It's All About...The Cheese

And amid the belated Happy Thanksgivings I wish to each of you, I wish you a little cheese. This entry will end up being a little cheezy, no matter how you "slice" it. (Warning: The bad jokes will not improve from here on out. Turn back now.)

My Thanksgiving was not typical, but I sure give thanks for it today. What a BLAST! Scott got me tickets to go see the Packers vs. Lions at Ford Field, and I was ready to deck the halls with green and gold. I woke up early, decorated my face with some GB tattoos...

donned a bit of the green and the gold and the cheese (with water all glamorously down the front of me from applying the tattoos)...

It didn't even take 2 hours to get to Detroit. There was almost no traffic until we got within a mile of the stadium or so. Once we got parked, we found we had to walk right through the middle of the Detroit Thanksgiving Parade to get to the stadium. I have watched that parade since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and it was really neat to see the huge floats and balloons in person. The Tuskeegee Airmen passed right in front of us and it was very, very moving.

And as the policeman let us across the street in a lull, I risked my cowboy-hat-cheesehead blowing away to snatch a picture of the parade from the middle of the street:

Getting closer to the stadium, we saw as many cheeseheads tailgating as Lions fans!!

Security there was tighter than any airport I've been to since 9/11. We got frisked and wanded and my purse was searched. There's a limit to how nice of a camera you can bring into the stadium, and mine fits the lens limit. I had to convince this nice security man that my camera was a still camera and not a movie camera. Sorry, Mr. Security Guy. I was lying. It does both.

I grabbed a beer -- NOT a common thing for me to do at 11AM, but it was a Packers game, sheesh! -- and bought a program and climbed and climbed and climbed to our seats. I am not complaining. They were nosebleeders, but it was a great view of the field!

Even being there early, my boys showed up on the field with an hour to go:

And the only man who has my heart at the moment, my revered Brett Favre, warmed up. Even from that far away, and even when running drills, that guy just looks like he's having a blast. I do appreciate watching that.

I was seriously ready for some football. When it started out 6-0 Lions, I was a little...um... nervous. You see, I've seen the Pack play live about 7 or 8 times. I'd only ever seen them win ONCE. Even during their '96 Superbowl season, I was only at games they LOST. I had nothing to fear.

These folks shown below were sitting next to us and were a RIOT. There were a ton of like-minded cheeseheads there, so I was in good company. (Scott, though he was wearing Dallas Cowboy gear, did actually root for the Packers. I was impressed...hadn't heard him do that before. I have a feeling next week's game will be a little different story, though...)

As you may or may not know now, my boys pulled through in glorious form, winning the game 37-26. Favre set a Green Bay record with 20 consecutive completed passes, his 7th 300-yard passing game this season, and passed for 381 yards. Jennings caught 2 more touchdown passes, Grant scored again, and Driver had 147 yards. Now I'm thinking that I need to drive to Wisconsin to see if I can buy same-day tickets for the 12/30 Detroit game...but we'll see. I Tivo'ed the game, but haven't had time to watch it yet. I'm saving that for tomorrow night.

As we left the stadium, we noticed yet one more sign that Packer Fans are just the BEST:

And there you have it. My fantastic Thanksgiving Day, 2007. We made it back to Scott's house in time to watch the last quarter of the Dallas game, and then I mosied home. NFL Football Rocks My World.

(More to write about today, but no time. Must. Go. Buy. Sweet Potatoes.)

It's All About...Birthdays and Plans

So, thoughts to begin the weekend:

• I can't believe that K is going to be FIVE YEARS OLD next week!! I can still remember hanging out in the hospital room after she'd been born, not quite believing she had arrived. And five years later? She's my roommate, my little buddy, my foot tickler, my almost-always-waker-upper-at-6AM, a big source of laughter. What a fun kid. Birthday party today is bumper bowling and a Scooby Doo cake and eight other kids and too much sugar.

I am really missing the kids lately and can hardly wait for the holiday season to get underway because it means I'll get to see them all at some point or another. This picture is from this past summer -- I keep a copy at work.

• The Walking/Running endeavor is going really quite well. I've been going almost every day in the late afternoon. With the dark coming earlier, it's getting harder to squeeze in the time outside after work during the week. I'm almost always mid-trail (it's a 2.8 mile trek) when things start to look like this:

I'm hoping to attend my first 5K Walk/Run around midnight on New Year's Eve. I am going to try, but I don't think I'll be able to quite run the whole way by then; however, I need a goal that's closer than springtime. So there it is. Instead of drinking on New Year's, I'll be running. It's actually a HUGE high, all these endorphins I get from being out and working so hard. It takes me hours to calm down afterward. Not that I'm complaining!

• Speaking of running, many time when I'm out there on the path, I see people with dogs. All shapes and sizes of dogs. They all run along. They are cute and fun and...I want one. And then my buddy from across the street comes to see me:

...and I want one even more. So I would imagine, if this enjoyment of running continues through spring, I will be the proud owner of a dog. Stop shaking your heads.

Starting an eBay project this morning, and I'd better get cracking on cleaning my room. Then there's the birthday party, then a karaoke/rehearsal evening. Tomorrow I'm going to K&K's church to hear the little one play handbells, then to a murder-mystery rehearsal in a nearby town, then home to another K Birthday celebration, and sometime in there I have to fit in a Packer football game. Next week, I get to wear my cheesehead at Ford Field. I know you'll love the pictures of that one...

It's All About...Bon Jovi

Gotta say it: I'm a fan of the 80's hair bands. Pretty much always have been. Even in the midst of my moodiest Bob Dylan-Leonard Cohen-Tom Waits lovin' periods, a good power ballad could brighten my day. Bon Jovi was almost always top of my list, and not just because Jon has really awesome dimples. The band just rocks, the melodies are good, and they've been around long enough that a sampling of their catalog is a fairly decent soundtrack for my last 20 years.

While driving for almost 10 hours through Ohio and Pennsylvania (as I did a few weeks ago), a person has time to think. I was thinking a lot about road trips, and all they've come to symbolize to me. Freedom, independence, adventure, spontaneity. And not that I haven't had my fair share of road trips in previous years, but this last year (with all its change and scariness and sadness and upheaval and...change) has really made the road trip a major feature of my life. In a very, very good way.

So, all of that said, I wouldn't say I'd ever been DEEPLY TOUCHED by a Bon Jovi song. Until the last trip. Funny thing is, I'd heard this song and enjoyed it when they played it on SNL during my PREVIOUS road trip, but really hadn't heard the words. While taking a break from the iPod somewhere in PA -- a rare break, I might add -- I heard this song on the radio and really listened to the lyrics. Oof. Hit me in the gut, they did. And no, they're not sentimental or mushy. That's not what touched me. It's just that they are exactly where I am at this moment in my life. I really am not feeling very sentimental or mushy at all lately. I feel like the song is explaining something that I just can't express. So. This morning, I wanted to share a little glimpse into the me that Jon Bon Jovi expresses better than I do. (And if you think THAT doesn't keep me awake nights...)

FYI: Song is "Lost Highway" off the album of the same title.

It's All About...Looking Back, Moving Forward

Miss me? Considering there are about 4 of you who actually read this, probably not. But I missed you. I missed writing! (I would say that I missed taking pictures, but I really haven’t stopped that because my camera is an appendage. Truly.)

So geez. What’s happened? I had a beautiful 4-day vacation during which I drove to Maryland and Pennsylvania. I finished the HTML class from hell. I destroyed my bedroom in a flurry of rearranging to make it more functional. (The piles should be removed by Saturday. At the latest. Or I will go even more insane.) I made a bazillion plans to take place during the next 3 months. And I completed one year fast-food-free, ate some junk, and started on the next year. I ran a half mile non-stop on my treadmill.

The road trip:

The weekend before Halloween, I headed back to Maryland for my semi-annual scrapbooking trip. It might have started with scrapbooking, but it's mainly about the friendship...and the food. One tradition is that we eat at Galaxy 66, a really nice restaurant along the coastal highway. We had quite a crowd with us this trip. As it was last March, the food this night was incredible:

The kids got creme brulee for dessert:

After a long drive, I did very little scrapbooking the first night. I woke up right as the sun was coming up. One of the nice things about staying in a hotel right on the ocean is the view, especially of the sunrise:

There were other views that were pretty good too:

After getting dressed and going to get donuts at The Fractured Prune, I spent a long frickin' time at CVS trying to get some pictures developed. It would have made sense to get this done ahead of time, except that I never know what I want to scrapbook until the mood strikes. And when checking my photos, I wanted to scrapbook about Barefoot. Of course, the CVS I chose had a myriad of printing problems. (And a really adorable guy who helped me a lot, thank you Sihrish.) I think I got back to the hotel in time for lunch. Oy. But I did get a ton of scrapbooking done that afternoon, thank you very much. We attempted to meet J's husband and son and stepkids for dinner, but plans went awry (as they often do with J and me...no biggie!), so it was just she and I who ended up at a crab shack for some serious seafood:

Afterward, we made it back to the scrap room in time for a demo of some really cool Creative Memories scrapbooking software that, of course, I couldn't live without. And I got several more pages done.

The next morning? More scrapbooking, of course:

And then it was time to hit the road. We took a few last pictures on the beach in a LOT of wind:

And north I drove, through Rehoboth, around Philly, and out to Hazleton. (This was a mistake...I should have gone right to see Bree first, but didn't, and it cost me WAY too much time.) Then I took the really weird, convoluted, twisty, climby, LONG route that GoogleMaps had provided to get to Bethlehem to see my lovely stepdaughter. She took me to a really cool brew pub where I blinded her several times with my ubiquitous camera:

And she gave me a nighttime tour of her campus haunts and the town, and a brief trip through her home. It really is the coolest thing to see her so independent and...well, cool. She's pretty cool. I hated to have my visit be so short, but there it is. I had to go. So BACK to Hazleton on a vastly shorter route (thank you, atlas) and I crashed into bed.

HTML Class. Check.

After a brief 10 hour drive home the next day, I did homework. For the Next. Two. Days. Straight. I worked in there too, but free time was almost non-existent. I wrote HTML code like a MANIAC. I finished my final project for my class with about 13 minutes to spare. Sheesh. I have rarely been so pleased to have a class be finished. I got a B in the class, and I don't even care. (That's very weird for someone so attached to her 4.0 GPA until a year or so ago.)

What else?

After completing my year of no-fast-food on Oct 29th, I ate all kinds of it for 6 days. Yuck. Other than Wendy's chocolate frosties, nothing tasted very good, and it all made me kind of perpetually nauseous. I'm back on the wagon for another year (with a scheduled exception for a KFC Famous Bowl...the only thing I really craved consistently the entire year, and that I didn't eat on my "break").

I'm planning a trip to see my brother in San Francisco, hopefully in January.

I have a vague plan to try and run a 5K by January -- still looking for races. (I need a closer goal than spring.) I started a 5 week training regimen yesterday.

I should have my car paid off by January.

I switched dressers and moved stuff around in my room. The room -- still completely trashed. One person just does not need all this CRAP. So it's 3 more days of sort and toss. The goal is a stress-free room by Sunday night.

Bored yet? I'm not. I feel like I'm just getting started. On a lot of things. I hope you'll put up with the erratic entries and stick around to hear about it.

It's All About...The Marilyn Quote

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes. I am out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." - Marilyn Monroe

Oh, though I would love to claim otherwise, this quote is so ME. I can only nod.