Also,

I feel it is important to know, that Lisa Smith is by far, the best coworker I have had ever in my entire life. Thank you.

The Next Great American Novel

It's about time for another amazing, history changing, best selling, page turning novel. And I'm going to write it.

I have a fool proof game plan. I've read, studied, poured over recent successful plot lines and discovered what we're missing:

Vampires VS. Dragons*

To my knowledge, this has not been done, and in my humble opinion, the world is worse for it.

The premise, I think it's pretty clear, is a battle between vampires and dragons. No longer will the world have to wonder which is the superior mythical creature! All will be answered!

The characters will consist of:

Several vampires - the names I have so far are:
Smedward
Smella
Smackula

Several dragons - the names I have so far:
Daphira
Duff the Dagic

A token witch and wizard:
Larry Lotter
Lermione Langer

Some small hairy footed human-like creatures:
Prodo Paggins
Pamwise Pamgee

Miscellaneous villians (because a battle between vampires and dragons can't all be fun and games):
Tollum (also known as Teagol)
Tord Toldemort
Tick-ed Tepmothers
Teddy Trueger

So, that's what I've come up with so far, I think it's pretty solid. As always, I'm open to suggestions (good ones may earn you the dedication page, really good ones, a mention when I accept my multiple awards.)

*if this is successful (which I know in my heart of hearts, it will be) I will follow up with such sequels as:
Vampires VS. Aliens
Dragons VS. Aliens
Vampires and Dragons VS. Aliens (those aliens are tough)
Vampires VS. Sea Monsters
Dragons VS. The Yeti
etc.

Oh, the day I've had (long and detailed version)

Today started off like any other day. I don't know how it happened, but it quickly turned into chaos.

First I went to get myself some coffee* and found the carafe empty. (People...if you drink the last of the coffee in a shared coffee environment, please make more so the next unsuspecting girl to wander in doesn't get sprayed with the little remains left and have to clean up the resulting mess and take 15 minutes to brew coffee. It's just common courtesy.) So, 15 minutes later, with coffee** in hand, I went back to my cubicle.

When I got to my desk, I found that I couldn't print anything. It kept trying to save documents to my desktop. So, being the smart cookie I am, I thought that maybe my printer wasn't set up for some reason, so it was defaulting to "printing" PDF's. A quick glance at the printer name showed me that wasn't the case. So, I rebooted my computer. That didn't do the trick either. A call to tech support and a half an hour with tech support shadowing me later (plus many attempts of deleting and re-adding my printer on their side) and we discovered that a box had been clicked telling my printer to save everything to files. What should have been a quick fix took up the first hour of my day (at least the first hour that wasn't spent making coffee).

Okay, I could recover from this. At least that was my thought at the time. Then came lunch time. I cover reception while the receptionist (Hi Lisa!) takes her lunch, and today I brought a carbonated flavored (mixed berry) water with me. Well, I have much experience with these waters, and have never had anything bad happen with them...until...I sat down at the chair in front of the phone and started to open it. Immediately a volcano of sticky red liquid pours out the top and all over the desk, papers on the desk, and me. I thought I reacted pretty quickly in twisting the cap back on, but I'm told (Hi Lisa!) that I stared at it for several seconds before shaking off my shock and twisting it back on. So, there I sat, laughing till I was tearing up with Lisa, holding dripping hands in front of me and watching the drink spread over the desk surface. After some out of control laughter/discussion, it was decided that I would go wash up and bring paper towels down to clean up the scene.

I started up the stairs with my still dripping arms held out in front of me in a Mr. Burns type way (I'm told) and somehow biff it on the fifth stair. I caught myself pretty quickly (benefit of falling up the stairs and not down) and came up laughing harder than ever (don't worry, my belly didn't get anywhere close to the ground), while Lisa laughed at me from the bottom of the stairs (Hi Lisa!). I gained enough control over myself to get upstairs, wash my hands, and grab what seemed like a substantial amount of paper towels (8). I got back down to reception, still laughing uncontrollably, and discovered 8 paper towels wouldn't do it, and eventually improvised by using computer paper.

Anyway, in this process I managed to get red water on my white shirt, so ran home at lunch to tide stick it. (Is tide stick a verb?) Well, lo and behold, I couldn't find a tide stick. So I changed, put it in cold water, and grabbed a bag of Circus Animal cookies to make up for my crazy day. These I put in the passenger seat on my way back to work, only to discover that there was a hole in the bottom of the bag and the passenger seat is now covered in rainbow colored sprinkles. I scooped these up as best I could and headed back to my desk, where I settled back down to eat the remainder of the bag. Since then things seem to have settled down...we'll see what the rest of this day holds for me, I suppose.

*Please, please, please do not take this opportunity to lecture me about drinking coffee while pregnant. Before I began working full time I avoided all caffeine, and all the books say that 8-16 ounces a day in your second and third trimesters are fine. Trust me, I researched. Also, you try "sleeping" with something kicking you, multiple bathroom runs and pregnancy dreams. Not so restful, sometimes a small cup of joe can go a long way, plus I water it down with cream. Rant ending now.

** Seriously. Don't lecture me, I beg you.

Lookit Lookit Lookit!!! Or, how we spent our sixth anniversary

This weekend we celebrated our sixth anniversary, and our last just the two (and a half) of us. We stayed in our favorite hotel, the Bellevue Westin,

I went and got a maternity massage (thanks to a gift card) which can be translated as 160 minutes of delight and relaxation), ate a delicious dinner at Z'Tejas, and went off to see Despicable Me. It was cute, there was a lot of laughing out loud to be had. I don't however, think you need to splurge for the 3D - it didn't add a whole lot to the experience.

There's a scene in the movie where a little girl gets a huge stuffed unicorn, and she yells, "It's. So. FLUFFY!!!!" I had a similar reaction to my anniversary present this year.

A little background. For about two years now, I have had a slight obsession with a little Etsy store called MadebyHank. You who are familiar, know that she makes the worlds best purses, and that they sell out, literally in seconds. So, last year for my birthday, when Tim surprised me with this little number:

which I have used as a wallet ever since. Then, I treated myself to this one a while back:

and I love it, oh how I love it. But Tim knew that what I really wanted was one of her coveted shoulder bags - impossible to find, but breathtakingly pretty. So, imagine my delight when he quietly placed this little number on our living room chair:

My reaction was something like, "What's that? No. How?!" (remember, sells out in seconds), followed by immediately putting everything from above tote into new and improved tough ruffles shoulder bag and announcing that it's name was Purse-Face (cause it looks like it has a mouth when you open it.) I love it. I couldn't be happier. Tim's gift has yet to arrive (I may have been a little slow on the ordering it process) but I think he'll be pretty happy too. Anyway, all in all it was a great last hurrah before the baby joins us.

Wanted:

Adorable clothes!

I can't wait to have a littel wiggle worm to put in all sorts of adorable outfits. All of these were found at oldnavy.com - a place my wallet is never safe.

4th of July

I hope everyone had a great 4th! Ours was spent hearing an amazing sermon at church, then Tim went off to work, and I went to my dad's to say happy birthday to Tim (Burns) and eat lots-o-food. When Tim got off work, we headed to Jonathan and Laura's for some s'mores (with Reeses cups, none of that ordinary Hershey's business), Wii, and sparkler fun. All in all, a sucessful day.

Anyway, I was reminiscing on 4ths of the past, and remembered a story from when my cousin Danny and I were about 3. All the adults and "big kids" were out setting off fireworks, which left Danny and I to improvise (this was in the day that two three year olds could be left unsupervised, evidently). Naturally, we were jealous that we weren't allowed to play with 3000 degree sparklers and set off fireworks, so we opted for making our own. My grandma always had off brand cheesepuffs in the house, which are a fantastic, perma-staining neon orange, so these obviously caught our eye. We gleefully threw them all over grandma and grandpa's floor and proceeded to jump on them until they were nothing but orange and yellow dust. They crunched just enough to compete with the fireworks noise, so we were happy as clams. Thankfully, by the time the adults came back in and discovered us, the floors, and everything we'd touched orange, they just found us hilarious, so we somehow managed to avoid getting in trouble. Win-win, if you ask me.

Mobile Madness

Help me decide what sort of mobile to go with (bearing in mind the decor mentioned in the last post.)

1.
This cute felt and fabric tree mobile actually plays music. Plus, polka dots!

2.

Again, polka dots! And I love that they're not uniform in the way they fall.

3.

Subtle whimsy with clouds. I like the idea of pulling in more aspects of nature to go with the trees and tulips.

4.

Also in blue!

5.

This one is a DIY mobile, and I love the organic feel of it.

6.

And some sweet rain clouds gently dripping flourescent rain drops.

So, tell me what you like, or if you know of something even better. I'll let you know what we get when we eventually make up our minds :)