Month: April 2011

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Running for Coffee

The following entry was written by Guest Blogger Alvaro Jordan.

I started running two years ago when a friend of mine decided to lose weight. She wanted to have company and I needed to lose that last twenty pounds that had plateaued on me. At first we would run together and try not wheeze back home (usually because we talked so much while we tried to run) but it did get better. Now we can actually talk and run at the same time without getting dizzy!

About four months ago we decided to be more competitive with each other so we started betting on who got to the bench in our park first. The winner had to buy coffee for the other one. Since we meet at six o’clock in the morning, there have been times where I had to hunt down my flashlight before switching on my home security alarm (all home security) and going out the door. We have really started trying to run faster and are getting ready to run an actual race for the first time. I don’t think they will be serving coffee for the race drink but that’s okay. It goes to a great cause and helps me keep in shape. Anyway, I can keep up with her now so at least I am only buying coffee half the time.

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Happy Easter!

What a great Easter! We went to church, had a great brunch, and hunted for Easter eggs. We all had a wonderful day.

We went out to brunch this year. I had the most delicious stuffed french toast. It was filled with gooey cream cheese and strawberry preserves. I could have eaten a whole tray full of that stuff. My husband had a huge plate of steak, eggs, and hash browns. The kids had smiley face chocolate chip pancakes with whip cream and cherries. Everyone left with full a belly and a big smile.

After breakfast we went home and let the kids hunt for a few extra eggs. They already had quite a few from the neighborhood hunt we had yesterday. We just wanted to give them a little private hunt in the backyard. Now our house has tons of plastic eggs and neon green grass all over the place.

After the hunt the kids dug into their eggs. They don’t get candy very often so were thrilled at the collection of sweet treats they had to chose from. I helped myself to a delightful chocolate covered marshmallow peep. Peeps always remind me of my childhood. I look forward to having a few every year.

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Ink at a price I can afford!

Why does printer ink have to be soo darn expensive?  My printer takes ink that costs around $60 or more  just for one cartridge.  I’m always printing something and these things only last for 600 pages.  I’m either printing something for work, coupons, or my kids are printing off coloring pages.  600 pages does not go very far in this house.

I found a great site that has cheap ink.  They have the ink I use in my HP printer for a whopping $5.95!!!  That’s about 10% of what I was paying before. They even have a great deal where I can get a combo pack of 2 color and 4 black for only $49.99.  At this price I can afford to print off all of those coloring pages for my kids and not worry if I’ll have enough ink to print out my report for work.

This site has inkjet cartridges for a variety of printer brands… all of the popular brands plus a bunch I haven’t even heard of.  They also sell toner cartridges for laser printers,  fax cartridges, copier cartridges, and refill kits.  It’s a one stop shop for all of our ink needs!

Call me crazy, but I might even purchase some cartridges as gifts for my friends and family with kids.  I don’t know a single kid that doesn’t love to print out every picture made with the standard paint program.

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Easter is around the corner

Easter is almost here.  I haven’t had one free moment to get anything done.  I wanted to get the kids a few things and clean the house.  This year we are having a big neighborhood barbeque with everyone on the block.  It’s Saturday so we can all still do our own thing with family on Sunday.

Every family is bringing two dozen decorated eggs for their kids and putting them in the collective hunt.  All of the kids get to go home with the same number of eggs but not necessarily the same ones they came with.  It was a hit last year and I’m sure it will be this year too.

In addition to the egg hunt we’re barbequing simple things like hamburgers and hot dogs.  This year I want to bring something extra yummy for dessert.  I’m thinking about looking up something easy on allrecipes.com.  I don’t have a lot of time left to plan for it so hopefully I can find something that doesn’t need much for time, ingredients, or effort and can still impress.

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Crack!

GAH!!!! My shiny IPhone now has one hideous crack running diagonally across the screen.  I dropped it as I was getting out of the car.  It hit the pavement and I shuddered. I’ve dropped the darn thing plenty of times in the past.  This time was different.  I picked it up and looked and saw a tiny crack… the kind a rock might make in a windshield.  It was just a little spot.

I was soo bummed as I worked really hard to keep it in nice condition.  Well, now that I am home I looked at it again and that tiny spot turned into a huge crack.  My phone doesn’t seem to want to work just right when I touch the screen.  I bought that 2 year protection coverage and hope that it covers this.  With my luck I bet I’ll have to pay to get it fixed.  They’ll probably say that the coverage isn’t for neglect.

I can’t stand looking at this huge crack.  I hope I can get it fixed fast!

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Water water everywhere

My sister called me last night and didn’t sound too happy.  Apparently her house was flooded.   She had water damage to her computers and wasn’t able to get online to find help.

I told her I would help her however I could.  Being on the other side of the country, all I could really do was look up information.  I started by typing in water damage emergency service austin into Google to see what would come up.   I got a ton of information and places that could help my sister out.  A bunch of companies even said they were open 24 hours a day because you never know when your house might get flooded.

My husband had suggested that I try looking up water damage restoration services austin.  He said that she would not only need it all to be cleaned up but, restored to it’s original condition.   He was right; so I looked further into the companies that I had found already.

I also looked up water damage claim tips to see what she would need to do in order to make sure she got what she needed.  I told her that she should take pictures of everything to have documentation of all of the damage.  I bet her insurance company will take their own pictures but it might be a good idea to take her own just in case she needs to dispute anything.

I gave my sister a list of places that looked good and hoped that she was able to get the help she needed and fast.  I think I’ll check in with her later to see how things are going.

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Pink Elephant

What do you do when there is a pink elephant in the room?  If the person you are talking to has a big chunk of spinach in his or her teeth do you tell them or just ignore it?  What about when someone has a giant pimple that you can tell has been freshly picked at and is oozing blood?

Today at work I saw a coworker with the biggest booger I have ever seen in my life hanging from the end of his nose.  He’s not someone I interact with on a regular basis so I felt a little awkward approaching him to let him know.  If it was one of my girl friends or closer coworkers it might have been easier.  But, I asked myself if I would want to walk around with a huge booger like that hanging from my nose and of course I said no.  So I walked up to him and very quietly whispered that he might want to use a tissue.  He turned bright red and instantly shielded his nose.  I told him it happens to us all and walked away.  I’m sure he was humiliated but, at least I prevented him from walking around longer with that monster hanging out.

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Laundry Day

Ugh!  It’s laundry day.  I’m not the biggest fan of doing laundry.  Well, let me be a little clearer.  It’s not the doing the laundry that gets to me; it’s the putting away of the laundry that I despise.  Sorting it out and tossing it into the washer and then the dryer is the easy part.  Sometimes spot cleaning is a pain when you have kids but not a huge deal if you do it right when it happens.  Folding, ironing, loading items onto hangers and stuffing drawers… yuck!  I’ll pass.  I know there are laundry services out there.  I wonder if there is a service that would include putting it all away for me.

I remember when I was a kid and mom would gather us all of with probably six loads of laundry and we’d go to the local Laundromat.  It was a big event for the day.  We’d all pile into the car with the mounds of dirty clothes and head out.  Mom would have us scope out a row of washers next to each other and load in the clothes.  As soon as all of the washers were loaded, we walked next door to the Pick ‘N Save.  We’d each get a dollar or so to spend on something small.  About 40 minutes later we’d all head back and swap things out into the dyers.  Then after the dryers, came the dreaded folding.  Ick! I’m glad I don’t have too much to do today.

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Yay! It’s Friday!

I love Friday afternoons. It means the beginning of my weekend and time to relax.  I can hang out with my family, go shopping, read, catch up on missed episodes of tv programs I enjoy, and of course blog.  I’m thinking we should have a family game night tonight.  A few board games, an easy dinner, and maybe if the kids are good banana splits!  Now that I think about it… even if the kids aren’t good I want that banana split.  I deserve a little treat for all of my hard work and effort this week.  Thank goodness it’s Friday!

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Time Management

“It’s not that we don’t have enough time. It’s that we don’t have a enough time management.  We all have the same 24 hours in a day.”

My AP European high school history teacher told our class this when I was in 10th grade.  Some of my classmates would always be complaining that they didn’t have enough time to do all of their homework and all of the extracurricular activities that they had on their schedule.  He always reminded us that we needed to manage our time wisely.

I remembered this when I was in college and wanted to go out with my friends.  I always took a full load of classes and then some.  I didn’t want to give up my social life just because I was a full time student.  I had to learn to manage my time throughout the day in order to accomplish everything that I had on my plate.  Looking back, the one thing that always got the short end of the stick was sleep.  I always made sure I did everything else but sleeping was at the bottom of the list.  Now that I’m a bit older I’ve put sleep higher on my list of priorities but, it probably isn’t up as high as it should be.