st floor unit of his 3-flat. He was able to fix the pipe himself (Good God that man is handy!!!) and he's over there now trying to dry the hard wood floors.

In case you aren't keeping score, let's run through the first 22 days of January, shall we?

1. Our furnace broke....twice.
2. The furnace broke in B's 3-flat
3. Our dog overdosed
4. My tire blew on my car
5. The pipe burst in B's 3-flat
6. B's company was bought by Bank of America (this could be a good thing, only time will tell)
7. It appears that my industry (food) is definitely heading into a recession

Hmmm. So that equates to every 4.4 days something terribly "fun" happening in our lives. Oh, alright. The first 4 happened between Jan 17th and the 22nd. So I guess that 4.4 number went out the window.

So as I see it, the rest of our year should be smooth sailin', right? Maybe, just MAYBE, we are paying some serious dues NOW so that our wedding might be free of flubs, mishaps and will be stress-FREE!! Yeah, that's it.


In other news, the City of Chicago is not having fun today, either. Check out the new lake on Montrose Avenue! That's a 25 foot (yes, you heard me right) sinkhole on a very busy north side street.

And Wall Street has already started out with a bang! Good times, good times....

NOT.

8, 6, 5, 1....and zero, zero, zero, zero

Come again? No, that is not some secret code that you should try to decipher so let me enlighten you, shall we?

8 is the number of cousins I have.

6 is the number of married cousins I have.

5 is the number of their weddings that I've attended.

1 is the number of their weddings in which I was not invited to (it was immediate family-only on the beach in Florida).

Do the math: I've attended every single wedding I've been invited to in my family.

So....

Zero is the amount of cousins I have attending my wedding.
Zero is the amount of aunts I have attending my wedding.
Zero is the amount of uncles I have attending my wedding.
Zero is the amount of grandparents I have attending my wedding.

It's a good thing that almost all of Brian's entire family will be representing us in Mexico. That makes me happy because that's my family now. Am I bitter about my family? No, I guess not...well, I guess that's a lie.....yes, I'm a little bitter. Even if we had the wedding here in Chicago, I doubt the attendance would be much different, or so I'm told.

I'm just glad I supported all of my married cousins when they wed. I guess when you're the 3rd youngest cousin, that's what I should expect, right? They all get married when I'm in my late teens, early twenties. By the time I get married at the age of 33, they all have families and commitments so my wedding doesn't even hit the radar on their list of priorities.

Well that's what I'm telling myself.

Hey, the good news is that my Mom, Step-Dad and their friends will be there. Even if my family has "other priorities" and I don't make it onto that list, we still have 60 people coming to our wedding. That's a big number for a destination wedding. I know it's A LOT to ask people to get on a plane and schlep themselves down to Mexico and spend a lot of money. It is, I get that. Trust me, I do. But it still stings, that's for sure.

Homeward Bound!!

Coop is on his way home this morning! We weren't able to bring him home last night; they wanted to keep him for observation and continue the IV treatment overnight. We did get to spend a good hour with him when we had to transport him to the overnight hospital and get him all checked in.

He was in awesome spirits. He was trembling still and whined a lot (but we think that's only because he wanted to get off his leash and explore the animal hospital). He even finished a whole jar of baby food and had some kibble at the hospital; so for a very finicky dog, that was all good news.

It was quiet in the house last night without him there throwing his toys in the air or chasing one of us around the kitchen island (an activity that Cooper NEVER gets tired of).

Brian is there now checking him out. Yay!!!!

Thanks for your calls, your texts and for your moral support!! Coop is one lucky dog and we are two very lucky people to have such a great circle of support! :)

Re-Cooper-ating

Our Doodler (that's his nickname) is getting better by the hour!! The vet said he's acting like a normal dog again and he's resting in a kennel. He's still on the IV to try to flush out the chemicals so we have to go back at 6:30 tonight. We'll then see if we have to either take him to the overnight hospital or if we can bring him home.

The vet told me that due to the fact that Brian got him in there so quickly really saved his life. Talk about a "lucky dog".

If our furnace didn't break then Brian and I would have gone to work and come home in the evening. After he ate the pills. Crazy how things happen like that, isn't it?

The Day from Hell

It's just after noon here in Chicago and already so much has happened.

The day started off when I woke up at 6am to find that it was only 60 degrees in the house. The furnace went out.

I left for work and decided to drive (Brian normally drops me off at the train) so that he could go to the store to get the part he needed to fix the furnace.

My car is driving really funny; it was pulling really badly to the right. I called B and he said he'd look at it later so I drove to work.

At 9:15, I get a frantic call from B. He came home from the store to find the dog acting weird. His eyes were half-closed, he was disoriented and when B let him outside he had horrible diarrhea. When he came upstairs, Brian found a brand new bottle of 5 HTP eaten on the floor. (I just bought it yesterday; it's a natural sleep aid supplement that helps achieve greater REM sleep. Lately, I fall asleep but wake up all night with a million thoughts running through my brain).

Sorry for the digression. So I google "5 HTP dog overdose" and find THIS. It can be fatal for a dog, not to mention the neurologic symptoms of seizures, hyperesthesia, tremors and other symptoms including vomiting, hyperthermia and blindness.

Needless to say, B rushed Cooper to the vet. By the time he got there, Coop was walking into walls, his eyes were closed and he was trembling. They immediately pumped his stomach, coated it with charcoal and they are pumping him up with fluids to dilute the amount of 5 HTP in his system. We have to pick him up in a little while to take him to the overnight hospital where he'll be treated for the next 48 hours.

I get back to my car to find the reason my car was pulling; my tire was totally flat. Great. I had driven my car downtown (2.5 miles) and back on a flat. So I admit....I had a bit of an emotional breakdown but I pulled myself together. Brian changed the spare and we went over to Costco to get a new tire. (Yes, I know, 'What kind of idiot drives on a flat tire without knowing?" Well looks like i just answered that question for ya, didn't I?)

That was all before 10:15 am.

The latest on Coop: he's responsive to the fluids, he's more orientated and his eyes are open now. They were coating his stomach with the charcoal when I talked to them at 11:30. They said he was doing much better.

Just say a little prayer for our little red bundle of joy!

I'll keep ya posted.

Stop Hitting the Bottle

So I love the tracking software I use on this blog. It shows me how people found the site whether it was by an internet search, a blog, an email, etc.

Today as I was perusing the hits, I noticed that someone found me by typing the following phrase in Google:

"sexy ass by bottle and free trails"

Well I'm doubtful they meant "trails" and pretty sure they were looking for free "trials", but I admit to giggling out loud when I read that.

So how in the world did that phrase get them to MY blog? My sexy ass is from Jenny Craig and XSport Fitness...no thanks to a bottle, thankyouverymuch!!

What in the world...

...happened to Drew Peterson? Ya know, the dirtball cop accused of killing his just-out-of-her-teenage-years wife Staci Peterson??

FUN-do Party

I think the fondue party was a hit! All of our hard work and planning paid off...everyone ate and ate and ate some more!

We had 3 courses including 5 fondues and 6 sauces. For the cheese fondues (we had 2), we served it with 2 types of bread, cauliflower, broccoli, red peppers, party sausages and apples. For the cheeses, one was a spicey nacho-type cheese, the other one was classic (Gruyere, Emmantaler and brie (couldn't find Vacherin)). For the main course, we had beef, chicken and shrimp with 2 broths and 1 oil fondue. We also had veggies including cauliflower, broccoli, red peppers, water chestnuts, mushrooms and zucchini for the oil and broth. Our 6 dipping sauces included bbq, sweet and sour, tangy apricot chipotle, curried mayo, honey mustard and Bearnaise sauce. In my opinion, the hit of the night was the dessert fondue....we had a chocolate fountain! We enjoyed pineapple, strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, pretzels and pound cake dripped in yummy chocolate heaven.

Our awesome table

Our new fondue plates.

The chocolate fountain.

Next year, we'll definitely chop most of the food the night before. Brian and I had some shopping to finish in the morning and we started chopping around noon on Saturday and used every minute up until our guests arrived at 7:30pm. Cooking for 20 people sure is a lot of work but it was sooo worth it.

After our guests were fat and happy we played Rockband ALL night. What fun and pure comedy that was!! The last guests left at 3:40 in the AM. That's a good party!

Today B's parents ventured into the city to celebrate my birthday. We enjoyed a very German birthday dinner at the Chicago Brauhaus. They all got wiener schnitzel and I had the meat loaf. I really wanted a burger to nurse my hangover so the meatloaf was the closest thing to it.

Hope you had a great weekend, too!

Why Good Dogs go Bad

We ran out of space on our camera memory card so as I was going through it and moving pictures to my hard drive, I found this one:

Yes, that's our dog.

In the Christmas Tree skirt.

And he's NOT very happy about it.

Just look at the utter disapproval in his face.

(If you would like to email Brian to share your disappointment in his decision to strip our dog of whatever doggie pride he had left, feel free to do so here, but please don't report us for animal abuse.)

Happy Birthday, Elvis!

Ohhhh okay then if you insist.....Happy Birthday to me, too!

Today is one of the first birthdays that:

1. It's not snowing outside
2. It's above 50 degrees (for a little while longer, anyway)
3. Elvis Presley was not mentioned in the news (due to being overshadowed by the New Hampshire Primary)

33 should be the best year yet!!

Britney, Britney, Britney

Oh, Britney.

THIS is very, very sad.

I fought the urge to enter a date (because then I'd really be going to hell in a hand basket), but I did read some of the condolences.

Do I have Attention Deficit Disorder?

Okay, I just took this test online and scored 111. If I do have ADD, then it would explain A LOT!!!!

According to the website,

If you scored... You may have...
70 & up ~ Adult ADHD
50 - 69 ~ Moderate ADHD
35 - 49 ~ Mild ADHD
25 - 34 ~ Borderline ADHD
0 - 24 ~ No ADHD likely

What is your score??

Sk!p Happens

I wanted to post a blog about this when it happened, but we were heading out of town and time was working against me. Do you remember my rant about my sales goal at work? Well if so, then you can appreciate this.

The long and short of it was that I was $455 bucks away from my annual sales goal, missing a trip to Cancun or a check for $5,000.

A good friend of mine read that blog and minutes after I posted it, sent me a quick message that he needed help finding a Personal Assistant and he was mailing me a retainer for 500 bucks. I won't share with you the details of what went on in my office that day simply due to fear of hearing about people getting fired for posting certain things in their blogs about work. But what I will tell you is that Skip's check arrived promptly in my office before the deadline of December 31st.

Unfortunately, one of my clients who vouched to send payment ASAP so that I could attain my goal, failed to do so, so I was still $19,000 short of the goal in the end, anyway. The money came in a few days after the New Year so it'll go towards this years goal. That's fine considering we are getting married in Mexico in April, but the 5k would have been nice for the honeymoon.

Since the goal was unattained in the end, I ripped up Skip's check and helped him find an assistant free-of-charge.

I just wanted to send a quick Thank You again to my good friend. I now know what his shirt means that reads, "Sk!p Happens". Friends always remind me of how lucky I am to have them when I least expect it.

Thanks, buddy!

More fun with Rockband!

So temptation got the best of us and we bought Rockband this weekend.

We are soooo playing at my fondue birthday party!

Happy New Year!!

Well hellooooo there, internets!

I hope you all had a wonderful New Years! Brian, Coop and I had a lot of fun in Wisconsin snowboarding, snowmobiling and playing in the snow. I've come to the realization that snowmobiling is not for me. After three hours on our snowmobiles, I was asking the question, "So where ARE we going? Do we have to go ALL the way back?" I was bored. Wisconsin has over 850 miles of snowmobile trails mapped out with official stop signs, boards that give you directions and everything. It was cool, but I'd rather do something "in motion". Something active. Not pushing a button for gas or another for the brake. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I understand why so many guys do an all-guy snowmobile trip though. It's probably super fun with a big group. It probably didn't help that it was 18 degrees outside. Our snowmobiles were well-equipped with hand and feet warmers and my helmet kept my head warm, but man, my butt was brrrrrrrr-cold! We were able to jump on the trail right from our hotel which was super convenient, but unfortunately, there weren't that many bars on the trail close to us.

As for New Years, we laid low with some friends and made an amazing dinner of beef tenderloin and lobster tails and then enjoyed Rockband for 3 hours straight. If you aren't familiar with the game Rockband but have heard of Guitar Hero , Rockband kicks Guitar Hero's ass straight to the moon. You have a vocalist on the mic, a bassist on the guitar and a drummer on the drum set. Each band member sees their own set of chords on the TV that they need to play or sing on their instrument. After each song, you get ranked as a band and if you are good, you gain fans. If you suck, well, then duh...you lose fans. As you get better, the venues (which are real venues across the country), get better. You also get paid more the bigger venue, giving you the option of upgrading your digs (aka clothes). The mic and the guitar even have a motion detector so if it detects you are jumping around jammin' your ass off, then you get more points or are judged as "Top Performer" or "Most Energy" after each son. At 3:30 in the morning I was still saying, "Just one more song!!!"

Good times!!! Go get this game!

In other news, the wedding plans are coming along. I promised myself I wouldn't be one of those brides that constantly talks about her wedding, but we now have appointments for invitations and bridesmaid dresses. All ladies are getting their measurements to me and I'm hoping to have those ordered tomorrow. Brian has been busy doing research for the honeymoon. We really wanted to go to the Maldives but after 6 days in Mexico, the thought of traveling 3 days to get there is very unappealing. Not to mention its the 2-3 days back to Chicago. So we're exploring Bora Bora/Tahiti, Italy, Costa Rica and a number of other places. Hoping to get that squared away soon.

I have the name & number for our wedding planner in Mexico but I can't seem to ever get through to her....I want to get all of our activities planned. So far, I'm hoping for a day-trip to Cozumel by boat from our hotel, a day of golf for the golfers or shopping in Playa del Carmen for the shoppers, a happy hour once everyone has arrived and a dinner the night before for our "rehearsal dinner". Of course, the wedding will be an all-day party, too.

I've found all sorts of fun gifts for our gift bags. Once we have a better idea of how many people are coming (current count is 58), then I'll order those. We'll assemble them in Chicago and ship them to Mexico so they can be delivered to every one's rooms before they arrive.

All in all, we got a lot done in just a few days!

So what else?? Oh I know, CONGRATULATIONS AMERICA!!! You have finally opened your minds to the possibility of having someone in the White House who is not a white male. Whether or not I am an Obama supporter, I think yesterday's decision was a HUGE MILESTONE in American history. This will change things FOREVER. We are finally moving in the right direction. It's 2008 and it's sure as hell about time!! GO IOWA!!!