It's been a rough morning.

I'm sure that you will find this entertaining. It's ok to laugh because I am now...in hindsight.

So I got up this morning and took a quick shower. Wrapping myself in a towel, I went to the kitchen to get some breakfast. In the process of grabbing things out of the fridge, I managed to knock over a container of cottage cheese. The lid popped off and half the contents of the container spilled along the edge of the fridge and all over the floor.

Great!

I grabbed a paper towel and a paper plate and began scooping the cheese onto the plate to make it easier to dispose. As I was doing this, I loosened what appeared to be a twig from underneath the fridge. No big deal. I thought that maybe someone had tracked something in from the yard and it just got knocked under the fridge.

So, I pulled on the twig thinking, "Fine, I'll just clean this up too and move on with my morning."

It wasn't a twig...

It was the tail of a mouse. A dead mouse.

Like a little girl, my first instinct was to scream...loudly.

Then there was a split second when I thought 2 things:

1. I just screamed incredibly loudly. Bet I woke up Jerry (and maybe the neighbors - loud I tell you)

2. I have a decision to make... Man up and finish cleaning this up or continue to act like a silly school girl and whine to Jerry to handle this.

As I mentioned before, I screamed loudly and probably woke up Jerry.

I proceeded to climb the stairs. Entering the bedroom, I found Jerry sitting upright in the bed.

"What was that noise?" he asked.

I attempted to tell him what I had found in the kitchen, but the mental image of the dead mouse made it hard to talk without vomiting slightly in mouth with each word.

"Will you please handle this?" I asked. (I apologized for acting like a little girl)

A full 2 hours before he would have to wake up otherwise, Jerry was in the kitchen scooping up dead mouse and cleaning the floor. I continued to get ready for work...far far away from the kitchen.

Needless to say, I never ate breakfast.

That was easy

I'm bragging a little here...

On Sunday, Jerry and I took inventory of the food that we have in the house that just isn't getting eaten. We then planned out all our meals this week to eat up all this food and found that we have absolutely no reason to go to the grocery store (score!).

Then, I started to look at what we had planned out and what I was really eating (calories/protein/fat/carbs/fiber) based on a diet that someone proposed for me. I plugged in the numbers for the foods that I already knew we were going to eat and filled in the blanks with other food to which I have access here in Crestview Hills. And to my shock and amazement, I was well below the proposed counts in each category! Although, I really think it might be bad to be so far below the protein count, but that's ok.

What's the point? Well, in just 2 days of not necessarily eating healthy, but just paying attention to what I am eating, I have lost 2 pounds (double score!).

I'm considering adopting the Mindy Ross diet: one 12 oz. beer a day!

A month??? Oops

Just saw that the last update on here was my birthday. I really thought that I was doing better than that. oh my goodness, so much has happened in the last month...

We got a kegerator - still trying to empty the keg. Help is always appreciated! (Jerry is getting sick of Miller Lite)

We had a housewarming party. Thank you to everyone who came out. And thank you all for the gifts which were very much appreciated yet completely unnecessary. I am still trying incredibly hard to not kill the plant from Kelly!

We got a 2nd refrigerator that lives in the garage - slightly scratched with a little dent in the bottom - for $50. No complaints here.

I selected my book for the course that I am teaching at UC. And now comes the daunting task of sitting down and creating the curriculum! Yikes! First day of class is September 24. (Kelly please plan your child's birth accordingly!)

Wow, we lead a terribly (sarcastically) exciting life in the D-ville. This is the most boring thing that I have ever written. I am falling asleep reading it back to myself.

Work has been VERY busy for me...lots of rpojects - creating new collateral, trying to convince people that it makes perfect sense to change the address of a building, listening to my boss praise my co-worker who has made 2 kinda huge mistakes in as many days and yet managed to relocate blame onto others. (Who are you calling bitter?) Very busy!

I am going to work harder to update this here blog with all the goings-on around the Hoell/McWhorter house, so I guess we should probably start doing more exciting things...

It's my birthday!

That's pretty much all I have to say about that.

Tomorrow's the big day

So tomorrow is my birthday! I'm going to be 28. Can you believe it? It seems like it's been such a long time...and then I remember that my Grandmother live to be 87. I've got time. I'm just getting started here!

So in honor of my birthday, this post will serve 2 purposes:

A. To tell you what I want for my birthday

B. To start the new feature that was a staple of my old website (OLD, OLD website) - the Top 10 (or so) list.

So today, on the eve of the 28th anniversary of my birth, I present

My Top 10 Birthday Wishlist

10. Job security - we have to cut our budget at work in light of a recent HUGE development and I am hoping that, should we have to cut jobs, it's not a "last in, first out" policy

9. Car - to be fixed by the end of this week rather than the beginning of next

8. Vince - to stop acting like a butt and arguing with me every Monday night at Trivia. Having the same birthday does not make us besties!

7. Health - I have been saddled with terrible headaches and light-headedness lately. I'd really like that to go away.

6. Alcohol - to be able to have a full beer without feeling like I'm going to die the next day (I have developed an "allergy" to alcohol - it's tough to explain, so let's just call it an allergy)

5. Clean House - guess I gotta work on that one a little more myself. My house isn't dirty...it's just messy and not completely "finished" yet. But we have the spare bedroom set up, finally!

4. The Cookie Dough that my sister promised me 2 months ago and that is still sitting in her freezer!

3. Date Night with the boyfriend. We haven't had the time (and in some cases the energy) to have our official monthly date.

2. Rest - or rather the feeling of being rested. That's been missing lately. Why am I so tired?!?!

and finally...

1. Money - I mean who doesn't want money. I actually just want to get the details of my teaching contract worked out so that I will know how much money I will be making.

It's almost my birthday

I have been very good this year about not publicizing the countdown to my birthday (7 days, by the way).

I apparently became an adult somewhere in this 27th year of my life... I asked my mom for a carpet cleaner for my birthday!

So anyway, about my birthday being a few days away...
It's restaurant giveaway time! So far (all today actually), I have received the following offers:
- Free stir-fry at Bd's Mongolian Grill
- Free burger at Red Robin
- Free (non-fajita) entree at Moe's Southwest Grill
- Free dessert at Chili's (mmmm...molten lava cake)
- Free entree at Fox and Hound
- Free handcrafted burger at Ruby Tuesday

My next week will be full of good eating!

Heels and humidity

I bought a pair of Joan & David "Circa" heels a few months a go. They were on clearance at DSW and I had a gift certificate and a connection with an employee discount. So needless to say, they were worth every penny even if I did buy them a half size too big.

They look a lot like this:

Except that the Mary Jane-esque buckle is closer to the toe.

I worried about how they would fit and the first time that I wore them to work, they clicked on my feet like flip-flops and almost caused me to fall. However, they were so darn cute that I still thought they were worth evey penny.

The last couple times that I have worn them, the temperature and humidity has been just right so that if I don't wear anything between my bare feet and the shoes, they don't move.

So, I guess what I am saying is:

Thanks humidity for making my shoes fit!