The Next Day

So yesterday was my birthday as I mentioned in my post Birthday Blessings 2011.  First business of the day, I tried to drive to Walmart to get a futon however realized that there was no way to fit it in my little car.  I then tried to drive home before my friend was supposed to be there, I find that half of Gainesville, ok I exaggerate, just a huge part of University Avenue had been blocked off for the Gator Homecoming parade.  I was thinking 'NOOOOOOO', I then proceeded having to drive down side roads for detours through residential neighborhoods.  This was a maddening thing, well could have been, but I kept hope that I'd eventually make it through this traffic jungle of people trying to find parking places, and people charging $5-15 a car to park on the grass of their yards, and my urge to just start bypassing the traffic and driving through yards and barreling through fences with my little car.  Luckily I had awesome music to keep me sane.  I finally found my way through to a major road, after an hour.  It took me longer on the detour to find a major road to get me home than it took me to drive to Walmart and go in and find the futons and talk to sales person and decide that it wouldn't fit in the car.  Oh and to stop and look at awesome televisions that I cannot afford.  Fortunately this detour was the only odd moment of the day.

My friend arrived and we had a great time.  He happens to drive a giant beautiful pickup and took me to get the futon - yay!  Definitely one of those times to take a moment and thank God for Southern men and their pickup trucks.  We hung out watched movies, ordered food in, took shots of the super delicious Pucker Vodka citrus... it was all great!!  I spent the day doing basically nothing and I loved it!  In the past when I've had a birthday party I always ended up having to do way more work than any birthday girl should have to.  So it was awesome that I could actually sit back and relax and just enjoy having company for the day and no drama either.  The older I get the more I just try to find that elusive zen state, and yesterday was pretty close.

Balue has decided the futon was purchased for him.

I woke up too early though, and went to bed late, and woke up again today too early.  So what did I do the day after my birthday?  Well I napped... fantastic!!

Much love!!

Not So Lazy Sunday

Today I woke up and have been on the go since.  I haven't even had time to think of an actual topic driven blog for today.  Laundry, grocery shopping, dog walking, iguana petting and ball dipping.  The details of the actual ball dipping is a blog all of it's own to come at a later date.  Today was my first time making the ever popular new fad cake balls.  I baked two cakes for these balls for the work Halloween bash being held on Tuesday, because not everyone will be there tomorrow on actual Halloween or something like that.  I've made my first batch of balls and I'm over it, and I have a whole nother batch of balls to go.  I have ball delirium.  I need to hire a little unsuspecting person at my apartments and tell them if they dip my balls they get to keep some of the balls.  Now I'm just going to vegetate for the rest of the night try to forget the balls and the rest of the balls will be finished tomorrow.  The ball project has been fun but tedious.  Whoever thought of the cake balls was brilliant, for one they are yummy for two I just got to reference balls 14 times in one blog.  I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend and that Monday is kind to them.
 
 Much Love!!
 BALLS!(15) These are some of the ones I've made so far.

Music Is Life

I truly love music, all kinds.  I will always have a special affection for rock and roll because I was a little girl growing up in Texas during the 80’s rocking out to the sounds of Pink Floyd, Tina Turner, Guns N Roses, Joan Jett, Aerosmith etc.  In our house rock and roll was pretty much all that was "allowed" on the radio, go ahead and deny it Dad, all radios in the house were to be tuned to, I’ll never forget, KBat.  Granted I was able to get away with New Kids On The Block and Tiffany and other 80’s pop music icons, but I couldn’t blast it.

My dad did grow out of that phase.  The first time he told me about how good this rapper was that my younger brother had shown him I think I about went into shock.

Now that I’m a grown ass woman, and live a few states away, I can gleefully admit that when my parents were not home I would scan the radio stations and listen to different kinds of music very loudly.  One of my favorite past times was recording songs on cassette tapes using my stereo/record player/cassette player/8 track player.  Oh yes I rocked the 8 track. 

I think my favorite song that I had recorded off of the radio onto cassette that I’d either play really low with my door closed or full blast when I had no parentals around to say something like “what in the hell is that, turn it off” was Will Smith or back then DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, Parents Just Don't Understand.  Oh yes, they truly didn't.   I remember having friends over and sneakily playing it, and the other awesome songs I had found like I Can't Live Without My Radio by LL Cool J.  Keeping it low for my friends to hear, feeling like the coolest 9 year old little girl on earth playing my contraband and exposing them to music that they had never heard.

Music has changed in the past 30+ years that I’ve been alive and it will always continue to change.  I will always love it.  Though rock is my favorite, on any given day I may listen to anything from P!nk to BB King, from Taylor Swift to Snoop Dogg.  I love the way it can soothe your soul or amp you up.  There’s music for every mood and every emotion. 

I couldn’t imagine our world without music!  A great place to find all kinds of music of every genre from over the decades is the Amazon MP3 Store.  You can download singles or entire records.  It’s great and it’s affordable!  The best part is that your purchased music is available to you everywhere.  You can log into your Amazon account and play it anywhere on your Kindle Fire, PC, Mac, iPad, or Android device.  All of which are also conveniently available at Amazon.  Friggen awesome! 

With the holidays coming up do not forget that music is a great gift.  You can purchase Gift Cards that do not expire at Amazon and your children, friends, and family can pick the music or other merchandise they love.  I also love that you can email or Facebook Amazon gift cards, this is great for friends and family who do not live nearby and saving money on postage and avoiding your gift being delayed in the mail during the holidays is not a bad thing.

Much love and pump up the jams!

Dead Phone Walking

I purchased my cell phone about a year ago, and not surprisingly it is now having issues.  I’ll be talking, texting or it’ll just be sitting there on the desk and it decides to restart.  It’s so weird!  Oh and reception quality is not as good.  It’s not having charging issues because it seems to hold about the same charge as it did when I purchased it.  The brain is just giving out I suppose.  So I’m assuming I have a limited amount of time with this phone as it’s begun its stretch down the green mile so I must prepare for its untimely departure.  It’s been such a good little phone.

My techno savvy does not include the vast cell phone world.  So now I’m researching phone advantages and disadvantages.  From the choices I have with my current carrier it’s either a Blackberry or an Android, or another simplistic non smart phone.  However I’m ready to leap into the Smart World!

My phone is not a Smart Phone.  Its a little touch phone with a slider keyboard.  I love having a keyboard.  I text more than talk and having to deal with a touch screen only keyboard is not appealing to me.  My carrier happened to come out with a new Android with a slider this week, which is the only reason it’s in the running.   

It seems to me on forums Blackberry users are diehard go Blackberry and Android users are the same about their Androids.  I then tried doing some recon by checking out some tech site reviews and they try to keep everything neutral…. ‘Oh the Blackberry is great and the Android is too, get them both! ‘

I need a baby of the Blackberry and Android.  It could come in Blackberry box and you pull it out and it looks like an Android and then you put it on the charger for 2 hours in a dark dry area that’s elevated by at least 7 feet and come back and you find that it has transformed into a DroidBerry!   Mmmm droidberries…. ;p

What do you think?  Are you a diehard Blackberry or Android fan?

Much Love!

***Imagine a big picture of a Blackberry and an Android boxing right here!

Single Blonde Girl vs. Grocery Shopping

Being single for the first time in almost 13 years or so has it's many perks and few challenges.  One such challenge has been retraining myself on grocery shopping.  Anyone who has always shopped for one person is probably thinking 'oh that's easy'.  For me it is getting easier for sure.  I rarely eat out, I am such a spend thrift that I find it much cheaper to make my own meals and besides that I just enjoy cooking.  So when I am shopping it is for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I used to do what I call Armageddon grocery shopping.  Every two weeks on payday I'd go and stock up on everything in the world that the household may possibly need for those two weeks.  Why every 2 weeks?  Payday always fell every two weeks.  I was hauling in enough food to fill the pantry, cupboards, refrigerator, freezer and deep freezer, as well as other necessities such as cleaning supplies and personal hygiene.  When I was with my ex-husband and his younger teenaged brother lived with us the bulk discount stores were definitely my friend, it is truly amazing how much food 2 young men can pack away.  And when I was in my second domestic living family situation where there were two young children again I was amazed at how much food 2 little girls can pack away!  And let us not forget toilet paper.  What in the world do they do with the toilet paper?

One of the downfalls of continuing to bulk shop in my current living situation is that my apartment is not located super close to the parking lot.  So making 13 trips with grocery bags to Narnia is not the funnest thing in the world to do.   After the first time I went and did my normal 2 week stock up trying to guess what I would need for only me and any possible visitors and I did those several trips back and forth from the parking lot to my apartment bringing everything in I knew that I had to figure out a better system.

After trial and error over the months I think I've got it down, finally!  I now know exactly how much food I consume on my own.  I've always taken a list when I grocery shop to streamline my process, and it's amazing that my list is so short now after being so used to shopping for so many people.  My biggest friend is the tiny version of the shopping cart that my preferred grocery store now has.  It's wonderful!  It has two tiny baskets and whatever fits in those tiny baskets ends up being one trip to the apartment from the parking lot.  I also have changed my routine of biweekly grocery shopping to now shopping once a week and get everything I need just for that week.

Now that I've gotten this down some hunk of an awesome man is probably going to fall into my lap, undoubtedly with 9 children and a younger brother and an uncle and 16 dogs that live with him, bringing me a whole new challenge of retraining my shopping habits.  But I'm always up for a good challenge. ;)

Much love!