Whoa! Who's That Chick?!

Whew! It's been a bit of a whirlwind since I posted that I wouldn't be blogging for awhile.

After the break-in it was rather jarring and hard to calm down and be excited about anything.  But it was really easy to be upset about a lot of things. So here is a re-cap of the good and the bad things that happened since I last blogged.

After the break-in we were scrambling around to protect our identities because one of the laptops that was stolen had our recently completed taxes on them, as well as some other documents that were useable for stealing identities. We also had to clean up the mess they left behind, then the mess the police made trying to help catch the guy.

Adam had recently decided to leave working on his PhD full time and find a job. He was on an interview when the bastards broke in in February. A month later he was offered all three jobs that he interviewed for, and he accepted the place he was most excited about. I'm very happy to report that he loves his job and he can't imagine being anywhere else.  He can't believe that he's been there 6 months already.

In March I was selected to interview at a non-profit. At the end of March they offered me the job and I accepted. It is a great job, a new position, and I love it. It's a very small office but we are doing good work. I've been there for 5 months and I can't believe it either! We're doing a lot of exciting things and hopefully there will be room for even more expansion soon!

Around the same time however, we learned some bad news. My Dad had been diagnosed with cancer. Cancer sucks. They caught it very early and he's going to be fine. At his last check he was cancer free. So, he's been cancer free for close to four months now.

Once Adam accepted the offer for his job, we started looking for a house.  We found one, made an offer, then another, the second offer was accepted and after many issues with our loan officer being incompetent, we closed on a single story ranch house with a full basement in a suburb of Lansing on Adam's birthday. It is a fantastic house and we love living here. How we moved in was very complicated, because we had planned to stay out our lease at our rental house on Lansing's east side.

And then it was burglarized again.

The second burglary happened the Monday after Adam's birthday, which also was the Monday after we closed on the house.  We didn't spend another night in the house. We stayed with some friends in East Lansing for two weeks, and moved out the Saturday after the second break-in, and into a storage unit and into the sun room of our new house. The former owners were kind enough to let us move a bunch of our stuff into the sun room while they were still living here.  After two weeks with our friends, we decided we didn't want to impose on our friends for too long, because we weren't sure when we'd be able to get into the new house. So we moved into a dog friendly hotel near our new house for two weeks.

Thanks to my father-in-law, we had installed a security camera system after the first break-in and were able to give the footage to the police which aided them in catching the kid who broke in. I can't say anything else because the court case is still in progress.

It was a very stressful time in our lives and we are glad to be past it.

We've been living here for four months and I think it's starting to sink in that we get to be here, that this place is ours (and the credit union's) and we just can't believe it. We are close to being done with furnishing the house, and there are curtains and shelves up and as many candles as I can get in!


Unfortunately, during this time, I also learned that a childhood friend was losing her second battle with cancer. This has been incredibly hard on her, her family and friends and I am kind of in shock. You don't expect to lose friends when you're 25. I hope that she beats this thing every day, but I cry a lot about it too, when I'm not in numb shock. Cancer really sucks.

That pretty much sums up the highs and lows of the last 6-ish months. I am hoping to get back on a regular schedule of blogging, but it won't be 5 days a week. I also have to fix how this blog looks in Chrome on Mac, because it looks funky.

Hug your loved ones, and tell them you care.

Here's a cute picture of Tesla.

A Look Back At the Firsts - Nostalgia Monday

Today is the first day of classes for my alma mater, Central Michigan University.  I had a great four years there, and I have no regrets.  I miss the wonderful people I met and I won't forget the great experiences I had there.

Andrew, chillin' in the ATEP lab

The cast and crew of Dead Man's Cell Phone

Some of the class of Irish Theatre History 2011 in Ireland, the night we did Caley Dancing

But I want to post a little nostalgia about the firsts for my that happened while I was there.

At Central I had my first apartment, that is now a parking lot instead.  Here, Adam gave me my claddaugh ring, as a promise ring.  I had my second apartment on campus too, and this apartment is where my wonderful boyfriend of 3 1/2 years proposed to me.

This building is also now a parking lot.  If you drive down Washington, through the center of campus, past the EHS building, the parking lot between EHS and Washington is where the two buildings I first lived in on my own used to stand.

While at Central I met two of my best friends, Courtney and Nicole.

Both of whom were bridesmaids in our wedding.  Melissa (one of my BFFs from my childhood) joined us when she came to CMU for grad school and Nicole introduced us to Lee.

Melissa (MOH1) and I on Adam's and my wedding day

L-R: Nicole, Courtney (holding Bauer), Me (please excuse my crazy eyes, I was trying not to blink) and Lee.  Our last Christmas with all of us in Michigan.

We used to have weekly breakfast gatherings where I would cook breakfast and we'd all hangout and eat and have a great time with friends.  This was a change from our weekly dinners we had the previous semester.

One of the biggest firsts while I was in Mount Pleasant:

Adam and I moved in together.

We moved in together the summer after we got engaged/summer before we got married.

And this summer we had to say good bye to it, two years after we moved in.

 Our tiny kitchen

It was remodeled about two months before we moved.

Looooong hallway that looked so nice when I decorated for Christmas.  I had a lot of fun with different things in this hallway.

The office

The office continued

We had so much closet space in this place.

First bathroom

connected by the shower/tub to 

the bathroom that connected to our bedroom

See? Seriously tons of closet space!

The room seems so much smaller without our stuff in it.

It was out this window that there was a great field where we played frisbee a lot.

Then we head back down the hall to our living room/dining room.

This apartment complex wasn't the best, but it was our first, together.  We came home to this apartment after our wedding, it was the first address we had on our drivers licenses that wasn't our parents' addresses.  We came home from our honeymoon to this apartment, and from our first wedding anniversary celebration.

So much happened here, it was hard to leave.  It felt like home.

Sorry for the quality, light was bad and I was trying not to cry until after the picture.

But today, I hope that even though the faculty is on strike, that every student's college experience at Central is as amazing as mine was and they have a lot of phenomenal firsts.  And I want to thank the Faculty for my experience. Though I didn't graduate with an ATEP degree, I learned loads from the ATEP faculty.  And the Theatre, Interpretation and Dance faculty made my experience with the theatre program one of the best times in my life.  I learned so much in class, working shows (whether I was crewing or in them), and about myself.  I loved every minute of my theatre major.  The friends I made, the people I met, thank you for my great experience at Central.

Fire Up Chips!

----

Thanks to Katie, Tim, Nicole, Lee and Titus Photography for some of the photos in this post, the rest are taken by me.

Why Structure is Important. Very Important. For Me.

For the last twenty years, I have been living my life on a semester based year.  That's a long time.

Now I that I have graduated, I no longer live my life based on semesters.  It's weird.  But I have been trying to get into a rhythm, a routine to keep me from wasting time while I look for a job.

I get up sometime between 8 and 9 am, if I sleep til 10, the rest of the day just disappears and I don't get anything done.  I eat breakfast and on Monday/Wednesday/Friday I wait an hour or so to digest and then I go to the gym to workout, shower, eat lunch and blog.  And after I eat lunch, I get really sleepy.  I have been trying to keep from succumbing every day, but today it's extra difficult.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are difficult, because yoga is at 7:30p.  I have no real structure on those days.
Those two days, and M/W/F afternoons are really where the time suck happens, because I don't have anything planned.  I try and keep busy with projects around the house. Like, making a new papasan chair cushion or a case for my kindle, unpacking things and getting ready for Courtney's Bridal Shower and Bachelorette Party.  But eventually, you just plain run out of stuff to do.

I need to find a job.  I am running out of things to do around here, and it's beginning to drive me mad.

I am trying to not get to the point of boredom, but I feel it's not far off.

Structure, for me is so important.  And if I had kids I would be able to have time to help them learn new things, and do all kinds of stuff, but that ship will not come into the harbor for several years.  With structure, deadlines and projects, I feel productive.  And it doesn't hurt to get paid for those things.

In the mean time I will spend my time working out, blogging, watching movies and reading lots of books!

And job hunting.

It Works! It Really Does!

As those of you who follow Weight Watchers® know, they just unveiled their PointsPlus™system, the biggest change in their system in 13 years.  And those of you who read my blog know that I have not actually attended a meeting in person in several months, but I was still trying to follow the plan on my own.

Well, with this change, that has become impossible (the following the plan on my own, not the attending the meetings, my schedule is what prevents THAT.)  Even though I wasn't going to meetings, I was still on the Weight Watchers® mailing list.  With their new unveiling they were running a special that you could either do a month of meetings for $50 or 3 months online for the same.  So, duh, I did three months of online, way better value, so I could get a handle on the new program.

So far, these are the changes: The old system for weekly food points was based on Calories, Fat and Fiber.  The new system is based on Fat, Carbs, Protein and Fiber.  The activity points still look at the same things, activity length and intensity, but I am NOT a math whiz, so I don't know how it's different on the inside.  You also get more Daily Points and I think that the extra Weekly Allowance is tailored to you.  For example, I now get 32 points a day and 49 points for a Weekly Allowance, instead of the 26 and 35, respectively, I had before.


I also joined Fat Cyclist's campaign to lose 10 lbs by Christmas.


I am off to a good start.  Since Monday, when I re-joined Weight Watchers®, til today, I lost 3.2 lbs.  The first weigh in for Fat Cyclist's thing is Monday, so hopefully I will keep it up!  With that 3.2 lbs down, I hit my 10% loss again and I am at 25 lbs down (since Spring Break 2010).  WOO!  Of course Weight Watchers® is freaking out because it somehow got mixed up when I entered in my new starting weight.  I had just put in a guess when I re-signed up, because I was in Moore when I was doing it and not near my scale.  So when I deleted the original number and put in the actual weighed number it thought I had lost weight, even though the new number was higher and warned me about losing weight too fast.  So, when I weighed in this morning, it warned me again, thinking I had been consistently losing more than 2 lbs a week for more than five weeks.  Really confusing.  But don't worry, I'm being healthy about it, I ate all of my Daily Points every day and I ate most of my Weekly Allowance.  (I LOVE FRENCH SILK ICE CREAM!!! ...low fat, of course...and pie....with Cool Whip Free....)

Also, we decorated for Christmas, and I'll post a picture of that with some stuff about that too.  And the end of the school year will get its own post too.  And Everyman.  And P90X, when I restart that on Monday.

Right, well, yes, 3.2 lbs down, ~60* to go!

*That may change.  Depending on how happy I am when I get into the healthy weight range for my height, which is a 30 pound spread.  So, if I am happy with how I look and feel healthy at 140 or 150 or somewhere in between, then I will switch to maintaining.  A whole new monster - just in time for Courtney's Wedding in June!! :D

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year I have so much to be thankful for, some of which I didn't have last year!

I am thankful for a wonderful husband, who is always there for me and felt like my husband well before the ink was dry on our marriage license.  He has been amazing and supportive through all of the changes that I have been going through the last year.

I am thankful for some amazing friends that I have, four of which (Nicole, Melissa, Courtney and Lee!) I will get to celebrate Christmas with early on Sunday.  They are there for me always and there is never a time that those four ladies ever are more than a phone call away.  Now that I've singled out those four, I'd like to tell you how thankful I am for the other friends that I have too.  New friends and old, life in Moore would be very boring without them.

I am thankful that changing my major didn't turn out to be a huge mistake.  I have never been so happy.  I have missed class like four times the entire semester and every one was because I was sick.  I have learned so much in the last year about myself, acting and theatre in general.  I love going to class, I learn so much and I love to study for the classes I have.  I am passionate about what I am learning and that is so important. 

I am thankful for my family.  My Mom and Dad, Matt, Zack, my parents-in-law and my sister-in-law Liz, extended family and all of the puppies in both families.  I won't get to see everyone over the next four days, one of my Uncle's and his family are moving and another Uncle's family is going to Chicago, but I am thankful for such a big family, even if it is a wee bit stressful at times.

I am thankful for all the other exciting things that are going on in my life right now, which I can't go into detail here, yet.  But as excited as I am about right now, I am even more excited for the future, including graduation.

I am thankful for all of you who come here from Marriage Confessions (You are amazing, Katie, and I am so glad I found your blog!), Fat Cyclist, Wide Lawns (congrats on your wee one being brought safely into this world!) and other blogs I comment on.  And those of you who come from Twitter or Facebook, thank you for reading and putting up with my links.

I hope you all have a safe, wonderful, Happy Thanksgiving, from my little family to yours.  See you Monday!

P.S. Go vote at the Pepsi Refresh Project for the Williamston Theatre!