Quarter of a Century

Well, last Tuesday (August 3rd), I turned 25... a quarter of a century. When said like that, it sounds pretty old. ;)

However, it doesn't really feel old. It doesn't really feel any different than 24. And 24 was pretty effing wonderful. I am incredibly happy. And, unlike most people, I am looking forward to the next few years. I am excited about getting older.

I can't wait to get married and start a family. And, Philip and I are on our way to getting to that point. :)

We've been discussing marriage recently. We will probably be getting married next fall. :) And, munchkins will come shortly after that... just as soon as we can actually afford them. haha We want three... preferably 2 boys first and then a girl, but we'll take three healthy children no matter what sex they are. :)

So, turning a quarter of a century isn't really a big deal to me... and I doubt that 30 will be either. I mean, how can 30 be that much different than 29? Age is just a number. :)

I don't tend to worry about numbers. Maybe I will when that number starts to approach three quarters of a century old... I guess we'll find out in about 50 years. :)

Wonderful weekend...

My weekend was wonderful. Joe said that it was probably his best birthday ever. Saturday morning, Jon and Aileen called him from Korea. He was so excited. He kept telling everyone about it. He thought it was the coolest thing ever. Philip was the only person to arrive on time. Everyone else arrived at about 4:00.

We went to play Ultimate Frisbee at the park in the cold. It was only about 40 degrees. It burned our lungs, but once we started running around, our bodies didn't feel quite so cold. Joe had a great time.

Then we came home and hung out. Philip got Joe a Wii game where you fight people with light sabers, so they did that while I finished dinner. They played Epic Duels as well. I made vegetarian lasagna and my ravioli from scratch. It was really good.

Then we played Mario Kart for a while (Joe loves doing Mario Kart competitions) and those of us who weren't a part of the current race, smoked the hookah. It was fantastic. We had banana split shishah first and then we did mint chocolate (my favorite). Dan and I won the Mario Kart competition despite it being Dan's first time playing. :) Later on, we played Cranium Wow. It was girl's versus boys (Kelli and I versus Joe, Nate, and Philip). Later, Haney joined the girls team. lol :) The girls won. As usual.

At 8:30, pizzas arrived from Papa John’s. They were Jon & Aileen’s present to Joe. So, pizzas from South Korea. ;) Joe was thrilled about that as well. Late that night (or early the next morning) we went to Denny’s. Haney started getting sick despite the fact that he hadn't drank anything. We went to bed about 3:30. I woke to the sounds of vomiting not much later. Poor Haney. We got up at 11:00ish the next day. Then we played more Mario Kart and goofed off some more. They were getting ready to go when I realized that we hadn't touched either of the 2 cakes I made. (haha... only us). So, they ate some cake and then went on their merry way. They left about 4:30. I spent Sunday doing some cleaning. The house was a disaster! Lol

Then, last night, Joe and I watched Closer and ate black bean soup. And I didn’t want to get up this morning even though we went to bed at a decent hour. I couldn’t fall asleep.

Joe loved his presents. He got a harmonica, a lap harp, wooden spoons, a guitar (from me), the Wii game and the light sabers, and a bunch of guitar picks and other accessories. And he is awaiting his musical presents from my mom: a tambourine and maracas. If you can't tell, we went with a musical theme. Joe has a "Music Room" in our new house. However, we didn't have anything musical to put in it. So, now he has plenty of stuff to put in it! :)

Could it be????

Are we actually finished??!?!

No, not really. Hahah! Fooled you. :)

To be fair, we are pretty much finished. For real this time. I have to mop and put the new door handles on the bedroom and the music room. That would have been all there was left to do, but Paul Kitchen screwed up in a way we didn't even realize. There were 2 doors leading into the kitchen. One from the foyer and one from the dining room. Well, we wanted them taken off so that there would be more room and so it would be more open. He told us that he would haul them off for us. Tuesday night we realized that we still hadn't put on the door for the half bathroom. I went to the garage to find it. It doesn't exist. However, there is still one door left in the garage. One from the kitchen. Paul hauled off one kitchen door and one bathroom door instead of 2 kitchen doors. Unfortunately, the kitchen door was much bigger than our bathroom door, so it doesn't fit. So, we have to get another door and have it installed. Zach will be coming tonight to get a check, so we'll probably see if he can do it for us. Hopefully he can.

After that, we will be finished. :) Finally.

Saturday is Joe's 27th birthday. I had a really awesome idea for his birthday present, but I ran out of money and time. lol... I had to buy a bunch of stuff for the house and it took up all of my paycheck from last week (well, most of it... the rest went for my monthly charitable donations and my Netflix subscription which come out of my account the middle of the month). So, I have to wait until I get paid tomorrow to buy Joe's present.

And! Twilight comes out at midnight tonight. I wish I could be like the giddy teenagers lining up to see the midnight showing. But, alas, I already missed 1.5 days of work this week for house-related reasons, so I can't be late and or mentally gone tomorrow. So, I will either see it tomorrow night, or I will wait until Sunday afternoon to see it. Either way, I am going to see it this weekend! :)

Some Random News

I got some more painting done in the kitchen. I have to fix the walls before I can do any more painting. We got more stuff organized and unpacked. The house looks like a home. :)

I am tired. I just want to go back to bed, curl up into a ball, and fall asleep for a few more hours. It would be so nice! I plan to do some sleeping in on Saturday. I haven't really been able to do that for a while. It will be fabulous!

I need to find new chairs for our dining room table. The ones we have are not good. In fact, I would go as far as to say they are bad chairs. Ugly. Bad, bad, bad. And in our nice new house, bad chairs are especially bad. So, I want to replace them.

My mom just finished the Twilight Saga. She really liked it as well. She's probably not nearly as obsessed as I am though. I downloaded the Twilight Movie Companion book last night to my kindle. I haven't started reading it yet though. I had too much to do. I was going to read a little before I fell asleep, but my kindle was going dead and I wasn't sure where my charger was. I need to find it. Joe and I will be going to see the movie on November 21. It's the day before Joe's birthday.

Speaking of Joe's birthday, I will be having a party for Joe. Nothing huge. He doesn't like big surprises and he doesn't like for all of the attention to be on him. So, we are going to play ultimate frisbee, eat dinner, hang out, play some games, maybe play the wii, and smoke the hookah. It should be a good time. So long as all of the cool people can come. :)

Today

I woke up this morning feeling great. I wanted to go back to sleep, but other than that, I thought it would be a good day. Well, it's still early, but so far so good.

I miss Joe. He won't be back until Friday night or Saturday. He still seems to be in a good mood despite all the driving he's having to do (from Minnesota to Massachusetts, then to Virginia, then home -- he hates driving, or riding in a car).

Some pictures from my birthday have surfaced. And a video. And despite the fact that I look ridiculous in my camo TEAM KETCHAM t-shirt and my candy g-string, and holding a beer despite the fact that I was NOT drunk, they made me very happy. I have awesome friends. That is all. :)

A wonderful birthday weekend...

Well, my birthday went swimmingly. :) I had a great time.

We played Mario Kart while we waited. Then we went to Portofino's for pizza. Brandon's car tried to kill me when we arrived at Portofino's, but I survived (my heel got caught on the seatbelt as I was getting out of the back seat and I fell out of the car in the least graceful manner possible... I halfway caught myself, but that just left my arms sore. I scraped up my elbow and banged up my knees pretty bad, but I'm okay). The pizza was good. Artichokes for me, of course. The company was great. Joe, Brandon, Walt, Nate, and Kelli went with me and then Philip and Richard arrived later. Then we wandered around Books A Million for a while, and then went bowling. I had mediocre scores, but I was pleased. We had a great time despite problems with our lanes and awful (NOT BOWLING) music. We went back to my house and played Mario Kart for a while. Then ppl left or went to bed and I played around with my new toy: a Kindle (see the link!). It's pretty cool. I really like having the actual book to put on my shelf when I finish reading it, but this is so easy and the books are cheaper and they're more earth friendly, I assume, since there is no need for paper. :) Anyway, I went to bed sometime after 4 AM when Joe finally made me. ;)

Yesterday I slept until 10:30 when the boys woke me up. I was not ready to be awake. I took a nap a little later. Then we went to Concord Mills to see The Dark Knight for the second time with Brandon, Walt, and Richard. It was even better the second time. I actually had tears running down my face at the end. Since I had already seen it once, I knew what was going on and I got to pay more attention to what was being said. It was beautiful.

Afterwards, we went to Steak and Shake and had shakes while we had nerdy conversation. :) I love my nerdy friends. Life would be so less entertaining without them.

We got home after midnight and then my neighbor insisted on talking to me for over half an hour. Then I couldn't fall asleep. Again. Needless to say, 6:15 came really quickly. At least my birthday weekend was wonderful. Thanks to everyone who was a part of it. :)

This weekend...

Well, this weekend is my birthday. I will be 23. It's such an uneventful number. Just like last year. And next year as well. There's such a boring period of birthdays between 21 and 25 that don't really mean much except that you've survived another year. I mean, what's so great about turning 22, 23, or 24?? Nothing special happens. It's not like 18 where I get to vote, or 21 where I get to drink. They aren't milestone years like 30, 40, or 50. But, I'm still here and there'll be cake, pizza, bowling, Mario Kart, and cool people, so I'm glad I get to have a birthday this year anyway. :)

My birthday always reminds me of how much I hate the summer. The summer is hot. I hate hot. Again, I have NO IDEA why I thought it would be a great idea to move to North Carolina. I love it here... except that it's too hot and the seasons don't change dramatically. I miss the changing leaves and the snow. Anyway, one more reason that I hate the summer is that everyone is gone when I celebrate my birthday. I love throwing parties. Especially surprise birthday parties. I'm actually pretty good at it. And it's a lot of fun. I have only once ever had a party for my birthday. And it was thrown together at the last second by the people that I happened to be hanging out with at the time. Why? No one is ever here!! People are on vacation or are home away from where I'm living. So, not only is it hot, but my friends aren't around to celebrate with me. Stupid summer, you disgust me. :(

But, on the up side, I do get to spend time with a few people who care about me. And I'm always up for bowling. :) And, I've always got 4 beautiful pups who love me no matter what. That's the most awesome gift ever.

Joe is really excited about the b-day present that he got me. He says that I'll love it and it's perfect. There is a whole lot of pressure from this gift. He and my mom always talk about how much I'm going to love it. What if I don't??? I can't lie, but I don't want to break their hearts! I really want to like this gift. But, they keep talking about it and making it sound so spectacular that I don't know how it could ever live up to the hype at this point. I hope I really, really, really like this gift. For their sakes. :)