Freebies

I could be cleaning or reading, but I decided to surf for freebies instead (at least it keeps me away from ebay.)

Here's the list:

Baby Stuff
Organic Baby Food
Beechnut Bowl
Gerber Promise Pin
Oxiclean Baby
Ensure Healthy Mom Drink
Earth's Best Organic Baby Rice Cereal
Diaper Bag Tag
Developmental Guide
Mustela Gift
DVD: 'BabyTalk Presents You and Your Baby'
Growth Chart



Fitness/Health/Diet
Magazine Subscription to Smart Moves
Nike Dance DVD

Beauty/Health
Advil Allergy Sinus
Sore No More! Natural Pain Relieving Gel
Vitabath Gelee
Dove Energy Glow
Vital Radiance
Poise Pads (need this stuff after I have the baby)
Rimmel Lipstick
Vitabath Shimmering Body Lotion
Dove Advanced Color Care (for lightened hair)
GUM Proxabrush
Maybelline Makeup
Degree Deodorant


Food/Beverage
Lipton/Tazo/Bigelow Tea
Costa Rican Coffee (Glad to see this one. We like our Costa Rican coffee, I just can't find it aywhere.)
Nescafe (14-single serve samples)
Teaology Tea
Dentyne Gum
Krispy Kreme Donut (New flavor - Creamy Caramel)

Home/Garden
Vegetable Seed Packet
Reynold's Slow Cooker Liners
Wildflower Seed Guide
Charmin Extender



There are plenty more things out there, I just posted the things I signed up for and seemed interesting to me. These were all valid as of 3/29/06. I don't guarantee how long they will be good for.

New Microbrewery in the Twin Cities

Just thought I would check out the website to the newest microbrewery in the Twin Cities, Surly Brewing Company. It's in Brooklyn Center. I read about in the RAKE. The hubby & I will have to go check it out after the baby is born and they are ready to give tours. Or maybe he'll go check it out with his brothers.

CLR is Amazing!

I just have to give some praise to CLR. See, we have this old house and even with all the plumbing problems we've had that made it so we had to replace much of the pipes over the years, there are still these really old pipes in places. One of these places goes into our main bathroom on the the second floor. The problem with these old pipes is they are rusted inside and when water runs through them the rust residue settles on our white bathroom sink and white bathtub. How annoying! Until now, I could (at best!) fade the rust residue be using a bleach cleaner on the white stuff, but getting it off the drain in the sink has just note happened. But I used this CLR today on it and it is COMPLETLY off the white in the sink and mostly off the silver drain (still goning to scrub a little more on that.) But I just had to tell you that this stuff is great. Now to go tackle the tub.

The Weekend.

Friday - Folded LOTS of laundry. Andy doesn't believe in folding his own laundry -- just lives out of baskets. So I think I folded about 9 baskets of laundry, 2 of which were mine that I just washed that day. Sad. Did A LOT of cleaning upstairs. Picked up some groceries.

Saturday - Andy worked on the Omni w/ Chris. I baked an apple pie & rhubarb (had rhubarb frozen) coffeecake muffins, cleaned & did laundry (again, although now I am just washing stuff for spring cleaning).

Sunday - Went to th Meditation Center, ran to Menards, Hy-Vee, & Big Lots. Went to a surprise b-day party for David (Happy 34th!). Came home, then left and made multiple trips trying to find a grill to buy; bought a grill (see post below.) Now, waiting for the Sopranos & Big Love (although I think I will just Tivo Big Love, as the other 2 nights I watched it it gave me wild dreams and kept me from getting really good sleep - maybe I'll just watch it tomorrow morning.)

This Coming Week - Not doing a damn thing. It's spring break and the doctor said I am 1 week too far along to fly (Oh, but he tells me he's going to Disney World with his kids - thanks for telling me that fucker! My family doc told me he was gone on vacation this week too, but he's going skiing in Colorado with his family -- that I don't care much about. It was the sun I wanted.) So, what am I going to do on spring break. Probably just clean, cook, watch movies, & read, maybe try to get together for lunch with a couple people, but not much else. I picked up 3 books & 3 movies from the library.

Grill-Envy

Not sure if it's like penis-envy or not. But anyways - we needed a new grill. The one we have did the job just fine for 6 1/2 years, but now it was getting to the point that we going to need to invest some money in it to fix it up, which we would not have minded doing, but we just couldn't find the size of grill racks we needed to replace. You can see that our top grill rack had worn through (the stones are on top because Andy as cleaning below, he also thought we would probably need a new burner before the year ends anways.) So, above is the old grill. One of the big things we were looking for in a new grill was that the racks were thick & sturdy, which these are. This new grill is made by Brinkman. The picture to the right is of the new grill from their website; it currently sits in the box in the garage. But my! Isn't it a nice looking grill.....it is a HUGE MONSTROSITY! We might have to do a little rearranging on the back deck to fit this baby there. It has 6 burners (WOW!), 60,000 BTU, 800+ Sq. In. of cooking space, a side burner (which has a cover so it can be a side table to match the other side), The bottom is all enclosed & everything (hence the doors.) It's pretty impressive. The box says it weighs 211 pounds. That's crazy. Guess we'll be doing a lot of grilling! Glad I bought all that hamburger & steaks. Who's ready for a picnic?

Can You Grapple This?

If there is some new fruit at the supermarket, I am all about trying it. Last night I picked up a 4-pack of Grapple (long a). Actually what it is, is a Fuji Apple somehow infused with artificial grape flavor & water. Not too bad, a little expensive. Was worth it to try it, but I'll probably just stick to real grapes and plain Fuji apples.

Holy Moley!

I had an appt. today with my Family Doc to have him check out these moles that developed last summer. One is particularly bothersome because it is raised quite a bit and gets knicked when I shave. So, he checked them out and said they looked benign & gave me some long fancy name for the type of moles they are and an explanation that they probably developed because of some trauma to that area (bug bite, puncture of some kind, etc.) So, he froze them (which feels like little bee stings) and said the area should dry up and flake off within 3-4 weeks, with no scars or anything. If they don't go away from that, then I can come back in and they will do outpatient surgery and carve them out (but I'd have a scar from that) and they would send them to pathology. But he said if they are what he thinks they are (whatever that long name was) then this should work just fine.

Remembering a Funny Story

Today, on my way up to the Cities for a conference I drove by this semi that was pulled over to help someone change a flat tire and it made me remember a funny little story that happened to me (about 10 years ago now - man, am I getting old).

I was 19 years old and was making the 5 hour drive across WI with my 18 year old friend Jeni to go back to my hometown for a visit. We left very early in the morning or late at night (whatever you want to call it) and started our journey. It had to be about 6:30 in the morning when all of a sudden I heard a loud sound and the car started driving funny; Jeni was sleeping. I pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned on my hazards. Jeni woke up and asked what was going on & I told her I think we had a flat. Upon inspection, we discovered that we indeed had a flat. Shit! We're about 10 miles from the next town and about an hour left to my parents house. Dammit! Neither one of us ever changed a tire before, but we knew we could do it. So, here we are, 2 teenagers sitting along the side of the road looking like blond idiots trying to figure out what we were going to do next. (I had AAA, but what good was that going to do me w/o a cell phone. Now things are different.) Then, all of a sudden this semi pulls off the side of the road behind us. Nothing is scarier than seeing a semi coming straight for you. They had 2 adult guys & seemed to be one guy our age in that semi and they got out and asked if they could help. Wow! This had the makings of a horror movie already. We said we were fine & were just going to put on the small donut spare and be on our way. They insisted that they do it for us. We were nervous, but let them. Hell! We sure didn't know what we were doing. They go to pick up the cover over the spare, and what do you know -- several bottles of booze & cans of beer are stashed there. I wonder how those got there. Hmmmm....considering we were going back and my friend Mike & I were throwing a party at his parents house while they were gone, well, it couldn't have been mine. Shit. Yes it was. Of course, we felt this urge to explain, but didn't. We just offered them a beer @ 6:30am. The young guy took a beer and watched while the older two replaced the tire and also he sat & flirted with Jeni. She found him kinda cute. The older guys finished & I offered them the only money I had in my wallet (which for some reason I remember my dad telling me to keep some emergency money, in case of an emergency, like paying someone to change my tire.) They didn't take it. We drove to the nearest town, all the time wondering what would have happened if Jeni would have exchanged numbers with that guy. We fantasized about going on Oprah and telling the story how she met her husband @ 6:30am when these guys stopped to change our tire and we offered them a beer. Crazy girls.

We did have our party and we were even more crazy then. Most of the people there didn't leave the area by too far or went to schools in small cities, I was the only one who actually went to a big city, so they were pretty shocked when Jeni & I were dancing provacitively with one another. We loved doing that, because it pushed people's boundaries & shocked them (which was fun to do.) I was mad at this one guy I was friends with because he was dating my middle sister (he was a freshmen in college, she a freshmen in high school) and Jeni was going to do all she could to help me out with that. It first started with me yelling at him through Jeni -- see, I wasn't talking to him & didn't want to look at him. And when you're drunk you get bright ideas like having one person make the motions & wave their hands like idiots while the other person stands behind them and does the yelling. I couldn't possibly look at him & yell at him, so she had to do one. The logic of a drunk college girl isn't always the greatest. She took it one step further (all on her own accord) and decided to make out with him and leave some hickeys on his neck (he couldn't possibly go out with my sister with hickeys from another girl.) It was pretty funny & she thought she was funny for doing it.

It was a weekend full of stories. The next time she came back to my hometown with me didn't start off too different. That one started with being pulled over for speeding (which I never got warnings for, always tickets), but I'll save that story for another day.

I just felt like sharing the story as I remembered it today. I had a chuckle from remembering it.

Uneventful Weekend

It was a pretty uneventful weekend. Friday we just ran to Taco Bell & picked up some stuff, then attempted to get a DVD from Redbox, but it was broken. So, we watched a movie we had at home we hadn't see, The Pledge.

Yesterday was our 2nd of 2 baby classes (which you can read about on the baby blog.) We were home in the evening & watched Spanglish on cable and Andy had commented on that the egg sandwich he made looked good (you know, the one where the yolk spills out & he had a beer there to drink), and I had to agree and had to make some. Also tried a different variation on making the homemade yogurt, which turned out better this time and made some Cabbage & Rice soup, which was pretty good.

Today, I went to the Meditation Center and then some grocery shopping at the co-op. I finally decided to joing the co-op so that I could take advantage of the member-only specials. Oh, and I slept like crap (which you can also read about on the baby blog) and have been sleepy all day. Now, I just need to go make this portabella mushroom & gruyere cheese tortellini I bought and long with some toasted french bread & watch some Sopranos.

Another Light Fixture Replaced

So, we replaced another light fixture in the house. The new one gives us so much more light. We really like it. It is the the stairwell going from the main level to the 2nd floor (kinda on that landing before you decide which whay you want to go up tot he 2nd floor areas) and gives us some much needed light there. I am holding the old fixture (as Andy took it down before I got a picture of it.) and the new fixture is lit up nicely.

Another Snow Day

How nice. Another snow day.

I got up and looked out the window and was disappointed there wasn't much snow. Checked the school district website and sure enough - school was delayed 2 hours. Go figure.

I was a little confused, so I turned on the TV and watched the weather and they said that areas south of the metro got 1-2 inches and then even 5 miles away they got 5-6 inches because there were these pockets in the storm system. So, a pocket must have been over our house because the school district we live in also closed, although many of the kids in our school district live in the country, which makes bussing hard and school closes more easily here.

Anyways - I've been waiting for the district I work in to close and just a few minutes ago it was announced closed. Now to work on some more projects around the house. There are some more ugly light fixtures we want to replace (bought some new fixtures @ Lowe's the other day.) So, we'll see.

Happy Birthday To Me!

Yes, today is my birthday. I have to work, which is always a bummer to work on your birthday. But I get to go to the doctor and listen to my baby girl's heartbeat this afternoon, so that's cool.

Andy gave me my birthday presents. I got the Fit Mama Post-Natal Workout (I asked for this; I have the pre-natal one and like it, although I haven't used it very often to be honest.) If you notice, the DVD is separated into 2 sections of 6; the first section is for you to do by yourself and the second section is for you to do with the baby. I did a bunch of research online abuot the videos marketed out there towards moms and all the feedback was that you either needed short segments to try to get a 10-15 minute workout in, or get a video that allows you to workout with the baby. This has both.

And he bought me the Logitech - mm22 Portable Speakers. It's marketed towards the iPod, but it has 3 different sized holders to put the mp3 player in, so my Rio Carbon fits great. He thought I might like to use it to bring to the hospital so I can listen to my own music there. It can be plugged in or run off batteries, and comes in a nice carrying case, so we can take it with us when we travel. I really like it.

And finally, he got me a "Hot Mama" maternity t-shirt. I was trying to stay away from that stuff, but you know Andy, he's a funny guy. He saw someone at our baby class last weekend wearing one and thought I should have a maternity shirt with something silly on it. He wanted to find one with something really clever on it, like these here, but this is what he found. I can't find a picture of the actual shirt online. Basically it's a dark,bright pink shirt with white writing that says "Hot Mama". I will have to wear it and get a picture taken for the baby blog. Later though.

And tonight, the plan is to go to dinner @ Timberlodge. I signed up part of Timberldoge's b-day club, so I got a $10 coupon emailed to me. We have done this for both of our birthdays for the last few years. Last weekend I got a free blizzard (BOGO) compliments of Dairy Queen for my birthday for signing up for their Blizzard Fan Club. Coupon comes in your email. We both got a pecan cluster blizzard -yummy! I also got a coupon emailed to me from Buca di Beppo for joining their Buca eClub. Their coupon is for a free dessert. Not sure if we'll get to use that one. And finally (actually, there could always be more coming in my email today, who knows, I don't know what I all signed up for.) I got a coupon from Cold Stone Creamery for joining their b-day club. You get a free cone, but it expires 5 days from your birthday and I am not sure that we'll get to one. But we'll see.

Are You Ugli?

Well, I am. I'm into the Ugli Fruit. It's supposed to be a hybrid tangelo from Jamaica. And it sure is ugly(i), but it tastes great. I think it's like a cross between a grapefruit & a tangelo & orange. I eat it just like I eat a grapefruit. I had bought one when I went grocery shopping this weekend and Andy & I each ate half. They were so good I went back today after work and bought some more and just finished eating one. I highly suggest trying this fruit. So tasty.

Straight River Days?

Straight River Days is our town festival, which lasts a weekend. It is usually the last weekend of June, and events are started to be posted that lead me to believe it will once again be the last weeked in June.

The Women's Club Parade (they sponsor it) is on Friday, June 23rd @ 7pm. There will be a dance in the park following the parade. The White Sidewalls will be playing. If I remember, they are pretty good. There is also food served, a beer tent (well, beer pavilion), some small rides, traditional carnival trinkets for sale.

The other thing annouced is that there will be a street dance at the Muni on Satuday, June 24th. The band is Janie in Wonderland. We went to that street dance w/ same performers last year and had a great time (lots of music from 80's, 90's, & today).

The other things that happen that weekend is: City-wide rummage sales all weekend (the last few years I usually hit around 50-60 sales, it's crazy!), baseball tournament, volleyball tournament, kiddie tractor pulls, Mud Races (these are fun to watch!), & various other events.

Woohoo! Snow Day!

Excellent! School is closed - no work for me! I got up and it was 2 hours late and so I just surfed the internet, as I couldn't get back to sleep. But now I see we are closed. Yea!

My Weekend.

Friday we went out to eat at the Peppermill. I also made some Refrigerator Bran Muffins.

Saturday consisted of 6 hours of baby classes, made some homemade yogurt in the yogurt maker I just got, made some LF Chewy Oatmeal & Fruit Muffins, & went to a Ladies' Night @ my friend Jessi's house.

Sunday was a lot of sitting around surfing ebay. I ran to the Wal-Mart Super Center & picked up groceries, a new ironing board (somehow the frame on the old one I have had for about 9 year collasped), & new shower curtain stuff (I read a tip somwhere, I think in a baby magazine, to try to fit in a shower while still keeping an eye on an awake baby, to put up a second shower curtain that is a clear plastic & rod behind your decorative cloth one so that you can see out it at the baby you have sitting in an exercauser or bouncy seat -- I thought it sounded like a good idea, and for $12 it's a pretty easy thing to do), neighbor Cindy came over to visit for a while, and now I'm waiting for the season 6 premiere of The Sopranos to air, at which time I will cook some cheese ravioli, french bread, & salad for supper. Andy & I like to dine on Italian food while we watch it. It's out thing. Right now Andy is installing the rear speakers (which involve mounting & running wire) for the surround system (which we've had for over a year now - until now we just used the other speakers.)

Out with the Old, In with the New

Friday we went and bought new ceiling fan, since the light fixtue on the old one (shown here with Andy starting to take it down) went kaput. It was ugly -- something from the early 80's. So, it had to go. But it just never made it to the top of our priority list until now.

We wanted a new fan & light fixture installed before the baby came, and we're starting to get down to the wire now.






Here's the new fan. It wasn't too bad of an install. It helps if you read the directions first rather than just look at the pictures. We might have gotten it done a little quicker. But we certainly didn't have the trouble putting this up like we did with the one in the hallway.

Anyways - isn't this one so much prettier?

I like the shape of the blades and the brushed nickel. We were pretty particular about the light fixture. I didn't want anything that bugs could easily crawl into & die. How gross is that to look up and see dead bugs in the light fixture? So, the lights had to either be completly enclosed ot hang down (not up to collect dead bugs - gross!). And with those stupid Asian beetles that come out in the fall (although this year their presence was not has prevalent as in years past), I was not going to provide them with any final resting place.

A-OK from the Dentist

I went in for my 6-month cleaning yesterday afternoon and all is good in my mouth. What just cracks me up, is we've been going to this dentist for about 4.5 years now and he says my tiny old fillings I got when way back when - we're talking elementary & junior high here are still holding up just fine and we don't need to replace them. But the dentist we went to 5 years ago, before we moved & before this guy, what to take them all out and replace them. She said they needed to come out and were not going to last. Bah!

I think someone needed to make a fancy house & car payment. I'm glad we swicthed when we moevd. She was kinda rough on our mouths too. She also kep trying to convince me to get my teeth lasered to whiten them, my teeth don't look very discolored - not more than any other normal person. Boy, she must have needed a lot of money.

Yummy Weekend

I thought the weekend was filled with lots of good food; I did a lot of cooking, with the exception of Friday night. Friday night we went to McD's and got Filet'o'Fish sandwiches (I was feeling in the mood for fish, which has not happened at all in 7 months) and sundaes. We also ran to Lowe's and picked out a ceiling fan for our bedroom since the current one went kaput a while back and I want a new light & fan put up before the baby is born. So, now it's bought and hopefully we'll get that put up before April.

Saturday I spent the day cleaning, doing laundry, doing dishes, and cooking in preparation for the Fondue (cheese) party we had. It was a good party. Lots of good food. Had 3 other couples over for that and had some fun.

Today I went to the Meditation Center and did a 30-minute sit and then they had Rita Gross there for a Dharma talk in place of the second sitting. That was interesting, gave me stuff to think about. Then went to the co-op for some groceries. Came home and made up some lasagna & apple cake (a recipe I had made when we had the B&B that was liked) for dinner. I usually make 2 small pans, eat one & freeze one. Andy's brother Chris is here to help him work on the project car, so I made one pan with no veggies. Chris isn't exactly fond of the healthy food I keep in the house or how I stick veggies in everything, so in order to not scare him off one final time I decided to make food he would approve of (& picked up some Mt. Dew for him too.)

Next weekend we start our baby classes for 2 full Saturdays. I know Andy would rather not have to spend all day Saturday (getting there at 8:30) doing anything but sleeping in, which his days are numbered for that. Saturday night I'm going to go to Jessi's for a ladies' night and Sunday we are going to service @ HOM and to their Love Feast afterward.

500th Post

Woohoo! This is officially my 500th post to this blog. Congrats to me!

Days of Our Lives

After reading about Tim tracking stuff through Tracksys, I decided to do it as well. It's interesting to see how people come across your site and what they seach for theat brings them to it.

Someone was looking up what will happen between Shawn & Mimi, and I thought I do have thoughts on it.

What I think will happen is that Mimi will find out she is pregnant with Shawn's baby. She thought she couldn't have children, but it turns out Lexie was wrong. I can't decide if it would make a better story for her to find out before or after Shawn finds out Claire is his. I could see her keeping it a secret so that she can have her won family with Shawn, but then I can see DOOL re-creating the Claire/Zack storyline and making some complications for Shawn & Mimi's baby where it would need a blood transfusion, and for some reason Shawn won't be able to donate and Mimi will say that Claire is a match. Bonnie will try to say it's because Shawn matched Claire before, but Mimi will finally screw up and spill the beans. Then Shawn will be left to choose which woman/mother he wants to be with: The one he has always loved (Belle) or the one he grew closer to and has a sick child with (Mimi). And to make the storyline even more complicated so that it is not an easy choice for Shawn, Belle will really be pregnant with Phillip's baby.

This is just my prediction, by no means do I have any real idea what will really happen. Guess we'll see.

Maurices is Coming to the Outlet

I ran over to the outlet mall to pick up something for this weekend and saw that there is a big Maurices sign outside one of the storefront. It's on the S side, same side as Old Navy, Pac Sun, Big Dogs, & Rue 21. That side is turning into clothes for teens, whereas the other side is more geared towards adults.

Trying the Email Post

I thought I would try this out again and email my post. If I remember from last time I tried this, it took a while (like several hours) for this to be loaded on the blog.

 

I am so sick of it being grey out. I think I detest the grey-ness this year even more than other years. Not sure why.

 

I don’t have really anything interesting to say.

A Daddy Post

Andy finally posted again on the baby blog. He's such a sweet guy. I feel bad about posting anything on there in a while since I would like people to read what he wrote. I don't want it to get lost in all my posts on there.

Blogger Banned!

Bah! Blogger is banned @ work as a "Non-Productive Site". What this means for me is that I can't get in to type a post or leave comments anywhere. I can however still view blogs. Apparently they have identified blogger.com as a site (which is how we type blog entries and type blog comments), but blogspot.com (which is how we view a blog) is not identified.