I'm going to trun 40 this year and sometimes it bugs me and sometimes it doesn't. I think what eats people about getting older is it just makes them aware of the things that come with time. Like wrinkles and the ability not not move as fast as we once did or that our bones ache a little at the end of the day. I'm not fond of the wrinkes, but something I am happy about is the wisdom I have now. This isn't to say I am bursting with wisdom, but I see things now in a way I had never seen them before.

Just 10 short years ago, I still got upset at the past and the things that happened. And when I say past, I mean when I was 18, 19, 20. I didn't understand why I had so much heartache during that time in my life. I thought there would never be someone to love me. I ended up being totally wrong about that, but for many years, even after I was married, I let this black cloud hang over me and bring me down. I was always wondering why I hadn't had love in my life. Why had it taken so long to find someone? It was a painful time and that continued to live inside me.

It's taken 20 years to realize it was for the better that I didn't have someone in my life back then. I was just too young and naive to know how to deal with a relationship. I made a few mistakes and had I been involved with someone, I would have made many more mistakes. I hate to even imagine the mistakes. I'm better off having had things happen the way they did. And had my 40 year old self appeared to my 20 year old self as a prophet and explained this, the 20 year old would never have believed it. "Clearly this prophet is mistaken. I mean, who is better off without true love in their life?"....I would have been saying. Had the 40 year old prophet gone on to tell me I'd meet a navy man in a bar on my 21st birthday and marry him 4 years later.....well, that would have just sealed the idea that this prophet was full of crap.

So the older I get, the more I understand why things have happened and that what you think will or won't happen is too hard to judge. I'm sure in 10 years I will figure out even more things and find it easier to look back and say it's best things happened they way they did. And I will be lucky for things I never dreamed possible.

Time may not be kind to my body, but at least my mind is resting easier.

the neverending search...

I'm not sure if it's this way for guys, but for girls, finding a pair of jeans that fit is something we are always searching for. I've found a few pair that fit, but they are not perfect. I have short legs so jeans are always too long. I have started wearing platform shoes because they mostly solve the problem. However, if I want to wear flats or filp-flops, I have to wear the jeans I cut 2.5 inches off the bottoms of. So the jean thing is always an issue with me.

Imagine how excited I was to find a site that said it would find me the perfect jeans! I was on it. I entered all my information accurately and figured it would come back with one pair of jeans that were $250 bucks. To my delight, it found 42 pair of jeans and none of them were over $100!!

So check it out and see if you are delighted, too!

Find your perfect jeans

I'd like to thank the academy...

I watched the Oscars last night.....loved Ellen. She did an awesome job. So funny.

Just some stand out meoments for me:

The opening with some of the nominee outtakes were good.

Those Cirque du Soleil people behind that screen....really amazing stuff.

Ellen with Martin Scorsese.

Ellen with Clint Eastwood.

I really thought Al Gore was going to announce he was running for president!

Sherry Lansing, who won the Jean Hersholt Award, gave a great speech!

*The commercial with the elephant who gets cold proudcts for his owner....sooo cute!

Melissa Etheridge looked great while she was singing. And wow....the messages on the screen behind her were powerful.

Jennifer Hudson clearly had no idea she was going to win. She was....overwhelmed. Priceless moment for her.

The singing duet with Jack Black and Will Ferrell was entertaining.

And then.....Melissa Etheridge won even tho she was up against all those Dreamgirls songs!

Beyoncé was great on stage. And very pretty!

Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Reese Witherspoon all looked equally pretty.

Celine Dion, Kirsten Dunst, Meryl Streep and Cameron Diaz...could have looked better.

I love the minute or so long video montage clips they always show of past movies. These are some of my favorite parts of the Oscars.

That is about all I can remember.

*This technically was not part of the Oscars, but it was the first time I saw the commercial and it was totally adorable!

Happy Weekend, Everyone!

Snow White
Originally uploaded by photo kitten.

Just Stuff

This guy must really love Iron Maiden. Now, I love Oprah and all, but I would not get a tattoo of her face on my body. Seems....scary obsessive to me.

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So, as many of you know, I ride a campus shuttle to work......and you hear some interesting stuff when 4 shuttle drivers are riding on the shuttle with you. These "shuttles" are actually the same size as buses. Seems one of the shuttles caught on fire yesterday afternoon! I guess the battery started it and then, poof, it went up in flames....burned to a crisp. It had passengers and they all got off safely. I bet a few of those people bought parking passes after that experience. Also yesterday, a woman tried to cut off a shuttle in her week old Cadillac STS and the shuttle won. Totally smashed the back passenger side. That's some bad karma when that happens. She told the policeman that she was running late for a doctor appointment, says the shuttle driver.

The moral of the story....maybe get there a minute or two earlier or maybe don't get there at all.

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The Fray

The band "The Fray" has quickly become one of my favorites. Today I was listening to the song "How To Save A Life. I read the lyrics and I can usually figure out what they mean. It sounded like two guys who were friends and something happened and one of them headed down a bad path and the other one tried to help him but wasn't able to. I was curious so I went poking around on the internet to see what I could find.

This was found on Wikipedia.

About the song "How To Save A Life"

According to lead singer and songwriter Isaac Slade, the song was composed and influenced by his experience while working as a mentor at a camp for troubled teens:

“One of the kids I was paired up with was a musician. Here I was, a protected suburbanite, and he was just 17 and had all these problems. And no one could write a manual on how to save him."

Slade claims that the song is about all of the people that tried to reach out to the boy but were unsuccessful. As Slade says in an interview, his friends and family approached him by saying, "Quit [the problem behavior] or I won't talk to you again," but all he needed was some support.

The verses of the song describe an attempt by an adult to confront a troubled teen. In the chorus, the singer laments that he himself was unable to save a friend because he did not know how.

While this was the original intent of the song, the band has opened the song to interpretation. They created a website where fans were welcome to submit music videos they had made for the song. This arose from the response that Slade got from the song:

“I got a lot of e-mails about it. One kid died in a car accident, and I guess it had been the last song he downloaded from his computer. They played it at his funeral, and some of his friends got Save a life tattooed on their arms. The response has been overwhelming."

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The Lyrics

Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
And you begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

As he begins to raise his voice
You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you've followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he'll say he's just not the same
And you'll begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

How to save a life
How to save a life

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

How to save a life

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day
Originally uploaded by photo kitten.

stuff

I can't remember the last time I had a doughnut.....long time. However, I may have to try these this weekend.

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Greg got me a Cricut (pronunciation: cricket, like the bug) for Valentine's Day. What's a Cricut? It's this thing that looks like a small printer but it cuts out words from paper you feed into it. Hard to explain. If you really want to see what it does, you can go here and watch a rather long and kind of annoying video of soccer moms having a scrapbook fest. They claim it's ridiculously easy to use.....we'll see. So far I have done a few test cuts and I was only slightly impressed. But things grow on me, and reading the manual might help, too :)

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I'm well now....over my cold. But now Greg is sick. And he seems worse than I was. He stayed home Friday and yesterday and went to work today....but they sent him home. He's had a fever pretty much the whole time. Poor Puppy.....I can sympathise since I know how it is. I just hope he does not give it back to me.


Okay, that's it for now I guess.

cute thing for the day

Oh my goodness....how CUTE is this!? A baby goat!!

Warning, it's a goat giving birth....but it's not yucky or anything.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WnIzxfUl5rQ

Misc

Finally feeling better today. Not well, but at the turning point I think. I always seem to get really sick at least once a year...hopefully this is it.

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Abby and Greg have this "thing". Every night, and I do mean every night, they go thru this ritual where she gets on his bookself that is packed with computer junk and knocks things off...usually CD's and that kind of thing. I'm in bed and I can hear it all going on. She knocks something off and he grumbles and tells her to stay off his stuff and puts it back. Then, 10 minutes later...knocks more stuff off. I hear her little squeeks....she squeeks when she knows she's done something bad. He sighs heavily.....puts them back and tells her she's being a bug. Then, she sneezes on something and all I hear is an exasperated, "Abby!".....and she squeeks innocently. He banishes her from the room and she comes in and sits on the floor next to the bed looking up at me.

"Daddy isn't mad at you....he just does not like it when you sneeze on his stuff" I tell her. "Course, if it wasn't so dusty in there, you might not sneeze on his stuff to begin with" I finish.

She thinks about that for a few minutes and then heads back in and jumps up on his desk and I hear him calling her a munchkin between all the lovey dovey kisses he's planting on her head. Once she's sure he isn't mad....it's back to the bookshelf. Moments later I hear something fall off the shelf and I remind him that he's the one that suggested we keep her.

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I think these heart necklaces are pretty and I love the idea of the inscription on the back.

http://www.john-christian.com/hitrdihe.html

However, pretty expensive....$790 is the least expensive and that is only for sterling silver! For that price, I could fly to Chicago and see the Oprah show. This coming from the girl with a $350 purse.....so I can't really talk. That's half way to Chicago and it isn't even sterling silver! Oh, but don't get me wrong, I do love my purse and I'm very happy with it :)

Chocoholic?

I took the chocolate IQ test even tho I am not a chocoholic. I got half of the answers right and didn't use the hints! It says this about me:"You're in the Dark. You know the difference between some chocolates but when it comes to rich history you’re totally in the dark."

Take it and see how you do.

Weekend Report

My weekend was mostly spent in bed. I'm sick with a bad cold :(

I did watch the first part of the Super Bowl, but then after the half time show, I went to bed. How perfect was it that Prince got to sing Purple Rain in the rain? I thought it was a good show considering the opening show. That was kinda boring with all the Cirque du Soleil stuff. Maybe it was better in person where you could see it all and not just parts of it like us at home.

And then there was the National Anthem.

*wrinkles brow in confusion*

What was that? I mean, it didn't even sound like Billy Joel! It was pretty bad....maybe the worst I've seen. And if you know me at all, you know that is my favorite part of the event. Oh well. The Chargers were not playing so it sucked anyway.

I will leave you all with this.....the National Anthem sung by The Grateful Dead. Trust me....it's good and they sound way more alive than Billy did.

Have a good weekend!

Originally uploaded by photo kitten.