The first two miles

If a pair of shoes lasts for 500 miles, I have approximately 498 miles to go before trading them in. That is a whole lotta miles. I'm not sure how long it will take me to get into this running thing, but tonight wasn't too bad. Though it wasn't all jogging, it was more of a walk - jog - walk - jog - waaaaaaaalk - jog (you're almost to the fire hydrant! keep going!) - walk (just for a block... hmmm, maybe another block) - jog (to the trashcan up there!) - walk. But that's more running than I've purposefully done in probably 2 years, so I'd say I'm off to a good start. I forgot to recharge my ipod from my trip to Arkansas, so I was unfortunate enough to hear two catcalls. I know, I'm hot.

Best last line of a movie

A good weekend = When Harry Met Sally, fresh strawberries, sunshine on hardwood floors, and a sleeping kitty.

The best of Arkansas:
.:Leaving Wichita at 7am to finally visit my BFF Mel.
.:Fresh salad and homemade bread with mozarella for lunch.
.:A trip to Fayetteville and walking around the Square.
.:Getting fitted for new running shoes.
.:Choosing to come back to Siloam and watch a movie for free instead of spending $8 at the theater.
.:Making pizza (canadian bacon on my side, mushrooms on Mel's).
.:When Harry Met Sally followed by an evening nap and giving some basil plants new homes.
.:Walking to Cafe on Broadway to meet up with Mollie, my college roomie (and seeing some old JBU friends - Hi Pritz!). Catching up on relationships, work, mutual friends...
.:Wanting to two-step but instead dancing a waltz with "Burney" while Travis played Tennessee Waltz on his banjo.
.:Walking home later than planned, but with more memories than expected (how's that for sappy?). "Uncle Bendi" is quite the funny man.
.:Sunday morning in my old church, Grace Episcopal, and then witnessing a baptism in Sager Creek.
.:Eating the best stirfry ever, homemade, of course.
.:Realizing that a weekend can be fun and doesn't require eating out every meal. Mel has incredible "make anything from scratch" skills and I only spent $7 on food: $2 for Cafe on Broadway muffin, and $5 for fresh strawberries at Renalli's in Tontitown. I recommend you go find yourself a Mel to stay with. :)
.:I've gained a new appreciation for the simplistic lifestyle. Not having a TV or internet really makes life more enjoyable and quality time is the norm.

The best of Kansas:
.:Seeing the sign for 70 miles to Wichita.
.:Talking to Christann for an hour and not missing a beat.
.:Coming home.

Playing Dress-Up

I'm supposed to be packing right now. Packing for my trip to Arkansas that begins Saturday morning. Tomorrow night I'm going to a friend's wedding. You know what that means? It means that I have to try on my dress tonight, just to make sure that it fits. Not because I just want to look cute a day earlier than necessary. No, that's not it at all...

It was cute when I tried it on and bought it 2 months ago, and it is still cute! What I'm excited about is that the dress that I bought for Becky's wedding in September is much the same fabric and style. Cute cute! Do I declare tomorrow to be a Diva Day? Yes, yes I do.

Betcha can't ride that bull

The Daily DeMo - Edition 6

DD36 :: Friday - "demolition to access" is a phrase meaning that a company has the right to demolish any necessary materials in order to access the asbestos.

DD37 :: Saturday - The background image for Windows was inspired by this vineyard.

DD37.1 - Even old violins need TLC.

DD38 :: Sunday - Most alarm systems will have a code for when you're under duress. You punch in the "secret" code if someone is with you, and it shuts the alarm off, but also sends a call to the police that something is wrong where you are.

DD39 :: Monday - Bull riding started like this: One cowboy says, "Betcha you can't ride that bull for 8 seconds." The other cowboy says, "Betcha I can." So the first cowboy says, "Ok, now see if you can do it with one hand." (thanks, Amy!)

DD40 :: Tuesday - A "stem" in music production is a layer of a track. When all of the stems are layered together, they produce a full track.

DD40.1 - There are online forums for women who are trying to grow their hair long. One particular forum has classifications and abbreviations for the various types of hair.

DD41 :: Wednesday - When you get a scratch disk is full message in PS when trying to crop, click the Clear button at the top to clear the units.

DD42 :: Thursday - PageMaker won't import a progressive jpeg. You have to save it as a baseline.

DD43 :: Friday - Most of the world's fertilizers are mined by the Dead Sea in Israel.

DD44 :: Saturday - Janel has two elbow creases, and had never noticed that until I pointed it out.

DD44.1 :: Use aloe + lotion on a sunburn because straight aloe will dry out your skin. (Consumer report: I've been using the Aloe Lotion from Walgreen's and can already see a decrease in the redness of my skin.)

DD45 :: Sunday - Friend "W" has one leg that is shorter than the other.

DD46 :: Monday - Skin is the most washable surface on earth.

DD46.1 :: My neighbor gave me a very stern motherly lecture about wearing sunscreen. Her brother died from melanoma when he was only 48. Yikes.

What is the etiology of too much knowledge?

The Daily DeMo, Edition 5

DD29 :: Friday - Contrary to my belief, my kitchen window really wasn't painted shut! This does wonders for the ventilation in my kitchen and this summer I won't be sweating nearly as much while I do my cooking.

DD30 :: Saturday - Even though the weatherman said the high would be 75 and sunny today, it most definitely was not. More like 55 degrees and cloudy. Someone asked me today, "Are you out of your mind?!" when they saw me in shorts.

DD31 :: Sunday - I learned more about Pastor Doug tonight, stories of his childhood that I hadn't heard before.

DD32 :: Monday - I looked up the definition for tinnitus (ringing or buzzing in the ears) and etiology (the cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of a disease or condition).

DD33 :: Tuesday - Derby used to be called El Paso, and there used to be a toll to cross the bridge from Delano to the east side of the river.

DD33.1 - You can play Old Snakey in Gmail.

DD34 :: Wednesday - Tonight's moon is a waning gibbous.

DD34.1 - The Eli Young Band is just as good the second time. And has the same groupies.

DD35 :: Thursday - Terro kills roly polies. Oops!

DD35.1 - Bill from PW used to play cello in high school.

This weekend offers many choices of entertainment. Some of it involves being spontaneous. :) What are your plans for the weekend? What did you learn this week?

PS. According to the definition of etiology, I don't think that my title question makes much sense. Just an attempt to pique your curiosity!

Stay tuned!

I know you will. Because you like this place. Right?

"How I saved Mother's Day with an X-Acto Knife" is coming soon. Drama!

Because I promised to get rid of the ants on the front page

This post for your squeamish types who dislike my pet ants. I'm tired of seeing the ants too. At least you only have to see them on the screen and not in real life!

The ants are still on this page, just be sure to not scroll down too far. Terro Day 2 was pretty uneventful. The ants continued to come, but aren't nearly as thick as they were. And today has been so-so. No pictures, because really all that you'd see is just a few ants here and there.

I met a friend at the Pat Green concert tonight at RiverFest (before you ask me "who's that?" for the 8th time, he's a country singer), and before that watched the Eli Young Band. I really like them. The last time I saw them was at Sam's Place, and I was itching to dance but the person I was with wasn't much of a dancer. I'll change that though!

If I get out of bed early enough tomorrow, I'm hitting up a big sale in the neighborhood. Pretty much a "name your price" sale, which I love. And how convenient that I just got cash from the bank the other day!

You've probably seen this by now, but to get your mind off of the ants, watch this. I want one of these. I could watch this all day. I always laugh at :42 at least. It's just so dang cute!

Terro: Day 1

Remember that one time when I complained about having ants in my apartment?

Blog readers, meet Terro.

Terro has turned my apartment into this:

My first visitor!

And not even 30 minutes later...

And in the bathroom!
And there are so many more. What I find interesting is that there are little black ants that come in the kitchen and living room, and the ants in the bathroom (in the back of the apartment) have bigger heads and browner bodies. Is there a name for the study of ants and their habits? They're fascinating to watch, but I've been watching for so long, this is my current attitude:

Ewwwwwwwwww! This is so nasteeeeeeeee! I just want them out! Eat up, little suckers! Go forth and DIE!

Unconditional Love

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

River Run, Softball, and Sonic

If you're reading my RSS feed, click through to see my bike map.

Instead of wallowing in the pain that occurred from riding my bike 4.5 miles and walking between Broadway and Waco the equivalent of another mile as I searched for my friends during the River Run, I went with Matthew T to watch the softball tournament tonight. It was more fun that we expected -- and definitely more fun than me laying on my sofa with aching legs and feet.

We picked a field and just watched whichever teams happened to be playing while spitting sunflower seeds. The last game started around 10:00 with the two best teams playing. Matt started out cheering for the Emphysemiacs (not their real name, but the majority of the team were smokers), but later switched to my team, The Team With Really Great Pants. I swear, their pants looked comfy enough to sleep in (I think their team name was actually something like "Swagger").

TTWRGP has a player named Zebediah. Powerful name. And he's definitely a powerful hitter (at least twice he hit the ball over the fence which results in an automatic out in slow-pitch). He has this routine that he went through every time he got up to bat:
Pat the dirt with both hands
Brush off the dirt
Do the baseball player thing and adjust himself
Swing the bat once
Do the baseball player thing and adjust himself (again)
Finally step into the batter's box.

He did this every time. I didn't really notice it until the girl in front of me was giving a play-by-play of his routine. Then of course, that's all that I noticed when Zebby got up to bat.

Most of the fans of this team were supportive girlfriends and wives of the players (though they weren't always so enthusiastic about watching the games). I asked where the team was from and one of the girls said that it's a mix of players from Tulsa and the Lawrence area. I'm not sure how they get their practicing done, living so far away, but they seemed to do alright, winning 7-5. This was something like their 7th game of the day. When they found out that we were from Wichita and just came to watch for fun, they were pretty surprised, but liked having the extra cheering section. I like to think that my cheering helped out with a few of their runs.

It was a perfectly still, windless evening topped off with a slush from Sonic. Yum. It would be nice if the weather could be this great for every night of softball, but this is Kansas. Wishful thinking.

What did you do this weekend? For the locals, are you doing any RiverFest stuff?

Are you still learning stuff?

@Mandy (on the blogroll) - Hi! Did you know that you can click the "subscribe by email" link when you leave a comment and then you don't have to keep checking? I'm on my way to go scratch your back now. :)

The Daily DeMo, Edition 4

DD#18 :: Monday - The word "ken" means scope of vision or knowledge and understanding. I learned this from babymakesthree.

DD#19 :: Tuesday - Today I learned that the QWERTY keyboard was invented by some guy (I have searched and searched and can't find the blog where I first read this. Perhaps I should narrow down my blog list so that I can find stuff.) who realized that the typewriter kept jamming because the most frequently used keys were placed together. So he separated them so that the frequently used keys are on opposite sides of the keyboard.

DD#20 :: Wednesday - To resize a layer with a mask in Gimp, right click on the layer mask and uncheck Edit Layer Mask.

DD#21 :: Thursday - I learned that a patch of fake chest hair and a wig can really have an effect on my view of a person. He can go from a perfectly good friend to someone who is not attractive at all.

DD#22 :: Friday - I learned that it's not worth it for me to spend money on Diversion and that I should just pay the speeding ticket.

DD#23 :: Saturday - If you average the income of the people you hang out with, your own income will fall within 10% of that number.

DD#24 :: Sunday - Trying to catch up on missed blogs along with Facebook updates over the weekend is nearly impossible and overwhelming. I'm tempted to just click "mark all as read."

DD#25 :: Monday - Angela informed me that there are 13 types of Spam: Spam Classic, Spam Classic 7 oz., Spam Low Sodium, Spam Garlic, Spam Lite, Spam Golden Honey, Spam Hot and Spicy, Spam Spread, Spam Singles, Spam Hickory Smoke, Spam with Bacon, Spam with Cheese, and Spam Oven Roasted Turkey.

DD#26 :: Tuesday - A friend from college is getting married in the Orthodox Christian Church and I read some info about the traditions.

DD#27 :: Wednesday - It's not as easy as it might seem to make a simple button for a link in SharePoint Services.

DD#28 :: Thursday - It seems like there are days when I really have to search for what I've learned, then one day I'll learn a whole bunch of new stuff to make up for it. This is one of those days. That SPS stuff that I was frustrated with yesterday? It just takes a new way of thinking about making it happen. There's always a simpler answer...

DD#28.1 - While watching a special show about Michael J Fox and optmism, I learned about Gross National Happiness in Buhtan.

DD#28.2 - While catching up on reading The Simple Dollar today, I learned that "$40,000 is a truly magic number. Below that number, people were much less happy with their lives - people with a household income of $20K or $30K were generally less happy with their state of living than people earning $40K."

DD#28.3 - My blogland buddy Mindee got to do a segment on the Rachael Ray Show and meet Bill Clinton. It was cool to read about her experience.

DD#28.4 - An overweight man riding a motorcycle without his shirt tucked in will reveal some nasty muffin top action.

Phew! I hope you made it through that. What did you learn today (or this week)?

a list of things.

things that i don't like.

• people who want to be my friend on shoutlife. have you not noticed that I haven't even logged on to the site in over a year??
• when blogger users leave comments and it links to their blogger profile instead of directly to their blog. [this isn't bashing anyone who leaves comments like that, but personally, when i leave a comment i look for the option to use the name and url instead of my blogger profile.]
  
• not having enough time to write a really good blog post, pull weeds, really dig into learning something new.
• incorrect usage of eager and anxious.
  
• ants in my apartment. on the floor, on my computer, on my table, in my sink. ugh.
  
• bare-belly pregnancy pics. (unless they're used in an artsy photography way.) i can get the same effect of your baby bump with your shirt pulled down thankyouverymuch.
  
• sites that require a registration to download free stuff.
  
• sallie mae. it will be a day of celebration when i kick her to the curb.
  
• being overdue for a haircut. this one deserves before & after pics.

things that make me happy.

• having food in the cabinets.
• tax refunds.
• downloading free stuff.
  
• getting inspired by dave ramsey to save money.
• strawberry jello with bananas and marshmallows.
  
• friends (of the tv show and real life variety).
• seeing my gladiolas growing more each day when i get home from work.
• being able to encourage someone else.
  
• knowing that God loves me more than i can imagine.

what annoys you or makes you happy?