Life in Beta

For the heck of it, I decided to get myself a new piercing — a frontal helix — for my birthday. [For anyone who might care, it was done by Tim at Ink Assassins. Both he and their other piercer, Brandon, are awesome.)

I figure it’s the last year of my 20s … might as well do something silly and fun, right? (Shhh… don’t tell but am loving it way too much and it’s kind of re-ignited my love for piercings. But I’ll behave, I swear. Ha ha.)

Mike, Little Man and I spent some time being silly and playing around with Photo Booth on my Mac this afternoon…

Perfect way to amuse a toddler for quite a while!! Daddies seem pretty entertained with it too, actually.  (Okay, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I got a lot of laughs out of it as well.) Hehe.

The snow here is getting ridiculous. It’s not as if that much fell (we have certainly had worse), but it’s as if the city just decided to not bother plowing because the forecast is calling for temperatures near 50-degrees on Monday. Meanwhile the mayor declared a “snow emergency” and all the secondary roads are atrocious. The parking lots of businesses aren’t much better. People are getting stuck everywhere.

We managed to dig ourselves out and we went out to dinner tonight at Boston’s (my employer had given me a $50 gift card for my birthday!). Then we did some shopping at Target. (Gosh I love that store, and I hardly ever go anymore, so it was a treat.)

Little Man insisted on pushing the cart. (It looked more like he was trying to do chin-ups on it!) I used the gift card my friend Erica sent for my birthday to get a new wallet and purse (on clearance!). The wallet is especially fantastic because it actually has places for all my debit, credit, shopper-discount, insurance etc. cards that I carry around with me everywhere I go. I feel so darn organized now!

I’ve enjoyed my Thursday and Friday off work … and love the fact that I have two more days off left to enjoy. A perfect (long) birthday weekend!

What are your weekend plans?

My weekend, in a short:

We saw two good bands at Sherlock’s Friday night: Otis and Black Lung Choir.

Little Man stayed with us most of last week and this weekend.

It’s always good having him home with us.

My poor guy has been sick all week and he seems to be getting worse, not better. Wish he’d shake whatever bug he’s managed to pick up.

We were supposed to go see a drag show (as in drag queens — *squee*!!) Sunday night, but then this happened …

(Mike took this photo earlier today and I blatantly stole it for my blog — thanks, honey!)

Sunday morning the roads were bare; it started snowing around 4:45 in the afternoon and by evening we were in full-blown blizzard mode. Mike decided it was too bad to go to the drag show {sigh, perhaps next time} so we stayed in.

(Turns out, The Zone has drag shows on the third Sunday of every month, so maybe we’ll make it next time – yay!)

And this morning there was a FOOT of snow in the driveway. Yes, we went from grassy, snow-free yards to 12″ of snow in less than 24 hours. Yuck. Damn Phil and your false hope!!

Just random stuff that’s on my mind…

(1) I’m tired of the snow. SO. TIRED. OF. IT. My poor Element has taken a hell of a beating this winter (getting stuck, anti-lock brakes actually getting use, being coated in road salt, etc.) and it makes me a sad panda. Also, I’m tired of paying $15-a-pop to get our driveway plowed. I realize I’m a born-and-bred Erieite and should be used to snow (lake effect snow at that) — but ya know what!? After living away from it for three years in Nashville, I’ve gone soft and I’ll be the first to admit it. I miss the south. (Though my friends in Nashville are posting pictures of their snowstorm today, so perhaps there’s just no escaping it…)

(2) I moved the Dock on my MacBook Pro to the left side of the screen. I have it set to disappear unless I hover my cursor over it and previously I’ve always kept it at the bottom of the screen. It was starting to get in the way though, so I moved it. Now I can’t seem to find it. Durr. (If you’re a Mac-user, where do you keep your Dock?)

(3) I’ve been working very hard on a complete redesign of MaxBack at work with major functionality changes as well. I’ve learned SO much in the process and am learning more every day. It makes me feel smart. And exhausted.

(4) I’m going to attempt to make BBQ ribs for dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever made ribs before. Thank goodness for having Mom on speed-dial for help with such things!

(5) My hunny turned 28 a couple weeks ago. (Happy birthday, sweetie!) My birthday is coming up in a couple weeks. The bad news: I’ll be entering the last year of my 20s. I’ve recently become obsessed with checking for gray hairs and applying moisturizer to stave off wrinkles (of which I already have two). So far, no gray hairs and only a shiny face to show for all the moisturizing. The good news: I get the day off work! Yay!

(6) Is it Friday yet?

You’ll never guess what feat of awesomeness I pulled off this morning …

Yup, I managed to stick the Element in the end of our driveway. I’ve never gotten it stuck-stuck before. I’ve gotten it semi-stuck, where I had to turn the wheel and go back and forth and edge my way out, but this morning, those games didn’t work. I wasn’t going anywhere.

I felt bad having to wake Mike up to help me. Thankfully he’s amazingly easy going and though he wasn’t thrilled to be out in the cold, he got right up and helped me out. We dug and shoved and spun, but no luck.

We finally called AAA and they sent a tow truck. We had a bit of a wait because the weather was bad and the towing companies were busy. Our situation was far from an emergency, so I didn’t mind the wait. (I used the extra time to make French toast to thank Mike for getting up to help me!) When the tow truck showed up, the driver and Mike dug some more and then pushed me out, no tow needed.

While I was at work today, Mike paid someone to come and plow the driveway. It was getting bad and the layer of ice made the snow extra-heavy and difficult to shovel by hand. (Not to mention we’d been driving over it and packing it down for several days.) He also had them widen the end of the driveway where it had gotten blocked so badly by the city’s big plow trucks. Hopefully we won’t get stuck again!

I’m wishing that we’ll get one of those random 40-50 degree winter days so we can we thaw out a bit. It would be nice to melt a little snow before adding more ice and snow on top. Too bad the forecast for the next week is saying we won’t get above 30 degrees. Brrr!