HAPPY NEW YEAR

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!

Please be safe tonight - the drunks and crazy people will be out in full force.

I plan on getting fubared at my best friend's house (or is it BFF these days?) in Baytown - yeehaw! I allow myself a time or two each year to get absolutely plastered... and almost always I'm with Jene' - go figure!

I'll try to check in tomorrow... it depends on how much my head is pounding and the size of my hangover... I'm not as young and don't bounce back like I used to...

Creepy Wendy's Guy

I stopped by Wendy's yesterday to pick up lunch for the office... Have you seen their new cups? I'm sorry, but this spokes-guy is just WAY too creepy for me. I don't think I could drink out of a cup with this picture on it. I wish Dave was still here. I swear, I think a picture of Dave's corpse in its current condition in the grave still wouldn't be as scary as this guy!

Christmas Presents

I have to brag about my husband. He really did good picking out my Christmas presents this year. I really didn't give anyone much of a wish list, so he was on his own for finding presents for me. And I'll admit it to anyone who asks - I'm a princess and VERY hard to shop for. But I always tell people if you're ever stuck with needing a present for me, you can't go wrong with 1) teapots, 2) Alice in Wonderland stuff, or 3) Pocket Dragons. I collect all three and can't have too many.

Apparently he was wandering the mall & stumbled across Teavana. Oooohhhhhh Teavana... I am SO dangerous in that place, I love it! They sell bulk loose teas (and will custom blend one for you), teapots & kettles, tea cups of course, lots of Buddhist statues & items, and various other new age stuff. I could spend all day and thousands of dollars in there I think...

Anyway... he bought me a decorative hand-made teapot to add to my collection. I love it - the design is called 'Buddha's Hand'. He said it looked like something I'd pick out. It reminded him of garden fairies and gnomes etc - I totally agree.

He also bought me a clear glass tea pot with a 'basket' inside to steep the loose tea - and tea cups. The cups are adorable with little fat cats painted on them. They match my kitchen decor perfectly in color, and they're unusual as they don't have handles. I love that! I hardly use the handles anyway, I always hold my cups/mugs from the other side.


Oh - and he found the most wonderful mix of chai tea. It's sooooo smooth and I swear tastes like melted candies... yum... I've had a cup every night since Christmas - it's wonderful...

Good job Hubby!!

Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll

I'm so torn... I just heard about this movie and my first reaction to it was 'oh wow - that is going to be SO COOL!' (Everyone who knows me knows my obsession with anything Alice in Wonderland...) But then I noticed that it was written and produced by Marilyn Manson - dammit! I really hate that guy! I think I'm going to have to see it anyway, just to know... who knows - it could be surprisingly good!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758775/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasmagoria:_The_Visions_of_Lewis_Carroll

Southern girl at heart

I'm the first to admit that I'm a seriously pampered princess. My husband has thoroughly spoiled me. Sometimes I think I was born for valet parking, room service, massages, & pedicures. But really, deep down inside where it counts, I'm still a southern girl at heart. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl. I grew up as southern and country as they come, and as much as I LOVE the Ritz Carlton, I'm just as happy barefoot swinging on a porch swing, drinking iced tea, and staring at the forest - or watching the hounds wrestle in the yard. My mind went down that road as I was driving home from the store this morning - all the windows rolled down, the cool wind messing my hair, and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" cranked on the radio...

HEB on Christmas Eve

I've always wondered what hell would look like - often imagined it like Dante did with several levels and environments getting worse and worse as you get deeper and your sins larger. I think I found an example of it this morning, maybe not quite a level of hell - maybe just a limbo of sorts - but whatever it was, I was trapped in it this morning with all sorts of lost souls. That's the only way to explain HEB this morning... I wasn't in a grocery store - I somehow stepped through a portal into an alternate dimension... a twilight zone of free sample girls and cranky stock boys -- end caps of mushroom soups, cranberry sauces, and Velveeta -- and the weirdest combination of customers ever put together. Plenty of us looked like me and who I am sure got up, brushed teeth and hair, and went straight to the store - stopping on the way for the necessary caffeine kick to keep us going. I saw plenty of people with bed head hair wandering the aisles in flip flops & pajamas (myself included). There were the creepy people who were already dressed for Christmas, glowing with holiday cheer and disgustingly bright & cheery. And then there were the unexplainable - the goth guy in full goth get up head to toe black leather with piercings & chains all over - and the guy in motorcycle gear, including a full face helmet, pushing a basket of groceries. Now that one I wouldn't have believed myself if I hadn't seen him first hand. For two hours I was trapped in Holiday Hell with these people, fighting for the last pecan pie & jug of egg nog, listening to Clay Aiken Christmas carols, praying to get out alive...

1st Pure Romance Party

Oh my God - I still can barely believe I'm doing this! WARNING - if you don't want to read anything about my sex toy parties, STOP RIGHT HERE. Do not read further! So... I had my first party last friday. Remember, I'm going into this new venture completely blind. I've never been to a party myself, so I have no idea what to expect! All I can say is WOW. These women are nuts! LOL Don't get me wrong, I had a blast and I know they had fun too, but WOW! So, I'm planning for this party, getting everything ready - selecting which games I want to play, etc. PR (Pure Romance) has tons of examples of different games to play, but I didn't think the ladies would want to do any of those wild & crazy games. Boy was I wrong! The first thing my hostess asked when I got there was "do you have that 18 inch double ended dildo thing? We played a game with it last time where we had to hold it between our legs & pass it around the room without using our hands. It was great!" Ummm... yeah, I brought it, but I wasn't planning on THAT game -- but you're the hostess, you want it - you got it! Oh! back up a little... The night before, I opened up all of my shipping boxes, pulled all my stock out to take inventory & set aside 'demo' items. Hubby was designated as the battery guy - I pulled the toys out & he put batteries in and turned them on. I was dying laughing by the end of the evening. I couldn't believe I was sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor surrounded by vibrators and other sex toys. 'OMG - am I really doing this?' I guess so, I just bought all of this stock, so unless I wants about $500 worth of sex toys, I'm really doing it! One thing the manual told us was to always store & transport the product in individual Ziploc bags without batteries. Got the Ziploc part, but I decided to leave the batteries in Thursday night, since I was going to demo everything the next day. Ok, now I know why they specified without the batteries -- as soon as I backed out of my driveway heading to the party on Friday, something in the locked trunk in my backseat started vibrating, and continued until I got to my hostess's house and was able to unload the car & search the boxes. It drove me bonkers! So, I get to the house, set up & everyone starts showing up. I was so nervous! I know I like to talk about this kind of stuff, but these were strangers to me - and there are just some lines you don't cross with people you don't know. But wow, it was so much fun! and WOW, I really know what I'm doing & talking about! I studied all of the sex education materials and product specs the corporate office gave me. (plus I just happen to know some of this stuff ahead of time of course!) It really made me feel good to educate these women, several of them had never owned a toy before and had no idea what to get or how anything worked. I swear, Pure Romance has really thought of everything to make parties run smoothly --- one thing is they insist on a private ordering room so I can talk one-on-one with each woman and figure out her individual needs. I was able to talk shop, find out what the women wanted & needed, and set them up with the right tools to get it! I ended up selling $800 - can you believe that?! My FIRST party, and I went into it blindly, and I sold $800! WOW! And of course, $320 of that is my profit. It cost me about $1100 to start this business up, with buying my initial stock, office supplies, paperwork, etc -- but hell, 3 more parties like this and I'll have made back that initial cost plus some! Woohoo! Okay - so reading back on this, I didn't go into as much detail about the toys etc as I originally thought I might... that's a good thing I guess... leave some of the mystery for my parties - you'll just have to come to one to learn all of the details!

Cloverfield Movie

I just saw a preview for this movie. It looks like the stupidest thing I have seen in a long time! It's almost the urban catastrophe version of Blair Witch Project. I actually kept thinking (hoping maybe) it was a Geico commercial or something up until the end...

Ugh...

http://www.cloverfieldmovie.com/

I'm sick again

I should have known I'd get sick this week. I've been sick at Christmas for the past 2 years.

I started losing my voice on Monday. It wasn't too bad, just a little squeek or two - a little crack. Tuesday morning I woke up with my Kathleen Turner voice - that deep husky sexy voice. It always makes me think of the Friends episode when Phoebe got sick & got a smoky sexy singing voice. Yesterday I woke up & nothing came out. I tried talking to the cats & nothing came out! I had a cup of hot chocolate & my voice came back somewhat. I sounded like Froggy from the Little Rascals. I attempted to go to work and lasted a whole 2 hours. No one recognized me on the phone - not even my VP! More than once I tried talking on the phone and nothing came out - the callers couldn't understand me. So I gave up & went home. I saw the doc yesterday afternoon - she said I have a sinus infection AGAIN. Luckily the strep test & flu test both came back negative. She gave me a shot of cortisone to help my throat & voice. That usually helps. Unfortunately not this time. I woke up worse than before believe it or not. When I say I had no voice this morning, I mean I had NO VOICE. I tried talking this morning and absolutely nothing came out, just a whisper. Well shit! So much for going to work today! While I love having a few days off, I really hate having no voice. So here I am sitting around, drinking hot tea, and watching daytime tv.

I can eat again!

I ate a scrambled egg last night... OH MY GOD - I've never been so excited about eating a scrambled egg in my life! LOL

So Tuesday you know I went back to liquids only. Basically I was getting all of my protein & nutrition from Yoplait or Dannon bottled yogurt. I splurged and ate half a cup of pureed potato soup both nights at dinner, and it did ok too. BTW - I love HEB's baked potato soup that you get in their Cafe on the Run or whatever it's called. It's chunky with bits of bacon, cheese, and green onions in it, so I just popped it in the blender for a sec or two. Anyway... yogurt drinks and pureed potato soup were all I dared Tuesday and Wednesday. I talked to the doctor's office on Wednesday and she said the problem was either 1) my body was just cranky about the fill and needed time to adjust, or 2) they'd put too much saline in the band making the ring too tight and solid food was clogging the drain (so to speak). If it was 1) I just needed to back off solids for a day or two and slowly walk myself up to soft foods and then to regular solids. If it was 2) I wouldn't see any improvement and still wouldn't be able to eat solids a few days later. Luckily, I think it was 1). I started with cottage cheese Wednesday night - it took me an hour to eat 4 oz, but YAY I did it without pain! I was a complete moron yesterday morning - I stopped by my favorite little cafe' & coffee bar for a mocha latte, and they had freshly baked choc chip cookies. I rationalized it to myself that the cookies were soft, but I didn't think about them being all carbs - and exactly the kind I can't have. I nibbled at work and made it through half of one cookie before the pain hit, and OMG did it hit. Same as with the cottage cheese, severe chest pain and nauseau. My coworkers were so worried about me, I was sweaty & clammy and just looked awful. Luckily it passed in about 10 minutes and I threw the damn cookies away. No way Jose, not again! So I went back to my yogurts and cottage cheese for the rest of the day. I decided to go out on a limb when I got home last night and scrambled an egg... YAY - it went down with no prob at all! I was so happy I was almost giddy! Again, it took me most of an hour to eat one scrambled egg, but I don't care - I ATE AN EGG! Woohoo! So now I've moved up my list of soft foods to oatmeal. I can have oatmeal as long as it's really watery. That's not the most appetizing thing in the world, but I don't care. I'M EATING OATMEAL! LOL Go me! I'm so excited!

Lap-Band Issues

Warning... TMI ahead...

The tech told me yesterday when she did my fill that I'd really be able to feel a restriction this time. She said that for some reason, everyone's first fill doesn't really do anything. I think your body is still trying to get used to it, plus the band's never been filled before -- I don't know, whatever. That explains A LOT though because I have been able to eat way more than I expected to. I was able to eat whole McD's Happy Meals and such -- WAY more than I should have been. I even gained 3 lbs - not good!

Anyway, she said I could feel the restriction and HOLY CRAP was she right! Per her instructions, I stuck with liquids only yesterday - liquid yogurt, milk, and potato soup put in the blender. I could move up to soft foods today, so I tried a little cup of cottage cheese this morning. OH NO - bad idea! I don't know if I was taking too big of bites (I thought I was just nibbling), the amount in general (half of an individual serving cup), or it was just too much food for me right now. Another possibility is that she filled my band TOO much and it's too tight for anything more than liquids to pass.

Whatever happened, the cottage cheese made me deathly ill. OMG did I hurt! So now I can officially say that I've been sick from my lap-band. I was so unique that I hadn't puked so far - apparently it's common until you get everything adjusted correctly & your body settles. This is NOT fun - I'm scared to eat now! Of course I know I have to, but yeesh! So, I've taken a step back and am on just liquids again for the day, and I have a call in to my doc to talk about it.

Just forewarning for all of you... I get VERY cranky & bitchy when I can't eat, so watch out!

Burger King Coffee

Why... why... WHY...

I've been stopping at Burger King for a large coffee most mornings recently on my way to work. They offer "turbo coffee" - my kind of coffee, it could practically walk away on its own! (anyway... ) So, I go through the drive-thru and order a large black turbo coffee - no cream or sugar packets please. Every day they put the coffee cup in a bag & hand it to me. Why on earth would they do that?! I practically spill the stuff EVERY time I grab it. Plus I immediately take it out of the bag & put it in my cup holder, wad up the bag & throw it on the floorboard. I know I know -- I'm way too anal and think way too much about these things, but it just makes me wonder WHY every single time!

Old LSU Picture 1992

I HAD to post this picture! My friend Nissa found this old pic of us while at LSU. OH MY GOD! I don’t remember even taking this pic, but isn’t it just the best?! LOL It was taken at the Christmas dance hosted by our dorm – East Leville and our brother dorm – West Leville. All I really remember about that night was dancing to Achy Breaky Heart and Boot Scoot Boogie with this guy – Bob. The funny thing is that I just ran into Bob in November at a friend’s wedding – actually Liz’s wedding (back right in the pic). We’re all three all grown up now… but isn’t just a blast to look back sometimes and “remember when”?


In picture: Sitting on Santa’s lap – Wendy on left, Nissa on the right. Back row – Heather, Chantal, & Liz.

Weight Loss Update - 2nd Fill

I had my second Lap-Band fill/adjustment this morning. They did it at the surgical center instead of the doc's office this time, and I swear I'm never having it done at the doc's again! Don't get me wrong, he's really good at what he does, but he doesn't tell you anything. It's just wham bam & it's over - you're out the door! Did I explain all this before? Oh well - if so, you're going to get it again... I went in & laid down on the table - he told me to do half of a crunch & hold it - he pushed around on my belly until he found the port - once he found that, he inserted the needle (here's the gross part) and fished around inside until he pierced the port - then he added some saline, pulled the needle out & I was done! I swear it was 5 - 10 minutes tops! He gave me a cup of water to drink before I left & then I was free to go home!

Today was totally different... First off, two techs do it. I laid on the table & the first one pushed around until she found the port - she inserted an external port/tube, so she wouldn't have to poke me more than once - I stood up & walked over to a fluoroscope machine (kind of like a rapid picture xray machine) and they positioned me so we could see my abdomen/lap band on a computer screen (this was REALLY cool btw) - the 2nd tech gave me a wonderful shot glass of barium to drink and we watched on the screen as it went down & through my stomach (oh so cool!) - the 2nd tech took a series of pics showing the barium - the 1st tech was able to tell by looking at the xray pic and by the speed the barium went through my lap band ring, how much saline she needed to add - after injecting some saline, they gave me another wonderful shot of barium (which tastes like really chalky pina colada blech) and we watched that go down - apparently everything was right on track then so I was done! She took the port out, slapped a band-aid on me and I was on my way!

She told me how much saline she added and how much total I have now, but of course I'd forgotten before I'd even left the center! Oh well. She said that I should be really able to tell a difference this time. The first adjustments almost do nothing at all - you really don't feel a difference, and you can still eat A LOT. I know - I've been eating everything these days it seems. I actually managed to gain about 3 lbs the last few weeks. Luckily now I'll be back on track, and losing 2 lbs a week again. The worst part about it all is that she said I probably won't be able to handle bread anymore. Aw man! I've been eating just about all the bread and any kind I want! This is going to suck! But, again oh well... we do what we must to be healthy & pretty!

Christmas Decorations Part 4

I swear - my neighbors are the biggest bunch of bah-humbugs in the world! Our house is the only house on our street (out of about 20) that has outside Christmas decor. A couple of years ago the whole street was decorated. There were lights on the houses, big bows on the gas lamps, and signs or figures in the yards. Well about half of the houses were sold this past year, and I guess the newbies just aren't that festive. Oh well - it makes me feel good that when you turn the corner on my street, you see my house all lit up with Santa in his airplane out front. It's like a beacon in the dark night! Fa la la! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Madness

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a few days, things are beyond chaotic around my house. I'm going nuts trying to decorate & get ready for Christmas. Plus we're having a garage sale on Saturday, so I have boxes and boxes of Christmas crap from the attic & garage sale crap spread all over my house. I spent all last weekend sorting through it all. I asked my husband how could my grandmother make it look so easy -- it seemed that you woke up one morning and the house had been magically turned into a fantasy winter wonderland. He said she was a GRANDMOTHER - taking care of the house & family were her full-time job. She had the time to spend hours putting things together & decorating. She wasn't working 40 hours a week at an office, taking care of a family & household, AND trying to start a new business all at the same time. Oh yeah - that IS what I'm doing isn't it? Well that makes more sense now. So, I scale back on the Christmas decorations and do a little more shopping online instead of in the mall... every little bit helps. I just need to breathe and remember this is time for family & friends.. It's still completely magical when seen through my son's eyes. I just need to take a step back and look at it all from his perspective.