Happy New Year!

We're almost moved into the new house! Thanks to WONDERFUL friends who have donated their time, bodies and vehicles to the cause of getting us out of the moldy rental ASAP.

Only a few more days.... Yay!

I would like to send out all the most positive karma possible to everyone for the New Year. I have been so blessed this year. A new job, an aunt who survived an incredibly complicated procedure, a new house, great friends and family. It doesn't get much better than this, and I hope that you all have a better year this coming year than my past year (which was good... really really good).

Aaaahhhh......

While I'm typing this, I'm sitting on my Shiatsu back massager. I got it for Christmas last year, and I really should use it more than I do, especially with all my back problems. After two days of heavy duty packing and moving, my back needed this. I only get a few minutes break, though. I don't know when I'll be able to blog again, we have the movers coming tomorrow to move the big heavy stuff, and the internet company is coming to the new house on Friday. Hopefully, we'll have computers set up and I'll be up and blogging by Monday. So, I know that you'll miss me... I'll miss you all, too. See you sometime next week. Maybe I'll post pictures then....

**Mu-ah**

Houston, This is Challenger....

The Challenger Learning Center-St. Louis now has a full complement. Today we offered part time positions to two people and they accepted!! Yay! We also interviewed an amazing lady for receptionist, and I have a feeling we'll be hiring her, too.

I'm so freaking excited. We'll have a competent receptionist whom we believe will be able to take on a ton more responsibility. Not that our receptionists have been bed, just not exceptional.

10 Ways That I Am Different Than You:

1.) I donated a kidney.

2.) I met my husband through my nephew (by marriage...). In other words, the man who became my nephew introduced my husband and me.

3.) I was married in the same room where my reception occurred 45 minutes later.

4.) My uncle married my husband and I.

5.) I have attended 5 different colleges. This means that I probably have enough schooling for a couple of master's degrees, and yet I only have my Bachelor's and a certification.

6.) I have a kitty with no name. We call her "Kitty." The vet thinks her name is Jet.

7.) I drive a 2002 Honda Civic with over 61,000 miles on it. Figure that mileage per year....

8.) I have Transformers in my house. Lots and lots and lots of Transformers. And also other action figures and random toys.

9.) My Christmas tree is more Sci-fi than the Sci-Fi Channel on TV. Many of the ornaments light up, some of them talk. I'm not freaking kidding. Nothing reminds me of Christmas more than hearing Worf's voice coming from the little spaceship hanging on my tree.

10.) I have a horrible reaction to peanuts. No, I'm not allergic. It gives me gas. Gas that clears rooms. Gas that keeps rooms clear for hours. According to my friend, Karl, it is gas that "clears OUTDOOR stadiums." Maybe I could put the Rams out of their misery this season... where are the peanuts?

Hello, My Name is Jennie...

and I'm a scarf-a-holic. No, I don't have a problem with eating too quickly, I actually have a LOT of scarves. While organizing and packing tonight, I found that I have 11 or 12 of them. Each of them is unique, which is good. It means that I have a scarf for just about any outfit or coldness level.

Fleece: Black; Grey; Black with sparklies; red, white and black plaid

Fuzzy Ones: Pink (knitted myself); lavendar (Magic scarf); blue and gold Rams(knitted); red and white Cardinals/candy cane (knitted)

Others: light brown with oranges, burgundies, creams; cream "cashmere" (knitted); dark brown "cashmere" (knitted); purple multicolor; white multicolor

Maybe if I get a chance, I'll take a photo of them all and post it. At least I have admitted my problem...

It's Official!

Today Ben and I closed on our new home!! I'm so excited. I went ahead and set up our Christmas tree while Ben put up lights on the outside of the house to let our new neighbors know we're movin' in. We were lucky enough to meet three of our neighbors today.

This morning while doing the closing day walk-through, our doorbell rang and a neighbor was standing there with the garage door openers and an extra set of keys. She was very nice. Then later this afternoon, after I had shown my parents around, I was walking them out to their car when a neighbor and his son came up to say "hi." Then his wife joined us, then their two daughters. The whole family was so nice and friendly. The kids were 6, 4 and 2, respectively.

I'll take and post pics tomorrow of our uber cute, lit-up house!

Quote of the Day

Today we had a group of gifted kids at the Center. They started out in the classroom, working in groups rotating from learning station to learning station. During the classroom portion, I walk around, checking on them, discuss various parts of their answers, etc. I get to the space food learning center, and the group has gotten to the question regarding what they think astronauts do with the trash from the packaging of space food. One kids chimes in with, "Well, they could just throw it out into space towards Earth, and it would just come down in the atmosphere."

Another kid's response, "Today in the weird weather category: It rained burgers in Connecticut!"

I about died laughing. Sixth graders are seriously hilarious!

Packing It In (Up) Whatever....

We close on our new house in just a few days. Guess how much packing we've done. Seriously. None. Nothing is packed up. We keep talking about how we need to get started and blah, blah, blah, but we've packed nada.

This ought to make for an interesting move, right?

I think that we might just be a little scared of jinxing the whole process by starting to pack before we close.

Oh Yeah.... our damn HDTivo keeps locking up. It's truly pissing me off. What if it locks up while recording one of our shows? Thank goodness we have a second Tivo (non-HD) on which we record many of the same things for just this reason. We found early on that HD recordings look really good, but they don't always record perfectly (occassional sound and picture glitches). To protect our religious watchings of certain TV shows, we set both Tivos to record many of the same shows just in case one locks up, loses HD signal, etc. It's sick how much TV we record and watch. No wonder we're both out of shape.

My Sides Hurt...

From laughing too much. Morgan's comment on my lucky kidney/karma post on 12/8/06....

Seriously, still giggling.... wiping tears from my eyes.

I'll link with the comment later today. So come back....

OK, so I promised a link, here it is:

Lucky Kidney (with comments)

Hell, Yeah!

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

So, I'm the High Priestess.... sweet...

Moody? Check!

Someone who illuminates what you otherwise might not see (Teacher)? Check!

Someone who holds knowledge, secret knowledge? Check! (Hey, as much as the general public knows about our space program, you would think that it was secret knowledge.)

F'ing Sweet Blog

Morgan apparently responds to bullying! Yay! She's started her blog and I was right, it's f'ing HILARIOUS. Now, I'm not sure how much knowing her adds to the hilariousness, but I'm sure that many others will find her funny, too.

Morganarama

I've already subscribed to it using my bloglines (www.bloglines.com). I serve this up for your personal entertainment. Let me/her know how much you love it. Encourage the cursing like a sailor with tourette's who's mama never spanked him for it. That's a Morgan-ism from her blog. Are you crying yet? I sure was when I read that.

Fridge/credit/power Update

Because I know you want to know about these things...

Bought a fridge last night at a major national electronics/appliance store. At frist, we were gonna get a black fridge, but at the last minute we decided to purchase a faux stainless steel side-by-side. It's beautiful. Did you know that fridges can be beautiful? Well, they can be. Mine is proof.

Also, fixed my credit problem. The one credit bureau did not have my whole birthday, only the year, and that is what flagged. So now that is all fixed. Although, it doesn't appear that many of the credit/financing places that I use actually report to this particular bureau, so that is why I haven't ever encountered this issue before.

I'm afraid to discuss my power issues for fear of repeating what happened earlier this week... but, our power came back on yesterday late in the morning. so the house was nice and toasty by the time I came home from work. Thank God. Seriously, thank you God. Please don't smite my power again.

Lucky Kidney

After my little P.S. post last night regarding our power, guess what? No really, take a guess... we lost power at 2 a.m. I am not kidding. Due to this recent occurrance, in addition to other power issues, I have come to the conclusion that I gave away my "lucky" kidney. Lucky Leftie now resides in Massachusetts, bringing much luck and health to my aunt, for which I am grateful. Don't get me wrong. I am glad it's helping her out. But I've had awful luck when it comes to power and other 'little' things happening to me since March. Let me lay it all out for you:

1) Major storm in July that knocks out power to my home, but also forces me to close the Center and cancel a summer camp due to a power outage at work as well.

2) At work, lost two weeks worth of missions in Sept because of someone leaving their job and not telling anyone about us.

3) Last week, major ice and snow storm causes power outages both at home and work. Work only lost power for a day or two. Home, we had no power for three whole days.

4) Last night, we lost power at home AGAIN (due to high winds from an Artic cold front moving in).

For those of you who are Howard Stern listeners: I am the Scott the Engineer of everyone I know. I have that Black Cloud following me; knocking out power, causing bad things out of my control to happen. Anyone know any incantations that will bring my luck back?

Can I swap kidneys with my aunt?? Oh wait, nope. Not going through that healing process again. F* that.

By the way, I do find this all hilarious. Shennie, I know you're reading this... say hello to Lucky Leftie for me!

P.S.

Just in case you don't know, Ben and I got our power back on Sunday night. So we've been home since about 11:00 p.m. Sunday. Yay!

(Gotta find something to be positive about with all this credit junk going on...)

House Inspection and other stuff

*Warning: There is a bit of cursing in tonight's post. You'll see why.*

House inspection went well tonight. I brought the camera with me and took like 50 something pictures. There are only a couple minor things that need to be fixed and we're not asking the sellers to do it. We think that they'll balk at paying for them, and they are things that can wait until spring/summer anyway.

Now, here's the shit that pisses me off. Ben and I went fridge shopping now that we feel fairly comfortable that this whole house thing is gonna go off without any major hitches... found the perfect fridge, told the guy we wanted it, filled out the credit/financing application... it comes back with a red flag because of my birthday!!! Are you flipping kidding me??!! I've NEVER had that flag before. I've had like 10 credit cards over the past ten years, bought a car with dad, rented a house with a couple of landlords that did credit reports... nothing ever flagged on my birthday before... WTF?!

Oh yeah, WTF reminds me of this group of kids that came into work today to run a mission. It was a group of kiddos with special needs. One young man kept getting frustrated, and would exclaim "WTF?!" Not, "What the F*ck?!" but the actual three letters, W T F. It was hilarious. I was proud of him for finding an appropriate way for expressing frustration, because few adults actually know what WTF stands for. So now, all day, I've been saying WTF?! when I'm frustrated.....

WTF??!!


What the flip is up with my credit stuff?? This is such crap. I am unbelievably frustrated because we're not even 100% certain which credit bureau has my birthdate wrong. I did a 3-in-1 credit report, and two of them report the month and year only (and they're both right), and the last one only reports the year, and it's right. So I'm completely flummoxed. On the 3-in-1 credit report, it already shows which credit company the appliance store checked, so I'm guessing that they perhaps don't report month and date on their reports for some dumbassed reason. I'm too pissed to keep talking about this. It means we might not be able to get a fridge on or around our move in date. Who the hell wants to move in to a house without a freaking fridge???!!!

I'm just working myself up more. I better just sign off now.

"I almost have a house... I almost have a house... I almost have a house..."

I Wanna New Blog...

One that won't make me twitch (except with laughter)

I've decided (with the help of my sister) that my friend Morgan should have a blog. While my posts are occasionally funny, they are mostly informational. Letting you all know what's going on in my life.

Morgan's blog, on the other hand, would be more like Jessica's blog, funny AND informational. I can only imagine the nicknames she would come up with for her students (so no one can identify them), and the stories that she could share. Oh, the stories I've already heard. I'm sure there are many more that there just aren't time for that she could share with us online. How great would that be?

Morgan, Please please please please get a blog. Blogger is a good, easy way to blog. There are many other choices, but I'm not familiar with them to recommend or advise against.

I Have the Power!!

NOT! My house has been without power since Thursday night. Ben and I slept at home that night because we hoped that perhaps power would be restored within 12 to 24 hours of losing power. Boy, we were optimistic. So as of yesterday afternoon, we still had no power, so we stayed at my sister's house last night. My best friend from high school also stayed here. He's been without power as well.

So we all had a nice breakfast this morning. Lunch was Penn Station. Then Jessi and I went grocery shopping. Now we are all sitting and watching movies, while I think Jessi is in the kitchen cooking, and I'm knitting. What a relaxing weekend.

I hope my kitty is warm enough at home...