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We had a gorgeous weekend here in New England, though it did start out a little bit chillier than expected. We took advantage of the beautiful, sunny weather, and took Brooskey and Vixen to the dog park Saturday morning. Unlike last week, there were some dogs in the small dog area when we arrived, but just like last summer, Vixen wanted nothing to do with them and demanded to be moved over to the big dog side. She got quite the workout chasing after Brooskey and the other dogs as they chased balls and frisbees, and she slept like a baby in my arms the whole ride home. We also had a surprise meeting with Abbie at the park, and she got to play with some of the dogs, too (until one knocked her over in the sand!).
Saturday afternoon after running some errands, we went over to Joe and Sandra's house. Sandra and I played Trivial Pursuit while Chris and Joe did a little bit of work in the basement (Joe is under orders to have it finished by their wedding in late July). Then the guys grilled some hot dogs while I helped Sandra concoct a pasta salad from random leftovers (which turned out quite yummy).
Yesterday it got up over ninety degrees outside! In April! It was hot, but I was happier than a pig in mud. I wore shorts for the first time this year. (Actually I had put some on Saturday morning, but changed when we realized it wasn't going to be as warm as originally forecasted.) We took care of a few more errands, then went up to our friends Greg and Shanley's house to hang out and enjoy the hot weather. We took Brooskey with us so he could play in their big yard, but left Vixen home so she wouldn't get swallowed whole by their grouchy Akita, Raven.
It's much cooler today (sixty-six right now), but still gorgeous out. And it really sucks to be back at work. 
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I'm slowly but steadily losing the weight I want to lose. And slow is fine as long as it keeps coming off. I've been working out on Wii Fit for twenty to twenty-five minutes about every other day. That's barely long enough to get my heart rate up into fat burning range, but right now it's about strengthening my muscles and joints so that I can endure longer workouts. And I can assure you it's working. I'm going to add five minutes to my workout time each week, so this next week I'll shoot for thirty minutes, and also want to try to do at least a few minutes of balance games on the days I'm too sore for aerobics. As I gradually increase my exercise, I'm sure the weight will come off faster. I should be in great shape in time for not just my trip to Oregon, but also the three weddings we're attending this year!
I've been following SparkPeople on Twitter, and the other night they posted a tip that I think bears repeating. "Eat a snack before bed. It's a myth that eating late causes weight gain. As long as you don't overeat and stay within your daily totals." I know many people who believe this myth, so repeat after me: It does not matter when you eat - only how much!
Here's something else worth sharing. My friend Laura (Abbie's mom) turned me onto Hungry Girl, an e-mail newsletter dedicated to us women who are trying to lose or watch our weight. It's packed with weight loss tips, recipes, food comparisons, ingredient swap tips, and more.
Finally, here's a warning about becoming too obsessed with eating healthy. It seems that parents drilling garbage into their kids heads about "good" and "bad" foods are leaving them with such an intense fear of food that they are developing a whole new type of eating disorder. Remember, there's no such thing as a "bad" food - it's all about moderation.
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Christmas is almost here, and things are getting busy, so I may not be able to post as regularly over the next week or so (you already saw evidence of this last week). And I'm sorry that all of my entries as of late have just been personal updates and not thought-provoking spoutings of my unpopular opinions. Actually, I'm not sorry. See, as much as I enjoy ruffling feathers most of the time, at this time of year I believe we should all just put our differing opinions aside and be kind and friendly to one another, no matter how different our beliefs may be. Like Mamacita said.
Rhode Island got majorly dumped on this weekend. I mean by snow... what were you thinking? The storm started on Friday afternoon, and as a preemptive strike most businesses sent their employees home at noon. I had fully intended to use my afternoon off to blog, among other things, but when I got home, it was like my butt had become a large chunk of metal and the couch was an MRI machine. I wasn't able to separate the two for about five hours. At least I was watching the Science Channel - furthering my education - so it wasn't a complete waste of time, right? Anyway, we finally got the rest of the Christmas decorations up, so there is that.
On Saturday, we ventured out into the snow - the snow that was still falling, after they said it would stop at midnight Friday night - to bring little miss Abbie her Christmas gift. She wasn't feeling too great, but she still managed to have some fun with her new toys. Afterward we grabbed dinner and a couple of drinks with Joe, and did a little bit of shopping. My knee was throbbing by the time we got home after all of that trudging through the snow, and I had to put on the knee brace I had forgotten to wear in the first place.
Sunday morning, surprise, still snowing. To be fair, another storm had been forecasted for Sunday anyway, but it turned out to just be a continuation of the Friday storm which still hadn't ended. This was a pretty lazy day, but we did decide to try taking Vixen out to see what she would do with real snow (not the thin layer she experienced a couple of weeks ago). Okay, Chris took her while I watched through the window in my pajamas. We didn't get any pictures this time... but I wish we had gotten it on video! They headed down the walkway, which only had two or three inches of snow on it since it had been shoveled the day before. Suddenly, she hopped like a bunny rabbit from the walkway into the deep stuff - about a foot of it! She sunk in, backed out, shook it off, and grinned with her tongue hanging out, like, "That was fun; let's do it again!" I couldn't believe it. She loves the snow. She hopped around some more, licking and eating it, and even ate all of the snow that fell off of Brooskey when they came back in the house. Now whenever Chris takes Brooskey out and leaves Vixen inside, she sits at the door and cries.
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Tina from MummifiedTimesFive has given me the "I Love Your Blog" award! Thank you, Tina!
The rules say that I'm supposed to pass the award on to seven blogs that I love, so in no particular order, here they are:
Abbie's Party Place
This is Chris' goddaughter's blog and it is chock full of adorable photos and videos of arguably the cutest baby on the planet. If you want to see evidence of the proudest mama in the world, visit Abbie's Party Place.
Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords
Robert writes about what it's truly like to be a parent to a child with a disability, without padding it with warm and fuzzy BS. His daughter Schuyler is an awesome kid who I really hope to be able to meet in person someday. I also find myself in complete agreement with almost everything Robert has to say that's not related to Schuyler.
Neil Turner's Blog
Even though he doesn't update all that often, I'm almost always interested in what he does write. Neil is slightly more geek than me and I feel like I can learn from him. Not to mention he is one of the very few on my feed reader who are using Movable Type like me, so I have to send him some love for that!
Scheiss Weekly
Unlike Rob at Fighting Monsters, I often find myself in disagreement with what Jane, aka Mamacita, has to say. But she expresses herself so well that I always feel compelled to read it all the way to the end anyway.
Canucklehead
Of course I can't leave out Lincoln. One of the only blogosphere-only friends I have added on Facebook (for me, social networking is usually reserved for people I know in real life). Ever since Lincoln discovered my blog and became my biggest fan (honestly I don't know what he saw in me!), I feel like I do know him in real life.
Functional Schmunctional
Grandy's blog is just fun. She's real and she's funny. Her semi-third-person writing style always makes me giggle, and reading her blog always puts a smile on my face.
Monkey Fables and Tales
I'm not usually all that impressed with humor blogs, but Monkey has a way of making a person spit their drink and pee their pants at the same time... a truly rare talent. He writes in a stream of consciousness sort of style which I imagine probably closely resembles the actual thought process of most men.
Okay, so technically you're all supposed to nominate seven blogs of your own, but if you've received this award before and done the whole nomination thing already, I won't make you do it again... unless you want to! Maybe you've discovered seven more great blogs you didn't know about before?
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Well here we are. I'm twenty-nine now. No, really. I really am twenty-nine, and next year I'll be thirty, not twenty-nine again. You can rest assured that I will never be one of those women who lies about her age. I will always be exactly the age I say I am, unless of course I get senile and lose count. I'm too proud of each and every year I've survived this life to ever lie about it.
Our friends Joe and Sandra hosted my birthday party again, just like last year, except it wasn't a surprise this time. It was going to be... it was in planning for a month before I found out about it. But between my attempts to make other plans for the same night, and Chris' realization that he'd never be able to sneak off and buy food with me home on vacation, he decided to tell me. The party was Thursday night. It was small, but we partied into the wee hours of the morning just the same. Good food, good friends (who are far too generous), and Rock Band are the makings of one great party.
Friday, the Fourth of July and my actual birthday, started out gray and drizzly. This always depresses me, but it was actually okay, because we needed to just lounge around and recover from our three hours of sleep while giving Brooskey and Vixen some time to be out of their crates and play with each other. They had been cooped up for a long time. Friday evening we met up with Joe and Sandra again and we all joined Joe's dad on his boat to watch the fireworks in Newport. We had a perfect view, and I wish we had taken the real camera, but all we had was Chris' iPhone (I left mine safely locked in the trunk of Sandra's car just in case we ended up in the drink while attempting transfer from the dinghy onto the actual boat). We haven't transferred the pictures to a PC yet to see how they came out, but there are a couple that look promising. I will post them here when they do get uploaded. It was another late night, and although we got home earlier than the night before, we were up just as late letting the dogs do their thing.
Keep reading...
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![[sample wedding invitation]](http://www.confoozled.com/confoozion/archives/wedding-invite.jpg) As I previously mentioned, our friends Joe and Sandra are in the early stages of wedding planning after having gotten engaged two weeks ago. I will have to be sure to tell them about 1st Class Wedding Invitations, an online wedding invitation store I just found. They have tons of different designs, and you can browse by theme, color, or paper type. I especially love the one pictured here. Another really cool thing on their site is the zoom feature. Allegedly this is something no other wedding invitation site has. When viewing an invitation design, you can move your mouse over the image, and on the right-hand side you will see an extreme closeup of the area the cursor is on. You can see incredible detail.
While browsing I also recognized another of their designs as the invitation Laura and John (Abbie's parents) sent for their wedding four years ago. It brought back memories of the wildest wedding reception I think I've ever been to. Picture lots of drunk people holding lots of beers, dancing and singing along to Billy Joel and Garth Brooks. Oh... what do you know? I've got video! 
Keep reading...
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Memorial Day weekend is supposed to be a kickoff to summer, and I think this weekend kicked it off perfectly. The weather was gorgeous; nearly eighty degrees today. And we did just enough to keep from getting bored while still getting in just the right amount of rest and relaxation.
On Saturday morning we spent a couple of hours at the dog park with Brooskey where I fried the back of my neck. (Vixen can't go back to the park until her spay incision heals.) Then Abbie met us at the park to play with Brooskey and exchange gifts - we gave her the Disney animation cell we bought her for her first birthday, and she gave Brooskey the toy she bought him at Disney World. Abbie is growing up way too fast. She's about to take off walking by herself any time now. And she's been saying some words for a while, but Saturday was the first time we heard any of them. We got to hear her say "quack quack", "go go go", and "wow"!
That night, after Chris went to help a friend pick up a keg of beer for his cookout the next day, we went over to our best friends' house for a few drinks, and helped them brainstorm venue ideas for their wedding.
Sunday morning, since we had two parties to go to and would be gone most of the day, we decided to take Brooskey for a walk down to the Gaspee Days arts & crafts festival at the end of our street. We wanted to get him good and tired... unfortunately the plan backfired, as I was the one ready to crawl into his crate and go to sleep when we got back! I did end up bailing on the second party (the one with the aforementioned keg) early, and was in bed asleep earlier than I usually am on weekdays.
Keep reading...
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I know I've been in a bad mood. This sinus infection is still kicking my ass. My grumpiness has been showing both in my recent posts here, as well as on Twitter. Also, Vixen is in the vet hospital overnight after having her surgery today, and I miss her.  I need something to help me think more positively, so I'm borrowing this meme from Tina at mummifiedtimesfive.net.
What are some simple things that satisfy you? Here are some of mine:
- Vixen crawling inside my shirt to go to sleep
- frozen peach margaritas
- falling asleep on the couch before bed (for some reason, this nets me a much deeper sleep once I do go to bed, than if I go to bed wide awake)
- getting up at 7am because I want to, not because I have to
- fat-free chocolate pudding
- my own kind of "spa day": a long shower, fingernails and toenails trimmed, legs shaved, and unwanted hairs plucked
- long weekends (hurry up, Memorial Day)
- after-work naps under my fuzzy blanket
- Chris' goddaughter Abbie's gorgeous one-year-old smile
- hot chocolate made with steamed milk in the winter, and strawberry Coolattas in the summer
What are your simple pleasures?
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![[photo of me blowing out my birthday candle]](http://www.confoozled.com/confoozion/archives/28thbday-thumb.jpg) It's been a busy week; I've been trying to write this for three days. Last Tuesday night Chris fooled me into thinking we were going to On The Border with Joe and Sandra, and when we arrived at their house to pick them up, there was the party which I knew was happening, but honestly thought was going to be on Wednesday. Even Laura and John and baby Abbie (Chris' goddaughter) came. We spent most of Wednesday back at Joe and Sandra's house, eating up the leftovers from the night before... making for a really bad diet day, but what the hell, it was my birthday. I still lost another pound over the course of the week, so I don't think I did too much damage.
Unfortunately the weather was not kind to me for my birthday. Wednesday was cool and rainy and miserable, and though Thursday, which I also took off from work, was a little bit better, it still wasn't nice enough to really enjoy the outdoors.
But Sunday more than made up for the bad weather earlier in the week. We got to spend the day out on the water on Joe's dad's yacht, and it was awesome. The weather was gorgeous, and I was perfectly content just leaning back, closing my eyes, and letting the warm sun and the boat rock me to sleep. I remembered my sunscreen this time, so only got burned on a small spot on one side of my neck where the sunscreen missed. It was a totally fun and relaxing day, and I can't wait to do it again.
Oh, and my birthday surprise from Chris? A little addition to our trip to Florida... we're going to Discovery Cove at Sea World! Even better, we're doing the Twilight Discovery package, which is an all-inclusive evening program including twilight swims with the dolphins and tropical fish, dinner, and dancing - and they only admit 150 people a night. ![[tropical fish smiley]](http://www.confoozled.com/smilies/icon-o-matic/oceanic/fish_16.png)
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![[the 'I Love Your Blog' award]](http://www.confoozled.com/archives/iloveyourblog.jpg)
![[me at my birthday party wearing a tiara]](http://www.confoozled.com/archives/princess-thumb-149x200.jpg)
![[photo of me]](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/7fe9c3e52fcd03d2253441f7ddc89ab3.jpg?size=144)
![[album thumbnail]](/photos/albums/userpics/10001/thumb_img_0986.jpg)
![[album thumbnail]](/photos/albums/flood2010/thumb_IMG_0112.JPG)
