Make A Wish!

If each month had it's own deck of cards, I would say March's deck is stacked.  Sure, the fall months have the autumn season and college football and Thanksgiving and December has both Christmas and New Year's, but March has way more than that!  The first day of spring happens in March and we get more daylight hours when we spring forward.  March has St. Patty's Day and that's the only time of the year the Chicago river turns green and people enjoy drinking green beer.  Speaking of drinking beer, March Madness makes it acceptable to drink before noon.  Sometimes March has Easter and Good Friday, and it has spring break for those of us lucky enough to still get those.  Seasonal affective disorder slowly fades away as the March sunshine comes and perks up the spring flowers before the April showers rain on their parade.  And, since 1983, March has been lucky enough to be my birthday month!

Really, what's not to love about the month of March? 

It's not a big year in terms of birthdays and, to be honest, it has kinda snuck up on me.  But since so many of you have asked (read: approximately two people) what I'd like for my big day, I thought I'd put together a little wish list.  There's really nothing that I need, but luckily I was able to browse the internet long enough to find a few things I'd be fine calling my own. 

First up, this rope belt pleated skirtin marigold from Ann Taylor Loft.  I've been drooling over it since it arrived on a flyer in my mailbox a week or so ago.  I even went to the mall so I could see and touch it in person.  To me, it screams spring.  But, with a birthday coming up, I convinced myself to put the skirt back on the rack and leave the store without it.

 

I'll also gladly accept the striped shirt they paired with it.  And if you could package up a tan too, my legs would greatly appreciate it.

If I'm going to be decked out in a new outfit, I might need to freshen up my makeup colors too.  I'd like to start with some of this lip shimmer by Burt's Bees.

And the final touch on my new look should probably be a shellac manicure, right?

Totally unrelated but still on the wish list are these kitchen towels from Bed Bath and Beyond.  Ours have seen better days and I think these colors would work in our kitchen.

The big ticket item on the list is this camera and laptop backpack.  I have a camera bag already, but it's pretty bulky and I can't fit anything else in it.  With this, I could travel with my camera and accessories, my laptop, and my kindle all in one bag. 

I was actually at a gift shop the other day buying a gift for someone else, when I found this last item on my list.  Did any of you have slap bracelets back in the day?  I think they eventually got banned from school but I remember them being SO cool for a while.  The SlapWatch is a slap bracelet that has a watch (in case you couldn't figure that out from the name).  Perfect for casual weekend attire!  And I could wear this in the shop instead of my nicer watches.  (This is a hot pink one, but I'd prefer red or grey.  Or maybe turquoise.)

So that's the wish list for Birthday 2011.  Only 4 shopping days left!

Ash Wednesday

Happy Lenton Season, everybody! Do you give up anything for the 40 days leading up to Easter?  I've been observing this Lent tradition since I was in high school.  Every year I try to give up something that I'm addicted to to remember the sacrifice that Jesus has made for us.  Sure, it doesn't even come close to comparing, but at least I do something, ya know?  Over the years I've given up popcorn, donuts, cokes, chocolate, ice cream, and who knows what else.  It's funny to think back on those now, because right now popcorn and donuts wouldn't really be a challenge at all, but since I worked at a concession stand during high school, I remember not eating popcorn being SO hard!  My dad used to buy donuts for our Sunday School class every week and the leftovers always came home with us.  It was torture seeing them on the kitchen counter and not being able to eat them.  Now?  Not so much.  Don't get me wrong, I still love me some buttery popcorn and a glazed donut (not at the same time) but they're rarely in my house tempting me to eat them. 

Cokes felt like a big sacrifice at the time, but now that I don't drink caffeine, Sprite is the only "coke" (soft drink, for you non-southerners) that I drink.  Chocolate is and always will be hard, but you know what has always made it the hardest?  The fact that my birthday falls during Lent.  And guys?  My birthday cake needs to be chocolate.  (I mean really, would it even be a birthday cake if it wasn't?)

So, after spending the last few days trying to think of something I could give up that would be hard and really feel like a sacrafice but not be just a repeat of the past, I've finally decided on something.

I'm giving up my snooze button.

Sigh...I know most of you probably think I'm kidding and that's not a big deal at all, but you obviously don't know how deep the relationship between me and the snooze button runs.  We make contact at least four times a day.  At ten minute increments, that adds up to a minimum of forty minutes of extra sleep!  And this girl looooooves to sleep.

Doc asked if I was going to change my alarm time to the time I actually get around to getting up each day, or if I'd just get up earlier.  As of right now, the plan is to keep the alarm set to the same and just get up earlier.  I've already turned off the option to snooze.  As Doc pointed out, this means I'll either be getting up right when the alarm goes off or somewhere around 9:30 when I finally wake up again.  Let's hope it's not the latter since I have to be at work at 8:00. 

Now, this would be where a better-than-me type of Christian would say that they're going to use those extra minutes to read scripture or do some kind of Bible study.  As much as I'd like to say that's my plan, I'm going to be realistic and say I'll probably lay in bed for a few minutes before finally getting up to play with Lolli.  And maybe if the weather ever warms up I'll get up and go for a walk.  I'm such an exerciser. 

Just because I'm not committing my morning minutes to something, doesn't mean I'm not adding something (a virtue, if you will) this Lenton season.  I've decided I'm going to aim for posting this here blog at least four times a week.  And it's up to you guys to keep me accountable.  The way I see it, some of you might actually read this to keep up with what's going on in our lives (Lala, Poppa: I'm looking at you two since I imagine no one else really cares) so it really doesn't serve its purpose if I go a week between posts.  Doc has already informed me that he prefers "meatier" posts to the short and sweet picture posts like my last one, but I can't guarantee that they'll all be like that.  I will try to entertain you and kill as much of your work time as possible, but even I run out of things to say occasionally. 

So there they are, my goals for Lent.  Write more and sleep less.  Lord, help me.

(In my pre-Lent thoughts about what to give up, I had decided I could conquer the lack of a snooze button as long as I offset it with more naps.  Cause I like to nap.  But here's the thing: have you ever tried to nap with a puppy on your head?  Not do-able, people. Not do-able.)

I shared mine.  Now it's your turn.  We're all in this together.

Oh, guess what?  Last Thursday when I was busy just uploading pictures because I didn't have anything to write about, I didn't notice that it was my 200th post.  Yep, two hundred.  Another milestone.  Whomp, there it is.

You may have noticed...

...that things look a little different around here.  Don't worry, my favorite IT guy is on the case.  Apparently if you don't renew your subscriptions with Wordpress, they'll just magically take away all of your formatting and layout in the middle of the night.  No warning or anything!

That's ok, though, because we're going to be migrating to a new site soon.  And by "we" I mean my IT guy.  I'll just do what he tells me to do.  You guys just keep reading and bear (bare? behr?) with me and the blah layout while we make the changes.

Final Goodbye

Today we said our final goodbye to sweet Minnie.  It was hard. Earlier in the week we made the decision to have Minnie cremated.  I knew that's what I wanted to have done so I could bury her in my parents' backyard with my childhood dachshund Greta, but having to actually say it aloud at the vet's office was hard.  In fact, this past Monday was my first time back at their office since that horrible night.  I thought all my tears were gone, but I was wrong.  The vet tech cried with me.

Also?  Having to pay a bill for an after-hours emergency surgery is not so fun.  But, like my mom keeps reminding me, Minnie was worth every penny and then some to me, and I'd pay it all again if she could still be here.

My mom picked up Minnie's remains on Thursday and I decided we'd bury her today after church.  Here's the headstone on Greta's grave.  She was buried in 2003 and my dad scratched her name into this stone.  The wrought-iron fence didn't exist when she was buried, but now it runs right over her grave.  I think that's good because no one can step on her.

Immediately after church we picked out a stone from my mom's flower bed.  I got to work etching Minnie's name on it using a dremel and a nail.

It looks ok for now, but I may try to work on it again another day to make the letters deeper.  I don't want them to wear away too soon.

My dad dug the hole while my mom, Doc, and I watched.  I decided to put her new collar in the grave with her.  We placed her headstone right under the fence.

In this picture you can see how she and Greta are right next to each other.  I like to think they're friends in Heaven.

So that's my little girl's final resting place.  It makes me happy to know she'll always sorta be at my parents' home with us, but even more so that she's free of pain and running and jumping and playing in Heaven.

Mantles, Spaces, and Commas

Guys, I need your help.  During our fondue night, we got into some heated discussions and I seemed to be on the losing end of all of them.  Maybe that's because I'm an accountant and was disagreeing with two English-y people (one has an English degree, they have both done lots of editing).  But surely, hopefully, someone out there is on my side. First:  did you know that the architectural structure surrounding a fireplace is actually spelled mantEL? I sure didn't, as shown in this post and this post and I'm sure countless others.  Of course, my friends - if I can even call them that - never felt the need to call me out on my repeat misspellings.  Instead, they sat at my dining table and giggled about this secret that only they knew.  Yes, seriously. 

So, I decided to look it up.  It seems as though they are right in that "mantle" today is usually a cloak and that "mantel" refers to the shelf over a fireplace.  But, BUT!, they both stem from the same word and the word "mantle" actually lists "shelf that projects from wall over fireplace" as one of its definitions too.  So maybe I'm not totally wrong.

I will take a quick second to mention that according to a story told Friday night, Allison was responsible for correcting a large corporation on their mantle misspelling.  On a visit to Starbucks during the holidays a couple years back, she noticed that on their holiday cup sleeves they had "mantle" instead of "mantel" as the place you should hang your stockings on.  She fired off an email to bring the mistake to their attention and the very next day, the sleeves were gone.  Pulled off the shelves, never to be used again.  So, while she couldn't fire off an email to her friend about a few blog misspellings, you've got to give her credit for single-handedly taking down a huge company.  Or at least their coffee sleeves.

Moving on. Let's talk about spaces.  Slate.com recently published this article that has been circling the web.  The topic?  Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.  The second line of the article makes my blood boil: "Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong."  Say what?!?  You're telling me that something I know for a fact that I learned in school - in my keyboarding class - is just flat out wrong?  No, no, no. 

According to the article, typewriters, back in the day, used "monospaced type" where every letter occupied the same amount of horizontal space.  The keys for all letters and numbers were the same size, regardless of whether they were a big fat "m" or a little skinny "i".  Because of that, there was all kinds of extra space floating around the little letters, making it harder to spot the spaces between sentences.  So the "two space" rule was adopted to make the text easier to read.  Nowadays, most fonts use "proportional typesetting" where skinny letters are given less space than fat ones.  Typographers argue that using two spaces with today's modern fonts no longer enhances readability, but instead diminishes it. 

Here's a good quote from Ilene Strizver: "I talk about 'type crimes' often, and in terms of what you can do wrong, this one deserves life imprisonment.  It's a pure sign of amateur typography."  Well, it looks like I'm about to start serving a life sentence!  Heck, I'm using double spaces as I type this post.spacespaceThe article also says that a space in text causes the reader to pause and keeps the text from flowing.  I hardly think my double spaces create "big holes" in my writing.  In fact, I can barely tell a difference between one space and two. 

Then why do I do it?  Bottom line, because that's the way I was taught.  And why would any teacher teach me the wrong thing?  I feel certain that my keyboarding teacher taught straight from the book, so it must've been printed there too.  Does that mean that textbook authors are also wrong?  Regardless of the arguments and what's right or wrong, I don't think I'll be able to change my ways.  Even if David Jury thinks "it's so bloody ugly."

Last topic: commas.  More specifically, the Oxford Comma.  Basically, this comma is the one used when listing items in a sentence.  It's the one that comes before the "and" or "or."  Example:  I enjoy reading, sewing, painting, and woodworking.  In that sentence, the Oxford Comma would be the one behind the word "painting."  Easy peasy, right? 

Well, it turns out there are arguments against using that comma.  One argument is that it's redundant in a simple list, since the "and" or "or" separates the last two items in the list. 

Sigh.  That's not what Ms. Pisahl from fourth grade English taught me.  The rule was this:  count the number of items you're listing, subtract one, and that's how many commas your sentence should have.  And so that's what I'm sticking with.  (Look, I even demonstrated in the title of this post.  Three topics minus one equals two commas.)

Is anyone else on my side of any of these arguments?  Anyone?  Double-spacers unite?