Meg{Moir}

So, this week was my first at my new part time job at Ann Taylor Loft.  Let me tell you, I have a lot of respect for those who are able to work retail for years on end.  One week in and my body wants to lay down and fly the white flag.  I’m enjoying it for now, but a full time job with a salary and a 401k plan would be wonderful.  And maybe a desk and a comfy chair.  Just saying.

In way more exciting news, Patrick and I are sharing the weekend with my mom and Grandma Doris, who flew in on Thursday and are staying until Sunday.  Lots of shopping, cajun food, plantation tours and coffee breaks await!

In way less exciting news, my Amos Moses has a little problem called a perianal fistual.  It’s a purebred German Shepard genetic disease, and while we always knew that he had shepard in his (with the neurosis and coloring and all), we were hoping that he would miss out on the plethora of problems shepards come with.  For now, we are able to treat him pretty easily, but keep your fingers crossed for us that this is the extent of his health problems.

On to our articles for the week!

A Brief Guide to Life – Zen Habits. Smile, Breathe, and Go Slowly.  Love it.

Ducks Wear Dog Masks – Super Punch. Now this is all I can see.  Looks like our Kame.

Being Pragmatic about Buying Local – The Simple Dollar. This is a follow up from the Get Rich Slowly article from last week.  I love a good interblog debate.

Photo Essay:  18 Places to Feel Dwarfed by Nature – Matador Trips. Number 9?  Yeah, I´ve been there.  Went for a ride in a dune buggy, sandboarded down the hills. Yeah, I did that.

My second attempt at baking bread had a much happier result.  It still didn’t rise enough on its second cycle, but I think that was user error.  I accidentally folded the towel over the bowl twice, maybe it didn’t get enough air circulation?  Regardless, with a pat of butter this bread was pretty darn good.

If you’re interested, I used the recipe from Trent at The Simple Dollar.  It yields one simple, delicious loaf of white bread, no fancypanys sourdough here.

I wish this picture captured it better.

Never the less, our resident bug catcher spends most of the day here, on our rug that he crumples to perfection, with his nose stuck in the door jam sniffing out any creepie crawlies that would try to sneak past him and into the house.

If there is one thing true in my life it’s this: I need a lot of sleep.

This may not be the most interesting revelation to ever hit the internet, but without enough sleep (ie 8 hours at the barest minimum) I just feel slumpy and lazy and unmotivated to move.  Turns out that this weekend, that wasn’t such a bad thing.   Patrick was on emergency duty all weekend, and he got called in 3 times.  I got a lot of sleep.

Friday night was low key, Patrick watched some weird movie called Evil Dead and I was soon asleep on the couch.

We thought about riding bikes on Saturday morning but the incessant drizzle crossed that off our list.  No matter, because Patrick had to go in at lunch for an emergency, and while he was out I did a little dusting, vacumming, sweeping, and furminating.

That night we were planning to meet friends out downtown at 10.  As these things go, Patrick got called in half an hour before we were going to leave.  Back in my PJ’s, I was in bed when he left.

Sunday was a lot of the same, Patrick home at 5:30, back out the door by 8:00 and home again at 10:45. While he was out, we had a loose dog in the neighborhood.  I coaxed him into the back yard, tried to keep our dogs from freaking out, and called his owner who thankfully picked him up at noon.  He was a sweet guy, but he needs to be neutered, bad.

So you know this already, but I am completely un-able to take anything but a fuzzy picture.

We were making plans for the afternoon when he got called again. Jeez!  I spent a good hour and a half at Hancock Fabrics and then took a lap around the mall.  I try not to be bitter.

After he had to go for a final check on patients, I was so bored I watched the Emmy’s.

Sorry to be so lame.  Here’s a picture of Thomas to coo at.

So friends, it would seem that I have abandoned you again. It was not my intent, but after getting back from Hertford late Monday night, I have been pretty busy for someone with not much to do during the day.

Tuesday was consumed with laundry, cleaning and cutting the grass.

Wednesday I had to finish reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Yesterday I took the Professional Entry Test to allow me to apply for government jobs. I thought it would be a quick 30 minute test on the computer, but it was like sitting for the SAT all over again, complete with number 2 pencils, scratch paper, a bored moderator and a Scantron sheet. It took all afternoon.

So finally I am back today and fresh out of excuses, thought I should drop in and say hello.

Here’s what I liked this week:

Why I Buy Local – Get Rich Slowly

Signs Your Dogs Hate You – Senor Gif

Everything You Need to Know About Fast Food – My Modern Met

Bike Lane Indicator Gets Straight to the Point – Boing Boing

20 Things I’ve Learned from Traveling Around the World for Three Years – Huffington Post

In other news, I got a job!  It’s only part time so I’ll keep looking for something permanent, but for now I’ll be folding jeans about 20 hours a week at Ann Taylor Loft.  YAY me!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a long (and slow) walk to try and stretch out this hamstring that has decided to start bothering me.  Have a great weekend loves!

I can’t take another day that pushes 100.  I really, really, really can’t.

So I sit in front of the fan and find interesting things to distract my self with.

I may have already shared these.  I honestly can’t remember and I’m too lazy to go back and look.

The Pinwheel Skirt by Elle Apparel – UCREATE.  I’m totally making this skirt.  One day.

Rail Directions to Anywhere – Palahniuk & Chocolate.  LOVE this.

Relaxation – heypais.  Thomas isn’t happy until an appendage is hanging off the couch.

Happy Friday!

It’s time that you know about one of the dirty little secrets of my blogging habits.

I often post a week or so worth of content at a time, then forget about it for a while. Juicy stuff, huh?

Anyway, all that to say, despite the light hearted post you will see here in the morning, I’m actually back in North Carolina for a while because my grandfather passed away early this morning. The funeral will be held Saturday at 3:00 in Hertford and I will be here until at least Monday.

Please keep my family in your thoughts and prayers, especially my Grandma Doris who has to say goodbye to her husband of 60 years.

Thank you.

So I made theses little cube things because I really really wanted to use my sewing machine but didn’t have any money to go and buy anything with.  Little stuffed cubes were the only thing I could think of that didn’t require additional fabric, buttons, zippers or various other notions.  So I made them, but I made them really fast.  I just kind of made it up as I went along and they didn’t come out too bad considering.  (So much confidence, haha!)

My point is, Patrick and I don’t really have any use for them and they are cute but definitely not of a quality that I would ever try to sell, but are perfectly fine for a baby or toddler to play with.  So here’s the deal, if you want them for your kid, your grandkid, your niece or nephew, your dog to chew on or whatever it may be, get in touch with me (you can leave a comment, use the contact button, send an email, facebook message, smoke signal, ect) and let me know.  I’ll send them to you as soon as I can and you can do with them what you please.  But I do think they would be exceptionally cute in a baby hand.  Size is about 4″ squareish.

Is a little out of control

I have read some of these already, but here is the run down:

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.  I am just not feeling this book right now.  I think its too hot to deal with heavy wordy writing.

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.  Ditto, unfortunately.  I really want to read this one.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer.  Recommended by Emily for good summer reading.  Sign me up!

Harry: A History by Melissa Anelli.  Let’s just say I am probably going to need some light, mindless but entertaining soon.

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.  I read these books in about eight hours.  Now they are waiting for Patrick to pick up.

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots by Three people whose names I can’t remember.  I loved this book  and agree with pretty much everything it said.

Good to Great by Jim Collins.  Classic business book, it will probably wait until Fall though (again with that summer reading!)

How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors by Dan Crowe and Philip Oltermann.  Looking forward to digging into this one!

Ok, I’m back.  Last week I couldn’t write, I just wasn’t feeling it.  So I didn’t.  My bad.

Patrick was kinda upset that I didn’t write about last weekend since we had a pretty good one.  On Friday night we walked down to a park at the end of our neighborhood for a hot air balloon festival.  There were probably 20 or so balloons, all inflated and running their torches for a neat effect.  We never saw any of them take off into the air though.  Baffling.

Here are a couple of videos we took, the first one shows the effect better but we are much closer for the second one.

Also, there was lots of food trucks and fair food and what not.  In Raleigh you would see funnel cake, carmel apples and fried oreos.  But in Baton Rouge, its shrimp, GATOR, catfish and (of course) chicken on a stick.

Saturday morning we headed out to the Bonnet Carre Spillway (if it sounds familiar, that is also where Dustin, Paige and I went crabbing a few weeks back) for some bike time.  Despite the fact that this trail has no elevation change, we really liked the trail, it was twisty and had great flow.  Also, it was right beside the river so we kept a pretty nice little breeze going, unlike riding the Comite trails which is like riding your bike in a sauna.

We had plans for another cookout/pool party Saturday night but everyone ended up getting called in to work, so that was a bust.  We had a quiet night at the house with the boys.

Sunday was pretty quiet as well, with Patrick at  the hospital most of the day and me trying to to sulk about it (too much).  Over the weekend I also read the first two novels in the Hunger Games Trilogy, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.  Over the weekend isn’t exactly the right way to but it.  I probably spent 8 hours, tops, on both of these books.  I was kinda into them.

So this weekend was another good one.  Friday night we headed out to a Vet School mixer at a place called Fred’s.  They were winning me over with the throwback 90’s music until the lights got low and they started playing new rap stuff (a.k.a. there was a lot of “Have you ever heard this song?”  “What? No.” going on).  We had a great time with our new friends before calling it a (late) night around 1.

Saturday we tried the bike thing again, this time heading north to St. Francisville and a trail called The Beast.  Oh boy.  I actually rode really badly.  I picked stupid lines and never rode with enough momentum to carry me over the hills that they had.  We’ve been getting a lot of rain too and it didn’t help that the trail was a bit slippery.  At one point I put my front wheel over a wet root that was parallel to the path (dumb) and my bike went right out from under me, catching my shin bone on the way down.  I have a lovely little knot to remember it by.  We didn’t get to ride the whole trail because it started thundering and lightening, but don’t you worry Beast.  I’ll be back for you.

After cooling off and showering we went out and had dinner at Cracker Barrell.  I know not a lot of kids in their mid 20s would get worked up about this place, but Patrick and I were in heaven.  We found a gift certificate picked up some where (and the only way we can afford to get out to eat) and loaded up on chicken fried chicken, chicken and dumplins, hashbrown casserole, baby carrots and those biscuits.  Ohhhhh those biscuits.

Sunday we attacked the house, sweeping, mopping, washing windows, washing dishes and all that fun stuff.  In the afternoon we helped Paige move in to her new apartment.  Now she’s even closer to me.  I approve.

A late dinner and Marley & Me (tear fest) finished up the weekend.

Ok, you’re all caught up on me now.  What’s new with you?