Amazing Cat Video and I haven't killed the plants yet

Using my new camera, which has a video function, and iMovie, which came with the MacBook Christian and I created the following video and it only took like an hour and a half. Hopefully that's just the learning curve and it won't take so long next time.



And here are a few photos I took with the camera. Remember the bell pepper plant? Well, it's not dead yet. In fact, here is a baby pepper that has just started to grow, and another blossom that I hope will grow soon!

How are they getting ahold of us???

For the love. This is the third time we've had fraud on our credit card, and the second time they've had to shut down our account and re-issue the cards.

How are these people getting our info?? We use Virtual Account numbers when we buy things online. We don't lend our cards to people. What is the deal?

But I have to say, Citibank is awesome about finding the fraud and alerting us before it is charged to our account. They'll call and say "this doesn't look like something you'd buy" and they are right! So, kudos to them - we haven't actually lost any funds from it, just the inconvenience and the inability to earn airline miles during the times our cards are being re-issued each time.

What day IS this?

Was this a Monday or something? I thought Fridays were supposed to be good. But this day was really, really crappy. I can't get rid of the headache it caused.

I spent 20 minutes on the phone today with a freelance designer who did not understand the difference between an email and a web page. I had to explain that email is when I send you a message and it comes into your Inbox, you open it, and you read it. A web page is when something opens inside a web browser and you are on the Internet.
This person gets paid to do web design. I am not kidding. I am pretty sure he gets paid more than I do.

I also got flack from 3 separate customers who are annoyed that I am taking a one week vacation in August.


Cigarette Count: Number of cigarettes my upstairs neighbors threw into my back yard today, which I had to pick up and throw away: 0 so far (it's only 9:30 PM)

Today was so exciting

Today I forgot to wear mascara. I wore other eye makeup but somehow got distracted before applying the mascara so my eyes looked weird all day. It was weird.

I guess we aren't going to San Antonio this weekend due to the flooding down there. That is kinda sad because we won't get to see the family and I won't get to go floating down the river in New Braunfels - I've never been.

Maybe I will use my new camera to take pictures of nice, indoor things.

Cigarette Count: Number of cigarettes my upstairs neighbors threw into my back yard today, which I had to pick up and throw away: 3 (also, they were wet due to the rain. Good times.)

I won!

Today was our annual CEO Team Awards at work and since I do not work in teams (I am an individual contributor), this is always a really boring event for me, spending 3 hours watching other people accept awards. They do try to make it fun, and one of the things they do is give away prizes. I was so surprised when they called my name and I won a digital camera!

Apparently it is a very, very basic model. The reviews it gets aren't that great. But, I am excited because all I wanted was to be able to figure out how to take pictures. Christian's fancy SLR camera is so complex that I can't use it and it shoots in RAW format which means I have to convert each photo to .jpg to post it on the web or send it to someone. So I am hoping this one will be great to use for simple things.

I think I'll get to pick it up some time this week - I just got the little "you won!" slip of paper at the time. So I'll post pictures as soon as I can! We will be seeing family in San Antonio this weekend so surely I'll have something to take pictures of!

Cigarette Count: Number of cigarettes my upstairs neighbors threw into my back yard today, which I had to pick up and throw away: 0 so far (maybe they quit?)

Now I have decided to keep count

I am introducing a new feature on my blog which I will put at the bottom of each post. I will call it "Cigarette Count". It will look like this, below, and here is today's count:

Cigarette Count: Number of cigarettes my upstairs neighbors threw into my back yard today, which I had to pick up and throw away: 8

Obsessed with tiny plastic bottles & bags

Lately I've been fixated on how I can get all our toiletry items for a whole week into 3 oz bottles and 2 of those quart sized bags that the airline allows for carry-on luggage. I have a strange fear of checking baggage and I love packing as efficiently as possible for long periods of travel in very small bags. But it doesn't help that I'm a beauty product fiend and I'm brokenhearted at the thought of going without Arbonne for a week.

Also been searching for comfortable walking shoes that also look nice. Right now I am looking at Merrells, Danskos, and Earth shoes. I'm starting to think I need to give up on nice-looking and just go for comfort, then bring 1 pair of nice shoes for "just in case".

Psychologically, I am sure that all my vacation planning has to do with the fact that I'm not excited about some things going on at work right now. But the weather in San Francisco sure is a good enough reason to wish I wasn't here!

Silly pictures

Today we got to hang out with my brother and sister-in-law and they brought Natali to play with us! We took some pictures which we have not uploaded into the camera yet. I know how to do it but I don't know how to turn the .pef format into web-safe .jpg so we'll have to wait on that.

Christian and I were playing with the Apples iPhoto and I think we got a good picture of what our marriage probably looks like through his eyes with the distortion effects:
Just kidding...I think. We also got these. They're kinda weird!

I'm sort of back

Well I am feeling much better now. I guess we will never know what made me so sick so randomly. I got a lot of sleep so that was nice.
Here are some random notes to pass the time:

• Yesterday I made fried okra for the first time, it was my mother-in-law's recipe and I really liked it. I think that I will do it again sometime.
• I never realized that so many people on staff at our church have blogs. I am following a blog of one of the families who is in the process of adopting a child from China and one of our Equipping Pastor whose 4 year old son was just diagnosed with leukemia.
• Carter Blood Care keeps calling me to donate blood, its like they are stalking me. What's frustrating is that I can't because I am on all these medications.
• I still hate the mail order pharmacy company with a passion. Why are they so evil? Once again it took 4 weeks of calling back and forth between them and my doctor to get my stomach medicine prescription filled.
• I have got all the supplies and am currently gathering the scraps I need to start my vermicomposting, exactly as Martha Stewart describes.
  
• I am hungry right now but I can't think of anything I want to eat.
• Lately it's been harder for me to disguise my loathing for my job.
• We looked at yet another rental house this weekend that turned out to be in terrible shape inside. I am starting to think we might never find anything within our price range that is in a decent area and not falling apart.
  
• In a related complaint, I just had to touch more nasty cigarette butts, throwing them out of our backyard, thanks to our upstairs neighbors.

That's all for today. Don't you feel better about your own life now? ;-)

Sorry I have been MIA

I have not been feeling well lately, I am not sure why. I have headaches, and some things are not staying down when I eat them, if you know what I mean.

I thought the headaches were sinus related but lately they've been light and sound sensitive. As great as the neti pot is, it only works for allergy-related things and this doesn't seem to be allergy related anymore. I went to the doctor and he said they sound like migraines but he couldn't figure out why the stomach issues. Also, migraines are supposed to start when you are younger and I am too old.

He gave me 3 medicines: 1 for nausea, 1 for migraines, and 1 for allergies.
The side effects of all 3 medicines are...nausea, vomiting, and dizziness/tiredness.
OK...aren't those basically the symptoms I was trying to get rid of? :-(

I'm not a big fan of taking so much medication so right now I'm only taking one of them sporadically and my stomach isn't loving it.

This is for my husband