Bloviation and Bling Bling, Baby!

Hi everyone. Hope that you've had a great last few days. As usual, it's been INSANE and I've not had much time to breathe. Lots to share with you, folks. Hang on for the ride.

As you know, our fourth wedding anniversary was this past Thursday...



These beautiful earrings were my anniversary gift from my amazing husband (after a qute tasty dinner at The Cheesecake Factory!). I am a lucky lady. Blessed. I can't believe it's been four years! (Well, six, technically...that's how long we've been together.) I'm still not certain why it is that God sent him to me, but I am sure glad that He did.

The last few days have been INSANE. Our "big project" at work is s-l-o-w-l-y nearing its end...thank GOD. A mammoth report (18-pager, go me!) that I'd worked on for days was deemed "very, very good" by my goss (go me, part deux!), and I spent the majority of the day Friday in a thinktank meeting trying to brainstorm the next phase of this monster assignment. I need a vacation so, so badly...

...which is a percect segue into my next item of "hot, exciting news!" Curt's office has a Las Vegas component, and he and his colleagues sometimes have to travel out there. He's always wanted me to come with him (and I've always wanted to go), but the timing's never worked out. He's going back out in May, and, ta daaaaaaa, the timing works out! So he and I will be "Tripping The Strip Fantastic" in good old Vegas! I am sososososo excited! Some of Curt's colleagues are bringing their wives and girlfriends, too, so hopefully I'll have some shopping buddies (HELLO - Vuitton, I'm a'comin'!) If any of you, my BlogBuddies(tm), are in Las Vegas and would like to get together for lunch one day, I'd love to see you!

Recently, another colleague of Curt's and his wife (who, coincidentally, are also Erin's godparents), went on a Marriage Encounter weekend. I thought "Wow - we should do that too," and, as if God were right there to hear me, we got this amazing card in the mail yesterday that said a Marriage Encounter weekend had been paid for for us as a gift from Erin's godparents. What a very sweet and meaningful gift. I will make them a "thank-you" card today...

...speaking of cards (I'm ALL about the segue today, can you tell?!), I spent the day yesterday with a girlfriend working on cards for a "swap." Lots of the women in our neighborhood are scrapbookers, and they like to make homemade cards too (i.e., birthday, Christmas, etc.) They have relatively large "swaps" where, for example, one person will volunteer to make X number (1 or 2 per person) of a certain kind of card, and then everyone "swaps." Although our little neighborhood group has a relatively large swap going on right now (I think 25 cards or something HUGE like that), we also have a small one, too (7 cards each!), and I spent the day with T. working on mine:



Here's my card. Unfortunately, the photo doesn't do it justice (if I do say so, myself!) The purple frames all say "Celebrate you!" over and over, and the inside of the card reads (in purple ink) "Happy birthday today - happy times all year!" Cute. The items I used were all purchased from Stampin' Up, which is quite the hot in-home party circuit in our neigborhood. As I have with crochet, I fear that I'll spend way too much money on stamps and eyelets and all of the other cool decorative stuff. It's fun, though. And homemade cards always mean more than those you just buy straight from Hallmark. I'll post the photo of our "thank you" card for Erin's godparents when I finish it.

Back to crochet for a second, why can't I seem to accomplish anything with yarn? I have TWICE (note emphasis) now tried to make a gift for my BlogBuddy(tm) Robyn, from what appears to be an exceptionally simple pattern. Well, once I used the wrong stitch altogether (genius, I am) and the second time, well, one part of the finished product (yep, I got all the way done with it) was fatter than the other. (*le sigh*) Not happy. So I figured I'd put that aside and come back to it later, and I had my eye on a second project, the "5 1/2 Hour Throw" from the Lion Brand yarn company. Well, I couldn't find 18 balls of Jiffy in the same damned dye lot, so imagine how happy I was when I read at Juliana Banana's website that she'd made this very afghan, but in a much more accessible yarn (Red Heart). So I excitedly purchased 56 ounces of Pale Plum (pretty color!) and off I went, Q-hook in hand, to crochet this afghan. (Before I continue, whoever invented the pull skein should be fucking SHOT. Shot DEAD. CHRIST, it takes FOR-FUCKING-EVER to ball up a pull skein...and that's assuming you don't get any knots!). OK, where the hell was I? Oh yeah, Q-hook-in-hand. Yeah, so off I went to crochet this afghan, and it did NOT work. Maybe because the Red Heart is thinner than the Jiffy? I really have a hard time eyeballing where chains and spaces are, so I know a lot of this (and a lot of my other crochet difficulties) are due to operator error. But it's SO incredibly frustrating. I love crochet and love what finished products look like, but I can never seem to GET to nice, finished products. Am I just crazy? I think I'll try the gift for Robyn next. Start over, breathe, relax, and try again. We'll see how that comes out. :)

I'm on that "Word Of The Day" EMAIL list from Merriam Webster, and Friday's word fit me oh so perfectly:

Bloviate \BLOH-vee-ayt\ verb
to speak or write verbosely and windily

Yep, describes me to a "t." My poor boss and colleagues. Every single time we pass around work for comment (or our Headquarters office asks for us to submit comments on proposed regulatory changes), I go ON and ON and ON. What most folks can say in a paragraph often takes me two or three. (Well, duh, you guys know that - you read my blog!) My boss just thought it was hilarious and she even wrote down the word "bloviate" so she'd remember it.

I've long been thinking about ways to update and snazz up this blog. Here we go. I've added two photos today ("picture pages, picture pages, lots of fun with picture pages, lots of fun with crayons and with pennnn-cils...."), and I've also officially changed the title of this blog. One of my work colleagues is very blog/HTML savvy and she said she'd help me make this place a little more appealing. And I'm also seriously considering making a contribution to the folks at Blogtogs in exchange for their assistance. I have some very definite ideas, so hang tight. Hopefully I get this place a little more snazzy and a lot less Pepto-ish!

I'd better run! I am way behind on my EMAIL and we're taking Maggy today for a play date! You heard me correctly...we're taking our DOG to a play date! We met some new friends at PetSmart one day, and it was because of them that we found the breeder we bought Maggy from. They have a Boston Terrier as well (who, we believe, is one of Maggy's distant relatives somehow), and we thought it would be fun to get the puppies together. :)

Have a great day, everyone.

Jen