Baby Finances

Instead of talking about my new years resolutions for this year. I thought that I'd reflect on mine from two years ago or what I thought I would be doing. I didn't really make any last year - and got little accomplished in 07 - so I'll compare what I did in o8 to what I thought I would do in 07 - I'm just slightly delayed. I thought about things like running a marathon, which was going okay - until I screwed up my knee and it still hasn't recovered fully :-( I never got any closer to writing a novel that I did in writting in this blog everyday. I thought I did pretty well in terms of posting this year. I did it pretty regularly with only a few times of not posting for more than a couple days. I did find a new job and I did move - but to a cold city - not a warm one. At least I achieved part of that goal. I did take an awesome vacation to the Grand Canyon/Arizona/Vegas. It was way fun - white water rafting was the best. I haven't really volunteered anyw...

There is really very little to do here. We have done very exciting things so far on this vacation. I've chopped up ice on my grandparents drive way, help set up for our family thing, went to our family thing, went to my grandparents the next day to clean up their house after our family thing, went shopping, went to Ikea, sat around. We did make a delicious delicious corn chowder for lunch yesterday. I got The Professional Chef book by the CIA (Culinary Institute of America...) for Christmas. So we tried to make their corn chowder - it was delicious. I really want to try to make the Lobster Bisque. Mmmmm bisque. I need some cheesecloth though first and maybe a china cap. It's been really low key and annoyingly unexciting. I did post some great pics from this week on my picasa page. Check it out. Pretty hilarious. We're going to do very exciting things today though. Go pick up a sharpening stone so we can sharpen my mom's chef knife (we ran around all day tryi...

It's been snowing here for a while. Like since Friday at 1pm - and it's now 1pm on Sunday. It looks like it's supposed to continue until 8pm tonight. We have a few inches on the ground already. Like 10inches. It just doesn't quit. I walked to my piano lesson this morning - which is a little over a mile away. I then walked to Harvard square to pick up a last minute christmas gift - and then back home. Typically a trip like that would take me like 1.5 hours total including the piano lesson. It took me 2.5 hours today. The snow just made everything slow going and because it's hasn't really stopped people haven't really shoveled yet. So it makes for extremely slow walking. I was so cold and wet by the time I got home I just stripped off all of my wet clothes - either my extremely wet pants and long johns or my sweat filled shirts and sweatshirt. I'm exhausted now. It was like walking through sand the entire time. I think that was a pretty good w...

My parents recently moved out of my second childhood home - and into their very own McMansion. I think that I've gone over my thoughts of their McMansion before. They now refused to store any of my childhood memories. So over Thanksgiving break I went through all of my old stuff and packed it away to have my mom send to me. Send away she did. I opened up one of the boxes that I got and it was kind of crazy. I hadn't gone though any of the stuff she had send me other than sorting through it as keep or toss. It was a box with my high school diploma, senior year book, and newspaper clippings of stuff I did while in high school. It was crazy nostalgic. Crazy. It seems like high school was a very very long time ago. I've done so many things since graduation. Looking at the old pictures of me and my friends was really strange too. I remember doing things but not every moment. I forgot a lot of the stuff - it was interesting to be reminded of it. So many things have c...

Is extremely tiring. My muscles hurt like I just took a yoga class. A hard yoga class - not baby yoga. It's way fun and frustrating all at the same time. I made bread last night too. It came out awesome. Completely awesome. Tasty delicious cinnamon bread and normal white bread. I need to do my laundry too. There's a ton of it. *sigh* Work trip last week was boring. Hopefully we'll get a few orders out of it. Hopefully.

I need to mentally pull it together. I'm getting stressed out and over whelmed - and it's really not that difficult. I think I'm just letting it feel more difficult than it is. I took a quiz today that said I lead a high stress life style. I don't feel that stressed. I wonder what low stress feels like... Have to travel the rest of the week. Glass blowing class, piano lessons & the ballet this weekend. Hopefully amazing. Need to shower and pack... and buy christmas presents - and buy a flight for christmas - and pull together christmas cards... I'm getting there. I swear!

Last night was pretty hilarious. I was supposed to go to a surprise birthday party for one of my friends. Her husband set it up while he was away on business. He planned for them going to the ballet with another couple, then meeting up at a nice restaurant where the rest of us would suprise her, then go out to a club afterwords - and have a table reserved. The thought was nice. The execution didn't really go as planned. The birthday girl didn't show up. That's right. She stayed home. Hilarity ensued. We all went out and celebrated her birthday without her. It was pretty fun. Except finding a cab on the way home. I was pretty toasted by the end of the night. I woke up still a little drunk. Then I had to go to my piano lesson - right on the edge of sobriety and hang over. It was not my finest hour. I didn't explain to my teacher why I was so aweful. I couldn't even play scales properly. I watched the rest of season four of Weeds and ate thai food. Man...

I realized that part of the reason why I was so unhappy going home is that some of my childhood goals and dreams have been crushed. They haven't necessarily been broken by a person or circumstance in particular. Rather, I came to the realization tonight that my dreams have changed significantly since I was a kid. I remember, pretty distinctly in fact, how envious I was of one of the houses that my friend lived in. I just remember wanting to grow up and become successful enough to be able to buy a house like that. Houses like that, to me, were the signs of success that my family didn't have. I wanted all that stuff that goes in them too. The movie rooms, the huge yard, the enormous kitchen with an island, and the huge staircase. I thought those were all the things that you got and earned when you were really successful. I don't think of that as success anymore. It seems like everyone has money and everyone could buy things. Money doesn't buy happiness. I'm ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cen37qxA7E

This whole bread baking thing has got me in a tizzy. For the life of me, I can't make bread for my life at my apartment. It's extremely frustrating. I don't know if I'm trying to take short cuts or something at home that I don't do at my mom's house. I think that the chemistry is just a bit different here than in Ohio - and I'm not adjusting right for it. I made bread last night. It came out MUCH better than the previous attempts. However, it didn't rise quite as much as I would have liked it. I think the problem this time was that it was too cold out - and I didn't give it a warm enough area (the oven was cold by the end - not warm) and didn't give it long enough given the conditions. I'm thinking that next time is the charm - and I'm going to have amazing bread. I did make some awesome bread at my mom's new McMansion over thanksgiving. It was really easy. For some reason, it's really hard in my apartment. I don't...

I thought I was having a horrible day. Until I got home. I put away some groceries I bought (w00t for the Whole Wheat Vegan Potstickers from WholeFoods - Delicious!) drank a couple of glasses of milk and picked up my mail sitting outside of my room. I just have a cell phone bill I needed to expense, some spam saying that I've won either a BMW, a porshe or 49K, a Habitat for Humanity letter asking for money, some random "Nest" magazine that I can't figure out how I got on their mailing list or how to get off, and a rather thin unassuming letter. I never get thin unassuming letters. So I opened that one first. Holy crap! It was my check from the sale of the last company. Effing awesome. I feel weird having it here in my house and not in a bank. I need to deposit that puppy pronto! It was weird that there was nothing else in the letter - just the check that has my name and address on the 'to' part. Yea for having that part of my life over with! Thanksgiv...