Gene and I had a wonderful time while in northern Illinois. I shopped at Ikea and decided that I wanted to move in there. I think Gene’s whole opinion on the place is that it is WAY too big. I think I lost his attention on our 2nd day there (yes, TWO days!) but it’s totally understandable. Oh and did I mention that I want to buy one of each of their Duvet covers. I LOVE all of the patterns! And they’re cheap! We also got to the Threadless store, finally.  We swore off using Google Maps for anything ever again, at least for a while. I think it only took us an entire day to get to the Threadless store. Of course that’s because Google Maps originally led us to their warehouse/office.

The Friday before we left on vacation we drove up to my Grandma’s house to visit her for the day. She lives about 3 hours away, to give an idea of how far we’re talkin’ here. It’s not THAT far but just far enough to be really tiring. So we drove up there on a Friday to visit her for a day. Then we drove to Illinois, a good 13 hours there and 14 1/2 back. We got a call that she was in the hospital so on Saturday morning we headed up to Joplin, MO to visit her in the hospital. Joplin is about 4 hours from our house, if mom’s driving.

Not much to say about the visit to the hospital other than it was the most emotional I’ve been in a while. I really can’t even explain how much my heart was breaking when I saw her. She looked so bad and so sick and like she had to be in so much pain and so miserable. I pretty much swore to myself that if I am over a certain age, I will NOT go through chemo if I am diagnosed with cancer. I’d rather live a shorter life than live longer and go through that misery. Totally not worth it, in my books.

Last week we had a plumber out to fix some things around the house and also had a Chimney Sweep come out and clean our fireplace. I’ve never used a fireplace in my life so it was quite a new experience. I still have yet to use it, because as soon as they left, the weather warmed up significantly. The best part of the entire experience is that the name of the company we called out is Mary Poppin’s Chimney Sweep and the lady who came out was wearing a black top hat and it was hilarious.

I also have a friend in need. A friend in need of prayers or thoughts or good vibes or whatever it is that you do or believe in. So if you could keep my good friend Malinda and my Grandma in your thoughts or prayers I would really appreciate it. These are two people I care deeply about and am worrying night and day about them. I can’t talk about my friend’s situation as it is quite a private one… Just know that she needs the good vibes right now, really badly.

But let’s get to the more important and fun stuff, shall we?

Gene and I completely lost our minds on Thursday and we purchased a teevee that is so ridiculously big and expensive that I thought I would tear up a little when I signed the credit card receipt. I can safely say that it is worth about 3 mortgage payments and the thought alone kind of freaks me out a little bit. It’s beautiful, though :) Our new baby is a 47″ LCD tv. I also purchased a new tv stand to go with it because.. if you’re going to spend that much money, why not splurge a little? Plus, we wanted something safe for our new baby to rest on :D And the picture next to this demonstrates our new found love. (P.S. the tv did not come with an Asian, as the picture may suggest. I had to go out and get that on my own, but even if it did come with one.. I would have totally returned it because I like my Asian the best of them all :D)

So we’ve been “working” on our spare bathroom. I have yet to take pictures of it, at all. And I totally forgot to take before pictures, so the only pictures we’ll have are the ones we took when we first moved in. We have it painted but have yet to do any touch up on the paint. Once the touch up is done, I can start putting the new hardware up. I need to go buy a new light fixture for it and my next big project in there is to sand the wood on the baseboards/door frame and re stain it. The people who owned it before us apparently never understood what painter’s tape is for and I need to fix all of their boo boos.

Other than that, not much going on. Just working around the house and having as much fun as possible when we can. We went to the Oklahoma State Fair last night as a kind of spur of the moment decision and we had a pretty good time walking around. Gene and I were pretty annoyed because apparently just having rides and scary carnies isn’t enough, so now they’ve gone super classy and brought in a few “circus freak” acts. I felt so horrible for these people. Just a quick rundown of the acts:

• World’s Smallest Woman – Advertised as a Real Live woman that is only 29 inches tall. You had to pay $1 to walk through to see her. Malinda went through and she said there was a woman that was about 2 1/2 feet tall sitting there, listening to her ipod while people walked through, staring at her. Can you imagine being in this situation? Sitting there for 12-15 hours a day while people pay to walk through and stare at you and your “freakness” ?
• Snake Woman – I can’t remember the exact name of this one. It was advertised as this woman that has no arms and no legs, a beautiful face and the body of an ugly snake. They repeated body of an ugly snake about 50 million times on the automated advertising thing and it was really disgusting that they can even act like this. Again, it was $1 to walk up and see the woman. However, on the advertisement it did mention an “illusion” a few times so I was a little skeptical on the realness of this.
• World’s Smallest Horse – This was advertised as a tiny horse that is no taller than the bales of hay they had (only stacked one high) on this platform. It said it was a real live horse and an adult, and not a miniature pony. Malinda paid to go see this one and what she found was they had the platform lowered where the bales of hay were so there was actually a horse in there that was a few feet tall. So technically, it WOULD have been taller than the bales of hay. Again, stupid.

I guess the best part of the State Fair this year was that I was in good company. I had Malinda, Gene and my little sister with me. There was a ton of laughter and that always makes for a good time. When we were leaving, it was well after 11 PM and everything was closing down. We walked by a food stand and I heard a boy shout “Half Price” and I swear I thought I heard him say half price french fries.. And being the french fry lover that I am, I stopped immediately and turned around and say “Huh?” and the older man in the stand shouted “Half Price Sausages” and we all immediately began cracking up. Typed up, it doesn’t seem as funny. I guess you would have to be there. But I mean.. Isn’t it funny anywhere you go and there is a man yelling “Half Price Sausages” ?

Well, I am sick and ready for bed. Yesterday at the fair I made a joke when we turned down the street that holds the majority of the food stands about how there should be a Biohazard Warning before you enter that area. We were walking down that street and I felt like the grease, smoke and trash was all sticking to my skin and absorbing into my blood. I then made a comment about State Fair Disease and Cancer. And wouldn’t you know, I had a horrible sore throat by time we got home from the fair and I’ve been pretty miserable all day today. Sore throat, congested, runny nose, sneezing, nauseous, dizzy… the whole bit! So, I think it’s time to get ready for bed, shower and then maybe a movie.

Balls of Fury was pretty funny. It wasn’t as hilarious as I was expecting it to be but it definitely had its moments. And I guess the story line was pretty good so maybe thats why there wasn’t all of that stupid, side-splitting hilarity. However, Superbad was a totally stupid storyline and I laughed my ass off throughout most of it.  The storyline in Superbad was your typical teenage trying-to-get-laid deal. It was sooo stupid but it seemed like every 10-15 minutes there was some new unexpected event occuring that was just too hilarious for words. If you have a somewhat vulgar, perverted sense of humor.. I totally recommend it.

Anyway that was the real excitement of my weekend. Gene and I “started” on taping off our guest bathroom to paint. I took everything out of there. It is a tiny bathroom with a tub/shower but I have been pretty lazy about getting the painting project started. My guest bathroom is a Palm Tree theme therefore I am painting the walls green. I’m hoping it turns out to be an “earthy” green color. I ended up buying cheap paint at Walmart so it’s not QUITE as earthy as the sample I picked out at Home Depot, but it was about 1/2 the price of the one at Home Depot. I’m really excited because it is my first time to paint. I am going to work on changing the light fixtures and hardware (towel bar, toilet paper holder, etc.) in that bathroom too. It is going to be our first official “remodel” of the house. We’re not doing any MAJOR updates in there. It already has a tile floor and the sink, toilet and tub/tile seems to be in pretty good condition. Some paint and a few minor updates ought to do the trick. I’ll take before/after pics.

Time for bed.. Need to get some rest before I go back to work tomorrow. It ought to be a CRAZY day to get back. Three day weekends are nice but we always end up paying for them when we get back :(

We stopped by my work on the way home to print out directions to Tulsa for tomorrow and now I am about to head to bed. My plan was to take a shower tonight but I think I’m going to do that in the morning. I am really exhausted right now and feel like as soon as my head hits the pillow I will be out.

So I am up today and my mission is to be as active as I can be without hurting my back too bad.  There are tree limbs in the backyard I need to pick up and I need to weedeat while Gene mows. I may buy some soil and flowers because our brick mailbox has a little enclosed planter type thing that is attached to it. I’d like to put some perdy flowers in it :D Oh my dear domestication.

Anyway, I am going to motivate Gene to hurry up and get dressed. We’re going to Home Depot to walk around and look at stuff. I need to go in search of Nelson. Even though I am extremely weary of spending upwords of $70 on a sprinkler for my yard, after reading the reviews I am pretty much sold. If I can’t find him in store I will be making the purchase via Amazon.com :) Gene and I really need to save money right now because there are a lot of “big” purchases in our near future but I also want to take care of my lawn and try to get it back to lookin’ nice.

Two more things before I go… I changed my domain to nerdwagon.org :D I always wanted .org because years ago I owned nerdwagon.org – I let it expire and some losers bought it after that. Well, it’s mine again! Nerdwagon.net is expired so change your bookmarks if you feel so inclined to do so! And the second thing is that yesterday morning Gene and I bought our The Cure tickets for Dallas. So it’s official, we have gone mad and spent $150 on concert tickets. We’re planning on staying in Dallas for a total of 5 nights. The things first on my list to do are Lush and Ikea. I really wanted to go to Medievil Times because it sounds like soooo much fun but there are no shows during the week we’ll be there. It’s ok.. Maybe we can make a special trip up there sometime to go.

I go back to the allergy clinic for my follow up in mid August and I think they may have to start giving me half of my extracts in each arm. A week or two ago I came home with a knot in my arm the size of a tennis ball! I am NOT exaggerating here. And today it is about the size of a golf ball. But it’s not just a knot, it is an itchy, irritated and sore lump. It hurts to even move my arm. Now, I know it’s not deadly pain but I really don’t want to have to feel like this every single week :( I’ll just have to talk to them when I go back in August.

Dad came over tonight and installed a motion sensor porch light on our front porch. I am sooo happy to finally have one of these! We put a light bulb in the porch light when we first moved in but we can hardly ever remember to turn the light on when we leave and it is still light out. Now we are worry-free! Hah.. Modern day technology is the bomb :) What would we do without it???

The only other real news is that at the end of this month we will be attending D-Fest! I am sooo excited. And also, Gene and I have pretty much made the decision to splurge with our money by purchasing tickets to see The Cure in either Houston or Dallas, Texas. I am really excited and can’t wait until Tickets go on sale :) We are going to make it into a little vacay since we never got one this year. I’ve already decided that I may take off an entire week of work if I am able. Not sure how many great things there are to do in Texas in October but we’ll find something :) Just being away is awesome enough as it is!

I got this purse from Ross a couple of weeks ago and I think I’m going to take it back today. It’s a Harajuku Lovers purse. I don’t know if anyone has heard of that but Gwen Stefani’s Asian sexy dancer girls are called her Harajuku Girls. Harajuku is a place in Japan, the place where these girls are from. The purse is seriously ADORABLE. It has oranges on it with little crowns and faces and says “I’m just an Orange County girl” – adorable. And I always fall head over heels in love with CUTE things. But I realize now that $40 for a purse from ROSS is not a good buy. If you look at the purses on their website, you will see that $40 actually IS a good buy. But I know that was a pretty big sum of money thrown down the drain for a PURSE. It’s goin’ back, ’nuff said.

Gene and I had our housewarming party yesterday and it was great. I was soo happy to see everyone. I served up 2 cheese balls, sausage balls, a veggie tray, homemade egg rolls, whole wheat chocolate chip cookies and whole wheat snicker doodle cookies. Almost all of the food was gone when the last person left and I couldn’t believe it. I rolled nearly 50 egg rolls! And I made a double batch of sausage balls. And I made TWO of the cheese balls. Anyway, it was a great turn out and I didn’t feel like as much of a loser as I usually do, haha. It was just really great to see some people that I haven’t seen in such a long time.

My mom gave us a $100 gift card to Home Depot. A family friend of ours gave us $50 gift card to Kohl’s. Malinda gave us this ADORABLE coaster set. It has a little holder that spins around that holds 4 glass coasters, in which you can put PICTURES into. And they also have little metal stands on the back so they also function as picture frames. There is no other word to describe these than GENIUS. And cute. And Malinda’s mom gave me a Swiffer Duster! I have the Pledge Duster and I don’t like it as much as I used to so I’m excited to try out the Swiffer one. V gave me a $20 gift card to Barnes & Noble, which is awesome because I love B&N! I’m definitely going to buy a cookbook or two with it. And in all of this, I really mean “us” since it is Gene and I’s house. But… ya know :D Oh and the family friend who brought the Kohl’s GC also brought a CUTE basket with 2 jars of homemade salsa and a bag of chips. Totally awesome!

Man it has been a while since I’ve last posted, this one is going to be long. Sorry about this people. I’m also extremely anal and I don’t personally like to use the “More” feature so I’m typing it all up in one entry. Anyway, the only latest developments with me are health related and they aren’t really good, at all. The first thing is that I got fitted for my customer brace the first week in May and the Insurance has declined coverage on it, saying it is “Not medically necessary” so now I’ve got a few people fighting it with appeals, trying to get some coverage. The damn thing costs around $1,600, so yes I would like some insurance coverage here!

Next would be my back. I’ve been in horrendous pain ever since we moved. I guess I pushed myself too hard and I’ve BEEN pushing myself too hard to do things around the house. I went to the Chiropractor for a couple of weeks and he got the pain down to where it was bearable and I could at least walk. But it hasn’t gone away and I can’t justify paying the Chiropractor $50 for 10-15 minutes of his back-crackin’ time anymore. So I went to the doctor on Thursday, I got a script for a steroid pack and an anti-inflammatory. It has felt slightly better since and I’ve been getting a little more sleep than before, which is good. I’m going in for an MRI tomorrow morning. Another MRI! This will be the 3rd MRI I’ve had since last July and I’m sure those people have got to be wondering if anything else could happen to me, as do I.

One more thing about the housewarming party, since my thoughts are extremely scattered right now; I feel like it totally officiated us as homeowners now and I feel ready to start the Wedding Planning Nightmare Journey. Anyway, I’m gonna eat my breakfast and maybe get ready to go out. I wanna do some shopping!

This weekend flew by. We pretty much spent most of the weekend at home, hangin’ out. Saturday I spent a good 5 hours cleaning and then today my dad came over and we put the shower massages in the bathrooms and attempted to fix the hot water tap in our master bathroom, but failed. Still needs some work but think we are going to just add that to the list of things we’ll need the plumber to fix. Hmph. The joys of being a homeowner ;)

Our new roof looks AWESOME. They started it Thursday morning and finished it Friday morning. I need to talk to the roofer because I noticed they forgot to take the Dish Network dish down that the previous renters left and I am going to take it down anyway, so I’ll need them to patch that spot. Stupid freakin’ Dish Network crap.

Anyway, I am going to get in bed soon. I gotta try my best to go into work early tomorrow. Mondays are always a real pain in the hiney and there is always triple the work to do. A quick briefing of what I do.. I work for a local alarm company and every day I review all of the people who had alarms go off the previous day/night and then I call and follow up on all of them. It’s just an extra way that we can service our customers and show that we really do pay attention to all that goes on with their alarm system. Something that I can gaurantee none of the bigger alarm companies (ADT, Protection One, etc.) don’t do. Anyway, I wont go into all of that nonsense. I love my job but Mondays are quite the b*tch :)

Today, Gene and I trimmed up the ginormous tree in the front yard. Spent a few hours out there working on it. Got most of it taken care of but there are some parts that we are too scared to cut down in fear that it will collapse the fence.  We’re trying to get these trimmed back because the roofer is scheduled to install the new roof sometime later this week. I also got up and mowed the yard at around 10:30 this morning. The grass needs a lot of TLC to bring it back to life. It’s not completely dead but some parts have been taken over by weeds and some of it just isn’t as thick as it should be.

Anyway, its the little things. Today Gene and I went to Walmart to buy a few neccessities. We bought 2 battery smoke detectors to protect us until we get the alarm system installed. Also got a Carbon Monoxide detector, a fire extinguisher, a shower massage for the spare bedroom and a bug proof light bulb for the porch.  I think thats all we got.. I don’t know.. but I do know that we spent $70 on it. Ugh.

Anyway I guess thats all I have to say for now. I need to go fold / hang laundry and maybe go chill out on the couch for a while. Peace :D

Having a few slight issues with the new house. Things that, of course, will get better over time. But the girl who rented this house before we bought it had 5 cats. FIVE. And I’m allergic to a single cat, so you can imagine how great it has been for me. I don’t show my typical allergy symptoms, I just… out of nowhere, have an asthma attack. I’ll be fine and then feel my lungs starting to close up and then it begins. Crazy stuff. My body will get used to it eventually, I’m sure.

Anyway, I’m gonna go take a shower and sleep. We gotta be at my mom’s house at 9:30 tomorrow morning to go out of town. I’d much rather stay and spend time in my house but we have family coming in from out of state that we never get to see and I really want to see them. So anyway.. thats the heads up on what is going on. I’ll write more when I actually have time. The next week will be spent finishing the move, cleaning the other house, unpacking and getting ready for a brand spankin’ new roof on Friday :D