Woohoo!

Thanks, prez.

Military.com reports:

Troops to Receive Retro Pay

Week of February 11, 2008

Active-duty servicemembers will receive retroactive earnings this month, followed by a supplemental payday for non-active personnel. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed into law Jan. 28, 2008 by President Bush stipulates a 3.5 percent military pay raise.


Also from Military.com - A creative way to support the troops :)
Operation Thin Mints

20,000 screaming girls plus me.

This weekend I drove 4 hours each way to watch my sister-in-law's competitive dance team perform. Yeah, I spent roughly 3.2 MINUTES in the car for each SECOND she performed. She's on the hip-hop team. At this Cheersport competition, there were allegedly 20,000 cheerleaders. TWENTY THOUSAND girls (plus a few boys) from approximately three years to twenty years old. Some were performing pom routines, some were doing cheering (cheering for whom, I'm not sure... because everyone was cheering for them... cheering for the cheerleader, who is cheering on... herself?). Anyway, I survived and was there to support her. Her team even won first place in their category, so that was pretty cool. DH stayed home to study. I should get extra wife-points for going to extreme lengths for his family, right?



I remember in college how one of my professors was against the words "extreme" and adjectives of the like. These gyms are not of the same philosophy. Almost all of them were "ultimate" or "elite" or even my personal favorite, "Champions Elite Allstars" - clearly allstars needed two modifiers...


After sitting in an arena for 5-6 hours listening to hip-hop and techno (let me just say that I still have an electronic version of "When Doves Cry" stuck in my head), I came up with a list of approved activities my future children are encouraged to do (by me). I seriously hope they do not want to be cheerleaders (no offense to those that are/were cheerleaders).

- Bagpipes (they're just stinking cool)
- Ballet dancing
- Basketball (per dh)
- Chess team
- Hula dancing
- Irish step dancing
- Soccer
- Surfing

Perhaps I will add to this... but for right now, Junior and Juniorette have that list to choose from.

But dh says I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch... I just want to be prepared

Just your average romantic Valentine's Day...

If you count a day where I worked 11 hours, dh studied all day, and I puked when I got home as romantic, our day could have inspired a chick flick. Poor dh tried to be sweet and he made me my favorite food for dinner, but alas, I couldn't even eat it I was so tired and sick!

I'm alive after an intense few days at the flower shop. FYI, Valentine's Day does not equal romance to a florist. Sure enough, in marketing, it does. But when it comes to the florist him/herself, they think it's simply, a long, exhausting day. More to come later.

commentators

Or "they're just your average potato..." Get it, common-tater? Common-po-tato? Haha. I'm funny.

Anyway, the commentators on ESPN crack me up. Either they're crazy over-dramatic, or like today, they're just plain silly. Take tonight's Vandy/Kentucky game, first, he said "Vanderbilt's having it once, twice, three times a lady." Um. How does that metaphor work? I understand it was their third three-point shot made in a row... but still? Then, when Vandy was ahead by 20 points, he said "Vanderbilt's finding it 'easy like Sunday morning'". Just weird. It's now halftime, and Vandy is up by 30 points. That's huge. DH says it's an "oldfashioned buttkicking." I simply say, "Go 'dores!"

On another note, it seems that since highschool, the schools that I have been associated with haven't had definable mascots. Foresters? Yeah, um kinda like lumberjacks. We wear flannel and big belt buckles - oh, and have axes. Colonials? Um. We dress up like people of the original 13 colonies, or we wear things with hippos on them. The hippos are because former president Stephen Joel Trachtenberg bought a big huge bronze hippo statue once (legend has it that he was inebriated and his wife wouldn't let him keep it, so he donated it to the school). Ask my sisters about Pres. Trachtenberg and his lovely going-away speech at graduation. They < 3 him. Or not. And now, Commodores? Yeah, turns out a dude donated money to start a college in the South, and they named it after him. They're not sure why he is called "the commodore" but sure enough they named the school's mascot after him.

Jen D, this makes me think of you. Not for the queasy.

It's Monday. Am I supposed to be happy?

For those of you who don't know, I've taken a week off from the preschool and am working at a flower shop for about a week leading up to Valentine's Day. Working at a flower shop has been therapeutic. There's just something about flowers that are very happy. I'm not doing floral design, but instead taking orders, cleaning, and processing flowers.

So, I took a lot of orders. They kind of range from normal to pitiful. Guys - have an idea of what you want to get before you order. If you don't know, it's ok to ask. But please, have your message in mind when you call a florist. There's only so much we can help with... writing your personal note is something YOU should do. Not the friendly helper on the phone.

Another note, if you don't know a girl's last name, you probably shouldn't be buying her flowers. It makes me fee very sad that you are that lonely.

I've been taking Hawaiian classes online and today I got a Hawaiian words magnet set in the mail along with a cool picture dictionary. It made my day.

Also - I forgot what it was like to have dh gone for a while. He went to California this weekend to see his brother, and so I was alone Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It was lonely! I used to survive pretty well a week or two when dh was underway (out on the ship) and not bat an eye. But I could barely survive 3 days this time! What kind of weak military wife am I? On the other hand, the ship experience was good for teaching me how to go out to eat alone. I no longer feel awkward when dining by myself, which I did this weekend. But he's home now, and I'm happy!

Not that we live in a rich area or anything...

Our grocery store has valet parking. Who's that lazy?

The land down under...

G'day!

Our "big news" is starting to pan out! Dh found out about a study abroad program through his MBA program and has pursued it. We have permission from dh's bosses to go (the most major obstacle, in our opinion), and are trying to work out the details and see if we can make it work... if it all works out, we could be spending fall semester 2008 (Aug to Dec) in Australia!!! We're super-excited because dh has family there and we would get to spend time with them (at the expense of seeing our immediate families :( Sad day!)



Silly me. I quite possibly might be the only female in the world who heard that we have a chance of going to Australia and I start doing math to figure out if we could have a baby there. Who does that? Who says, hey, I'm going to be 9784 miles away (give or take a few miles) from my hometown/most of my family, so why don't my dh and I bring a child into the world? Oh, that'd be me. No word if we really will, though. It's not just up to me. Also, after consultation from my mother, she says we should consider more than citizenship when deciding to have children. Perhaps she has a point.