Thanksgiving, kitties, and runaway carts

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I had a very busy week leading up to Thanksgiving.... I had so much to get done at work. Thankfully, I got everything done, so late Wednesday evening I headed up to my parents house. Thanksgiving day, we had a lovely time with my maternal grandparents and my mom's brother and his family. We had a lot of laughs and of course, a lot of good food.... I think I ate almost half of an entire pumpkin pie all by myself. :P (It was a smaller, 8 inch pie though, so I don't feel like such a pig).

Friday, I had breakfast with one of my best friends, Katie!! She's been getting her phD in Analytical Chemistry down in South Carolina and I haven't seen her since last Christmas, so it was so nice to get to see her and catch up a bit. We went to the APD, such memories of high school :)

Later in the day, my Dad and Britt and I decorated the house for Christmas, and it looks so pretty! I love the way the house looks at Christmastime. Then once my mom got home and we had dinner, we all watched A Christmas Carol (with Patrick Stewart). Oh! I almost forgot- Friday I found a kitten! I opened up the door in the morning to call our cat Kit inside and saw a tiny calico crying piteously under my mom's car. I went out and coaxed it out, and it wanted some loving cause it practically jumped in my arms. It was SKINNY. So malnurished, poor thing, so we brought her in and gave her some food. She's been on our back porch for now but I think we've convinced my dad to let us keep her. :) She's cute, white with black and brown striping, and very loving. She follows us around everywhere.... if we keep her, we're calling her Piper.

Today, I headed back down to Philly for Tabitha and Jamie's wedding. I was setting up and running the mini-reception (for people were were coming to the wedding but not the main reception). I had a little trouble with the setup at first....when I took a cart out to my car to get all the supplies, the wind was blowing stuff off my cart left and right, so I had to chase things across the parking lot, and then, when I turned around, there's the cart, flying full speed down the parking lot! I screamed and thankfully had enough time to run over and throw myself in front of it to stop it.... just in time to look to my right and see Will sitting in his car with a stupefied look on his face like "what the heck just happened?" Well, I wasn't the only goofball that day, chasing a runaway cart, because Will was actually there not for the wedding, but because he honestly thought it was Sunday and he was there for Church! Wow. :) Between the two of us... :P Anyway, it worked out for me because then Will helped me bring everything into the Church. A few minutes later my helpers Phil, Jason, and Mike showed up to help me set everything up. They were so awesome, I'm so glad I had their help! And everything went so well, praise God! I was a little worried. But the decorations were really pretty, everything went really smoothly... we did have a lot of leftovers, but that worked out too because we're having a big holiday party at Phil's house on Saturday, so I sent a lot of the stuff home with him. The extra food will go to his party Saturday, my workplace on Monday, and my membership class at Church tomorrow.

So now, I'm finally home and can relax a bit...hope everyone had as fun this weekend as I did! :)

NaNoWriMo

So sometimes I hit the "next blog" button at the top of the page and scan other people's blogs. Most don't interest me, however, the first blog that appeared tonight was fascinating. It was titled "Life according to k" and I wish I knew this girl! Her posts were so interesting and she seems like so much fun. I think we could be very good friends, if we met in person.

The second blog I ran into was called "William's Ramblings" and was not interesting to me but for one post halfway down the page. It was titled NaNoWriMo and it immediately caught my eye, because the same thing was mentioned quite frequently in the Life according to K blog.

What is NaNoWriMo, you ask? (Don't worry, I didn't know either!) It stands for National Novel Writing Month (which apparently happens to be the month of November.... check it out here http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano). It's just for fun, a contest that encourages people to write a 50,000 word (about 175 page) novel in one month! That's a pretty daunting task. K of Life according to K has taken up this challenge, while William of William's Ramblings, who is apparently an actual published writer, has not. I so wish I had known about this before now! It sounds so interesting. Of course, it's probably better that I'm not doing it this month, seeing as up to this point I've only been on vacation, sick, or working overtime, so I wouldn't have the time for it.... but I'm putting it on my calendar for next year! I have a year then to think of a topic to write about....

I think the easiest way to write a 50,000 word novel is to write a story about my life. Although I would definitely have to embellish things and just outright make stuff up to actually make it an interesting read..... hmm. This could be interesting! :) Luckily, the purpose of NaNoWriMo is that it's all about quantity, not quality.... so even if what you write is a bunch of crap, it doesn't matter! You can still pat yourself on the back for writing a 175 page novel.

I am SO doing this next year! :)

Stupid sinus infection

Boo to sinus infections. :(

This one is really bad, too. It must have happened when I was in Bahrain, and flying home made things that much worse. It's only on my left side, thank God, because if I had this insane pressure and achy-ness in both ears, I think I'd throw myself out a window. Thankfully the pressure isn't constant, it comes and goes, so that's something, and I went to the doctor today and was given antiobiotics, so I hope it clears up soon. This morning when I woke up the pressure in my left ear was horrific. I could barely get ready for the day. Thankfully, after taking a short nap before my doc appt, the pressure had cleared and stayed away for the rest of the day, but it's come back with a vengenance right now. :( I'm praying it goes away soon!

On an upside, I just found out that the random 167.00 deposit in my checking account from Lankenau was NOT a mistake, it was a little bonus to all the employees for doing something good. I don't really know what, to be honest, I had deleted the email that had explained this bonus without even reading it and then was left wondering about this money in my account for the past 4 days. I finally found out when the girls started talking about it at lunch. Which is nice, because I can always use some extra cash, and I wasn't too keen on giving it up if it had been a mistake. So yay for me! :)

Ok. My ear is seriously hurting... I'm going to go lay down and hope it clears like it did this morning. Here's hoping! *crosses fingers* :)

Long overdue update

So, I know it's been almost 2 months since I last updated the blog.... I've been so busy lately and just feeling lazy. And I did actually try to update a month ago- I wrote a big post and then my computer went crazy and I lost the post. It was all I could do to not throw my computer out the window at the time, so re-writing the post was definitely not an option. :P

Since September, here are some things that have happened in my life, just some highlights.

1) I have a new car. Noah didn't actually die, he's still at my parents house, and despite the fact that he's just an old car, he was MY old car and I miss him terribly. I know I sound like a huge weirdo for being so attached to my car, but too bad. I'm now leasing my sister's car, a black Nissan Sentra. My dad repainted it with sweet pink and gray striping on it's side (it used to be red and gray) and I like that a lot better. This car has been dubbed Sweets. For two reasons- one, beck named him Lance, a name I didn't really like. However, on one of my fav TV shows, Bones, one of my favorite characters is called Dr. Lance Sweets. (Everyone calls him Sweets). So it's perfect, my car's name is Lance Sweets. Plus he has a sweet candy pink stripe. :) I love Sweets, but miss my Noah a lot.

2) I've gotten crazy busy at work. My only co-worker lauren went on maternity leave on October 12, so I've been nuts taking over her work as well as carrying my own. I'm managing, thank God I'm a very organized person who's extremely good at multi-tasking, or else I'd be dead by now. My boss has been great though so that's good.

3) I'm getting really involved with my Church- I'm in two community groups, and I'm taking the 10 week Explore class (it's for people who are thinking about becoming members of the Church) plus I'm taking the 10 month Grow class- a class that's designed to help people grow in their faith. I've been loving it. It's been such a blessing to learn and grow with my fellow community group members. Not to mention we have tons of social events- the last weekend of October was the singles retreat (AWESOME experience!!! I had a great time!) this Friday is a game night at Leah and Jackie's house, there's a holiday party the first Sat of December at Phil's, and there's a singles Christmas party December 19. Oh and this coming Sunday is a cookie baking day with my Monday night CG- we're baking cookies for Jamie and Tabitha's mini wedding reception (being held for guests who come to the wedding but weren't invited to the main reception). I'm actually in charge of the mini-reception, I hope it goes well. Yesterday my mom and I were out getting a lot of the decorations and supplies. I had such a good time shopping with my mom!

4) November 4-9 I went to Bahrain to visit Becky!!! Unfortunately due to the travel time, I only had 3 days with her- it went way too fast. I would have loved to have stayed longer, but I was lucky enough to get these couple days off at work (see number 2 above) so I took what I could get. Becky was so wonderful, she bought the ticket for me, since I'm just a poor overworked researcher that no one cares about (no one cares about the research I mean, people care about me. At least I think they do! :P) so that was really nice. I flew British Air, which was awesome. I highly recommend it. The flights went so smoothly. Becky flew me over specifically so I could go to the marine ball with her... it was so much fun! I loved it. I'd put up pics but I'm feeling pretty lazy, plus I have a lot up on facebook so everyone can check them out there. :) I felt like a princess though. It was a nice feeling. :)

So, that's some of the biggest stuff that's happened to me for a while. There should be plenty to update now with the holidays approaching, and it appears I'm over my lazy slump, so stay tuned. I'll try to be better at updating!