life
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Sledding!
Okay so I couldn’t post that I went sledding and there is video and not upload the video! Enjoy!
Happy Friday!
~k
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Snow day part deux (365 challenge)
Work has been crazy busy the last week or so and I haven’t had a chance to write about the snowstorm that hit Raleigh last week. Predictions were 4-8″ and I would say we definitely got 4″ plus a little more.
The snow was due to start around lunch on Wed so Matt decided to ride in to work with me and work from the Hunt Library on campus. It is about 2 blocks from my office and he hadn’t been there yet. A little before noon he walked back to my office and waited for me to get out of a meeting. I didn’t really take the snow seriously and about 12:15 he texted me and told me we had to leave that the snow had started. At this point my meeting was running long anyway so I grabbed my things and left.
By the time we got out the door the snow was already starting to stick to the ground. We hopped in the car and headed home. We got to Western Blvd and sat through the light a few times before I encouraged Matt to hop the curb and go a different way. Traffic was already starting to suck and the snow was sticking more and more. Within 15 mins or so of the start the roads were covered. We finally got off campus only to get stuck about 8 miles from the house. A drive that normally takes me about 5 minutes took us almost 45! Not to mention I was starving at this point. We finally got past all traffic but the roads were getting worse. About an hour and a half after we left the office, we finally got home. We only had one instance of sliding, like really sliding while trying to stop.
The snow continued into the night before turning to sleet and freezing rain and by the time we went to bed we had about 4″ of snow with ice piling on top. Clearly we worked from home on Thursday and Friday. I even managed to go sledding Thursday afternoon. Matt was a snow humbug and wouldn’t sled but he did take a few videos of me sledding. 🙂 It was fun!
By Saturday the roads were back to normal and I made Matt get me out of the house. At this point I am DONE praying for snow! 😉 I’ve gotten my “several inches” and I am ready for spring.
Now for the photo overload! Enjoy!
Happy Thursday!
~k
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Snow Day – 365 Challenge Week 5
I’m totally cheating and using some of the snow pics from last week for my challenge. 🙂
Last week the news started calling for snow on Tuesday and into Wednesday morning. I got to work and waited for the flurries to start. By 4:00 pm there was still no snow in the Triangle. I waited another half hour and decided to head home anyway. Matt and I laid on the couch around 5 and I told him it would be snowing when we woke up. Sure enough around 6 it was snowing. It snowed for most of the night however when we woke up on Wednesday we only managed to get about 1.5 inches. Since there was snow on the ground, there was no way I was going in to work. I emailed my manager to let him know I’d be working from home. I threw on some clothes and headed outside to take a few pics before the snow was ruined!
Matt is a snow fuddy duddy and wouldn’t go out and play with me but around 10:30 he decided to de-snow my car and clear off the driveway with his new snow shovel! Hehe. I bought him a snow shovel for Christmas. 🙂 Anyway, I decided to go out and help him but boy was it cold. At this point it was only in the teens out. I helped clear off some of my car and then took a few more pics. It was a gorgeous day but it was so cold out. I finally headed back inside to do more work and to warm up.
Thursday I went back to work, though I went in a little late since the roads were still a little icy. Even this weekend we still had some snow in our yard. It didn’t really all melt till the rain started last night. And while I do love me some snow, it was very very cold. I’m glad the temps rose some over the weekend.
~k
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Let it be?
Did anyone else know there is an “other” message inbox in your FB messages? Oh, you didn’t either. Well you do. Apparently this is where messages from non friends go. You can only get to this from your computer. I didn’t see it as an option on my mobile app.
I just discovered this little gem today. Come to find out I had quite a few messages dating back to 2008. Whoopsy. 😉 I’m mentioning this because there is one message I want to talk about. It was from a former best friend. When I lived in Austin this person interviewed me and when she called with the rejection, it was the nicest, best rejection ever. She said I was more than qualified but she didn’t think it was the right school for me. It was a position working in a high school helping kids with career counseling. It was also a job I’d done previously with out of school youth in Alabama.
A few months later she called me with a position working with out of school youth. I accepted and spent that summer locating kids that had fallen out of the system. I must say, I was good at this. Really good! I found kids others couldn’t find. I even tracked a kid down in Las Vegas (my prize accomplishment). Anyway, S and I became friends and then we became really good friends. We each dealt with a lot of up and downs while I lived in Austin. Eventually I moved to Raleigh and we were still great friends but things started changing. Her life was still quite dramatic and mine was starting to settle down. Eventually we had a falling out. This was 5-6 years ago and some days I miss our friendship. At this point there are no ill feelings, at least on my side, and I hope all is well with her.
Cue today. I realized I had an “others” inbox on FB and found a message from her. From 2012 She said I popped up as someone she might know and noticed I was married and she wanted to wish me well. I feel bad I never saw the message and to be honest I don’t know that I would have responded but maybe I wouldn’t have. I honestly don’t know. I started thinking about it this morning and I think I’ve decided somethings are better left alone. While I valued her friendship while I had it, she brought a lot of chaos to my life because she had a lot chaos in her life. I feel like I’ve grown so much since then and hopefully she has too but I don’t think it’s worth diving into that again. Plus that was over 2 years ago so it is really worth rehashing the past?
~k
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There are so many other things I could be writing about right now but I am stuck on something I saw on FB this morning. As I was scrolling a video started to play, I wasn’t really trying to watch it but I caught something being thrown into water. I paused for a moment and realized it was a video of a girl with a 5 gal bucket of puppies and she was throwing them in a river. My heart immediately sank and my blood started to boil. My first thought was OMG poor puppies. The next was WHAT THE HELL is wrong with people?!?!? And then I realized it wasn’t just some asshole girl, but there was someone recording the whole thing.
What is wrong with people today? Who gets joy out of something like that? More than that, how do you decide that seems like fun? There is something about people hurting innocent animals that just makes me want to hurt them back. It’s one thing to pick on someone your own size but in this case we’re talking days old puppies.
It seems like you hear so many bad stories these days of violence towards animals, or children and it makes me sick. Sick to think there are people out there who have no conscience, no morals, no regard for right or wrong. I can’t help but wonder if society itself hasn’t increased the problem with the explosion of social media. Now anyone (and everyone) can have their 5 minutes of fame especially if it’s violent.
I want to add that I hope these people are caught and thrown in jail where bad things happen to them!
~k
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It was a good fight! (Warning it’s a football post)
Last night was the BCS Championship game. My beloved Auburn Tigers miraculously made it to the final game after a crazy season. I think I mentioned I had no expectations for this season. Last year we were awful and I just hoped to win a few games. Armed with a new head coach and a new QB we had to be a little better right?
I’m not going to recap the season or even last night’s game but I want to say that Auburn played their hearts out last night. They were ahead for most of the game and pretty much dominated the first half. A late touchdown at the end of the half swung the momentum back to FSU and they seemed to keep it up until the end.
With a minute left Auburn was leading by 4 but a drive down the field and a costly penalty resulted in a FSU touchdown to put them ahead. Unfortunately there wasn’t much Auburn could do with only seconds left in the game.
I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty bummed we didn’t pull out the win. Not because the guys didn’t try because they did. They played their hearts out and you can’t fault that. But losing sucks! Even when you play hard, or maybe even more because you played hard. In the end, Auburn did what I wanted and that was, show up and play hard and it was great game. A nail biter but a great game! I couldn’t be PROUDER to BE AN AUBURN TIGER!
WAR EAGLE!
~k
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Oh Bobbi….
Before Christmas, I booked a “makeover” at the Bobbi Brown counter. Even after the disastrous foundation debacle I wanted to see what a pro could do. I was able to book a 4:30 appt on Friday the 20th. I get to the mall early and walk around for a few minutes. I pass by the Bobbi Brown store and notice it seems eerily empty but I’m early so I head to Belk for a few minutes. About 10 minutes before my appt I head back to the Bobbi Brown store only to find out the makeovers are happening at Belk! Ugh! Back I go.
I get to the BB counter and am given a makeup artist. She’s asks what I’d like to focus on so I say a smokey eye. Now I’m a little thrown because I thought this would be a full makeover but whatever, if someone can teach me how to do a good blown out smokey eye then I’m down. Plus I’ve already gotten the Stila foundation so I’m not sure it’s worth checking out the BB again anyway.
I sit down and the girl hands me some eye makeup remover. After a few minutes and several cotton balls later I still can’t get my mascara off so I comment that it’s not coming. She then realizes I have on waterproof and gives me something that will actually remove it. By this time my eyes are starting to red from so much rubbing. Once I’m done she begins working on my smokey eye. She starts, removes, starts again, removes again, thinks for a while and starts over, again! Then she grabs another girl. At this point she tells me she’s “hit a wall.” Okay then. The other girl comes over and offers a few suggestions. I also pipe in and tell her she can use black on me. Despite my fair skin I can pull off black eye shadow. Actually the darker the better. It makes my green eyes look bluer.
She finally dives in using the BB Smokey Eye palette. At this point all the other makeup artists are packed up and leaving and she’s still working on my smokey eye. I didn’t have anywhere to be so I wasn’t really worried about how long it was taking but I felt bad she wasn’t done yet. Finally close to 5:30 she finishes up. I tell her it looks good and head home but really I’m not that impressed. By this time my eyes are burning and itchy from all the rubbing and removing so when I get home I take a pic and wash my face.
A few days later I decide to try my own smokey eye. I personally think it looked as good if not better than the pro. So once again I was pretty disappointed with my Bobbi Brown experience.
The top pic is from Bobbi Brown. The bottom pic is my smokey eye.
~k
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Deck the halls
The other day I received a Big Lots ad. I normally trash them straight away but the subject caught my eye. Christmas stuff was on sale. I’m looking for a new tree so I decided to check out the ad. While I didn’t see any trees I felt would work, I did see a pair of 4.5 foot lighted trees in urns for $35.00. Umm sold! I called the Big Lots near my office but they were out so I called the store closest to my house and they still had some in stock. I ran to Big Lots after work and picked up my new trees.
I got home and put them together and got them fluffed and ready for outside. Then Matt asks how I plan to light them. Umm, I don’t know. He’s the outside light guy! Since our timer only had one additional plug and the cords on the trees weren’t long enough I was unable to immediately plug them in. I ran to Lowes on Saturday and found a cool split plug. It’s a little bigger than we needed but I’m sure it will come in handy. I now have the icicle lights, and both trees plugged into the timer. YAY!
That left my wreath. I guess sitting in the garage for a year didn’t do much for the lights because when Matt plugged it in a few weeks ago it didn’t work. I picked up more lights and I told Matt I’d redo them yesterday. About 3 pm he grabs the wreath and starts trying to take the lights off only to realize they were clipped in place. He spent the next half hour or so taking them off while I took a quick nap. I woke to find new, working, lights on the wreath. I fluffed and secured a few of the new lights before reattaching the bow and adding a few Christmas ornaments. It’s not my best Christmas wreath by far but it will do. So now I think I have all of my Christmas stuff up and in place. With the exception of the table. I think I want to do a little more with it but I’m not sure what. I feel like table settings are my weakness.
~k
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SEC Champ to National Title
Saturday was the SEC Championship game. Third ranked Auburn played #5 Mizzou. I thought this was kind of cool considering both teams were at the bottom of their divisions last year. Both had improved and kicked ass. I’m not gonna lie, I was nervous. Mizzou is tough and I was scared the game might not go Auburn’s way. The score was back and forth and by the end of the first half, it was the highest scoring first half ever for an SEC championship game.
My Tigers hung in there and were able to pull away from Mizzou in the second half and secure the win. Then I got really nervous. One of 3 things needed to happen for Auburn to go to the National Title game: # 2 Ohio State needed to lose to #10 Michigan State, #1 Florida State needed to lose to #20-something Duke, or Ohio State AND Florida State needed to lose. Florida State losing was pretty improbable. Both Ohio State and Florida State losing also seemed never impossible so that left Ohio State losing.
Auburn had clearly played and beaten more and higher ranked teams than Ohio State (so really Auburn should have been #2 but the only way for Auburn to leapfrog OSU was to have them lose at this point.) So when the Ohio State v. Michigan State game started Matt and I were rooting for good ol’ Sparty! It was a close game but in the end Michigan State pulled out the win. Matt and I were ecstatic! This meant Auburn was going to Pasadena to play the National Title game at the Rose Bowl. It also meant Michigan State was playing Stanford at the Rose Bowl. (Just something else I thought was neat.)
Auburn has had a miraculous season. A season I never dreamed possible. After such a disappointing season last year I was just hoping for a few more wins than losses this year. Never did I believe we would end up back at the Title game. Actually it never even crossed my mind, at least not till the very end of the season.
WAR EAGLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
~k
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Happy Thanksgiving
In the spirit of the holidays I’m going to *try* to blog more. I won’t say work has settled down yet but I’m hoping it will.
Mom and dad moved into their new house about 2 weeks ago. When they found it, I told mom they were having Thanksgiving if they were in by then. They were, so we did. Mom invited Matt’s parents as well so we had a nice family Thanksgiving.
Thursday morning Matt helped me pack my car with all the things I would need to cook my dishes – mac & cheese, corn casserole, and homemade rolls. Mom picked up the rest of the items I would need for sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes. I got to their house around 10:30 and we started cooking. Well actually we walked around the house and mom showed me what she’d been up to with decorating. Then
weI started cooking. We cooked, watched TV and talked, cooked a little more and by 3:00 almost everything was ready to be put in the oven. Matt and his parent’s arrived and the ladies finished up the last of the cooking. Dad had to work till 3:00 so he fried the turkey on Wednesday however, it worked out well because we weren’t trying to cook while he was trying to cook/fry/cut a turkey.Around 5:00 everything was hot and ready to go. We had a nice dinner. After we sat around and watched football for a while. Finally around 8:30 Matt and I and his parents headed back to our house. We threw in a movie and I proceeded to pass out. Talk about tired.
Friday his parents left and I convinced Matt to run to Garden Ridge to look for a new taller Christmas tree. Little did I know, they don’t do black Friday deals! BOOO! I knew it didn’t look crazy busy when we drove up. Anyway, we found something we needed for a gift but came away empty handed on the Christmas tree.
I think Saturday needs it’s own post. 😉 If you know me you know why! WAR EAGLE!
~k
