Saturday, May 30, 2015

Row Row Row your Boat.....

Just kidding - we haven't gotten anywhere near the rain they have in Texas!  We've probably got about an inch so far today and .7 of it was during the first storm this afternoon (I have a rain gauge & I checked!)  and we're supposed to get another inch tonight / tomorrow.  Guess I won't be mowing the lawn / finishing the flower beds this weekend!  A couple big trees have fallen in the 'hood.  A huge one fell across the road when I was home sick this week and landed on a car!  And when I picked Angel up this afternoon, a couple big branches came down out of the neighbor's tree 2 doors down.  I sort of wished they'd fallen on the pool that no person has been in since we have lived here.  There's a damn bush growing in it!!

This ant hill looks like a tiny tropical deserted island.

Today was pretty chill. Still napping whenever I get a chance. Last Friday night I came down with the Plague, graciously passed on from Miss Angela.  She only had it for 3 days and went to Cedar Point on the 4th and I've maybe heard her cough twice since.  Maybe that's what I need to do.....go ride some coasters!  I started out with a tickly throat and lost my sense of smell / taste early last Monday and missed out enjoying a gorgeous 2 inch thick steak that we'd gotten to grill. Tuesday I only made it thru a half day at work since everything started to drain - I swear my brain was leaking out of my nose!  Between the coughing, sneezing, nose blowing and generally feeling lousy...I announced I was taking my misery and going home and 2 of the dispatchers said "Thank you"! Wednesday I got up and saw Randy off to work and Angel off to school and went right back to bed for another 3 hours.  It's been crappy, but I'm slowly starting to feel better.  I still have no sense of taste or smell.  I took nail polish off my fingers and smelled nada.  Makes eating SUCK since I may as well be chewing on cardboard or tofu or packing peanuts.

So Miss Angela is out of school!  She had a half day yesterday, a class picnic and was free by 12:30!  I made a #tbt post on FB with this first day of Kindergarten pic - how cute was she with her sprout??
So she goes Tuesday to get her cap & gown.  Thursday is prom and Saturday is the BIG day!

She needs to consider looking for a job, but we're going to be on vacation for a week or so in July, so I wonder if its even worth her looking for one until after.  idk.  I'll have to consult with Randy and see what he thinks.  It would definitely keep her busy and out of trouble.  I had to take a week off right after getting hired at my work - I told them right away I'd need that time off since I was going out of town and they were OK with it.  She could do the same thing.

And she's already lost use of the car, except to go to the studio Monday.  I gave her the chance to run around all afternoon after school got out, she just had to be home before me.  And she knows I get home right around 4.  And since Randy installed one of the APRS trackers (a ham radio thing) in her car, I was able to see she went right home after school, then left again at 3 and went to McDonalds - where she proceeded to sit for over an hour.  She was with some boy - not her boyfriend - and he chose to sit and chill in her car and didn't seem to care that she had a curfew.  I told her he was clearly an asshole and why was she out with him anyway?  She said Joey knew and didn't care, but in fact he was pissed.  And she went to the mall with a bunch of people today and this guy was there again.  She's going to screw up her prom date within days of prom!  No business going out with other guys, even as friends.  In a group is different, but it's still beyond rude, knowing that Joey doesn't like this guy.

Anyhooo - rant over.

Hey!  I have some strawberry Crystal Lite in my water and I think I could taste it!  I could pick out odd things before like "sweet" or "salty" but this actually tasted like the real thing!  But 2 hours ago I couldn't taste the PB bagel I had....hmmm.  But that's OK!

I thought this was pretty neat.  I always take a flashlight when I take the dog outside, to check for unwanted furry black & white critters before I let him go.  As I was waiting, I swung the light over the patio and hit the rainwater pooled on the patio table and it reflected up like this.  With the movement from the sprinkles, it looked really cool.
Brrr, it got cold out there!  It's like 50 degrees!  Pretty sure the A/C can be shut off.

What happened to our spring??

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Weigh in & update 5/27

Whew - this past week was a doooooozy!!  And actually, it really wasn't because of the holiday weekend.  It was the BBQ lunch at work on Thursday (which I did NOT track) and going out to dinner at another BBQ place Friday night (OMG chicken & waffles!!)  I can't remember the last time I used all of my weekly points AND all my APs, too!

But then.....the Plague happened.  Miss Angela had been sick last week and she graciously made it worse, then gave it to me.  I woke up Saturday morning with the tickly throat and it eventually morphed into stuffed sinuses, coughing, sneezing & such.  By Sunday I was losing my sense of taste and still don't have it back!  My chest & ribs hurt from coughing. 

On the plus side, it really cut down on my mindless grazing over the weekend.  I was really disappointed, since we had this most beautiful steak Monday that was easily 2 inches thick and I'm sure it was heavenly to eat, but WAHHH!  Couldn't taste it.  But I still did, and tracked it but I was sad the whole time. 

It's really weird that I can figure out what the food is supposed to be, but not the food itself.  Like I ate some sour cream & onion chips earlier - I could tell they were salty.  I had Honey Nut Cheerios this morning for breakfast, I could tell they were a little sweet. 
So basically that means I didn't get much activity in.  I did get the lawn mowed Saturday and half-heartedly worked in the flower bed off & on between rain sprinkles and motivation.
But I was feeling so lousy that many naps did happen. I managed to make it thru a half day of work Tuesday and didn't even go in today.

The half that's done looks pretty nice. And there's buds on my roses!!! And a whole lot of helicopters off the maple trees.

Did I mention?  I was down 1.4 lbs at weigh in tonight.  I made myself go to the meeting, even tho I look like death warmed over and have a lovely singing voice.  And the sickness beat out Mother Nature with her cramps & bloating!  I was feeling the scale could go either way.  I wonder how much I would have lost if it weren't for the TOM?  Who knows, I'll take this. 

Friday, May 22, 2015

Yay!

So I finally figured out the damn share buttons at the bottom of my posts.  I had to contact tech support at AddThis several times and they finally figured out something that would work.  And once they found the right code - BAM done.   Only 3 weeks after the A-Z Challenge wrapped up!

I lost my custom signature at the bottom of the posts, but I'm really not sure if I even want that back.  

So what do you think of the new look?  I like it.  Pfft, of course I do!  I wouldn't make my blog ugly to my eyes!

Yada, yada, yada, I've been doing pretty lousy with the losing the 12 pounds before Miss Angela's graduation.  That ain't happening.  I can shoot for her party in August, tho.


We don't have any big, exciting plans for Memorial Day.  I'm sure we'll meet the family at the cemetery to visit Dad and probably have some lunch.  I'd like to go visit my sister's house since her fur-family has increased significantly.  Last weekend she adopted a dog from an adoption event at the Detroit Zoo and Wednesday one of her barn cats produced 4 kittens.  The mom cat is pretty shy so seeing the kittens might be out, but I definitely want to meet Barney! 

Grilling will happen.  Randy & I stopped at the local grocery store that has a great meat counter and got a beautiful steak, some sirloin burgers and boneless pork ribs.  mmmmm Meat.  Got some squash and corn on the cob to put on the grill, too.  And I want to try grilling peaches - Randy thinks I'm nuts but I've seen lots of recipes for them. 

Yard work is a total gimme for this long weekend.  It's gonna happen. The lawn needs to be mowed again and the flower beds need some serious attention.  The lawn is taking over the one on the south side of the house.  On the plus side, I put grass seed down in part of the back yard to fill in some bare spots, and it's just starting to sprout, so I won't be mowing in that area for another couple weeks - yay!  We have a BIG yard and it's an effort to mow it. Like 2 1/2 hours of effort and that's without even using the bag to catch the clippings. 

I bought a bunch of bricks around today so I got some lifting in.  Right now we have rotted landscape timbers around the big maples out front, I want to make those nice stone rings around them before said grad party in August.  I have no idea who many we'll need so I started with 20.  I'll get another 20 next week and so on.  I figure that was enough to pile in the back of my car!  


Anyhoo, so I'm back!  I've updated my "In Progress" page with my weigh ins and earned APs.  OH!  I went in this week for my yearly physical.  Everything is fine. I still have borderline high cholesterol, which I've had since my Navy days, but the doc didn't seem concerned about it, so I guess I shouldn't worry, either.  Apparently there's a thing now that if you have a clear pap smear, you don't have to have another for 3 years!  So I got to skip that bit o fun.  But I don't get out of a mammogram!  Yay me.

Another thing - I took the dog for a walk today and went to enter my mileage in the website I was using to "walk across the USA" and found out the website has been retired as of May 6!  WTF!  It would have been nice to get an email about that!  I would have been really pissed if I was mostly across the US, but I wasn't even out of Virginia yet, somewhere like 450 miles.  Guess I'll have to find a new site.

It's getting late, so later!

Friday Randnomness 5/22/15

Well it was for one day.


Off my phone....
Maddie attacking my sunglasses.
 I was feeling very pirate-y.
 Oooo, I put on nail polish!  
My toes have been turquoise for about a week now, but this is unusual! 

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Catching up....

I am loving this not-having-to-drive-anywhere thing!  So I mentioned before that I took Miss Angela to the Secretary of State last Wednesday and she got her drivers license!  She opted not to drive that night, since we had to go directly to the studio for classes.  But Thursday she spread her wings and flew solo!
Brat-face wouldn't wave as she pulled away!

I told her I couldn't wait to send her to the store for some random thing.  It happened Friday night.  I sent her to Little Caesars to get a $5 pizza & breadsticks.  She almost fell off the couch in her hurry to grab her purse & keys! 

Gosh nothing much has been going on, other than that excitement.  Randy hasn't been home much for the last 2 weeks.  He spent a week in Arkansas with his mom, then came home for 2 days and was off to Dayton for Hamvention.  And this week has been spent catching up at work - those ungrateful assholes.  That place makes me GRRRR.  But I digress. 

We found out not long before he left that his mom had cancer in her uterus, so he flew down there to be with her for surgery to remove her lady parts.  She was ok with that part, she said she wasn't using them anymore anyway!  But I guess she still needs chemo since it spread up into the tubes.  Randy's upset about that since she has always had really long hair and she's likely to lose it.  Oh man.  In my opinion, if that's what makes her healthy, we'll get her a nice hat or scarf.

ooo, juicy gossip!  Miss Angela showed me Monday night a text from her dance teacher Jon, saying he was done at the studio!  He was group chatting with her & Mal since they were both on his All-Star dance team and he thought they should know before they got to class that night.  I honestly didn't expect him to stay after this year, but I thought he'd at least wait until after the recital!  But I guess him & the studio owner are having irreconcilable differences and he's parting ways. So the other teachers are banding together to cover his classes for the next few weeks.  Sort of funny, I know the owner was pissed since he was teaching the same dance to the rec hiphop class that his All-Star team did.  So first thing they did was scrap the entire dance & are starting over with new music, too.  The recital is only less than a month away!  I'm know the competition kids don't have a problem with learning a new dance so quickly, but the non-comp kids are probably freaking out!

Last Tuesday was pictures at the studio.  I always get a 5x7 of her in each costume and it's getting tougher since she never wants to do the same pose as in the past, so she dinks around in front of the photographer until inspiration hits.  This is a pretty $$$ undertaking!  She had 13 costume changes, but one of them was for the acro group picture, and I don't need a photo of her in black shorts & bustier.  So 12 new ones for the "Angela Wall" in my living room.  These are last year's.  Sorry they're so dark, the lighting in the living room sucks at night.  
This particular wall will now never change. 
The little people on the shelf were our wedding cake topper.  I commissioned a lady to make googly-eyed figures that looked like Randy & I, Angel, Jack, Chester and my late Skeeter. 

Moving right along!

I saw someone else on our street had their sign out already, so I put mine out, too!

So this is "Seniors Week" at Utica HS.  Weelp, today was Senior Skip Day so I imagine it was pretty quiet around UHS.  Angel went to Cedar Point with her friends and she texted me not long after she got there this morning that the line for the Raptor roller coaster was only 30 minutes long and she hadn't seen the new coaster yet because they arrived and got distracted by a big bunch of other UHS kids there!  Monday they got a bagel breakfast and they were supposed to wear their future college gear (oops, I haven't seen much Macomb Community College gear around, tho!) Tuesday was "Girl Hush Day" and Wednesday was "Boy Hush Day".  So Tuesday, the girls couldn't talk to the Senior boys and Wednesday the boys couldn't talk to the girls. They wore beads and if they got caught talking to someone "forbidden", they had to give up their beads.  Today, for those who were actually at school (aka those poor saps with sporting events tonight), it was "Senior" citizen day - they could dress up as old people.  Which could be hilarious!
Pretty sure 2 of those balloons are on Miss Angela's bedroom floor.....

Last night I was at the school for an All Night Senior Party meeting so I went roaming the halls to see the decorations.  The mock election boards were up with all the nominees.  Angel was nominated for "Next Movie Star", which is much better than what her friend Brittney was nominated for - "Most Likely to Never Move Out".  They had a lot of categories.  Prettiest Eyes, Biggest Flirt, Best Hair, Next Apprentice, Next Einstein, Next to be on the Voice, America's Next Top Model (coincidentally - the boy who had been in that horrific accident was nominated for this.  He's the only one left in the hospital and is improving daily - thank the Lord!!) stuff like that. A sign said the winners would be crowned next week.
Seeing UHS all decked out made me happier than I ever was with my own high school.  I'm so glad that Angel has had a much better experience in school than I did.

So the prom dress has been altered and is home.  Hair appointments have been made (one for highlight touchups and one for styling), she knows when (and with who) she's getting her nails done. Tickets have been bought.  We still have to give Joey a swatch from her dress so he can get a tie or whatever to match, and she is still waiting for her "Promposal!"  Which seems pointless since they know they're going together.  But whatevs.

So school is over May 29, the are required for some reason to attend the class picnic until a certain time after school, and then they're free!

We don't have any exciting plans for Memorial Day weekend.  I'm sure we'll meet the family at the cemetery to visit Dad and then have lunch like we usually do.  I want to work in the yard. The flower beds need some serious attention.  I haven't decided if I'm going to plant my annuals yet. There's some hardscaping to consider.  Then I told Randy that he needs to update his resume and apply for a position he found that would be ideal for him (and make him a lot happier!) If he gets hired, it would mean moving out of state, but I'm perfectly OK with that. 

So Miss Angela is finally home from Cedar Point and told us all about her day - and she's finally off to bed.  Her ankle is really bothering her from all the walking & standing, even with her brace.  So I gave her some ibuprofen and she fully plans to sleep in tomorrow since they got a 4 day weekend.  Must be nice!

Later, all!


Friday, May 15, 2015

Friday Funnies 051515

Hmm, I'm going to need to consult a thesaurus and find a new name for this post.  I need a place to share random pics found on my phone. 

I may or may not have seen this - we were at a dance competition so the curtain that had not moved all day suddenly started swaying.  Or it could have been someone running behind said curtain and hitting it.  btw, it was May 2 at 12:30ish  4.2 on the Richter scale. 

So off my phone!

I love when the crabapple & lilac bloom together.  My patio smells so good.  Too bad we got heavy rain right after this and washed all the petals off.  Grr. 
 Went to my sister's and saw movement in her garage window.  Went outside to look and saw this little guy caught in there.  He was bouncing off the glass like a fly, so I gently grabbed him and smoothed his wings down and carried him outside. I was surprised at how calm he was!  He sat there for a minute before flying away. 
 Last Saturday was a cousin's bridal shower.  She stole my bridal shower idea and had everyone wear "Derby Hats" even tho the Kentucky Derby was the previous week. 
 Mom & her girls.  We took her out to dinner Friday night. 
 3 generations!
 Angel & I spent the night and did this on Mother's Day. 
 Jack & Captain are buddies. 
 I tried to get them both with their feet in the air but it didn't happen.  
Wednesday I took Miss Angela to the Secretary of State and she got her driver's license!  Here she is Thursday driving off to dance all by herself! 

I am so excited!  We have NOTHING planned for this weekend!  No places to go, nothing going on....AWESOME!  The only thing that'll probably happen is we're wanting to go see Pitch Perfect 2 in the theater.  Yay!  Maybe I'll finally get all the tweaks done to the blogs, too! One can only hope.


Thursday, May 14, 2015

Hug your high school kids a little tighter.....

Utica Community Schools
Utica Chieftains
Stevenson Titans
Eisenhower Eagles
Henry Ford II Falcons

It seems every spring there is something that happens that centers around high school kids.  This year is no different.

Last Friday,  5 boys representing all 4 high schools in our school district, were in a car accident and 3 were killed.  And a different accident happened about 2 hours later, taking the life of yet another boy. All of them were 17 years old.

Miss Angela has gone to school with one of the boys since 5th grade.  He was a lucky one and was hospitalized.  Although rumors are flying around about the 2 survivors likely being charged with DUI and possibly other charges.

No matter how stupid it is - that someone gave a bunch of teenagers access to a Jaguar, and alcohol was involved.  The fact is 6 different families were torn apart.  Thoughts & prayers to them all.

Really makes me nervous that Angel just got her license yesterday.  But I have to have faith that I raised her right and she makes good choices.

story here
another here

Monday, May 4, 2015

A-Z Reflections post


Yay!  My 4th year of the A-Z Challenge is in the books (with 2 blogs!).  I stepped out of the health / weight loss realm that my blog usually lives in (and have done the challenge on every year in the past) and concentrated on women who have made a difference.  It was really interesting to research these fantastic ladies.

Anna Atkins
Angela Bachiller
Lt. Colleen Cain, USCG
Dorothea Lange
Einar Mogens Wegener
Mary Fields
RAdm Grace Hopper, USNR
Lt. Kara Spears Hultgreen, USN
Isadora Duncan
Jacqueline Cochran
Julie Krone
Linda Finch
Adm. Michelle Howard, USN
Night Witches
Odette Sansom
Maj. Heather Penney, USAF
Eve Queler
Ruby Bridges
Jr. Lt. Valentina Tereshkova
U
Brig Gen Wilma Vaught, USAF
Cathay Williams, US Army
Lou Xiaoying
Malala Yousafzai
Babe Didriksen Zaharias

On the down side, I am horribly embarrassed that I didn't visit many new blogs or reply to the comments left in a timely manner.  I promise I will still reply and I will be joining the Road Trip to hopefully redeem myself somewhat.  Funny how life in general gets crazy in spring...or is it just April??

That being said, I sadly don't have anyone to make a shoutout to.  I think the hosts & minions did a fantastic job and can't think of anything I would actually change about the challenge.

I learned the wonders of Tweetdeck and joined in on the Twitter chats each Thursday afternoon.  The people I chatted with each week are going to be the first blogs I visit once I get off my backside.

And I WILL figure out how to get the share buttons at the bottom of my posts!  I have an email in my inbox from AddThis right now with a completely different set of instructions than what is found on the website.  So hopefully that will work and I can put my customizations put back on the blog - this generic stuff is for the birds!!

#AtoZChallenge

A-Z Reflections post


Yay!  The 4th year doing the A - Z Challenge has come to a close.  I'm pretty proud of myself for having all my posts (on 2 blogs!) written & scheduled mostly ahead of time.  This was actually a really easy theme - telling sea stories from my Navy days.  I even did 2 posts for a couple letters since it was tough to keep them a manageable length.  And I still have topics I could write about!

I am rather ashamed at how crappy I was with replying back to commenters in a timely fashion and I didn't visit nearly enough other participants.  Sincere apologies being sent out!  I don't know why life just seems to get insane during the spring, or maybe just April in general?  I don't know.  But I promise to still go back and make my replies and I'll be hopping on the road trip to hopefully redeem myself somewhat.

I participated in the Twitter chat each Thursday afternoon.  I learned about the fabulous wonders of Tweetdeck and the people I chatted with are the first blogs I'm going to go visit!

Other than that, I think the hosts & their minions do an outstanding job and I can't think of anything that I'd change about the challenge.

~hanging head in shame~ I'd be able to do some blog shout-outs if I'd visited more of them.  I was even getting behind in my regular Bloglovin' feed!   I really appreciate how many categories there are in the sign up linky.  I confess to staying away somewhat from the book reviewers and writer blogs.  I blog for shitz & gigglez and they're like hardcore authors, so they are kind of intimidating to me.  I don't know why I feel that way!

Yes, I will be doing it again next year.  I'll start a new spreadsheet on my Google Drive and jot down ideas and topics as they come to me throughout the year.

#AtoZChallenge

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Another successful weekend!

Let me start at the beginning.  

Last weekend was our annual trip to the Showbiz National Talent Competition.  This one is pretty neat that they also steam the dances online, so I could let both Randy and Angela's dad know when she was about to go on and they could watch, too!
Goofball had only her solo on Saturday, so she danced with her hair down and curled - which looked pretty cool when it wasn't in her face (she's got TONS of thick hair) but the judges said it was distracting and she admitted it was hard to do turns when you couldn't see to spot.  She also tweaked a muscle in her back doing her front walkover so half the dance looked a hot mess.  She wasn't able to do some things as well as I know she can.  She could dance thru a partially dislocated hip for 2 1/2 dances, but a tiny pulled muscle did her in!
Out of the top 10 senior solos, DOS took home 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th (Angel!), 9th & 10th.  
Still don't know how she managed to beat the 2 other girls. 
 However, for duet....Angel & Katie took home 1st place! 
 They ended up with a 1st for small group hiphop, 2nd for tap, 3rd for jazz, 4th for contemporary. 
Quite a respectable outcome! 

The main issue I had, besides the exceedingly chatty emcee, was they did the large groups and productions last. And of course we had 1 large group so we had to wait for awards for them.  2 studios did most of these so we, as spectators, had to wait a good 10 minutes between numbers for their entire teams to do costume changes.  Made for a crazy long day.   Production number can also last up to 6 minutes and both routines had elaborate sets they needed to build.  Grrr.

The requisite Good Luck Team Cookie
 This weekend was the annual trip to Dance Force.  This competition is slowly growing.  It used to just be one show on one day.  Now it's held at 5 different locations and it spilled over onto the second day.  But thankfully we were done by 3 so it didn't feel the whole weekend was shot. 
All 3 of Angel's small groups placed in the Platinum (highest) range of scoring and actually had the highest point for each category!  Hiphop took 1st again and jazz 3rd.  Contemporary also earned a platinum, but only 1st place was awarded in that category.  That was sort of weird.  Some categories they awarded the top 10, some the top 8, some the top 3 - all different numbers.  And they ran out of high gold ribbons on Saturday.  They must have either expected everyone to do better or suck more than they did!  

The cutest thugs in the OC (Oakland County)
They seriously kicked some booty, tho.  None of the other groups really did hiphop!  They did mostly jazz with some hiphop tossed in.  Not this bunch!  
Very happy for their 3rd in jazz!
  Wooo, the boy interest showed up to watch!  
She didn't place in her solo.  The stage was crazy slippery and she almost busted her ass landing her center leap and she her foot slipped so she couldn't make it over in her back walkover.  Other than that, I thought she looked pretty good!

And for the duet again - platinum / high point in jazz - 1st place!!
This pic was taken after their respective solos, hence the dramatic paint smear on Katie's face.
(Note the pulled back hair?  She learned!)
They also have a "Force" award for a dancer in each age group that does either 2 solos or a solo and a duet or trio.  The one with the highest combined score from their 2 dances won a big trophy - and Katie won that for the senior age group!!  One of our girls also took the junior Force award.   So very proud of them all!  Even the petite group (5-6 years old) competed for the first time this weekend!  The little ones are so stinkin' cute - all of them!  

This is just the dances that Angel was in, I didn't mention all the goodies that the juniors & teens won, too!  

So that wrapped up the last of the studio competitions for the year.  Even tho Angel has been recognized several times as a graduation senior, she's going to talk to the studio owner to see if she can do one more year.   She's going to community college in the fall so logistically she'll be OK and here in a few days she'll be taking her last drivers training class and then just needs to do her driving test and BAM!  I won't have to drive to the studio anymore!  

Ooops, sorry, I digress.  I just get happy when I think about not having to shuttle her around anymore!  

She does have one more competition this weekend with the Movement Project (one of her teacher's own team) but it's just on Sunday and she only has 3 dances with them.  He does a different circuit and their comps run very quickly and almost exactly per schedule. Love it! 

I'll be putting my A-Z Reflections post up tomorrow, still have some thoughts running thru my head about it and I need to sit still long enough to actually write the post!