I recently read a blog of a friend of mine…he talked about why he’s going to school to study what he’s studying. It got me thinking, I guess.

I’ve switched my major plenty of times. More than I should have, honestly.

I started as a secondary education major; then on to music production; then to social work; on to sociology; next to hospitality/event planning. Finally I settled on English Writing with a minor in Spanish. I recently dropped the Spanish, which is fine with me. I love Spanish, but studying it was killing me. And on top of all the major changes, I’ve been to five, yes FIVE, different schools: CBC, OHCC, RRCC, MSCD and now I’m at UCD. Again, I’m fine with that.

Anyway, all of the majors I’ve chosen over the years are reasonable. I thought I’d enjoy teaching, but as it turned out, I hated being in Minnesota more than anything and as that’s where I was going to do the education major, when I left, I just sort of….stopped going to school for a while.

My heart breaks for the disenfranchised so social work would have made sense as well. I actually came to this conclusion while watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU. The episode made me cry. That’s when I kind of knew I should do that. Turns out, there’s a ton of red tape that I just don’t have the energy for. I saw it when I worked at Volunteers of America. Those people have more patience than I ever could muster up.

So sociology seemed logical next. Study the disenfranchised in order to help them. Meh. I didn’t take to that too well.

So the hospitality major seemed to make sense…I love planning weddings! This would have been perfect…if I had endless supplies of time in order to do the work required. The whole program was jacked up for me from the beginning. I cried a lot and, after planning my own wedding, found that I much prefer doing the planning on a purely “pro bono” basis…and I’ve done quite well at that. I still enjoy planning weddings and events, but I don’t think I want to do that for a living, frankly.

After that, I took a semester to really think about what I was passionate about.

And the first thing that popped into my brain was…ENGLISH. I LOVE this language! I have too many books to name that are about grammar, punctuation, syntax, history….all on the English language. And yes, I read them for pleasure. Most of you know this. I love words. I love how they fit together. I love learning new words and working them into daily usage (tee hee). And beyond all of that, I love to read. Why hadn’t I thought of this all those years ago?!? I’m good at this…really good at this. I could have wasted so much less time if only I’d have really considered what it was that I’m passionate about. Bother.

So I’m officially (and permanently) in the English Writing program at the University of Colorado-Denver. Granted, I don’t enjoy the writing so much as the reading, but the point here is to eventually become an editor and let’s be honest….if I can’t write well, how am I to judge if someone else writes well? But I have enjoyed writing several of the pieces I’ve done in the past year or so and that leads me to thinking that writing ABOUT weddings might not be such a bad idea either! Maybe I could write for a magazine or website or something?? I don’t know, but it sounds like something I could do.

My mom has also kind of put it into my head to teach English at my high school. I have long been disappointed with the English program there, but I also have pretty fierce feelings about teachers actually being licensed educators and as many of the “teachers” at my high school are not that, I would really need to be sure to get my license before considering teaching. Fortunately, my program allows for students to get their licenses in conjunction with their degree so that might be something to consider as well.

I mean, teachers are kind of always in demand so for the sake of job security, it might not be a sucky idea to get a license anyway.

And Todd thinks it would be super fun to move overseas at some point and I could teach English anywhere we go, which would make getting a job that much easier…

So yeah….I love English. So I study it. With fervor and passion.

And it feels good!

New Year’s Resolutions are interesting things to me.
I’ve always made them. My whole life is filled with New Year’s resolutions that haven’t been kept. Just TONS of them. I once made the resolution not to swear. That was a complete wash. I should probably work on it more and do it less, but it’s still a resolution that didn’t get kept. I’ve made resolutions to write more, stay in touch with friends better and all sorts of other lofty goals.

Recently though, in the past 4 or 5 years, resolutions have been much easier to keep. Last year, Todd and I resolved to minimize…and we’ve kept to that pretty well. We have newer “stuff”, but we downsize regularly and donate all the time. It feels good to do “spring cleaning” a couple times a year. And it just makes sense. We have so much crap we don’t use. I don’t even know why we have some of the stuff we have. Yesterday alone I threw away a box and a half worth of crap. It was amazing…to think I’d been holding on to some of that junk since I was 20 or 21. Sheesh.

The year before that, we resolved not to spend any of our “date nights” at chain restaurants. We really only eat a local places or local chains (Yak & Yeti, Thai Basil, that sort of thing). It’s the very rare occasion that we eat at a chain place. We love trying new and interesting food and love even more supporting local businesses. There are just too many amazing restaurants near us to waste a date night at Applebee’s. In the last two years, I can think of maybe a handful of times that we’ve eaten “chain” and that’s either because we have a gift card or were invited by someone. It’s been pretty awesome.

And the year before that was the resolution to not eat fast food. That one has stuck really well. It’s just better for us, nutritionally. I think the only times we’ve eaten fast food have been on our way to/from SLC. Other than that, it’s not really something we do. It’s been nice.

This year, we’re to pick five things we’ve never done but always wanted to do and do them.
Mine include:
1. Running the Bolder Boulder (if my knees will allow for that).
2. Seeing a Broadway show (we’re going to see Phantom of the Opera in February)
3. Learn to shoot a gun.
4. Learn to golf.
5. Ski at Park City.
Runners-up are:
1. Run the Republic (doing that in February).
2. Seeing a Britney Spears concert (doing that in April…in Vegas)
3. Learn to crack a whip.

We’ll continue the tradition of picking 5 things from here on out. It’s what we tend to do with our resolutions…as I think is the point, actually. Make one and stick to it. One of these years, I’m going to make a resolution to travel somewhere once a month. That would be amazing!

So what are YOU up to in ’09?

My car broke down yesterday.

This, after having spent nearly $600 getting new tires, rotors and brakes. Sigh.

Oh and paying off Todd’s car with a final payment of over $4000. Sigh.

My dad, who usually fixes whatever is wrong with my car, is out of town and as it is going to be friggin’ COLD this weekend, I had the car towed down to their house this morning. Another $150 or so. But at least it’s out of my company’s parking lot.

This all started around 7:15am yesterday when I was heading up the hill to work. Just as I passed under C-470, the wind picked up wildly and my check-engine light flashed a time or two and then turned off. Then it happened again another 10mins later or so. The wind was INSANE so I figured it was just that my car was having to work so bloody hard against a head wind. It’s not a totally unreasonable thing to think…you don’t know how bad the wind was.

Well, when I went to leave the office to head to class (20mins late, mind you…I got my days mixed up in my head), I jumped in the car and….

Nothing.

Kate, she was trying so hard to start. She knows I’m good to her and I could tell she really wanted to start, but it just wasn’t in her.

So I hopped back out of the car, slammed the door shut and ran back into the office to see if Chandra could take me to the Mills where Todd would eventually pick me up.

As I was on the phone with Todd explaining all the drama, I realized that in my haste, I had locked my keys in my car.

Awesome.

So Todd wound up coming all the way up to my office to get me and instead of going to class, took me shopping for a new party dress for the Christmas season, which I needed anyway. I got this super hot “Samantha from SATC” style dress which will look great with my new silver heels and Todd was so excited that he bought me yet another dress and some long silver gloves to wear to his company party with the SATC dress and silver heels. Woot!

So this morning, my co-worker BJ hears that my car is busted and offers to check it out for me to see if he can try to diagnose the problem prior to having my pops fix it.

Turns out, I have a cylinder misfiring, which has happened before. On top of that, when he looked at the engine, he discovered that a vacuum hose was disconnected and one of my spark plugs was just hangin’ out in the engine, not really attached to anything. Bah. He thinks I might also need a new ignition module.

All of these things I’ve had to deal with in all my years of owning vehicles and three of those four things have happened with Kate, the current car.

So, two weeks before Christmas and $4700 down, this is probably the best thing that could have possibly happened to me.

But I suppose there is a bright side to it all.

I mean, I’ve been really lax with studying for my Spanish final on my own and I’ve been given some “forced” study time over the next couple days, which will be nice. It’ll also allow me to really enjoy the Christmas party tonight (Alice 105.9s “holiday hootenanny”) and Todd’s company party tomorrow night (it’s a 20s speakeasy style party, which I’m crazy excited about) without freaking out that I haven’t studied or need to study more. All-in-all, it’s okay.

It’s also kind of a slap in the face from the universe to remind me not to be so flippant with my/our money right now. We’ve been a little frivolous and this is kind of just a reminder that I’m not yet made of money so maybe it’s time to tighten the purse-strings ever so slightly until this economy of ours gets back on track…whenever that decides to happen.

Regardless, this whole car-breaking-down thing isn’t the WORST thing that could happen to us right now. It’s certainly not the most ideal thing, but way worse things could happen so I’m going to focus on the silver linings and not let it get me too down…

I am absolutely exhausted. I’m in the middle of my last week of this semester and just finished my oral final in Spanish. I thought I was going to die.

Okay, not actually die, but it was incredibly difficult and I completely forgot how to use tenses and may have really effed that entire thing up. It’s frustrating because I really enjoy Spanish and while it’s no longer my minor (I don’t have any minor…just a major), I do want to continue to learn and use the language. I think it’s incredibly important for everyone to know a language other than their own (though for some, even native English is apparently a challenge). So many problems and issues could be avoided if we just knew how to communicate with each other better. Sigh.

I have one more final, next Saturday. A written final. I’m sure it’s going to be difficult, but like I’ve always said, it’s much easier for me to write and hear Spanish than to actually speak it. I really need to get better about *speaking* the language. I suck at it.

Myriad of other things on my mind right now.
I have a new hat, so that’s fun.
The new Britney album continues to be ever-so-enjoyable.
I’m getting new brakes on Kate today courtesy of supremely-awesome boyfriend de Laura.
Christmas may have lost a bit of its luster for me this year (very unfortunate).
Bleh.

Per instructions from my husband’s blog, here are a few things that make me unique (read: random

I’m incredibly selective about the music that I listen to because of the pretty drastic effects that it can have on me. I have (had?) CDs that I’ve actually tossed because one song on the disc brings back certain memories that I’m not okay with. So my personal taste in music is pretty quirky and well….juvenile. Britney and Christina are at the very top of my list. Every one of their albums has had zero adverse effect on me. I also love oldies more than a person my age should. I was born approximately four DECADES too early. Really. I was. Maybe even five. And my list of favorite songs changes quite rapidly, though there are two that will forever remain as the Top 2…

I have a knack for throwing a killer party…and LOVE doing it! Most people enjoy the actual “having” of the party whereas I definitely prefer the planning stages to just about anything else. Small or large, formal or casual, I love throwing parties. I’ve thrown … well… several in the years that I’ve known Todd. And I intend to thrown hundreds more. I like to make a big deal out of things. Birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, promotions, Saturdays, football games, Todd publishing his first book (that party yet to come, but definitely in the works), elections & inaugurations, you name it, I’ll find a theme and a place!

I also really hate wet paper. It makes me physically ill. I don’t like to talk about it.

I firmly believe that cars and computers should never break and should work all the time. Except for the standard maintenance required (changing the oil, rotating tires, etc.), I don’t believe that I should ever have to do anything to my car and get extremely upset (read: hysterical) when something goes wrong (timing belts snapping, clutch pedal coming loose, heads cracking, just to name a few…all of which have happened while the car is in motion at a fairly high rate of speed). When computers go bing-bong-boing on me, it’s not pretty either.

I live for holidays. Especially Christmas. There is nothing more exciting to me than the Christmas season. Holidays are second only to my husband and family in my heart. Truly. I love listening to Christmas music and indeed have a full CD collection that continues to grow (but will NOT listen to Christmas music prior to the day after Thanksgiving because each holiday deserves it’s own time). I like the twinkling lights and the smells. I love driving down I-70 between Denver West Blvd and Youngfield and enjoying the lights in the trees that line the highway. Even traffic doesn’t bother me…one direction is red (brake) lights and the other is white (head) lights. I love to bake all of my favorite Christmas cookies and learn how to make my grandmothers’ (plural) delicious cookies. I love decorating the house and going to holiday parties and generally relishing in the warmth and deliciousness. And I really love wrapping gifts…it’s a craft I learned from my mother and is famous in my family…my family can always expect to be “wowed” by the wrapping on their gifts from me. Anyone can expect that really. I was even designated the office gift wrapper last year J I also really love watching the holiday movies….Elf, A Christmas Carol (with George C. Scott), The Grinch (original and Jim Carrey), the Charlie Brown movies (because that scene with Linus telling the Christmas story will make me cry every time), all the weird quasi-claymation movies, the Muppet Christmas Carol, Scrooged, Love Actually, The Holiday, Miracle on 34th Street (the original with Maureen O’Hara), White Christmas, Holiday Inn…

Yeah, I love Christmas.

So there’s a quick smattering of my quirks. Now you go.

4:00pm – Sitting at the office, anxiously awaiting my departure from work to go home and quickly throw on my 80s garb and head down to Brooklyn’s to grab a drink and wait for Laura to arrive.

5:15pm – FINALLY get to leave the office, sassy boots in hand (they’ve been at the office since October 30th when I brought them in as a potential pair for Nikki to borrow for Halloween). Hauled significant amounts of ass home and then ran into the house and just about jumped out of my work clothes and into my concert clothes. Outfit consisted of black leggings, grey tulle skirt and a purple sparkly 80s shirt. Topped off with aforementioned sassy black boots, giant hot pink beads, coral scarf and about 20 pink and silver bangles. Mmm….fantastic!

6:00pm – Make my way down to the Pepsi Center by way of Wadsworth to I-70 to I-25 to Speer to Auraria Parkway. I love that I can play that “Umm…I’m actually here for class” card and get to park on campus for $3.50 rather than $10…woot! Flash a smile and lie to the parking attendant and make my way rather effortlessly to Brooklyns at the Pepsi Center.

6:30pm – Inside Brooklyn’s is an absolute madhouse. Alice 105.9 is there hosting a crazy Madonna pre-show party or whatever. I’ve never seen a DJ in real life, so it was kind of cool to see BJ and Howie + Mikey at the bar…BJ plowed into me at one point, but was apologetic and it was really no one’s fault in particular…the place was packed, I was apparently standing in a major thoroughfare and he got bashed into by someone else, thereby bashing into me. Whatever. I had a double cape cod and was jamming to “Papa Don’t Preach”…I really couldn’t care less. Spent about a half hour dancing by myself waiting for Laura to make her arrival.

7:00pm – Laura arrives. Long Island Iced Teas all around, thank you! We head to the upper level of the bar and chatty-chat-chat for about 45mins before slamming the remainder of our drinks and heading downstairs to close out and go to the show. Closing out proved challenging so we just left. Meh, we were going to be coming back after the show anyway so it didn’t really make any sense to close out only to open up again in 3 hours.

7:45pm – Leave Brooklyn’s and make our way to the Pepsi Center. Once inside, the following occurs:
Receive drawing tickets for a new Blackberry (of which neither of us needs)
Don’t get a free Blackberry, so receive a light up blue necklace thingy as consolation
Have our photo taken by a Blackberry rep which will be on their website later on
Take 6 ridiculous photos in the free photo booth
Go a little bonkers that we’re ACTUALLY at the Madonna show
Laura loses her ticket. Thank GOD she was already in the venue.

8:00pm – Get to our seats and are actually astounded that a) the staging is so massive and b) there are so many empty seats still! Ah whatever. Our seats were perfection! Section 318, Row 12, Seats 13&14….smack in front of the stage and way at the top so we could see EVERYTHING. The only better seats I could imagine would be right against the stage. As it were, our seats were fantastic…and there were people who didn’t show up next to us so we had tons of room to dance…yay!

9:00pm – Show has still not started even though our tickets definitely say that the show time is 8pm. But I guess when you’re MADONNA, you get to do whatever you want to and everyone just kind of sits back and takes it. Oh to have that kind of power haha! At this point, Laura and I are jamming to some wacky mix of current pop nonsense when I stop and say, “Who the hell is smoking?!” and then immediately realize what I’ve just said and Laura and I both say “Um this is a non-smoking venue!” We turn around and see two girls right behind us lighting up. Laura immediately transistions into “No Bullshit” Laura and informs them that the Pepsi Center is indeed a non-smoking venue. They don’t really care and continue to smoke. Then two girls behind the smokers start to get fiesty about it and eventually two security guards come up and inform Smoky McIdiot that they cannot in fact smoke and must stop immediately.

9:30pm – Lights go down and on with the show!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have never been so excited about a show in all my life. It’s friggin’ MADONNA!!!!!!! Live and for real for the first time EVER in Denver. It was unbelievable. There is really no way for me to explain how fantastic the staging and lights and sound board and TWENTY dancers and clothes and lasers and everything actually was. Just imagine the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen…this was w-a-y better.

About four songs in, Smoky McIdiot lights up again and much to my own chagrin, I actually leave the concert to find another security guard. I hate people like that girl. HATE THEM. Once at the security guard, there is already someone there with the same complaint as me: I didn’t pay this much money to have some bitch smoking behind me. Make it stop.

Security guard made them stop. Thank God.

Continue with the show.

I don’t think I realized quite how late it was until I actually fell asleep during two songs…they were slow songs and very ambient so I blame Madonna for playing good sleeping music.

Interesting features of the show:
1. Madonna gets mad at the front-rowers for not clapping, saying “You’re in the front fucking row and you’re not clapping! How lame!” It’s true. That’s trés lame.
2. Madonna takes a request from a girl in the audience and we all sing Like A Virgin with the Material Girl…it was awesome!
3. Five giant screens display “the incomparable Britney Spears” saying “it’s Britney, bitch” to which I proceed to lose my mind and concern Laura. What can I say….I [heart] Britney!
4. Other stars that make video appearances during the show: Pharrel, Kanye West, Puff Daddy (or whatever name he’s going by now), Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. Woot!

The show ended abruptly, but very “Madonna” and it was off to Brooklyn’s for fried food to fill our excited bellies. It wasn’t until I dropped Laura off at her car that I realized it was freaking one o’clock in the morning. Definitely intended to get home around 11:30pm, but that was assuming the show would actually start at 8pm. But hey, two solid hours of all things Madonna isn’t anything I’m going to complain about.

It’s going to be a challenge to stay awake today though….that is for certain…

All said, Madonna has officially taken over the top spot on my “Best Show I’ve Ever Been To” list, which was previously held by the Beastie Boys….and next year, Britney will probably overtake the #2 spot, pushing the Boys down to #3,4,&5 (yes, I’ve seen them three times….woo hoo!)

Till next time…

This came from Amy’s Blog….seemed like fun

If I were 7 again I would….
jump on the trampoline all the live long day

If their were an extra hour in the day…
I would sleep through it all the while knowing I should be using it to study.

my junk food indulgence of choice is…
jalepeño and cheddar kettle cooked potato chips

the color yellow makes me think of…
smiley faces

the most used item in my kitchen is…
The coffee maker.

Now, YOU go!

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Sounds like they’re leaning toward adopting a puppy from a shelter.

Way to go! There are plenty of puppies out there that need lovin’!
Just ask Leo and Suki…

The last couple days have been pretty heavy around here. Cyber-space, I mean. I’ve been involved in a few different discussions regarding the recent election and they’ve gotten incredibly long and drawn out and occasionally feisty. Not that I mind any of it.

The country is changing, there’s no doubt about that. And I’m quite looking forward to what is going to happen and what could happen. Whatever happens though, it’s going to be different from we’ve been doing for the last little while. That’s not good or bad. It just is.

And I think that’s what’s giving me this excruciating headache since Tuesday.

All the non-stop bickering about what has happened or what people perceive is going to happen.

The fact of the matter is that Tuesday, Election Day, has come and gone and what’s done is done. Barack Obama is going to be our new president come January 20th (Inaguration Party anyone?) and really there’s nothing that anyone can do to stop that now. The ballots have been cast and counted, the electoral votes have been dealt to their rightful owners and Barack Obama is it.

I’m just kind of over all the constant yammering, bickering, bitching and whining about the results. This is absolutely no reflection on the blogs that I’ve been reading and commenting on lately, but rather on the hateful and disrespectful things I keep reading on Facebook and hearing on the television.

Maybe I’m petty. Maybe I’m not smart enough for heated political discussions. Maybe a lot of things.
But right now, since it’s the Obama’s that are going to be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and I have made my peace with that, I’m more interested in other things.

Things like what kind of puppy Sasha and Malia are going to get.
What is Michelle going to wear to the Inagural Ball?
What kind of china is the new family going to choose?
Who will be the new Secretary of State? The Press Secretary?
And because I live for all things Christmas, how is the House going to be decorated next year for the holidays?
Is Barack’s jump shot really as good as “they” claim it is?

I know that a lot of that is trivial, but that’s what I’m more interested in right now.
I’ve been so personally invested in this election that I feel like I have some kind of personal attachment to this fabulous new family. And I want to get to know them, just like so many other Americans out there.