Tomorrow Is Another Day...

Happy VD

So, yet another Valentine's Day goes by without a special someone to spend it with.  Granted, I'll take these circumstances far beyond the circumstances of last year!  On the bright side Colby finally figured out how to call our house phone, since my cell reception here is so terrible, and we had a nice, albeit brief conversation.

This morning was the first day of Angela's Running Challenge (Volume 9,654)--the main challenge being to drag myself out of bed and get myself onto a running track.  Once I'm there it's easy (well, easy is of course a relative term... it's easier than, say, killing a roach), but getting myself in the mindset to work out is nearly impossible.  It's easier for me when I have a workout buddy of some kind, but my requirements are that they be in at least as terrible shape as I am, and hate working out just as much, so my sister is really the perfect partner.  It's going to be a sad day when I leave here and have to find someone new to motivate me.

It's funny though, the running program we're doing is geared to the completely out of shape, it starts you off very slowly (Which is fabulous since I haven't run regularly since, um, June--doesn't that give you faith in your armed forces?  I always just figured that if I were ever in a life or death situation and someone was shooting at me, I wasn't going to be able to outrun a bullet, no matter how quickly I ran a mile and a half.  I'm just being realistic here!) and after a little over two months you're supposed to be able to run a 5K without stopping.  So, I've done this program numerous times since I seem to follow a pattern of enjoying running for about 6 months and then hating it with a passion for about a year, and having run off and on for years I have a pace that I'm comfortable starting out at and I know I'll be able to build up to a steady run without stopping.

But running with my sister is like running with Bambi after he just heard the hunters' shot in the forest.  We start running and before I know it she's light years ahead of me, and I'm hollering at her about finding her pace and not wearing herself out in the first 5 minutes.  We did finally make it the full 30 minutes, and aside from the bone-numbing wind and the stabby feeling in our ears, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected.  I'm tired right now, but I know eventually I'll work up to a point where this gives me energy rather than sapping it out of me, and mostly I just want to stop bulging ever so slightly at the top of my jeans.  I can accept a lot of things about my body changing as I mover farther and farther away from 16, but one thing I will never accept is the muffin top.

So, I was inspired for my next article at Wise Bread, about getting fit without shelling out tons of dough.  I think there's a lot of good information in it including the 5K running program I use as well as how to's for my favorite calisthenics and hand weight exercises.

(And I promise at some point I'll stop linking to my articles in my posts here, but I'm still not sick of pimping myself out, so you'll probably just have to live with it for a little while longer.)

Mini-Update

I'll have much more to come tomorrow, but I did want to let everyone know that Phase 1 of the moving process has been completed.  I outprocessed the base at 9:00 am Friday morning and after hours of cleaning and packing finally got on the road around 4:00 pm.  The ride was pretty uneventful aside from the annoyance that my cd player in my car has finally crapped out, and I made it home by 11.  Yesterday was crazy busy, and today I'm exhausted, so I don't have the energy to put much more effort into a post today.  Instead, I'll leave you with my Wise Bread Valentine's Day Gift Guide.

I’ve scoured the web to find the twenty best Valentine’s Day gifts for less than ten dollars, and I think I’ve found a little something for everyone. The toughest part was deciding how to categorize all of the items, but I decided on a list based on price, from lowest to highest. I’ll leave it up to you to decide to which gender each gift should be assigned, because if your boyfriend loves to smell like a freshly bloomed rose, who am I to judge?

So, without further adieu...  Continue Reading Twenty Valentine's Day Gifts Under $10

Pick Pick Pick

I swear, you people and your attention to detail!  You know, I thought long and hard about that post title yesterday.  I thought about actually doing my research to find out what sort of category an olive falls into, but instead I based it on my pizza menu.  Vegetable pizzas.  Olives come on vegetable pizzas ERGO an olive must be a vegetable, right?  WRONG.

According to Wikipedia (which is NEVER wrong, right?):

The [olive] fruit is a small drupe 1-2.5 cm long, thinner-fleshed and smaller in wild plants than in orchard cultivars. It is also green and sometimes can be black.

And in case you, like me, saw the word "drupe" and started laughing hysterically, here is another little botany lesson:

In botany, a drupe is a type of fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin; and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a shell (the pit or stone) of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries. (Haha! My ovaries are better than your ovaries!!)  The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, lignified stone (or pit) is derived from the ovary wall of the flower.

So, in short, an olive is much more closely related to a peach than to an onion.  And that is just wrong--whoever heard of an olive and peach pizza??

Anyway, I'm still struggling to keep my eyes open during the day.  I've been sleeping horribly for the past couple of nights.  Jack is not taking this relocation well, and he spends the nights jolting violently awake from a dead sleep and barking frantically at top volume for no apparent reason.  This in turn jolts me violently awake from a dead sleep and subsequently I have spent the past two days cranky and yawning behind my desk.

I did however get a post up at Wise Bread yesterday, so in lieu of any further entertainment here, I urge you to go read about my love for Isaac Mizrahi (Have you seen his talk show?  I just want to squeeze him!)  Go, shoo, off with you now!

T-7 Days

I would like to begin by saying that yesterday was a cold, rainy day, and I received a phone call at 6:45 telling me that the wing commander had released a delayed reporting time of 10:00.  Last night, we received at least 2 inches of snow and the roads were covered in sheets of ice until about 9 o'clock this morning.  Yet, we were expected to report to work at 7:30.  I watched two accidents occur and nearly skidded out of control on bridges three times.  Sometimes, you have to really wonder about people's decision-making processes.

Anyway, flashing forward to exactly one week from this moment, I will no longer be an Arkansas resident.  How long have I waited to be able to say those words!  (Though, technically, they won't count until it actually is a week from now...)

Have I started packing yet?  No.  Have I thought about starting to pack yet?  Yes.

I'm so overwhelmed, but I think I'm going to put everything in the hands of God and Mayflower Moving company.  I'll pack a couple of suitcases and stash those in the bathroom along with all of my liquids that shouldn't be packed and then tell them to just box up everything except the refrigerator, oven, and dogs.  I don't think puppies do terribly well in storage facilities.  Although, I'll admit, I am tempted to experiment.

I'm pretty excited about having a month and a half off from life as a working girl, though a bit nervous about living with my parents for the duration.  My plan is to attempt to stick to a schedule, and get as much wedding planning done as is humanly possible.  I'm also devoting myself to writing.  I figure there's probably not another time in my life when I'll be as free to take a stab at this "full time writer" dream, so I'm finishing that damn novel if it kills me.  And it very well might.  Then, if I'm not dead, and I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I'll start on my idea for my next novel that came to me in a dream a few nights ago.  Literally, it came to me in a dream.  Weird.

In other writing news, my Wise Bread blog on Target shoes was the only one to be quoted in the Carnival of Shoes and Bags and my article on the shipping kit for military addresses was picked up by The Consumerist.  Not bad for my first week on the job!

Since I've had nothing to do at work for the past couple of days, I've begun researching for the honeymoon.  We're pretty much decided on two weeks next March in Rome, Florence, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast, so I've been scouring Trip Advisor and have come up with a nice loose itinerary that I think could work very well.  If anyone has ever been to Italy, do you have a recommendation for a town to base out of along the Amalfi Coast for about 3 days?  I've been looking at Positano, but have seen some warnings that it's gotten pretty touristy.

I've been having a blast though--I don't know why people get travel agents, I've had so much fun doing the research and googling this and that.  Half the fun of travelling is when you get horribly lost on your way up a "hill" that turns out to be a mini-mountain or are unwittingly attempting to travel by the seat of your pants on a bank holiday and end up having to stay at the bartenders flat above the pub.  You'll have to remind me to tell you those stories some day...

Anyway, I've got a busy weekend planned.  I'm hosting an old-fashioned slumber party at my apartment Saturday night, complete with chick flicks, pizza, ice cream, and pajamas, and then all day Sunday will be spent in a panic preparing for the movers to come on Monday.

Expect my next post to be written as I'm cowering in an out-of-the-way corner, horribly embarrassed as a group of strange men tromp in and out of my apartment, hauling my furniture and possessions away.  Should be fun!

The Final Countdown

This is my last real week of work--next week the movers come on Monday, I think I'll take a day of leave on Tuesday, and I'll be done at work aby around 10 o'clock Friday morning.  Kind of unbelievable.  And no, I haven't started packing yet.

Colby asked me this morning if I was going to spend the week packing or wait until the weekend and stress myself out--which option do you think seems more likely?

My parents' visit went well though, they did their part of the packing process, which consisted mainly of bringing me more furniture and squeezing it into my already jam-packed apartment.  I think moving into the new house is going to be kind of like when you get a new storage unit.  You think to yourself, "Oh, I have ever so much room here!  I cannot believe how much empty space there is!  It will never, ever be filled up, because I didn't need it before, why will I need it now?"  And then, within the week, it's overflowing with junk you never even knew you had.

I'm afraid I have a lot of junk I never even knew I had.

This weekend, I also tested out my upcoming article on shopping for super-hot clothes at Target.  I love having this new writing gig because it totally gives me an excuse to shop as "research".  My favorite purchases were a gorgeous light teal trench coat and a hugely on sale ruffly black tuxedo shirt, which sounds kind of hideous, but I can assure you it is now at the top of my list of favorite shirts and will probably be worn every time I go out until it's knocked off the charts by a new acquisition.

But, to tide you over to that exciting article investigating whether Isaac Mizrahi for Target can pass for Isaac Mizrahi on the runway, here's a little tidbit about saving money when sending care packages to the troops overseas:

With so many soldiers deploying to serve their country recently, it’s likely that at some point in your future, you’ll know someone who is heading away from home for at least 4 months, and possibly into the combat zone for over a year.  My fiancé has been deployed for a little over 3 months now, and one of my favorite things to do has been sending care packages.  I try to send something each month, and between the packages, the emails and phone calls, the separation can be bearable.  However, sending one care package after another grew to be fairly expensive, and I wasn't able to send them as often as I wanted to—until I discovered an amazing deal offered by the post office.  And the best part is that anyone is eligible to participate simply by making one phone call.
Continue Reading...

Designer Deals on Ebay

My next post is up on Wise Bread, you should read it.

So, you’ve just found out that you have a very important business dinner with a new client, and you’re expected to dress to impress. A suit is too stuffy and that great cocktail dress hanging in your closet is too glamorous. What you’re dying to wear is the fantastic Ralph Lauren Black label cashmere sweater that you’ve been lusting after for weeks. Unfortunately, $750 for a sweater is most certainly not in your budget, and probably no amount of justification is going to change that fact. But what if I told you that you can get that very sweater for 90% off retail price? And that you can find a bargain like that if you aren’t living in New York City, the land of secret sample sales? Here’s a hint for you—it can be found just by clicking over to a certain online auction site from the comfort of your own home.
Continue Reading...

Lots To Think About...

My parents are coming in today to help me start packing and do all of the stuff movers won't do.  There are so many rules about using movers--they won't take things off walls--what's that all about?  If there is a picture hanging on the wall and you want them to pack it you have to either take it off the wall before they arrive or they'll stand there looking at it and ask you to come take it down.  I mean, I can understand not packing perishable items, bleach, etc, but where on earth did the rule about the wall hangings start??

Anyway, I have a lot of stuff on my walls, so that should kill some time this weekend.

Lynn met with our first publisher yesterday, and I'm hesitantly excited about the prospect.  It's a subsidy publisher (more commonly known as a vanity press) out of Alabama, and while their prices are extremely reasonable, I think our book deserves a shot at a traditional publisher.  I've read a lot of articles online about "self-publishing" and it really seems like the people that opt to do so are the ones who only expect their book to appeal to a small audience.  I think we have such a unique concept, and if we can just find a publisher that gets behind us and understands our audience we could appeal to a very wide audience.  Of course, what author doesn't think that about their writing?  Any thoughts?  Opinions?  Random, spontaneous comments about cheese?

I will say one thing for sure, I love working with Lynn.  I think we complement each other very well (we compliment each other too--Lynn, you're quite pretty!) and balance each other out in a certain way that I can't quite put into words.  I feel comfortable sharing my thoughts about this process with her, and I hope she feels the same way.  This is kind of a unique situation for me, because really I usually work best alone.  I get frustrated with people who don't pull their own weight, or people who are too controlling, and it's rare to find someone who meets and exceeds all of my expectations in a work partnership.

And a BIG thank you to all of you who followed me over to Wise Bread yesterday!  I'll be posting again this weekend, so I'll put another teaser up here when it's published.  Now I'm going to go help myself to another Krispy Kreme--I brought in 2 dozen for the office and I think they need some help in the eating department.  Ridiculous "healthy" people!

How To Find Red Hot Shoes and Keep Your Checking Account In The Black

My first article about, what else, SHOES, is up at Wise Bread:

However, I have found a way to allow my passion for fashion to coexist with my emptying bank account.  As a girl who would rather live in bankruptcy than pass up a good shoe sale, but would really rather avoid the bankruptcy part, I was intrigued when I heard about the selection of shoes at Target.  My closet has seen its fair share of designer names in its day, but taking my new circumstances into consideration I felt compelled to try a discount alternative.
Continue Reading...