Month: November 2010

I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful! (Of course if you’re not the in the U.S., this doesn’t apply). Tomorrow I’ll give a full rundown with photos, but right about now I’m ready to crawl into bed. I might not have Matouk linens, but I have some super cozy fleece sheets that are calling my name. It’s been a long day. Laura was throwing up just around 3, and by 4:30, Drew and I were downstairs with her, drinking coffee, and setting up the Christmas tree. So I hope you understand.

Lots to be thankful for this year, that’s for sure. I will be falling asleep with a smile, thinking about how blessed we are.

Tonight was the Cub Scouts annual Space Derby. You know, kinda like the Pinewood Derby except with balsa wood rockets? Yup. Jake designed his to be a SWAT rocket, though I have no idea where that came from. The shape doesn’t lend itself to too many creative ideas except maybe a fish or a cigar. It was a long night and there was great trouble with some of the rubber bands. They broke while being wound and that obviously caused a lot of stress. Jake’s rocket did pretty well though. He came in 2nd place in his group. The event is just for fun, though — no major awards are given out or anything. Last year one of the rockets went so fast that it hit the wall and shattered. Legendary! Nothing of the sort this year, but a good time anyway.

A couple years ago, when Drew and I started the South Beach Diet, I didn’t think I’d ever, ever wear the size I wore in college again, even after dropping about 20 pounds. I don’t remember ever researching apidexin reviews or anything like that, but I’m sure the thought crossed my mind at one point or another. Nevertheless, I plugged away trying to eat well and get some exercise here and there. Halfway through I found myself pregnant, and then I nursed for 15 months. Oh, and I also found out that I had Hashimoto’s, which meant my thyroid was under-active, which can cause weight gain.

Now, I never really thought my weight was due to anything other than my love for ice cream, but my thyroid issue may well have been keeping those extra pounds on my frame. Since I started taking my medication at the end of August, the remaining pounds that I wanted to lose have slipped away and when I weighed myself this morning, the scale read one pound less than the goal I set for myself originally! I celebrated by purchasing a new sweater and a new pair of jeans. I still can’t believe the size actually fits me. This is what I wore in college!

It would be nice for a couple more pounds to slip away… you know, to give me a little leeway when I get a craving for M&M’s 😉 Now I really have to work on the exercise part and getting myself into shape.

Last month we refinanced our home mortgage and got a killer rate that is not only saving us money, but cutting down on how long we have to pay. With our old mortgage, the home insurance was paid through escrow, but now it’s not. We’ve been thinking of switching insurance companies anyway, so this might be the kick we need. While we’re at it, we can try to find cheap auto insurance. Why not save as much as you can? (Especially after my visit to the dentist this afternoon — youch! Saving a few hundred just might balance everything out!)

We’re friendly with the guy who owns our local comic shop and he’s in the process of re-doing his website. He wants to have a blog and a basic web shop. I took an HTML class way back in 1997 and I’ve worked with PHP and CSS just through the process of blogging. D. knows a lot more about programming languages than I do because he directly works with programmers. But our friend doesn’t know too much about it, so he’s been looking into some free website builders to get himself started. Building a great website should be fun. It shouldn’t make you crazy, especially when you have a small business to run! It’s helpful to work with a site that helps you along. And when you don’t have to pay for it? Even better!

I hate writing posts like this because it once again shows that I am painfully out of touch with popular culture. I just don’t like what most everyone else seems to adore. Current case in point: The Walking Dead. Now, let me preface this by saying that I was immensely looking forward to AMC’s new offering. Earlier this summer I read issues 1-10 of Robert Kirkman’s comic and was intrigued. I loved how he set the story up: the zombies were the backdrop and it was a story about human survival. I wondered how it would translate to a TV show, but I had faith in AMC. Breaking Bad is my favorite show, so they had to know what they were doing, right?

Well, the thing is: Breaking Bad wasn’t a comic. Nor was it a book. And even if it were either of those things, I hadn’t read them so the story was fresh to me. Now, I’d bet that if you didn’t have any exposure to the comic, then TWD probably seems really great. But it’s disappointing to me how it deviates from Kirkman’s original work. I imagine some of the things I question in the first two episodes probably happen later in the comic series and the writers brought them in sooner because it makes for good TV. So maybe if you’re a WD aficionado you like it more than I do, too.

But all that aside, the show moves as a grueling pace. It is painfully slow and they drag out some of the scenes far longer than they should. Just get to the point already! I feel like they are just trying too hard with this show. And the zombies? I’d read about what a big deal the zombies were supposed to be in this series. The actors went through “zombie school” to train. Half of them don’t act like the undead. And there is no consistency. And they’re not scary. I almost fell asleep during Episode 2, which I watched On Demand last night.

I guess I expected too much. And that’s my problem a lot of the time. I need to start lowering my expectations. Will I continue to watch the show? Probably. At least for a few more episodes. At some point my disappointment will get the best of me, I’m sure and I’ll just let it go, but I would at least like to watch until he finally sees his wife and son again. (They’re really dragging this out. My guess is they want to make Rick more of a hero than necessary and make Shane out to be a very obvious “bad guy.”)

To end on a positive note: the casting is great. I don’t think they could have chosen actors that so closely resemble (in both appearance and manner) Kirkman’s comic book characters.

We’ll see where this thing goes.