Hello Tiffy!

Sigh, what a crazy couple weeks it has been. I have been working my ass off, with a nice sick break in between. The work emails have been coming at full speed and since we have some new developments and features coming out on the site tomorrow I will not have any free time for a while, yet! Oh but my paychecks have been extra nice lately so I have been paying off some of my cards and my car so this is all good news.

I joined a gym yesterday a really nice one! So we have a nice gym here at Riata the only problem with it is that it is big, but not big enough for the 9 communities to share. I found one right by work called Planet Fitness that is only $10.00 a month and it is a brand new location so it is super clean and all the stuff is new. I love that. I joined yesterday but today was my first day there. Boy, am I out of shape!! I did 20 minutes on this cool machine which was actually fun and challenging. (Hence the 20 minutes before my lungs gave out on me) It is almost like a cross between an elliptical trainer and a treadmill, its fun and you just kind of swing there. Trust me, it does the job. I worked on my upper arms as well. Most of the lower body stuff was taken, and I was so tired from my big 20 minutes that I was ready to go home. LOL.

At least I started something again! I was loving my 24 hour Fit-Lite circuit training gym in the Bay Area, and this place even has a whole FitLite-esque circuit training area inside a full sized gym - yes, for $10 a month no contract.

I am loving that. I am hoping to get into a bikini this year (which would be a stretch to lose 45 lb by september but I can dream can’t I?

I am a size 16! By the way that is a good thing!

Oh. My. God. I stopped at Ross tonight on the way home from work, hoping to find something relatively-valentiney for J. I was floored by the bargains there, I mean call it the recession, call it that I don’t get out much but Holy. Shit. I found this gigantic beautiful expensive looking wall mirror (something I have wanted for a while) for 40 dollars, a set of alcohol glasses for all different kinds of drinks for 29.99 (we have never had a champagne flute, or an approrpiate glass for anything except wine or beer), a Breakfast At Tiffany’s retro poster in a frame for 19.99 (Just in case you wondered, I have ALWAYS wanted that in my house or apartment!), and big, nice-looking area rugs for 10-20 dollars.

Alas, I was a good girl, I know I don’t need to buy it “today” but I made a serious mental note and I left thinking about how 100 dollars at Ross may very well decorate my apartment and finally make it homey-feeling. We are in a bit more need of a new couch but we have so few decorations and we both want just a smidge of personality here. We have one big blue flower framed picture that I got from Ikea some years ago (that I love) and 3 colorful vases that I got at Target (that I also love, despite there being no real reason to have them except they look all moderny)

So, that is my excitement for the week, I may go back and drool some more tomorrow night even.

I watched part of the Grammy Awards tonight and I enjoyed all of the oldies being performed. I don’t know if this is normal since I normally don’t watch, but I felt good feelings hearing The Four Tops songs, Beatles songs and even Neil Diamond songs it was cool. I find it kind of interesting because I really did grow up on the oldies. Basically in a way I grew up on what my parents grew up on. I listened to the (now banished to AM-only) Bay Area station KFRC 99.7 FM with my parents. In my room it would be going 24/7. I got my friends into it, and we would have sleepovers at my house and call the 800 request line and talk to the DJs all the time. It was uber fun for me. I probably didn’t start to discover my own preference or opinion about music until I was about 12 years old. (Then, MTV tainted me with Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre but that is another blog). So anyway, the oldies are the ones that truly remind me of childhood. Pure innocent childhood. I remember that most of my time between being 9 and 11 was spent playing Mega Man or Super Mario 3 and I would wait for the radio station to play certain oldies songs, almost as if it was a new song. One I particularly remember getting into was the song Heat Wave, because it was used for a Dominos Pizza commercial and suddenly I was into that song. I, having no brothers or sisters, had quite lax parents, so Fridays and Saturdays I could sit in my room and stay up all night if I wanted to. Most of the time I did just that, and I remember calling up to request Heat Wave all the time.

What got me on this rant, again..?.. Oh yeah, Grammy’s. Well they were not bad and they have earned some respect from me for kickin’ it old school for once. However, I still don’t see what people like Lil’ Wayne for. If he got rid of some of the facial tattoos, maybe I could respect him. A little.

Today was icy! It was the first time that I was threatened with “black ice” - there’s a new one! When it gets cold here it gets really cold - not chicago or New York cold but the tempature drops and everything gets coated in a sheet of ice! I was worried about driving today to work, and when we went out to the car this morning J’s car was covered with a layer of ice as well. It looked neat, but we couldn’t even get the door open at first! So, we took my car, which was nice, cause it was encapsulated in the garage and was a very nice temparature, and dry to boot.

Luckily, we did not hit any black ice on the way to work but driving on the freeway at 40 miles per hour is something else. Then, you have the assholes that see the big gaps people are trying to leave between the cars and decide to weave in and out at 65 MPH. Gotta love that.

Yes, I am alive. I have just been kinda… I don’t know insane lately? Not exactly busy per se, more just, lost in my own world? I guess it happens to us all. I have been mostly working the 2 jobs, daydreaming about career aspirations, and playing lots of videogames. Those things are my 3 favorite things right now but my favorite is playing the video games
I lost 10 pounds in 16 days on South Beach. Once I entered the phase where you can re-introduce carbs it has stopped, but I am confident it will slowly fall off after my body adjusts. I was hoping for it to continue rapidly but I am pretty proud that I accomplished 2 weeks of no alcohol and no carbs and no sugar. I am now only eating Whole Wheat flour based carbs and red wine if I want some drinks. I am surprised how much I have adapted to it, and it is a fun thing to learn about, too. However, since I am kind of new to it I didn’t realize it turns your teeth blue after 2 or 3 glasses. So, everytime I would have some glasses of wine lately I would notice in the mirror my teeth were blue. I kept telling myself I was batshit crazy, and ignore it, the next day it would be gone. So I was re-assured I was batshit crazy. Last evening I saw this happen again so I finally had it. I googled the term blue teeth red wine. I was so not crazy. I also found out that it wipes off with a napkin, or brushes off. so I brushed my teeth and boy was I relieved! I have enough bad habits, coffee, smoking, oh joy, red wine now too.

However I do think it is REALLY neat that I can tell you what a shiraz looks and smells and tastes like, or a merlot, or a cabernet, it is a neat little hobby. My joke is that South Beach Diet will make me a sommalier. Of course, this is an outright lie because sommaliers don’t drink bottles of 6 dollar wine I would bet (Oh how I miss you, Two-Buck Chuck!) Oh - not to mention the fact that the good sommaliers can tell you what kind of wood the cask it was fermented in was Those people are seriously bad ass.

I am still daydreaming about career stuff, but I am also extremely appreciative that I have a job right now. I just read a story about these people going psycho murderers on their families just because they got laid off. It is so sad. I have had life experiences that taught me absolutely no amount of money is worth being miserable. On the flip side, I have been the person that takes a calculator to the grocery store to make sure I got exactly enough food to match what was in my bank account. To the penny. Life is hard, and low to no money really makes it harder. It is easy to imagine that life is such hell when you must stay home all the time and never have any fun but it is all really what you make of it.

My friend Angela is coming out to visit me in Austin in 2 weeks and I am so excited! Too bad she picked the most frigid boring month in Austin, but again, it is what you make of it! We msis eachother and we will have fun, even if it is like, ridiculously cold. I really miss Summer. 

Hi,

I have not said hi in a while, so hi there. Nothing new to report. hope to say hi again soon.

6.5 pounds lost in 2 weeks. Not bad!!!

I am so frustrated with bills and credit, I just called to pay off my remaining balance with AT&T Wireless and they tell me I broke a contract with 23 months left so I owe $229.00. I don’t remember making a contract anytime recently but the fact is when I transferred to T-Mobile I guess they had no way to know that I was breaking a contract. It would certainly be nice if it would have been communicated to m e because I thought I had been contract free for at least 9 months. I swear, I will never be on the up & up, it feels like every month I feel good about paying the bills cause I am getting some out of the way and then every few months I get these lovely surprises. I hate it! And I didn’t win the Mega Millions last night either, dammit!