April 4, 5, 6, & 7: Sick as a Dog

Spring Green by bunni711 featuring a david yurman perfume

Mellifluous (me-LIH-floo-us) adj. - (of a voice or words) Sweet or musical; pleasant to hear [Google Dictionary]; having a smooth, rich flow <a mellifluous voice> [m-w.com]

April 4: Today my mom bought us subs from the sub shop in town for lunch.  It used to be a Subway, but they pretty much sell the same stuff there now under a different name.  I got a sweet onion chicken teriyaki sub, which was yummy but very messy.  The only reason it wasn't as good as Subway was that they seem to use a different kind of chicken.  I only ate half (it was a footlong) and saved the rest for later.  

I worked on JavaScript earlier (I started last night) - we have to code a jigsaw puzzle.  It's pretty cool, but I also have to finish this chapter's project by Sunday night, too.  I've got a lot of work to do.  Hopefully the stuff I learned from working on the last project will help me out a lot.  I think I really got some of the concepts more concretely last time.

Later on I watched an episode of Alcatraz, which was pretty good.  I have a bunch of them to catch up on but never seem to be in the mood to watch them.  I always really like the show when I'm watching it, though.  I need to keep that in mind when I've got time to watch them.

For dinner, we had what my mom calls paprika chicken, which is just baked chicken with spices on it, and some chicken-flavored rice.  Later on, we made some chocolate cupcakes.  I tried a couple with Nutella on top, and it was pretty good.  The chocolate cupcake kind of cancelled out the taste of the Nutella, though.  It's better on other things, I think.  

Mostly I read and spent time online today, looking at reddit and reading through comics that I found through the r/comics subreddit.  I found a couple that seem cool.  One is Invisible Bread (which I'm finished going through), and the other is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (which seems to have a much larger archive and I'm still working through).  It's always fun to find new comics that I like.  r/comics is probably going to be a good place to find new comics to read.  Speaking of which, I think I might stop reading Robot Beach.  It was really cool at first (I loved going through the archives), but it's been consistently boring for a while now.  I encourage anyone who's interested to read it, but I don't personally think I'll be following it anymore.  (If you're interested, there are a bunch of webcomics listed under "Favorite Sites" on the right side of this blog.)

March 5: Today I woke up feeling absolutely terrible.  At first I thought it was because I had been staying up pretty late every night since I got home, but quickly discovered that I am sick.  I had trouble falling asleep last night.  I read more of my book before bed, but it was really late when I finally fell asleep.  I'm sure staying up late 3 nights in a row didn't help me keep from getting sick, at least.  Ugh.

I've been feeling pretty awful all day.  I finished the rest of my sub for lunch and wasn't feeling too bad at that point.  I watched some TV and hung out with Teddy as I steadily started feeling worse and worse.  Today is my mom's early day (she gets off at 3 instead of 8:30), but she didn't get home until much later because she had to bring my older sister home from work and do some shopping.  

When my mom got back, I was feeling really terrible.  I had tried to take a nap to nip this thing in the bud, but I don't think it really helped.  I didn't expect my mom to have picked up any chicken soup, but she did!  I had some of that for dinner, and then my mom made some really yummy potato stroganoff.  I actually ate too much of it and went to bed a little full.  (We always eat kind of late at my house.)

I tried to go to bed earlier tonight since I've been feeling so yucky, but still ended up going to bed a little late.  It was within reason, though, don't worry.  After James and I got off the phone, I was on reddit for (what I thought was) a little while, but when I looked at the time, 30 minutes had passed!  Reddit is actually a bigger time waster for me than even Facebook used to be.  I was on there earlier, too, reading and commenting on a thread about how short guys (under 5'4") are kind of prejudiced against (among other topics).  There were a couple of very interesting IAMA's about transexuality - both were male to female, but one was by a 19 year old girl and the other was by the husband of a 35 year old Chinese woman.  I wish more people were open-minded about this.  I won't go into it, though. (I could fill an entire post and more.)

March 6: I had a really rough night last night.  I woke up every few hours with a really sore throat and I could barely breath through my nose.  Suffice it to say, last night sucked.  James came over today instead of yesterday because we were having an Easter dinner.  Today is my mom's day off, and we couldn't have it Sunday since she's working.

This morning, my mom had to run some errands in Ashtabula with my grandma.  She got her new puppy today and brought him along with her.  I slept in because I was sick, or I would've volunteered to babysit him.  I had some more chicken soup for lunch today; this time it was Progresso.  The soup was pretty darn yummy.  My mom also brought back Taco Bell (I actually think my grandma got it for us).  I shared my tacos with Jamie.

Jamie and I agreed not to kiss each other today since we don't want to get him sick, too.  It's weird, but we have just been kissing each other on the cheek and stuff instead.

Later on, James and I went over to my grandma's house to see the little puppy.  We brought my nephew along, too (he's staying at our house this weekend).  The puppy is so adorable!  He played with us a bunch today, which actually surprised me.  When I saw him the first time, he only walked around some and slept the rest of the time.  Today, he was full of energy!  He bounded around, pranced, and jumped on us.  He would lift up his little paw and wave it at us, too.  He also took an interest in my flip-flops - it was so cute because he kept biting at them but never bit anything off.  His little teeth don't hurt when he nibbles, either.  We tried to keep him from doing that, though.  I figure it's never too early to start discouraging puppies from biting or nibbling.

My grandma got the puppy a little tennis ball, but he wasn't interested in it.  I think it was too big.  Delgado liked it, though, and kept going after it.  He finally got it, too, and ripped it all up in no time.  The puppy is doing so well going potty on the little training pads.  He might never need to go outside since he's only going to get up to 4 pounds (at most).  We took a bunch of pictures of him chewing on my shoes and people's fingers.  I also got a really cute one of him kissing Jamie all over the face.  Can you imagine his little tiny kisses?! Hopefully I can figure out how to upload them so I can post them on here.  

The puppy would play with us for a little while, then take a nap, play with us some more, and take another nap.  I can't believe how playful he was - he's so tiny!  He was pretty much the cutest thing ever, I have to say.  I held him an awful lot today, too.  He spent a good chunk of the time we were there asleep on my stomach, cuddled in the palm of my hand (yes, he's that small!)  He's just too cute and I hope I can go over and see him a lot.  I've never gotten to spend so much time with such a tiny puppy and I love it!

After we left (unwillingly), I had to lay down for a while.  My cold (or whatever it is) is a lot worse today.  My nose is stuffy and I'm blowing it constantly.  My throat hurts a lot, so I've been drinking a lot of tea.  Needless to say, my voice is less than mellifluous today.  I wish I had taken some of the cold medicine we have last night.  It is helping a lot today.  I slept some and woke up just in time for dinner.  My mom made some delicious glazed ham, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes with homemade gravy.  Everything was really good, but I didn't feel too hot after eating.  I had been feeling a little nauseous all day, too.  Ugh (again).  My mom picked me up some more medicine, though, plus some delicious Luden's drops which help my throat feel so much better.

March 7: I slept a lot better last night.  I think part of the reason was that I took medicine before bed, and I also think I might be getting a little better.  I hope so!  I went to bed at a decent time last night, too.  I slept in the guest room because I didn't want to wake James up in the middle of the night and it was more comfortable to sleep on my own.  I didn't wake up in the middle of the night, but I did wake up kind of early (I think on my own), and went back to bed - more sleep should mean less sick, I hope.  I slept in on purpose so I could work on getting better.  For lunch, I had some more chicken soup and James and I watched Broken Flowers on netflix.  It was really boring and there was no closure at the end.  I didn't really like it. 

Later on I watched Jamie play his Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning game.  It was pretty interesting.  The style reminds me of my Legends of Zelda game on gamecube (Windwaker).  A lot of the characters looked pretty funny, too.  Funny in a haha way.  It looks like fun, though.  I guess he played it a bunch while I was at my house.  Like pretty much the whole time, I guess.  (Just kidding!)  I didn't feel like doing much else besides sitting around, so it was nice to just watch him play something cool.

Later on, I checked up on our group discussion board.  We have a bunch more projects due in Workgroup soon - Excel and Powerpoint projects.  There are 6 total due on the 11th.  No one has picked any yet, so I volunteered for one of the powerpoints and said I'd help out with Excel, too.  I think I'd like to work on one of the projects that's worth more points because I'm not sure I trust some of our group members to do everything thoroughly.  We missed a few points on some Word projects because they didn't follow directions.  I'd just like to make sure everything is done right.  (Even though I made comments on those projects, the group members who did them didn't make changes.  It's frustrating.)

Jamie's parents took us out to Arby's for dinner because they're having a deal on their roast beef BBQ sandwiches.  I can't be sure how they really tasted since I can't smell anything (and thus my sense of taste is severely dulled), but I think they tasted pretty good.  I also got some cheddar curly fries (Mmmm).  It was very yummy.

We stopped by Lowes, so James and I wandered about and picked out stuff for our future house.  We picked out wood floors (James found them - I told him he has great taste in floors), a front door, kitchen counters (this amazing granite that I'm in love with), faucets, a kitchen faucet, a front door handle, and a rug.  It was pretty fun.  It's interesting to see the types of things he likes.  He says that he likes old looking things more.  I like both modern and old, so hopefully it won't be too hard to compromise when decorating/designing our house one day.  

I used to think about decorating my house as if I were going to make most/all the decisions, but I think I'm realizing more that I'm going to have to compromise.  I guess I just figured he wouldn't care about that sort of thing.  I just need to stop worrying about how I'm not going to get everything exactly how I want it and be more open to compromises.  It's something I've known about forever but didn't fully grasp - it's something you have to experience, I guess.  There seem to be a lot of those types of things in life.  

It was a lot of fun looking at all the home stuff with James, though.  When we got back to his house, I worked on my JavaScript project, but I'm still having problems.  I got some of it to work, which is progress!  Hopefully I'll be able to figure it out tomorrow without having to ask the prof for extra help.  I know it's her job, but I need to be able to work it out on my own.  This is something I may potentially need to do in my day-to-day job, so I have to have a handle on it.  I don't think I'm doing too bad, though.  I should be able to get it right on my own.

Sorry I haven't been posting every day.  I've been pretty sick the past few days, though.  One thing is that I'm not always in the mood to write.  The other is that I'm running out of Polyvore pictures to use for my posts!  I'm really trying to get a post written about every day, though.  I haven't missed one yet!  It's easier to make a post the day of or the day after, but I do my best to try to remember the main things I did/experienced every day.  

Love,

Christen

April 2 & 3: Puppy Preoccupation

Parisian Afternoon by bunni711 featuring a chain necklace

Prolix (pro-LICKS) adj. - long and wordy; tedious [Webster's]; (of speech or writing) using or containing too many words; tediously lengthy [Google Dictionary]

April 2: Today James and I picked up a Digiorno pizza for lunch and took advantage of a deal on m&ms - 2 medium sized bags for $4.  It was a pretty bad idea because we ended up with a crap ton of m&ms once we split them (we got one bag of plain and one peanut and split each in half).  I ate way too many, of course, and still have a bunch left.  I didn't think it was going to be so much!  

While we ate, we were going to watch Warehouse 13 (we did finally watch the Christmas episode the other day) using the SyFy app on his 360, but we found out you can't actually watch episodes on it (or at least you can only watch certain ones, I'm not sure which).  Instead, we watched Breakfast at Tiffany's.  It was so good!  I really, really liked the movie.  I thought it was cool, the dialogue was witty, and the story was amazing.  I really love the character of Holly Golightly.  She's not just a fashion icon (as she's generally depicted), but a fiery, independent female lead with a past and a wild side... yeah I'm in love with the movie! Really, I think it's one of my favorite movies now.  I'm excited because there honestly aren't a whole lot of movies that I fall in love with and can watch over and over.  I really think this is one of those movies, though.  I'm pretty excited.

Later on, we headed over to my house.  I had to finish up my memo for tech writing.  I found out that my draft didn't post to the discussion board (it must have been some sort of error), so I didn't get any feedback on it at all.  It's frustrating, but I'm trying to take it in stride.  I had to take a break from working on it after I found out, but I went back later on and got it done.  I had to change the pretty fonts I used because they didn't show up on anyone else's computer.  It actually distorted the headings and caused the memo to go onto 3 pages, so I didn't have a choice.  Hopefully they don't mess up for my prof, otherwise she'll probably give me a crap grade on it.  Ugh.

James and I played Skip-bo later on (after dinner), but he wasn't feeling very well.  We sat in my room and talked some while he rested, but he had to leave a bit early.  I read some before bed and went online, but that was about it for tonight.

April 3:  I stayed up kind of late last night, but wasn't overly tired this morning.  I didn't really do much this morning, but after lunch I finally published some new sets on Polyvore.  I had a bunch in the works but wasn't satisfied with how they looked, but I finaggled them and finally got some of them to look nice.  The one on this post was actually a new one.  I'm pretty happy with it and the other ones.  I also entered one of them into a group contest, so we'll see how that turns out.

Later on, I watched the episode of House that I missed and then watched America's Next Top Model.  I like that show, even though some people probably think it's dumb.  I'm surprised that it's still doing so well/ is still good after so many seasons.  I especially like the cool photo shoots they do and it was interesting to see them go for casting and walk in a show this week.  I'm glad that there doesn't seem to be a "villain" this season to make everything overly dramatic, but I guess we'll see if that changes.

Earlier I was playing around with Draw (Open Office) and Design (Expression Studio), trying to make cool logos.  I didn't make much progress, especially with Draw (I think I need directions for that one because individual study is not working out so well).  In Design, I figured out how to use the warp tool and use layers to change fonts to look how I want them too, but I definitely need more practice at it.  I'll have to look up videos or directions to help me out.  I've decided to try to make a bunch of cool logos.  It'll be good practice for website design.  I think I'm really leaning toward the design side instead of the coding side, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a job in design without a background in graphic design. That's another reason why it might be a good idea to take that class in the fall - Digital Image Manipulation.  We'll see.

After my dad left for his meeting and before my mom came home, my grandma called and asked if I wanted to meet her new puppy who was over for a visit.  He's not even 5 weeks old yet and soo tiny.  The little guy is coming home on Thursday.  They're leaving the mom early because she has an infection (something to do with feeding) and he is already eating real food like baby food chicken, some soft dog food (chicken and rice), and some kind of cereal.  He is so, so adorable!  The little guy is a chihuahua (half standard, half teacup), white with black spots, and his name is My Buddy Spot.  His nickname is SpotBot.  He has a big black splotch on his butt, a little one on his back, and his head is mostly black except around his mouth and a line down his forehead.  His little tail curls a little (especially when he walks!) and it's half black, half white.

I got to hold the little puppy for most of the time I was there.  I was there for over an hour, maybe even an hour and a half.  I had to take Teddy since I was here alone, but he didn't behave at my grandma's house.  He was playing with Delgado (my cousin's dog), but then he noticed the tiny puppy and went nuts.  He was whining and trying to get at him (he had to be held back), licking his chops the whole time.  I was afraid he would try to gobble the poor thing up, so we didn't let him near the puppy.  Delgado is really good with him, though - very loving and gentle.  Once when Teddy was whining and crying, the little puppy started whining too in his little tiny voice.  It was so adorable!

The puppy is so tiny that he can fit in the palm of my hand.  He's only going to get between 2 1/2 to 4 pounds.  I mostly held him, but let him walk some, too.  He walked up onto my shoulder and onto the couch and I had to rescue him from the cushions!  I let him walk on the couch later - he was sniffing around and trying to walk off the edge; then he squatted down and peed a little puddle the size of a quarter (at most).  I was surprised he never peed on me.  (I was thinking it the whole time.)  I told my grandma his nickname should be Puddles.

He started looking sleepy, but I wanted to see if he'd walk on the floor (my grandma mentioned that he would come to you if you made kissy noises at him), but he just stood there, so I picked him back up and snuggled him so he could go to sleep.  The little thing just curled right up into a ball with his little nose tucked under my arm and dozed off.  I saw him yawn later on and about died!  I held him while he slept for a long time and didn't want to let him go when the owners came back to get him.  My mom came after work, too (I left her a note) and we called my dad after his meeting to come see him.  They both got to hold him.  He's so soft and cute and tiny!  I told James his little black nose is about the size of the head of a push pin.  I took a couple of pictures, but I'm still not sure how to get them online from my phone.  I'm the least tech savvy 20-something I know - when it comes to cell phones, anyway!  

Sorry if my spiel on the puppy dog was a bit prolix - what can I say? I love dogs!  Anywho, later on I watched Alcatraz online.  Oh yeah, and earlier I got a message from the guy in my group I was having problems with before.  He said he really liked the newsletter I did, and later on suggested some grammar fixes (I don't think I need them, though).  The other two people in the group still haven't gotten back to me about their descriptions in the newsletter.  I'll have to make something up if they don't.  We also haven't gotten a draft of the mail merge letters yet, or a second draft of the questionnaire.  Hopefully they get done because we all have to share the grades for these things!  Despite all the issues I found with the proposal, we got full credit for it.  It seems like this lady won't be a hard grader, so that's a relief.  I just need to make some last tweaks to it and turn it in tomorrow.

Welp, I'm off to bed.  I've been reading more of Catch-22 and I really like it so far.  It's funny and quirky and interesting.  I like all the characters because they are so rich and so crazy.  The time jumps are a little disorienting, but I think I get the main details so far.  I'm maybe 1/3 of the way through.  I'll probably read some more before bed and such.

Love,

Christen

March 28, 29, 30, 31, & April 1: Work and Worry

Disney Princesses: Ariel by bunni711 featuring shell jewelry

March 28: Today I woke up kinda late again, but it could have been me recovering from my (possible) sickness.  I haven't really been feeling unwell today, so maybe I'm already over it.  (Hooray if it's true!)  I played The Sims 3 for a long time today and it was a lot of fun.  I haven't been letting myself have fun too much lately and I've been having a lot of anxiety over school work.  I have been putting things off.  I have a paper due next Tuesday and the Word group projects are due next Thursday.  I volunteered me and James to work on the newsletter, but one of the guys said we didn't need to both work on it and that James should start working on the Excel projects.  Apparently those are due on the 4th, too.  There is just too much work right now in that class.  Ugh!

Later on, I worked on my owl some more.  I started choosing the paper I'm going to use and I cut out some parts of the pattern (after labeling them all, of course).  I think it's going to turn out really cute.

March 29: Jamie came over today, but I was still feeling low.  We stopped by the library and I got out some non-fiction books because I'm in a learning mood.  I got the book on the death penalty that I had been reading last year and wasn't able to finish, plus a book on the history of socialism (for pure academic interest, mind you), and a pictorial dictionary on the history of fashion.  I'm excited to start reading them.  After that, James and I got some drinks, too.

Jamie wasn't feeling well earlier, so we had to leave early to go back to his house.  We got back just in time because his mom hadn't been planning on making dinner and we would've been on our own.  Our paper was due today on how our workgroup groups are going.  I'm frustrated because there have been some issues with one of the group members acting as leader and telling me I can't work with someone else on a project.  Maybe I'm making a big deal of things, but I'm frustrated and had a difficult time figuring out what to write in my paper.  (I also had a really hard time figuring out what to write back to him when he said I shouldn't work with someone else.  I was pretty upset, but didn't want to come off rude.  Ugh!)  I hope the prof doesn't make something out of this.  It's giving me a bit of anxiety, actually.  We are actually supposed to meet with her soon as a group because we had a bit of a late start on the work.  Hopefully things go smoothly and this isn't brought up.

March 30: I have been sleeping in for a few days in a row now and it's making me feel pretty weird.  On top of that, my anxiety about my projects is getting ugly.  James and I watched a bunch of movies on TV today and we got Subway for dinner.  I got a chicken marinara melt again because I really like them for some reason.  I've been kind of avoiding work today, but I really need to get started on it tomorrow.  I realized that I had mistakenly thought Tuesday was the 2nd, when Monday is actually the 2nd and the 4th is Wednesday.  Now things are due a day earlier than I had anticipated.

I don't know why I'm having so much anxiety, but James has been making me feel better.  He's being really understanding and I can tell he is really trying.  I think I'm letting this stuff get into my head too much and I'm going to try not to focus on my anxiety.  It's there and I recognize it, but if I keep it in the back of my mind all the time, it will only be worse.

I posted editing remarks on the business proposal today.  I had a lot of critiques (mostly on basic organization so far, but I have a feeling the language is going to need work, too).  I hope the guy I've been having issues with won't take my comments the wrong way.

March 31: Today, I started working on my memo and it was much easier to do than I was worried it would be.  Actually, I feel pretty silly for having so much anxiety about it.  It's only a two page memo and we had to analyze the effectiveness of three brochures.  Our next assignment is to make a brochure, so it makes sense.  I tried to make my memo look nice and despite the sentences being a little rough, I posted it on the discussion boards for review.  I don't think anyone will post about it over the weekend, but I'm hoping someone does so that I can get more work done on it.  I'll go back and edit through tomorrow.

Later on, Jamie's parents took us out to a Chinese buffet for dinner.  We stopped by Walmart and looked around for a while before.  We had Jamie's nephew with us and we took him through all the toy aisles to keep him entertained.  I'm sure a bunch of people probably thought he was our kid.  That's so weird.  I think I probably looked like the disinterested mother while Jamie pushed the cart.

Dinner was really good and I actually didn't get sick from it this time.  I usually do get sick from eating at this place.  I even had some ice cream, which I was sure would push me over the limit.  Jamie's mom did get sick, but I don't think James did.  He regretted getting ice cream, though.  Later on, we watched a couple of movies, including Midnight in Paris and Bridesmaids.  I heard a lot of good stuff about Bridesmaids, but didn't find it amazingly funny.  Don't get me wrong, I thought it was funny and I liked it, but I guess I expected more of a The Hangover type movie.  We also saw Friends with Benefits the other day, which I actually liked.  I thought it was snarky and cute, but James didn't really like it that much.

The dude in my workgroup group was really nice about what I said back to him (about working with another group member) and about the proposal critiques.  He said he'll change some things, but I'm not sure he's really going to change it that much.  I hope we don't get points off because it is a lot longer than 5 pages (16 at the moment, actually).

April 1: Today I started on the newsletter for workgroup and I'm really happy with how it is turning out.  At first, I wrote it with customers as the audience, but discovered that it was supposed to be written for the employees.  I had to take a break after that because it meant I would have to rewrite some stuff.  I was thinking I'd have to rewrite more, but I actually only had to tweak a few sentences to make it work.  The whole thing looks really nice and very professional.  I posted a draft to see what the groupies say and to get some information about a couple of group members as far as their technical experience/expertise.  I think it will turn out really nicely.

Later on, I worked on the memo some more, trying to get it down to two pages.  It was at three when I posted it yesterday, but I was able to make things fit.  Earlier we watched Space Jam on TV and the season premiere of Game of Thrones.  Watching that show reminds me of the big fight we had that day we watched the marathon, so that wasn't fun.  I've been grumpy today, too, so things weren't going totally smoothly.  I was sitting on the couch earlier, dozing off every few minutes even though I got enough sleep (well, we did go to bed at 3am last night because we decided to watch Bad Teacher, which I think has a terrible message and wasn't that great, either).  I'm tired of being tired all the time.

I'm still working on Catch-22 but could be making better progress.  The story is strange and it's pretty much set up in sections where each chapter consists of stories about a specific character in the main character's air corp unit.  It's not boring, though, just quirky.  I've also been reading a bit of my other books, but mostly I've been worrying or working or watching movies.

We didn't go to see The Hunger Games today because Jamie was feeling sick again.  We probably won't be able to see it until it comes out on dvd now.  We've been watching a bunch of movies this weekend, though, and we got to go out to eat yesterday.  I just hope that he won't have to be sick all the time anymore.  He complains so little that I always have to ask him how he's feeling to even know if he's sick or not.  I guess we both have our struggles.

Love,
Christen