Just another week

 Not much to report this week. Last weekend Shona attended a convention for anime artists. She was going to go for one night, but it was cheaper to get a weekend pass, so she and her dad went Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. She had a wonderful time and met new friends. She got to listen to panelists who did voices for anime movies and TV shows, and panelists who taught her about perspective drawing. Every one of them she met personally told her that her art work is already beyond her years, but that she needs to get a degree in graphic design if she wants to work in the industry. She thought about it and has decided to drop out of chorus to take an art class in high school. I'm just happy that she has found her "thing" so early in life. I've never seen her so self-motivated as when she is engaged in this e-communications program. It does my mom heart good.

We also did mundane shopping this weekend, at Target among other places. Snapped these cute pictures while we were there.

 I still need to finish shopping for Easter and Shona's birthday, which happen during the same weekend. Yikes. To add a little pressure to the situation, Shona has asked if I would continue the tradition of doing an Easter-egg hunt for her to find her basket. I always did rhyming clues for her, but apparently they were too easy. This year she wants them to be tough clues, and she said they don't have to rhyme. So I guess I will continue this tradition another year.  Oh, who am I kidding? I bet she will still get this when she goes off to college.

It's spring break around here. I know because Shona is staying home and sleeping in until noon. I am jealous, I admit. I am also aware of spring break because my office is like a library. It is painfully quiet. The only excitement going on there is that we are doing a March Madness bean bag tournament. Instead of creating our own teams, we had to draw names. I got paired with a good player, because we have survived two rounds so far. OK, the first game I did score eight of our 21 points, so I was no slacker. Yesterday's game? I scored a whopping 1. Oh, well, there will be another opportunity sometime this week. As quiet as it is in my workplace, and as slow as my work is right now, I could probably get away with going to the hallway with the bean bags and brush up on my game. Maybe that's how I'll spend my afternoon tomorrow.

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated...

I was keeping up with my blog pretty well, and then my computer crashed. What we thought would be a quick fix at the store turned into sending it away for a couple of weeks and then being told it couldn't be fixed. In good news, it was still under warranty, so I got a new computer out of the deal. But getting one picked out and set up and getting everything up to speed again took longer than I anticipated. I suppose in other good news, my life is pretty dull, so I didn't miss posting many things. I haven't even taken many pictures. My life seems to be work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep, then spend the weekends cleaning. It's a vicious cycle.

 At least Shona had some excitement. She was invited to a school dance by her boyfriend, who lives in the town we moved from. They gave us a date, and Shona and I went out shopping for a dress. Yes, a dress! She wanted one. I swear I didn't force her to buy a dress. The night of the dance, we texted to make sure it was still going on thanks to bad weather, and they swore the dance was still on. So up we went the 45 or so minutes it takes to get to their house and knocked on the door only to discover that the dance was not until the next night. We were pretty angry, considering we had been texting back and forth with the mom all afternoon. The next night, I was off to a dinner with a friend, so I couldn't see the girl off, but she dressed back up and her dad took her. This time the dance was on.

I think the best part was that Shona got to see all of her friends from middle school. She said they "swarmed" her and chatted the entire evening. Well, between dances that is. Yes, Shona actually danced. Or so she says. I don't have any actual proof of this, but she swears it's true. The girl wore a dress, so I'm willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to her. I'm glad she had such a great time and got to catch up with her friends.

We have also spent the last few weeks planning for and doing some early preparations for summer vacation. We have done Disney, we have done a few cruises, and we have done some driving tours of local places. What I really wanted was to just go to the beach. No exhausting days spent walking around a hot park. No days crammed with activity after activity and the noise of a party boat. I just want a vacation that doesn't make me feel like I need a vacation to rest when I return. Just once. Shona has a thing for hunting seashells, and she wanted to see Sanibel Island. Turns out John's mother was born not too far from there and has always wanted to go back. That started us talking about taking her with us to the beach. Then I added in how much my mother loves the beach, and from there it morphed into a family vacation with the grandmas. We searched until we found a condo rental that will work for all our needs, and finally put down a deposit on it when John was able to put in for time off for that part of the year. We also took the dogs in to make sure they are up to date on all health things before we board them for a week. Next up is buying plane tickets, which should happen in the next week or two. Then it will finally feel real.  Know what we are doing already? Planning for vacation 2016. John wants to take another cruise, but this time in the Mediterranean. Oy. That's going to take some planning. Stay tuned!

Somewhere on the far right toward the bottom is my kid playing her trombone. It's one of the last times I'll get to see her play because she has officially decided to drop band next year. I'm OK with it, but her dad is taking it pretty hard. There was still that chance she would change her mind, but then she enrolled in her classes for next year and band was nowhere on the list. I can't say I'll miss cramming into a seat in the bleachers to watch 950 area kids play. This is just one shot. There were band students all over that gym floor. The concert was a couple of hours, but it only felt like ten. :) I kid. I really will miss band concerts and marching events. Mostly.

Speaking of band stuff, we have been working for months on the big fundraiser event for the band. It's called Blues and BBQ, and not only does it involve blues music from area student bands, and barbecue from a local restaurant, it has a live auction and huge silent auction. John and Shona went to tons of area businesses and got an awful lot of donations for the auction. The Kia dealer even loaned us the cardboard rodents. We hope to hear soon how well the event went. The live auction alone brought in over $8500, so I think their totals will be pretty good. For the items Shona was able to get donated, she gets 60% of the auction amount in her band account. Since she is not coming back to band next year, and we paid a pretty penny to send her to NYC last November, we will get a refund check. So that will be worthwhile. We'll probably put it toward her choir trip next year.

At the end of the evening last night (which was around midnight), I thanked Shona for quitting band, because I cannot do another night like that night. I was on my feet for eight hours, walked 6.5 miles, and didn't even get to eat the meal I purchased, and I paid $50 for my seat, darnit! I feel cheated. But what really irks me is that all the kids who were in the kitchen and served the meal didn't even get fed. Shona and I finally got McDonald's around 10:30, and by that time I was shaky hungry. So I'm glad the band had a great turnout, but I'm done.

Now that it's over, I hope to have the energy to post more. And I hope no more family drama goes on to prevent it! Right now I'm trying to plan a summer vacation for five, and it's stressing me out. Shouldn't vacation be fun and relaxing?

Hair Today

Before

 After

A couple of weeks ago, Shona wanted to go get her hair trimmed and have some layers put into it. It looked very pretty with her natural waves. Then this week she asked if I would lop her hair off even shorter. A month ago it was almost to her waist. Today it's shoulder-length. This is still wet. After it dried it was even cuter. More pictures another time. I don't know if she just wanted a change or if she was tired of taking care of all that hair, but I think I will be saving some serious money on shampoo.

 Last night was my company's holiday party. Good food and free alcohol for the first two hours, so that's a good start. The band on the bottom floor was really good. Plus I won a few trinkets playing Plinko. I did great at skee ball, but you don't get prizes for that. Dangit.

Instead of  a boring speech this year, we were treated to acrobats. Sadly, this is the only picture I got the entire evening. We did get a professional photo taken, but it's so bad I refuse to post it. Nope. Don't even ask.

I didn't win any of the drawings this year, but that's OK. We left shortly after 9 p.m. because after the acrobat act and the drawings, all that was left was the gaming room. Well, that and the chocolate fountain, but I don't do chocolate. We aren't gamblers, so it was a great time to leave. The party is quite the production, I'll give them that.

Oh yeah, and today is our 24th anniversary. I still haven't come up with anything as awesome as my treadmill to give to him. Maybe by our 25th.

The Long Road to Nowhere

Hello, old friend. A few years ago, I burned out my treadmill. At the time, my knee was giving me a lot of issues, so I thought it was a good time to switch to an elliptical for a lower impact workout. From the beginning I had problems with the bottoms of my feet burning. Silly me thought it was just a matter of adjusting, and that I would eventually get used to it or it would go away after a while. You should really listen to your body. When it tells you something is wrong, believe it. I, being the stubborn idiot that I can be, developed plantar fasciitis from not heeding the warnings my body was sending me about using the elliptical.

Know what's especially annoying? I never even got up to a good workout on the elliptical. Three weeks of no working out to heal my feet doesn't feel that much different than working out on the elliptical. There's a problem there.

Tonight I came home to a new treadmill assembled and set up in the basement, ready to go in front of my little screen. Our 24th anniversary is this weekend. I'm calling this my anniversary present, even if I did tell him to go out and buy me a treadmill, because I didn't expect him to actually listen. Plus...he assembled it. Dang. Does this mean I now have to go find him an awesome anniversary gift?

I'm just looking forward to getting back to walking. I can't believe how much I've missed it.

Look at this.. It's only a couple of weeks into the new year, and I've already failed to keep up with my blog. But in my defense, I've been busy. Katy and Matt came in for a few days and we were out running most of that time. Katy and I had a shopping day to get her hair cut and find a new pair of boots. We did manage to find the boots, but only after looking in every shoe and department store in the area. This is what she wound up with:

I found a new purse along the way, too.

I don't know how I am so abusive to my purses, but the poor things don't last very long. The one I had the most hope of lasting for longer than six months died a horrible death by syrup after a McDonald's breakfast run one morning.

Anyway, in addition to shoe and purse shopping, we took everyone to see "Into the Woods" after Katy said she really wanted to see it. Their comments? "There was too much singing." Hello! It's a musical! And yes, they knew it was a musical before they went in. So much for culture.

And in other news, I've had to give up my elliptical thanks to plantar fasciitis. It's excruciating. I had to buy some Dr. Scholl's inserts and tape up my feet with this stuff:

What a difference. Two weeks later and I can almost walk normally again. Almost. I'm planning to start walking again, but it's cold outside and I don't have a treadmill. Ugh. 

Is winter over yet?

 John and I went to see the Plains Indians exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins art museum since it was about to close out and move on. The outside had cool works, as did the inside, but my aging eyes have trouble seeing all the inside works thanks to that low museum lighting. Forget reading most of the captions. Getting old is so fun. Yeah, I guess it beats the alternative, but I can still whine about it.

And of course the giant shuttlecock. Doesn't everyone have to go visit that during their trip to the art museum? I would have enjoyed it more except it was cold out there. How cold?




It started doing this a few hours later. First snow of 2015.
I'm so not ready for this winter nonsense.

One of the first things we did in 2015 was head to IKEA. John couldn't give up the hat yet, which seemed to make people's day. I had to snap the picture to send to Teresa. How many trips has she made to KC to see her kids and she still hadn't made it to IKEA? Dude. I've been three three times already. Only once willingly, though. It tends to lose its appeal when the population of California tries to shop there within an hour. I managed to not punch anyone during any of my trips, so I'm calling them all a brilliant success.