Contradictions

It occurred to me tonight that I am, apparently, a contradictory person. I don't mean that I like to argue with people (well, okay...sometimes I do); what I mean is that my personality seems to be a study in contradictions. A lot of my personality traits, habits, likes and dislikes seem to contradict each other. Here are a few examples.

• I love watching sports, but I am one of the least athletically talented people you will ever meet. I can often watch a game and tell you what the athletes are doing wrong; however, I could never in a million years do what they do.


• I really enjoy being awake early in the morning, especially if I know that I'm going to get to spend some time outside. However, I absolutely hate getting up early.


• I love being able to cross things off of a to-do list. But I'm a huge procrastinator. For example, earlier today I was thinking of all the school-related things I have to get done within the next week. However, it's currently 10:45pm, and I have yet to do a single school-related thing since I left school this afternoon.


• I like to travel. I especially like getting on a plane and going somewhere. However, I get motion sick really easily and have to drug myself up to be able to fly anywhere.


• I enjoy relaxing on a beach; however, until we went to Jamaica on our honeymoon, I was afraid to get in the ocean.


• I got my first issue of "Good Housekeeping" in the mail this afternoon. I was intrigued by an article that touted a 3-week "body makeover." I read the article (which includes a regimen of fat-burning, muscle-toning exercises) because I really would like to get myself into better shape. Did I mention that I read this article while sitting on my couch (watching baseball) and eating Double-Stuf Cool Mint Creme Oreos?

My niece

As explained in my last post, I spent this past weekend in Ohio. I'm really kicking myself for not thinking to take my camera home! I was privileged to be able to spend a lot of time with my niece, who will be 2 next month. Although I'll admit that I may be somewhat biased...she has got to be one of the cutest kids ever!

When she first saw me on Saturday, she really wasn't too sure about me. She ran off to my brother, and I think she was about to start crying. However, my brother asked her if she remembered "Aunt Carrie." When she heard my name, she looked up at the pictures that my parents have hanging in their hallway. She pointed at a picture of me, and then looked over at me and smiled!! How adorable!

She's pretty good with "please" and "thank you." Of course, "Please" comes out sounding like "peace," but that just makes it cuter. At one point, I asked her if I "could please have one of her grapes?" I asked her a couple times, and she finally cocked her head to one side and said, "Thank you?"

She has started giving "kisses" by just touching her mouth to something or someone. Although most of the kisses seem to be reserved for Sampson (my brother's dog) or Smokey (my parents' cat), I did get a couple myself. One of her favorite things at my parents' house is their cuckoo clock. Every time it went off, she pointed to it, laughed, and said something along the lines of "cah-cahk."

On Saturday, she wanted to come upstairs with me, so I brought her up when I was getting my waffle-knit, zip-up hoodie. I was going to carry her back down the stairs, so I asked her to hold my sweater. She did, and I noticed that she was rubbing it all over her face. When we got downstairs, I put the sweater on, and she gave me the strangest look...like she thought I had 3 heads. I figured out what the look was for after my brother asked me to get her blanket for her. Her blanket and my sweater are made of fabric with the same texture...so she must've thought I was wearing her blanket.

This is definitely one of the reasons that I like going home to visit my family...hanging out with my niece. :)

O-HI-O!!

This is going to be the first weekend in a couple months that Shawn and I won't be seeing each other. For a few months now, Shawn has been planning on going to Missoula, Montana this weekend with his team for "Maggotfest" (don't worry too much...it's a rugby tournament). So I decided a few weeks ago that I should take the opportunity and go home to Ohio to visit my family, since I wouldn't be seeing Shawn anyways. Of course, Shawn hurt his back playing rugby last weekend, so as of now, he still hasn't decided if he's going to go to Montana this weekend or just come home to Colorado and take it easy. But either way...I'm going to Ohio.

I'm heading out tonight and flying to Akron. I get motion sick very easily, so I already took my Dramamine. Since I took it so early, I'm hoping that I won't be quite as tired on the plane, and I'm hoping that I won't be jet-lagged and tired all weekend. Maybe I'll get some papers graded. Or at least get to read part of a book.

I don't think that we really have any plans for the weekend, so it might end up being a bit boring. But at least I'll get to spend some time with my family, who I haven't seen since the day after the wedding. And I took the day off work on Monday, so it'll be nice to get a 3-day weekend! I have to leave for the airport in about 15 minutes, and I haven't finished packing yet. Guess I should do that!

7 Random Things

Among my blogging friends, a little game of "tag" has been going around. I think that most of my friends have already been tagged, so I may skip that part of the game. However, I have been told that I need to list 7 random things about myself. So here you go:





1. I get a strange sort of enjoyment out of telling my high school students true stories that might gross them out a little (for example, on Monday, I told my 9th graders about the time in Kindergarten when I threw up cheese puffs all over the bathroom floor at school).






2. I have (so far) been blessed with a high metabolism. Almost every Saturday, while Shawn plays rugby, I eat an entire can of Pringles.






3. I hate the very thought of having someone touch my feet. Shawn knew that I really liked him when I actually touched his foot with my foot. :)






4. Driving in the snow scares me, even though I've never been in an accident or had any kind of truly negative experience.







5. I've never lost a game of Boggle (the online version doesn't count, in my mind).








6. I'm afraid of most large dogs (and some small ones), but I like Dobermans (thanks, Lis...).







7. I had never tried pepperoni pizza until I was a freshman in college.

I Can Cook!

For some reason today, right before I left school, I decided that I was craving meat. (That's not that weird, is it?) So I decided that I would stop at the grocery store on my way home, and I'd actually COOK dinner tonight! Since this is a very rare occurrence, I thought I should document it.

I made breaded boneless pork chops, which I absolutely love! I basically use a recipe out of the Pillsbury "Complete Cookbook." I've actually made it often enough that I don't really follow the recipe anymore, though...I just "eyeball" the ingredients.

I know this isn't a cooking blog, but in case someone's interested, here's the easiest pork chop recipe ever:
1. In small bowl, combine flour (1/2 c?), 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, and seasoned salt (actually calls for paprika...). In another small bowl, combine 1 egg and 1 to 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce. In a third bowl, put about 1/2 c unseasoned dry bread crumbs.
2. Coat a boneless pork chop with the flour mixture, then dip it in the egg mixture. Finally, coat it with the bread crumbs.
3. Place chops in ungreased shallow baking pan. Bake at 425 for 30 minutes.



Here's the final result from today! (Oh, okay...I'll admit that I slightly over-steamed the broccoli, but it still tasted good.)

Mockingbird

First of all...Shawn and I have been married 4 months as of today!! Happy "anniversary" to us! :)

As hard as it is for me to believe sometimes, I am almost finished with my 8th year of teaching English. (That makes me feel a little old!) Whenever I meet someone new and I tell them that I teach high school English, I almost always get one of two reactions. Either the person's eyes light up and they say, "Oh, I loved English when I was in high school!" Or the person sort of grimaces and says, "Oh, I'm sorry." That second reaction is often followed up with, "Do you still make kids diagram sentences?" (By the way...no, I don't...although I personally actually loved diagramming, it's not normally done anymore.)Yes, there are lots of perks to teaching (namely things like summer and winter break). However, for many reasons, teaching is hard. One of the most difficult things for me is that I'm teaching a subject that I truly love. So on one hand, I get to spend my days talking to teenagers about literature that I find beautiful and fascinating. On the other hand, the majority of those teenagers either don't get it, don't like it, don't care about it, or some combination of those.

My 9th graders are beginning to read To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Personally, I think that this is one of the best American novels ever written. Both of the story lines (that of Boo Radley and that of Tom Robinson) are powerful. Atticus Finch is a true American hero. Harper Lee's writing style is full of sophisticated wit and sly humor. Just about every time I read this novel, I discover something new that I hadn't caught before. And yet, sadly, most of my students don't care. Many of them will read the book, only because I tell them they have to, and most of those won't read it carefully enough to pick up on Lee's nuances and subtle undertones. Many of them will skim the SparkNotes (similar to Cliffs Notes), and think that "counts" as having read it.
I just have to remind myself that there will be a few students who will begin to grasp just why this book is read in the majority of high schools in the United States today. Maybe a few of them will read it again as adults. And maybe, just maybe, a few students will go so far as to say that this is a book that they love. And that's why I teach high school English.

Our weekend

Our weekend ended up being not quite as exciting as we had planned. Friday night, we spent the evening hanging out with Jarid and Sarah, playing their Wii. I have discovered my new favorite snack food: Double Stuf Cool Mint Oreos. I'm not normally a huge fan of mint, but these are so good!!

Saturday, we drove out to Grand Junction for Shawn's rugby match. It was a beautiful day outside, and Shawn's team won, so that was good. Unfortunately, though, Shawn hurt his back pretty early in the game...but kept playing for another 40 minutes or so before taking himself out. We hung out with the ruggers for a little while after the game, and the plan was for everyone to check in to their hotel rooms before meeting up somewhere to watch the Avalanche play-off game. However, Shawn and I were apparently tired...we fell asleep at our hotel around 6:30. We woke up briefly around 8:30, long enough to say that we should head out. The next thing I knew, it was 4:00am. So needless to say, we didn't watch the game...or even eat dinner Saturday night.

Sunday, the plan had been to go hiking, but Shawn could barely stand up, let alone walk. So we just got brunch and then headed back home. The combo of Aleve and ThermaCare seemed to help Shawn's back...at least enough for him to feel okay about sitting on a cramped plane to head back to Seattle. And that was our exciting weekend.

Possibilities

The big news in our life right now is that Shawn has a job interview on Friday morning! For months now, we've been trying to decide between staying in Colorado and moving to Seattle (where Shawn's been working for the last two and a half years). We've more or less decided that the results of this interview will make our decision for us. If Shawn gets a job offer and if it really is something that he'd be excited to do, then we'll stay here. If Shawn doesn't get a job offer or if it's not what he was hoping for, then we'll move to Seattle this summer.

Instead of dwelling too long on what may or may not happen as a result of tomorrow's interview, I thought I'd spend some time thinking about what our weekend may entail. Our friends Jarid and Sarah just returned from a trip to Puerto Rico, so we plan to hang out with them on Friday night. On Saturday morning, Shawn and I are heading to Grand Junction, Colorado. It's a town on the Western side of the state, really close to the Utah border. Shawn has a rugby match, so this is what we'll spend Saturday doing. This is a picture of a scrum. Shawn's team is the one on the left, and he's literally in the middle of the scrum. I think you can see his forearm in this picture.

On Sunday, we're hoping to do something outdoors. I think Shawn was hoping for bike riding, but I'm not a fan. Instead, I'm hoping that we'll do a little hiking. We might go to the Colorado National Monument. This is a picture of Shawn at the Monument (which is like a "mini Grand Canyon") when we went a couple years ago.

I may also try to convince Shawn to go here. This is the Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs. I've never seen it, and I've heard it's gorgeous in person. I've also heard it's a fairly short hike...which I would like, but why Shawn will probably say no. :)

Where We Live

For almost five years now, I've lived in the small town of Evergreen. It was the fact that I lived here that first made Shawn interested in getting to know me...you'll have to ask him for the details on that one. When we decided to get married, there was very little discussion about where we would live...Shawn's immediate vote was that he should move in with me up here.

Evergreen is a small little town in the Rocky Mountains. When the town was first started, it was primarily a "summer residence" for people who lived in Denver. Now there are about 40,000 people who live here. There is a "downtown" area that has little shops and restaurants. One of the more infamous establishments is the "Little Bear Saloon." It's located in the oldest building in town, and known for having good live music and getting a little crazy.

We also have a lake in the center of town. It's actually man-made, but I've been told there's decent fishing because Bear Creek runs into it. (Side note: Willie Nelson used to own property on Upper Bear Creek, and according to the rumors, Johnny Depp bought a house up here, too, a couple years ago.) The lake is especially popular during the winter, as it's open for skating and hockey once it freezes over. NHL players have actually been known to come up and play pick-up hockey with the kids from time to time.

Since we are a mountain town with an elevation of about 7200 feet, there are certain things you just have to be prepared for. A traffic jam in our town is normally caused by a herd of elk that refuses to move out of the road. More than once, I've woken up in the middle of the night because of the coyotes yelping outside my window. You have to get bear-proof garbage cans, and everyone knows that if you come across a mountain lion, make yourself look as big as possible. One other thing to get used to is the weather. We normally get about double the amount of snow that Denver gets, and it can literally snow at any time. Yesterday, it was sunny and in the 70's up here. Today...snow. I took these pictures on our back porch about 20 minutes ago. Gotta love mountain living.

A little more adult

So I've already admitted that Shawn and I spent quite a bit of time this weekend playing the Wii. We even had Shawn's mom try it on Sunday night when she came over for dinner! She agrees it's fun, though, and also thinks we should take the Raving Rabbids game with us when we go to Oakland in a few weeks. Once Shawn's mom left Sunday night, other friends came over to play for a little while, too.

However, despite our hours of immature fun, Shawn and I were able to be a little more "adult" on Sunday. Of course, this also meant that we spent a good chunk of change on Sunday, too. After going to Mass, our first stop of the day was Men's Wearhouse. Shawn has a job interview on Friday, so we agreed that buying a good suit was in order. After choosing a beautiful Calvin Klein dark blue suit (almost charcoal, really) with a light "pinstripe," and after getting it tailored, and after buying a new shirt and tie...we only spent about twice what we had expected to spend. :) But dang, he's going to look good!! I think I'm going to have to come up with more excuses for him to wear it.

We then also went to Crate and Barrel and bought the one thing off our wedding registry that I had been really excited about but didn't receive. This is the "Alto Wine Table." They actually had one in stock, so we were able to take it home right away. It took Shawn about 15 minutes to put it together while I finished cleaning up the living room before his mom came. I can't seem to get the picture to post correctly, but you can see the table by clicking here: http://tinyurl.com/6jckgn

I think it just makes sense, then, after our expensive "adult" afternoon on Sunday, that we went back to playing the Wii after dinner.

Just playing around

First thing this morning, Shawn and I found out that his rugby match for today had been cancelled. Although Shawn especially was bummed that there would be no rugby, we decided it would be a nice day to just take things easy and hang out together. We decided to start our day by playing the Wii.

Before he left Seattle on Thursday, Shawn picked up a copy of a game called "Rayman Raving Rabbids 2." I'm a bit ashamed to admit how long we spent playing this game...so I won't. But I will say that it's a lot of fun! One option with this game is to play against the computer or against each other in little "mini-games." For this option, each player gets to choose a "rabbid" that you play with. (A "rabbid" is a cartoon rabbit with buck teeth that, frankly, is a bit crazy.) Granted, some of the games are a bit immature...like making the rabbids fly through a canyon using the power of their farts. But there's nothing wrong with being a little child-like from time to time.

The other option with this game is to work together in "shooting games." For these games, the object is to shoot the crazy rabbids...with toilet plungers. One of the interesting things about the shooting games is that the backdrops are actual "real-life" settings. Instead of cartoons, they're more like live-action shots of places like Central Park or Paris.

Quite awhile ago, Shawn and I had decided that there is just something inherently funny about cartoon squirrels (see the movie Over the Hedge for a perfect illustration of this). Apparently, crazy cartoon "rabbids" fall into that category, too.

Weekend travel

I've always enjoyed traveling. There's just something about packing a bag or a suitcase and heading out that appeals to me. Maybe it's the sense of adventure. Maybe it's knowing I can relax and forget about "real life" for a little while. Maybe it's giving myself the opportunity to break out of certain habits and routines, but with the security of knowing that I'll be able to return to those routines once the trip is over. (By the way...stay tuned for what will likely be multiple posts about those habits and routines...my friends enjoy making fun of my little OCD things.)

I've had some pretty fantastic travels over the years. There was my first plane trip the summer after 8th grade...Lis and I flew to Florida and stayed with her aunt and uncle. This is where I discovered that I shouldn't fly without motion sickness pills (sorry, Lis!) and also where I discovered just how loudly I grind my teeth (again...sorry, Lis!). In the summer of '94, when I was 15, I took a trip for 9 weeks...without my family. It was a missions trip to Ireland. There were 26 teenagers from around the U.S. and Canada and 4 adults. Definitely a life-changer in lots of ways! I've been to Europe 5 times and have found something new to love every time. I've done lots of road trips over the years, too. One of those involved driving from Steubenville, OH to Key West, FL with my friend Katie. We drove my car, which had no cruise control and was a stick shift. Katie didn't know how to drive stick until the week before we left. That was interesting. :) One road trip I did alone. I drove from Denver to my parents' house in OH. Then I decided to take a "detour" on the way back and I drove to the Twin Cities to visit Mark and Meagan. After a day or two there, I drove back to Denver. Somewhere in Nebraska, I discovered that there was a tornado warning for the county I was driving through, so I got off the highway and hung out in a rest stop with a bunch of other drivers. Fun.

This weekend, I won't be doing any traveling (unless you count driving to Denver). But next weekend, Shawn and I will be going to Grand Junction, CO for a rugby tournament. We'll stay an extra day to do some western slope outdoors stuff. The next weekend, I'll be going to OH to visit my family while Shawn goes to Montana for a rugby tournament. The next weekend, we'll be going to Oakland to stay with his brother's family and see Shawn's nephew's first communion. I'm excited for all these little travels! I just need to remember to ask my friend Kate to feed our fish each weekend. She's going to be thrilled. :)

Recent Reads

One of my goals this year is to read more books just for the fun of it. The sad part about being an English teacher is that I often get so busy I don't have time to read what I want to read; all I read is what I assign to my students. I started off on the right foot by reading Water for Elephants on our honeymoon. It was pretty good, and definitely a different story, but for all the rave reviews, I was expecting something more. Since then, I've been averaging a little over a book a month, which is a huge improvement for me!

However, I'm starting to notice a trend in my book choices. Most of them are depressing! I think that people have died in all but one of the books I've read since January. I actually read two books over spring break. The first was A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. As the title suggests, this is an autobiographical account of the wars in Sierra Leone. The author was 12 when war reached his village, and he was eventually "recruited" to become a soldier. He vividly describes some of the torture and death that he witnessed (and even inflicted) during this time.

After that, I read A Thousand Splendid Suns, the most recent book by Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner. The book was absolutely gripping. It's set almost entirely in Afghanistan, beginning in 1970s and finishing in more-or-less modern day. The main characters of the book are women, which is a very interesting perspective to see. However, these women are rejected by society, see their families die, are forced to marry and then are beaten, verbally abused, and raped by their husbands. The book also gives an Afghani view of the political scene in this country, including the rise and "governing" of the Taliban.

The question now becomes...what to read next? The next books that I have easily available to me are John Krakauer's Into Thin Air (a story of climbing Mt. Everest...where people die) and Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey (the stories of five people who die when a rope bridge breaks and sends them plunging into a gulf). Any suggestions for some lighter reading? Maybe I need to go back to Sophie Kinsella for a little chick-lit. (By the way...her latest, Remember Me?, is really good!)

Wheee!!!

As of today, Shawn is 30 years, 6 months, and 5 days old. In only 6 months and 20 days, I will also be 30 years old. (For those of you trying to do the math, my birthday is 6 days before his.) However, despite these facts, I am happy to announce that Shawn and I are now the proud owners of.......


A Nintendo Wii!!!

We have jumped on the gaming bandwagon and have bought the "revolutionary" Nintendo Wii. We first began playing it with Jarid and Sarah, who managed to get one before the craze really went into full swing at the Christmas season. Shawn and I decided in February that we were willing to splurge and spend the money to get one; however, at that time, all stores and online retailers were "out of stock" of the gaming console. There were a plethora of systems available at that time on ebay, but we agreed we'd rather wait until they come back in stock in the stores instead of spending well over retail price for what is, frankly, a toy.

This weekend, we fortuitously ran into a friend of mine, who mentioned he had been able to get his hands on a coveted Wii last week. Shawn and I let him know we were jealous. End of conversation...or so I thought. When I left school this afternoon, I had a voicemail from said friend. In a low, almost secretive voice, he left the following message: "Hey, I'm at Wal-Mart. They have Wii's in stock. I think there are only two. Hurry."

I'll admit...I rushed right over. Success!!! Now I just need to figure out how to set the darn thing up, and then I'll have 4 extra days to practice before Shawn comes home and I challenge him to a game of Wii Bowling. Or maybe Baseball. Or tennis! The possibilities are endless!

We're also hoping that this will give us an excuse to have people over more often. We can invite them over to play the Wii! Goodness knows I shouldn't invite them over for dinner! (For proof of that, see yesterday's blog post.)

Being Suzy Homemaker

I made a valiant effort this weekend to play Suzy Homemaker. After my big cleaning spree on Friday, I decided I was actually going to cook this weekend! (Gasp!!) My friend Ashlee has an amazing cooking blog (check out A Year in the Kitchen in the "Links I Like" section to the left), so I chose a few of her recipes that I wanted to try out. After writing down the ingredients I'd need, I headed out to the grocery store, leaving Shawn at home trying to salvage my computer (after it had been infected with over 120 "malicious" programs!).

I decided to play it safe for dinner Saturday night and make my mom's meatloaf and baked potatoes. I know that everyone says that their mom's meatloaf is the best...but mine truly is!! It doesn't have any kind of ketchup/sauce stuff on top of it, which I think is a huge bonus. Plus, I have fun mixing all the ingredients with my hands. :) For once, I remembered to account for living at high altitude (about 7200 feet), and the meatloaf turned out wonderful. I'm excited to eat the leftovers!

One of my friend's recipes that I wanted to try specifically called for Yukon Gold potatoes. So I just got a big bag of them and decided to use a couple of them for the baked potatoes to go with the meatloaf. Note to self: Yukon Gold potatoes do NOT work well for baking! They never got soft and fluffy, so Shawn and I practically had to cut our potatoes to eat them. Oh well...at least we were able to enjoy the meatloaf...and the store-bought cupcakes I had brought home.

This afternoon, Shawn decided to head out to the open space park nearby and go for a run. Since he left me at home, I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out another recipe or two! I first looked at making the "Molten Lava Cake." However, I discovered that I didn't buy enough of the baking chocolate to make the cake. As I'm typing this, it just occurred to me that I probably could've halved the recipe and been just fine. Dang it! Then I checked out the "Almost Fudge Gateau", which looks really yummy. Unfortunately, I again didn't have enough chocolate. I also don't own a spring form pan (at least, I don't think I do...). Or parchment paper. Or heavy cream. I then decided to give up on Ashlee's recipes and just make my mom's chocolate chip cookies. But I don't have chocolate chips. Or brown sugar that isn't rock hard.

Deciding that maybe I just wasn't supposed to bake goodies today, I decided to go back to Ashlee's blog and make Au Gratin Potatoes. That way, I can serve them as a side dish to the leftover meatloaf tonight. I know for a fact that I cut up too many potatoes. And I don't know if I was supposed to cover the casserole dish or not (I didnt'). But as far as I can tell, everything else looked right. It's currently in the oven and still has awhile to go, but I just checked on it and the potatoes definitely don't look like the pictures in Ashlee's blog.










***Half an hour later...these are pictures of the "finished" product.

Maybe Shawn and I will get Wendy's when I take him to the airport tonight so he can fly back to Seattle.

Spring Cleaning

I decided to take the day off from school today. Yes, I do realize that I just had a week of spring break last week, but Shawn and I had planned on returning from Seattle on Thursday afternoon. Instead, we didn't come back until late Friday night. Since there are some things that I needed to do that just can't be done while I'm at work, I decided to give myself a day at home by myself.

I started my day by sleeping almost 2 hours later than I meant to. Oops. What can I say...I love to sleep. :) But then, I went on a cleaning spree. 8 hours later, I'm proud to say that our condo is now almost completely clean! Now, I'll admit that I took breaks here and there. I kept up with the message board on The Knot (my not-so-secret addiction). I watched the Rockies home opener. I treated myself to Domino's pizza for dinner just so I could get some CinnaStix.

One of my big goals today was to do laundry. I did three loads, including a quilted comforter which I think I may have ruined. Don't worry...it's just a store-bought quilt that we were only keeping to use as a back-up or for guests. But I'm now not sure that it was supposed to be machine washed. I think that the maroon squares bled onto the cream squares. Oops. For the next 5 or 6 hours, we have an empty laundry basket. Then Shawn will come home and empty his suitcase from the week, and I'll have more laundry to do. But that's okay...I actually enjoy doing "our" laundry.

I also managed to completely clean out our bedroom, including throwing away quite a few things, organizing my shoes, and putting away things like a suitcase and some towels that we received for the wedding. Wood laminate flooring throughout the entire condo, so they all got dry mopped (including my laying on the floor to get all the little dust bunnies out from under the bed) and then wet mopped. I actually stored away a couple things from the wedding that were still in the living room. I vacuumed the area rug. I washed a set of dishes that we received for the wedding. I scrubbed the tub and shower. I cleaned off the coffee table, including putting some of our engagement photos in frames that I've been meaning to do for months.

I'm not entirely done. There's still dusting that needs to be done, and I wasn't able to clean the bathroom floor since the washing machine was pulled out and in use. Maybe I'll leave those for Shawn to do this weekend.

Let's Play Ball!

I love baseball. I'm happy to watch just about any game, but of course, my absolute favorite team is the Cleveland Indians. I'm not sure that Shawn understands my obsession with the Tribe, but he humors me.

I remember watching baseball with my grandpa when I was really little. I distinctly remember watching a game on TV (probably the Detroit Tigers) and being thoroughly confused by the fact that three pitches had already been thrown, but the batter was still at the plate. I understood the "three strikes, you're out" rule, but I had yet to grasp the concept of balls versus strikes.

I became a fan of the Indians in the 80's...yes, the same terrible teams that served as the inspiration for the movie Major League. Because I got good grades, we were able to buy tickets to the games for something like $4 each. Of course, that was in the old Municipal Stadium, or, as it was affectionately called, the "Mistake by the Lake." There was no guarantee that your seats weren't going to be located directly behind a large cement post.

Fortunately, I remained an avid Tribe supporter through the worst of times...and my devotion finally paid off in the 90's. Granted, we have yet to win a World Series, but at least I've had my chance to watch some phenomenal baseball and see some great players (my favorite of which is still Omar Vizquel).


As I said, Shawn humors me. Last summer, when we were in Ohio visiting my parents, Shawn had his first visit to Jacob's Field (sorry...I refuse to call it Progressive Field). Unfortunately, Jhonny Peralta seemed to think that he was supposed to be playing for the Yankees that day, so we watched a heartbreaking loss. But I'm an Indians fan...there's always tomorrow.

We're off to a good start so far! We won our first two games against the White Sox, but lost the game today, 2-1. Tomorrow, the Tribe begins a series in Oakland. Had I realized that, I may have suggested to Shawn that we go visit his brother and sister-in-law for the weekend!

Wedding

Obviously, since this is really a blog about Shawn and me, it would make sense to start with the most recent, exciting thing in our lives...our wedding! I've had quite a few people ask me, "How was the wedding? Did everything go off as planned?" I'm never quite sure how to answer this. The wedding was absolutely wonderful! I, of course, loved it. Although I'm completely biased, I think that it was beautiful. I love going back and looking at our pictures, but I really wish that we had spent the money to have someone make a video for us.

As far as "did everything go off as planned"...not exactly. However, I'm proud to say that I don't think any of our guests noticed most of the "issues" that occurred, and I never turned into some kind of freaked out "bridezilla."

We found out at the rehearsal dinner the night before that we weren't allowed in to the church until 3:00 for our 5:00 wedding...and I had planned on getting there at 10:00 to start decorating and having the girls' hair done. So much for the detailed schedules I had printed out for everybody.

On the day of the wedding, it started snowing around noon. The roads were terrible. Some of our guests missed the ceremony entirely and only made it to the reception. One of our guests totalled his car on I-70 on his way home. The snow made for some gorgeous pictures, though.

I was told around 4:30ish that my wedding band had been left at Shawn's house...which, in good weather, is about 45 minutes from the church. Family friends were able to stop by his house and get the ring, though, so it arrived about 3 minutes before we said our vows. Thank goodness for a full Catholic Mass!

Oh...and I was actually sick that day. I was drugged up with Sudafed and Robitussin, so I don't think my guests noticed. However, I had no appetite for the wonderful food that we served, and I actually had a temperature of 100.8 when we left for the honeymoon early Sunday morning.

But despite the little things going "wrong," I can honestly say that our wedding day was the best day of my life so far. :)

Disclaimer

I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a few years now. Honestly...this should help to illustrate how much of a procrastinator I can be. I've recently been inspired by a few friends who also claim to "have nothing to blog about," so I thought I'd give it a try. I will attempt to keep this updated; however, I don't claim to have an exciting life. I'll do my best to keep any random readers entertained!