Moving on

I just have to write a new post because every time I click on my blog and see my dog it makes me so sad. I need the page to move down but I really have nothing to say, so let's talk about some stuff I am into right now.

• LOST. I am super happy LOST is coming back on tonight. Oh, I just love Jack so much and I love his super angsty bossy pants attitude. I hope he is shirtless and sweaty for most of the evening.
• TCBY yogurt. I got a gift certificate to TCBY yogurt for Christmas and I can not get enough sugar free frozen yogurt, it makes me so happy.
• Pizza with tofu and broccoli. I know it sounds weird but it is so, so good and I can pretend it is a WHOLE meal on a pizza and HEALTHY because BROCCOLI!
• Diet Dr. Pepper. It is really so delicious and spicy, I must limit myself to one a day.
• Modern Family. Have you guys seen this? It is really funny and it always makes me happy.

Things I don't want to talk about:

• That my gas bill is 500$ for last month! What the holy hell? I didn't pay that much in NJ!
• That I am still looking for another job
• My mom moved back to Virginia to work (only until April) after living here for only three months. Our relationship still sucks.
• I feel fat
• and bloated
• and ugly
• and pimply
• I wonder why?

coffee buddies

Friday's prize was this Christmas Starbucks Coffee. Have I ever told you about my obsession with Starbucks coffee? Well I love coffee, every morning the first thing I do is stagger from my bed to the coffee pot and pour a cup of coffee, before I shower, before I eat, it is all about the coffee! Well over the years we have tried to support our local coffee shops and honestly I have never liked their coffee as much as Starbucks. When we lived in NJ we literally lived 2 blocks from a Starbucks, I could be from my front door to coffee time in five minutes. Now that we live in the middle of Alabama there is ONE Starbucks in our town and it isn't even a proper Starbucks , it is a smaller one in the student union on campus. Every Sunday we walk 30 minutes to get a cup of Starbucks coffee. We are sad consumerists...
Can you find the coffee in the tree? How about my gigantic cat?
Today's prize was what Teddy called the Christmas buddies. I like them very much but forgot to shove them in the tree and take their picture and well....it is too late now. Sunday's prize was a few candies stolen from Eli's Advent Calendar and shoved into mine, I didn't bother with a picture of those.

Saturday I ran a 10K. It was fun but a REALLY hard route and I finished in 1:01:something, this was better than my previous time of 1:04:something, but I was a little bummed to not get under an hour. Ehh maybe next time.

Oh, I picked out my Holiday cards today and it made me very happy to get cards that only say "Happy Holidays" this makes Teddy's parents NUTS which makes me very happy. Last year I sent similar cards out and one of my friends sent me a facebook message saying she liked our very "PC" card. I consider myself Agnostic so I like neutral cards and I typically say we celebrate Santa Holiday, not the birth of Jesus...ANYWAY I like my cards to be neutral so I can send them to my Christian friends as well as my non Christian friends....BUT I wonder now if it would be more in the SPIRIT to send Christmas cards to my friends I know celebrate a Christian Holiday...or maybe I'm just thinking WAY to much about some damn cards...

mean people suck

There are a lot of things I will miss about NYC but to be quite honest, the people are not one of them. I lived mostly in small towns growing up and people are polite, they hold the door for you even if they have to wait an awkwardly long time, they say hello, they wave when they drive past...just generally friendly.

I will say in my experience a lot of the people around here are douche bags (obviously a lot are not). I actually yelled at a pregnant woman today in Union Square because she was such a bitch, and honestly that isn't like me, I'm pretty polite. Here is my take on the NYC culture: people (of course I am generalizing here) think they are all super special snowflakes, and YOU are in the way of their most special snowflakedom so you must be KILLED or SHOVED OUT OF THE WAY so they can get whatever they want.

I told Teddy today that I think New Yorkers are the rudest people in America. Now, there is A LOT of America I have not been to, and yet I'm comfortable making this statement.

DISCLAIMER: I totally get that not all people in NYC suck, I'm just saying in my lifetime I have seen and dealt with more crazy assholes in NYC than anywhere else on earth. OH and here is another generalization I'm going to make, people in NYC stink. I know, I know I'm terrible, but let me tell you NYC in the summer is really not that awesome. It is hot and you walk down the street and the nasty air conditioner water drips on your head, and you can smell the cooking garbage on the sidewalk. People go from the hot sidewalk to the even hotter subway station and then the inevitable starts to happen and they get a little ripe. It really is a very smelly city.

(for a completely different take on the city, you can go read my sister's post)

Naming names

I love names and how people came up with the names they call their kids, or their pets, or their plants whatever. I name everything. If I have fish I name all of them, if we find a snail in the backyard we name it, if we see a particularly cute squirrel we give it a name.

When we were naming our son we really wanted a name that was original, but not too original...nothing like Pilot Inspektor or Jermajesty...Teddy and I both have fairly plain first names that neither one of us particularly liked growing up. I wanted a more original name and Teddy wanted a name that was easier to pronounce (Teddy's real name is not Teddy). It is interesting to me because today I was reading a post by a person with an original name and she was saying she always wanted a name you could find on one of those bicycle license plates, I always wished I had a name that was so original you wouldn't be able to get one of those things.

Anyway, when we were trying to pick out first names for our son we could not agree on anything, every name just sounded too plain and it just.wasn't. right. We ended up annoying everyone by giving our son Teddy's last name as his first name and my last name as his last name. Got it? So let's say Teddy's name is Teddy Smith and my name is Penny InExile our son's name is Smith InExile. So not only do I not have my husband's last name but our son has my last name. I know, we are weird. Here in the very blue, very liberal NJ no one really cares and they think it is "cool" when we explain it to them...I'm not sure how well this is going to go over in Alabama.

When we were naming our son we were SURE, and I mean ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE we did not want any more kids so we never considered sibling names. Now that we think we MIGHT, MAYBE, KIND OF want another one we have a naming dilemma. Whose last name do they get? Teddy seems to think they should share a last name (mine) but I don't really care, I mean I don't have the same last name as my sister, but I still understand we are related. And what are we supposed to give them as a first name when our other kid had Teddy's last name as his first name...

I'm thinking if I ever get pregnant with a second child I might ask Swistle for her advice...

hypothetically, of course

Hypothetically, if you were planning on quitting your job and then before you turned in your resignation you were offered a buyout package, would you accept?

ETA: I feel the need to clarify. If the hypothetical place you worked was a good place that was free for people to go and learn, and you really like the idea of these kinds of places but they are losing money fast in this economy and the only reason they are offering you a buy out is because they are desperate for more money....then would you take it?

ETA: OK there is more to it still...it wasn't that you were targeted for a buyout but EVERYONE is being asked if they are interested so you would have to sign yourself up...hypothetically of course.

Things that are currently making me happy.

Ashley and Lee are in town and they brought us these cake balls all the way from Texas (and look at the pretty tin and the cute tissue paper)! They are delicious. I ate 3.5 in about one minute. They are way more dense and moist then I would have thought... I definitely recommend going out and getting one of these right this minute.

I got this Blackberry last weekend. I totally love it. I have never really been into cell phones but it is so pretty and small and PINK and I can check my email and actually send text messages....who knew I would be a cell phone dork.

Happy Earth Day

I am rolling out my earth day entry from last year and posting my updates because I'm lazy like that.

In celebration of Earth Day I give you my list (Yay, I love lists!) of what my little family is doing to reduce our impact on the earth, as well as the things we need to improve on.

Things we are already doing:

We don't own a car and we rarely take cabs. We walk whenever possible, and if we can't walk we take public transportation. Update: We still follow these rules although we do plan on buying a car before we move. We are buying a SUV (gasp). I know, I know, but here is the thing...we are only buying one car to share and we rented a house close to campus so Teddy can walk to work/school and we made sure to research which SUVs are fuel efficient and have low emissions and are going with the best which is the Honda CRV which is considered a COMPACT SUV. (shut up, I know that isn't much better, but it makes me feel a little less guilty. We just can not physically fit two adults, one child, one 90 lb dog inside a kennel, and two cats in a Prius.)

We do not buy bottled water. (check)

We buy organic as much as possible and eat very little meat (check, we have also started trying to buy more local produce when possible)

We recycle (check)

We changed all our light bulbs to the energy efficient kind (even thought the light is kind of weird, but you get used to it) (check, we have not had to replace a light bulb in over a year)

We turn off the water when we brush our teeth (check)

Things we should do:

Buy cloth bags for groceries. We are using the grocery bags to pick up dog shit, but I think we could find something more environmentally friendly to do that Update: We still have not done this, but are still using the bags to pick up dog poop...

I haven't made the switch to earth friendly cleaning products. I'm a little anal about cleaning and I like my Clorox Wipes Update: we have started making the switch to earth friendly cleaning products...dish soap, and glass cleaner I have products I love, I'm still working on cleaning wipes, any suggestions?

Turn the lights/TV off when we leave. I'm convinced the dog likes the TV on, and sometimes I'm too lazy to go around and make sure all the lights are off before I leave. Update: we are MUCH better about this, I always turn off the TV and I am much better about the lights

Stop using so many paper towels. There were several years in the beginning of our marriage that paper towels were a luxury we could not afford, now I think we get a little giddy with our paper towel usage. Update: This has been our biggest improvement, we went from using one roll of paper towels a week to using about one roll every 2-3 weeks. We hope to start using more cloth napkins once we have our own washer machine.

Things we should do, but probably won't:

Use cloth diapers. Without having my own washer/dryer I just don't see this one happening

Turn off the AC when I leave the apartment. I know, I know but I REALLY hate to be hot, and I don't want the dog to be hot when I'm not here.

protesting was never so funny

I know things are tough now, good people are losing their jobs and sad things are happening everywhere but dudes...DUDES all day today they have been talking about "teabagging" on TV and I can't be more amused. I laugh every time I hear it, I laugh when I think about it. I laugh that a bunch of white, old man douche bags have no idea what teabagging is and they go around saying it in all seriousness while the rest of us laugh at them. I can not wait to see Jon Stewart go to town on this.

Today is awesome.

all because I thought her pants were funny

• Today I was walking down the street and saw a fairly large women wearing a pair of stretch pants and pushing a stroller. Her stretch pants said "baby girl" across the ass. I don't get it. I guess it would make sense if it was on her stomach AND she was pregnant, but on her ass? Is her ass pregnant with a smaller ass? I decided I was going to get a pair of stretch pants and then some iron on letters, and put "something stupid" on my ass.
• That reminded me of a time several years ago when Teddy and I went to Florida to visit my dad, and my sister and her family. We were staying in an apartment my dad rented for the summer and this bizarre woman who lived in the same apartment complex was having a big party for her 30th birthday. She went out to celebrate and got a tattoo of a daiquiri spilling on the number 30. It was the most hilarious tattoo I have ever seen in person and my sister and I had to totally keep our shit together to not laugh in that ladies face. As Teddy would say "bless her heart" which is what he says instead of "stupid idiot" because he is from the South and polite.
• That story reminds me of a story from several years ago before Eli was on the scene. Teddy and I went to a bar to have a few drinks and after having several beers I told Teddy I thought we should go get each others names tattooed on ourselves. He readily agreed and off we went. He got my name tattooed on his bicep... and then I refused...Oh I laughed and laughed and laughed...I'm a bitch. I still laugh when I tell that story.