Robertisms
Apparently Rob is prone to the same speech malfunction that Jim is...here's today's wisdom.

"Grass is not organic. It's man-made by God."

If I never have to go through that again...
Mood:  down
...it'll be too soon.

We went on a road trip yesterday. We left our house around 9:30am, headed for Mitchell, SD and Cabelas. Did some shopping, wandered around, then we drove east to Yankton for supper. More shopping because we got to Yankton too early, then at 5:30 we went to JoDeans for the seafood buffet. All you can eat crab legs...yum yum. While we were there, a totally unexpected blizzard struck. We left around 7pm, and headed south. It was AWFUL, with snow, and wind gusts to 70 mph. We got to highway 20 (about 30 miles) an hour later. We tried to turn west and head for home, but ended up turning around and going to the Hilltop Cafe, which was only a couple miles away. We got there at 8:30pm. Jim intended to just rest for 30 minutes, then try again. I convinced him to stay longer, as it wasn't getting any better. Soon after, we learned that they had closed hwy 20 due to 5ft drifts across the road. I tried to go out to the car at 8:45pm and take a nap, but couldn't get any rest because of the wind shaking the car. We ended up stranded there until 11:30pm, at which point the storm was starting to taper off, and we headed south for Norfolk. We reached Jerry's house at 12:30am, and went to bed. Then I had to get up this morning and come to work, in the same clothes I'd worn the entire day Friday. Yay. I'm exhausted. I hope this last hour goes quickly for me, because I've been ready for bed since noon.

Quick update
Mood:  spacey
I don't know what made me decide to post here today, but here I am.

Had a pretty good Christmas at Jerry's yesterday, lots of nice things. We'll be going to Kearney Saturday for the Tannehill Christmas, thanks to the generousity of my siblings. I called Sarah and told her we couldn't afford the gas. She told me she'd find a way to send some money, and got Mom, Matt and Joey to each donate $10. Now I have to get Jim another present, since I have his name. He opened all of his from me yesterday! lol I've also got to get something for Joey, Jim has his name.

Jim and I have been married for close to 7 months now. We still haven't sent our thank you cards. *shakes finger at self* I wanted to write a Christmas letter, and include the thank yous, but that didn't happen. I don't know if there's any point anymore....

It's freezing in here again today. I've got my coat on, and have my legs wrapped up in my trusty Navy wool blanket. Thank God for coffee, it may be the only thing keeping me from getting hypothermia. ;)

title, shmitle
Mood:  caffeinated
*looks around* Is anyone still here? It's been ages since I last posted. Poor blog, so neglected...

Much progress on the wedding front. All of my bridesmaids either have their dresses, or have them ordered. Sarah's made magnificent progress on the flowers. I've purchased undergarments more expensive than any other item of clothing I currently own, and will have a gown fitting soon. With the exception of the people playing an active role in either the setup, or the ceremony itself, all of the invitations have been sent out, and the replies are starting to come. (pats self on back) All of that said, there's still so much to be done: I have to fill out my song sheets and return them to Complete Music, find something to attach my veil to (some sort of barette, I think), find vases for the table centerpieces, make hair and nail appointments, purchase more flowers and garlands for decorations, mail the rest of the invites, find time with Jim to get our marriage license and get the men's suits bought, and several other things I haven't even thought of yet. O_O 36 days to go. I'm trying very hard to keep track of everything that needs doing, and not be so overwhelmed that I give up. So far, I think I'm doing ok. Some of the invitations were sent a little later than they should have been, but at least they're done now. I'm really having a rough time fulfilling all of the roles I'm involved in. I'm not only a wedding planner, I'm also a tutor, housekeeper, stepmom, and full-time employee. I do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and checking of homework, and that's just between the hours of 4 and 10pm. I've never been so consistently busy on a daily basis, and I really don't like it very much. I suppose it's good training for what will come later in my life though. *sigh* I miss reading on rainy days...and theatre. I'm hoping that I can get involved in the community theatre this fall. I miss quiet evenings, just taking time for myself. But anyway...

I guess that's all I have to say for now. Who knows when I'll post again? :P Feel free to comment, the site emails me when you do. *waves*

and the countdown begins...
Mood:  rushed
Topic: Wedding Plans
98 days to go...

I've got my dress ordered. That was an ordeal in and of itself. But, the worst is over. Now to move on to flowers. I plan to visit Hobby Lobby sometime this week and take pictures of the flowers I like, which I will then email to Sarah. Dearest Lu has taken on the formidable task of creating the wedding party's floral accessories. I myself will do some of the decorations, and I plan to recruit a couple of Jim's relatives and friends.

Now if I just had money to pay for all of this stuff...lol. I did have a minor windfall in that I discovered that an old credit card account from a few years ago is still open, and has $800 available at a much lower interest rate than my other card. Yay! I put the dress on that, and plan to use it to pay for the first installment of ring payments. Will pay the rest of that (and buy flowers) when we get our tax returns back, hopefully in the next week or so. Hooray for direct deposit!

Well, back to the rat race I go...

Let your heart be light...
Merry Christmas everyone!

Hummmmmm
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday dear Jessi,
Happy Birthday to me.

or, if you prefer something more casual:

We hear it's your birthday
and we're here to sing to you
singing do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do.
So have a happy birthday
from the HCM crew
singing do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do.
You look good (you look good)
You look fine (you look fine)
You look good you look fine
and we're running out of time
singing do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do.
Hey!
(a shameless bit of plagiarism, but I'm not the first) *wonders if Amanda is crosseyed yet*

and for our German friends:
(scary the useful things I remember from high school, isn't it?)

Herzliche Geburtstag fur mich,
Herzliche Geburtstag fur mich,
Herzliche Geburtstag leibe Jessi,
Herzliche Geburtstag fur mich.

And furthermore, in the words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

Ah, the glory of Jim's vocabulary
"What's with the glumitity?" Jim asks.

I give him an odd look.

He replies, "Glumtitude?"

Don't you just love making up words? We do. You've got to hand it to the person who came up with "haberdashery", that's real talent. Myself, I stick with simple creations like....

I can't think of one right now. That figures...

Oh well, life goes on.

We're well into Turkey Day preparations at our house. Hope it goes well...

I'm still here...
I'm really disenchanted with the whole blog thing. I think if I had a computer at home it wouldn't be so bad, but here at work I'm just not in the mood. Of course, that could be due to my recent state of mind. I think I'm on a bipolar low. I'm not enthusiastic about anything, if I smile, it's forced most of the time. I heard myself laugh today, and thought to myself "Do I really sound that phony?" I'm having trouble sleeping too. And gaining weight again, no meds to blame it on this time, just emotional eating. All in all, I'm just not a happy camper. Don't know what will have to happen to turn me around, but I hope it happens soon. It's just occurred to me that I haven't even been trying to find another job. I went to StaffCo over a week ago, and haven't called them back yet. That's all I've done. Now that it's re-entered my mind, I believe I'll go check the ads right now, before I forget again. Will post again when the mood strikes...

How broad can a broad get?
No, that's not a reference to fat women. I'm talking about broadening your mind, your horizons, however you want to put it.

I watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang today. (Which will henceforth be referred to as CCBB, cause I don't feel like typing it again) I don't know how it ended up at our house. Well, actually that's not true, I know exactly how it got to our house. When we moved, Jim had Robert pack the movies, and told him that everything on a particular rack was ours. He didn't check, so we have some movies that Jim isn't too fond of, CCBB and Sound of Music among others. Anyway, I didn't work last night, I stayed up late and read, then watched Chorus Line. I finally went to bed at 3:30am. Mind you, this was intentional. The logic behind this was something like "I have to stay up all night Tuesday at work, so I should stay up as late as possible Monday so it won't be so hard on me." Well, as usual, logic didn't come into play when I woke up at 9:30 this morning. I never did manage to go back to sleep. So, I've had 6 hours of sleep (not uncommon lately), and by the time I get home tomorrow, I'll have been up for 24 hours. Do I have to tell you how tired I am of working third shift? Oh, and more good news. Found out when I got here tonight that not only is the owner making us work Thanksgiving and Christmas, we won't have December 15-31 off like we did last year. Supposedly, time off requests will be considered in the order they are received. Jim and I turned ours in for Thanksgiving (and the day before) over a month ago. We'll see...

Wow, that was a heck of a bunny trail...back to my story...

Ok, so I got up this morning, read for a little bit, then decided to watch CCBB. I'd never seen it before, and knew I'd never get to watch it when Jim was home. So, since he was over at his dad's getting ready for trapping season and would be home around noon, I popped CCBB into the player. It's cute. I can understand why Jim doesn't like it. :) For the record, I do. It's the kind of cutesy catchy quasi fairy tale that I enjoy on occasion. And that's the most exciting thing I did today. :)