Scrabble

This past weekend I made another trip to Alabama. It was a very enjoyable trip, although it was a little boring at times. It came some severe storms that kept us inside most of the time. We spent the majority of Saturday at my brother's house. When bad weather comes my brother turns on the news and leaves it there. He learned it from out mom who does the same thing. I don't necessarily do that. When I hear the sirens I know I need to run for cover or in most of my cases, run outside to see if I can find the tornado. Until then, I'm watching a movie or reading a book or just doing whatever. I'll occasionally flip over to the weather to see what's its doing just to be informed. Anyway, Saturday I spent the day at my brother's and he had the local weather on all day long. I mean...All. Day. Long. It was a long day. :) I know that he just keeping up with it to protect his family but it made for a very long and boring day. Oh he was fine. He had his iPhone with all its neat little games and gadgets but those of us who don't have cool phones had to sit in boredom. So occasionally Alan and I would go take a walk or drive around.

My sweet boyfriend is an outdoors person and when he is stuck inside he's bored out of his mind and feels like he's wasting time. Me? I'm not an outdoors person because well, I hate bugs and all creepy crawly things. But I'm learning to be more outdoors and just run and shriek when a wasp or huge bumble bee comes within 20 feet of me. But anyway, I kept saying that we need to play a board game or cards or something before I start gauging my eyes out to have something to do. Our family used to be huge on board and card games. That's what we always did. We love our Scrabble. Chad plays it constantly on his phone with friends which should have been my first clue that I need not play this game with him. But he suggested that someone (definitely not him since he needed to monitor the weather, yeah, right) run to Wal-Mart and pick up a Scrabble board. So Jenny and I ran to Wal-Mart and got it. We ended up playing much later that evening after Jenny went to bed so it was just Chad, Alan and myself. Alan had never played it before so after brief instructions we started our game. It started off normal with words like hater and stowed being placed on the board. Now I was really excited when I formed the word toupee. I was stoked. I had never formed a word that big which should tell you something of my spelling skills. :)

But then Chad started putting down all these two letter words like jo and qi. What?! What is a jo or qi? He always prefaced his moves with, "I promise this is a word. I play scrabble all the time on my phone." Okay, one...don't be a bragger about your cool new phone. Second...my picture is not by the work gullible in the dictionary. Okay, it may be but I'm not falling for your shenanigans this time buckaroo. Then he always said that if we didn't believe him to look up in the dictionary which the only one they had was an online version on Chad's cool new phone. So you better believe I decided to call his bluff and look up every single word he put down. Shoot, they are real words. Needless to say that Chad skunked us by at least 100 points. But I'm not bitter....not about the game or his phone. :) Oh and he's not a sore winner either by any means. He totally did not rub it in our faces that he won with words we've never heard of that he found on his cool new phone. *I hope you are reading this with sarcasm but that is so how I'm typing it.* :)

What's the moral of this story? Break Chad's phone before you play Scrabble.

80's and Traffic

I've been on a big 80's kick lately. Big! Huge! (Name that movie.) I really don't know why I've gotten on this obsession lately but it's been kind of fun. I've always been a huge Goonies, Karate Kid, Back to the Future, Breakfast Club and Adventures in Babysitting fan. Every time they come on TV I always have to watch it even though I own three out of the four movies. I also love 80's music. I realized though that I hadn't watched as many as I probably should have. So I've been slowly catching up on some those. It's been fun and very nostalgic. It all puts me back in Salem, IL where I grew up and now I've had a little bit of homesickness for that place. I'll get over it soon. :)

Speaking of longing for some place I have found myself missing Alabama this week. I spent the weekend there and had the best time. My sweetie and I spent most of Saturday sitting at Lake Tuscaloosa with our feet in the water and talking about everything and anything. It was so peaceful and restful. I'm headed back down there this weekend. I usually don't go two weekends in a row but our travel schedule has been messed up because of this reason or that. But after traveling back home Sunday night I'm not really looking forward to going back. I mean, I want to go back to see Alan and my family but Alabama does not know how to plan road work.

Between Birmingham and Decatur I got stuck in traffic three different times! THREE!!! It was ridiculous. The first one was for construction. They merged three lanes into one. That was was terrible. Once I cleared that mess I got stuck again a few miles up the road. This one all the lanes were completely stopped and barely creeping. Then all of a sudden the roads cleared. There must have been an accident and by the time we got there it was all cleared up. Then a few more miles down the road I got stopped AGAIN for construction. I was getting so frustrated. When I finally cleared that mess I put my cruise on 80 and just dared a cop to stop me. I was tired and frustrated and just wanted to get home. I finally got home around 9:30 or 10:00. What should have been only a 3 1/2 -4 hour drive took 5 hours!! I was beyond ticked. But oh well. Those things happen from time to time. I guess it wouldn't have been so bad had I not gotten in stuck in traffic on the way to AL because of an accident. Why can't these people learn to drive correctly? Oh well.

Despite all the traffic issues it was an amazing weekend and I can't believe it's already Wednesday. The week is just flying by. I'm not complaining at all. :) Alan and I are suppose to take his boat out on Saturday for a day of fun in the sun but they are calling for rain so we are just going to wait and see how things go. But I'm excited to head back down there. The people in his church are so nice and sweet and they treat me so well. I'm slowly getting to know some of the people down there. It helps that Chad and Jenny are there and that I've been visiting that church for the past four years.

Oh! Anyone else ecstatic that Kate Gosselin finally got voted off of Dancing with the Stars?!? I'm sorry but the woman cannot dance and I'm all about watching the good ones. LOL!

Happy Wednesday!

Catching Up

Oh my goodness! I didn't even realize it's been almost a whole month since I've blogged. That's terrible of me. But you should be used to my lack of motivation and inconsistency by now. :)

Of course the lack of blogging might also mean that not one new thing is happening to me and thoughts banging around in my head are not really worth mentioning out loud or it could mean that I've just been so incredibly busy that I haven't had time. I choose to believe the latter even though the first is the truth. But anyway, I'll attempt to jot some things down today.

My new furniture did come in and I have to say that it looks GOR-GEOUS in my house. I love it! It's big. Really big...and comfortable. I had no idea it would be that big. My parents were gracious enough to hang out at my house to wait for the furniture since I was working and couldn't leave to meet the furniture delivery boys. But they (my mom mainly) were having a coronary in trying to get the furniture to fit and was calling me every 3 mins to give me an update and sending me pictures on what it looked like. I told her just to wait until I got home and I would help move things around but by the time I got home they had it all in place and I haven't moved it yet. It looks great! I love how big and comfy and full of pillows it is. Now I'm waiting for my tax refund to come in so I can go by curtains for the living room. Once that's done my little house will be so homey I may become a hermit. I love how Uncle Sam is paying for my redecorated home. :)

My sister (in-law) had surgery this past Monday. They thought she had endometreosis. She's had it once before and had the surgery when they were living up here in Nashville. She had been having quite bit of pain for awhile so they (meaning the doctors) assumed the mess was back and they wanted to go in and take care of it. They went in and she had none whatsoever. We were thankful to hear that but was a little puzzled over what was causing her pain. The doctor said that some of her organs were moved around a bit from her pregnancies so he went in there and put things back where they should and performed a DNC and everything went well. But other than being very sore she did very well. Her mom and dad stayed with them the first half of the week and now my mom is headed down there to stay the rest of the week to help take care of her, the house, kids...my brother. LOL!

I'm still with Alan. Things are going very well for us and we both couldn't be happier. Are we talking marriage? Yes and we know that we are the ones God has for us but we are just taking our time. I only mention this because we both get bombarded with questions on when we are getting married. We are just enjoying this time of being together. But it will happen and when it does I promise there will be a post with pictures, fireworks, and trumpets to let the world know that I'm finally engaged.

I bought four new tires yesterday for my car. Man, are they normally that expensive? But I desperately needed them. According to my dad and Alan, I was illegal driving on the tires. They had no grooves left on the tires. I guess that wasn't a very good thing. :) But I have four brand spanking new tires and now I feel like a responsible adult and now my family can breathe a little easier when I travel back and forth to AL. (I said they can breathe a little easier. I still speed. lol!)

I'm headed to AL this weekend to be with Alan and to visit my family. I can't go too long without seeing them and since Jenny had surgery I feel like I need to spend time with her. Of course she only uses me for my cooking skills. She has requested brownies a layered salad and homemade ice cream. I think I'll just do the brownies.

I think that catches us up on everything. How have you all been?

Happy Thursday (and Survivor night!! Woo Hoo!!)