RIP, Ariel.

I was driving home from work yesterday evening when things started to go wrong. My first indication something was happening was the battery/alternator light came on. I wondered if it really meant anything, since my emergency brake light comes on all the time without my emergency brake being up. The airbag light (which I didn’t even know existed) came on next. Which actually made me worry less about the battery light. Then the car started driving weird. The RPMs started fluctuating wildly. The tachometer eventually stopped working. “Hmm,” I thought to myself. “I wonder if the battery is dying.” It had been raining, so my windshield wipers and lights were on. The windshield wipers began to slow down. The interior lights in the car started fluctuating from very dim to very bright. I shut both the wipers and the lights off, as well as the radio. The car behaved itself for awhile. Then the speedometer died. The low fuel light came on, even though I nearly had a full tank. The interior lights (the clock) dimmed to where I couldn’t see them. At this point, I was just praying that (a) it didn’t start raining again (since the windshield wipers and lights no longer worked…I didn’t even have a turn signal and I’m supposing I didn’t have brake lights at this point) and that (b) I could make it home. Surprisingly, I actually did make it home without it raining. After turning off my car, I tried to start it again, and not surprisingly, it did not start.

My parents happened to be in town, so they came over and went with me to Advance Auto Parts to have the battery checked. They told me the battery wouldn’t hold a charge at all, and sold me a new one for $85. I was ecstatic that it was the battery and not the alternator. After putting the battery back in my car, I started it. The battery/alternator light was still on. So, great. It’s not the battery at all.

After wasting $85 on a new battery, there’s no way I can afford a new alternator plus labor to have it replaced (it’s a Ford, the thing is kind of buried). Plus I was planning on getting a new car in like a week anyway. So, for now, I’m working different hours so I can carpool with Wayne, and trying to figure out how to get myself down to the dealership without appearing desperate for a new car so they don’t try to screw me over….

So, say good-bye to Ariel. She was a good car for the 9.5 years that I owned her, but it’s time to move on to something new. With a working CD player. And working air conditioning. And heat. And a blinker that doesn’t blink at the speed of light. And an emergency brake light that doesn’t come on whenever I give the car gas.

I have a house!

I closed on my house on Friday and started work on it this weekend. My mom came up to help. We went shopping for paint, and I got a few samples to try out for my bedroom and living room, so I’m probably going to start painting sometime this week. I spent most of today stripping wallpaper from the upstairs hallway. It’s almost done, except for a small portion of one wall and the parts that I can’t reach. I’ll probably bring my step stool out there tomorrow to finish it up. We also priced carpet. I can’t believe how expensive it is! Does anyone know any good local carpet shops that aren’t too pricey?

For the curious, here is my French decorating plan:
Living room: Paris, red and black - lots of Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, etc.
Kitchen/dining room: French Bistro, red and black - French chefs, wine, etc.
Master bed/bath: French Boudoir, gold and brown
Sewing room: L’Atelier - signs of French dress shops, hat shops, dress forms, etc.
Guest bed/bath: French country maybe?, some shade of blue
Office/loft: ???

I can’t wait for it to be done. I just wish I had more money to do everything I want to it right away.

McKay’s finally opened in Nashville. *does a dance*

So, now I’ve got my McKay’s and I’ve got my Mellow Mushroom. I can’t think of any other places in Knoxville I miss, so why do all you guys still live out there??

Top 5 Myths About Girls, Math and Science

The days of sexist science teachers and Barbies chirping that “math class is tough!” are over, according to pop culture, but a government program aimed at bringing more women and girls into science, technology, engineering and math fields suggests otherwise.

Below are five myths about girls and science that still endure, according to the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Research on Gender in Science and Engineering (GSE) program:

http://www.livescience.com/health/070827_girls_math.html

Things you wouldn’t expect to hear at the grocery checkout…

All names and places have been omitted to protect the privacy of….idiots.

I went by the grocery yesterday to pick up a couple things. I found a line with only one person who was leaving. As she left, both the cashier guy and the bag guy said good-bye to her by name, so I assume they knew her or something. The cashier said hi to me and then started ringing up my groceries. The bag guy repeated the name of the girl who had just left and shook his head. The cashier looked at him and laughed and said, “If I wasn’t married….”

At this point, I start wondering why they are having this conversation with me standing right there.

Then the bag guy says, “Well that didn’t stop you last night!” with a laugh.

Again, why?

The cashier guy kind of laughed nervously and told me my total. As I swiped my debit card, the bag guy turns to me and says, “He was a bad boy last night.”

…………..

Do they think I care? Or that I even want to know this stuff? Regardless if he was joking or not (which I’m not really sure that he was), it just kind of weirded me out.

I stared at him blankly for a second and then grabbed my groceries and got out of there, ignoring the bag guy’s question of if I needed help with my bags.

Kaleb Matthew Sloffer was born today!

I received a call from Matt at about 7pm tonight saying that Sabrina had given birth to Kaleb. He is 9 lbs, 9 oz. Everyone is doing great.

Edited to add: I added some more photos to the Nashville folder, from Movies in the Park and the Summer Solstice party at Nashville Shores..

When I was at the grocery store last weekend, I happened upon a Duncan Hines Boston Cream Pie kit.

I looooove Boston Cream Pie, so I decided to give it a shot. Here’s a couple pictures of how it turned out. I haven’t tasted it yet, since I want to share it with Ben, but I will post again after we eat some (maybe tomorrow). It’s a little flat. I didn’t have a smaller round cake pan.

My nephew was born last night!

My brother Chris’s wife Michelle was having some problems with high blood pressure, so the doctors decided to go ahead and give her a C-section. She was about 34 weeks pregnant at that point. So, my first nephew, Alex Michael Winn, was born last night weighing 4 lbs, 9 oz. Chris says both Alex and Michelle are doing well. Here is the picture he sent:

Alex is their miracle baby. They were told that they would never be able to conceive children, and they were about halfway through the process of adopting a baby boy from Vietnam when Michelle discovered she was pregnant last fall.

I’m glad everyone is doing well. I can’t wait to meet him!

My sympathies for the Kim family.

I had been following the story of James Kim, an editor at CNet.com, and his wife and two daughters. I had seen James do reviews of MP3 players and such on the website as well as CNet’s TiVoCast videos. They went on a trip from San Francisco up through Oregon over the Thanksgiving weekend and did not return when they were supposed to. After they had been missing for over a week, his wife and daughters were found on Monday. They had taken a logging road and gotten stuck in the snow. However, James had left two days earlier to go search for help. They found his body today. It’s so very sad. My prayers and sympathies are with his wife and children, who I hope grow up to realize that their father was a hero, giving up his own life in the hopes of saving theirs.

I’m bored with my hair color.

I will miss you, Lydia. :(

My first blog post from Nashville!

Well, I’ve moved to Nashville, unpacked most of my stuff, washed EVERY SINGLE article of clothing I have, and started a new job. Right now I’m sitting here watching an episode of House Hunters about a couple named Jason and Becka. Ha.

When I got to the apartment complex on Friday to move in, everything was crazy because a building was on fire. There were flames shooting out of the building. It was insane. But we managed to make our way around all the fire trucks and police cars and get everything moved in. (No one was hurt, by the way.)

On Saturday, I went white water rafting on the Hiwassee River with my friend Diana from high school and a few other people. It was fairly tame, but I still flipped out of the raft once and did a couple somersaults underwater. It was way fun.

Then Sunday, I spent the ENTIRE day doing laundry and moving the living room around. It’s basically set up now; I just need a TV stand to put my new TV on because it is too heavy for the one I had before (which is practically broken from the weight of the last TV). So my TV, TiVo, DVD player, and game systems are all sitting in the floor right now.

Today was my first day of work, which was a little overwhelming. I went in at 9, spent an hour filling out paperwork, then went to a board meeting which lasted an hour and a half, ate lunch, went to a meeting in the government building downtown about a project I will be working on, came back, got introduced to everyone, and then came home. Whew! Two meetings on my first day! So far my favorite perk of the job is getting a pass for the parking garage that I can use any time.

I brought home my laptop to set up, but I don’t know if I’ll get to that tonight or not. The cable guy came about 20 minutes after I got home. I went to set up the internet after he left and kept getting an error message. I knew everything was set up right so I spent an hour on hold with Comcast before they finally got on the line and fixed it.

Which is where I am now. I’m almost done unpacking except for a bunch of little stuff and I still have to set up the sewing room. After I do all that and I get a TV stand, I will take some pictures. I love the red wall in my living room. It makes apartment-living a little less blah. I just need to get the pictures on my walls.

Well, as most of you probably know, I’m moving to Nashville in less than two weeks.

I accepted a job offer to be a technical analyst with Tennessee Anytime, and I start on July 17. It is a bittersweet decision because, while I’ve been really antsy to get a new job, Ben will not be accompanying me to Nashville. Instead, he has plans to move to Chicago and try to figure out his life. Hopefully, things will work out for the best.

So, I’m apartment hunting right now. My last day of work here is the 11th, so I have from the 12th to the 16th to get moved into a new place and set up. Talk about stress.

I won’t be going to AWA or Dragoncon this year, unfortunately.

I hope everyone has a great fourth of July.

More car problems…although this one is actually my fault.

The apartment complex has rows of mailboxes on the side of the main road. There’s about 10-20 mailboxes in each row. So, I was getting the mail yesterday. I got it out of the box and closed the box. As I was setting the mail down in the passenger seat of the car, my foot slipped off the brake pedal, sending the car rolling down the hill. Since I was getting the mail, I was at a slight angle toward the mailboxes, so the side of my car went careening into the boxes before I slammed on the brakes again. Something flew through the window, landing in my lap. Horrified, I looked down, assuming I had just ripped off the door to my neighbor’s mailbox. Instead, it was the driver’s side mirror of my car. Who knew that running into a mailbox at 5 mph could knock off a mirror? So, the driver’s side of my car is in rough shape right now.

Ben and I went to the The Break-Up on Friday night. We both thought it was very good, although Ben was a little iffy about the ending (the acting during it, not the actual story). It was very relatable. Then on Saturday, we went to McClung Museum on campus to view an art exhibit on “The Faithful Samurai,” which was very interesting. After that we went and saw X-Men: The Last Stand. I never saw the second one, but I thought it was okay. Ben, however, said too much was wrong with it and he didn’t really care for it, but he used to read the comics and such, so he would know better than me.

I have a hair appointment tomorrow night. I meant to dye my hair beforehand, but I forgot to go get hair dye, so I hope my stylist doesn’t comment on the 2 to 3 inches of roots showing, hehe. Maybe I’ll just get her to dye it, although I usually deem that a waste of money since it comes out looking exactly the same.

Some updates….

Ben and I got stuck in traffic Sunday night heading back to Knoxville. Apparently there was a wreck involving seventeen different vehicles and some fish sticks that closed off I-40.

I put up a few pictures of Philip we took over the weekend (since apparently I hardly had any up). They are all under the “Random Picture” folder in the photo gallery, on the second page.

Ben and I spent Valentine’s Day watching a very embarassing video my parents found of my singing into my mirror when I was 16. The answer is no, you cannot see it.

I’ve tentatively scheduled a board game party for March 4. Please let me know if this date is not good for you.

I want some root beer.

Snowing in Crossville!

Snowing in Crossville!

I made a one minute video of our Christmas tree.

[Sorry, I removed all the videos. :(]

It’s kind of dark (I need to get some lightbulbs), but I wanted to show off the cool twinkly lights.

It may not be as cool as this guys’s lights, but I like them! ^_^

Edit: Contrary to what my mom believes, that ornament is Princess Leia NOT Daniel Boone.

I lived a video game today.

Okay, not really, but I was greatly reminded of one.

It all began as I was driving back to work after my lunch break. I stopped at a gas station, because my fuel indicator was teetering precariously below the red line. I turn the car off, get out, and swipe my credit card. “See cashier,” the display read. Grumbling, I lock my car and go inside. I get my gas paid for, come back out, and pump the gas. Then I go fumbling for my keys. Not in my jacket. Not in my purse. Oh, yeah…I left them in the ignition. Great.

I go back inside. I call work to let them know I’m going to be late. Then I call Ben, since he has my spare key. He left his keys at home.

So in order to get in my car, I need to go to the apartment, get a lock-out key, get in the apartment, get Ben’s keys, give back the lock-out key, go back to my car and use Ben’s keys to get my keys.

Like I said, it’s one of those hokey-pokey video game puzzles.

I eventually got back to work after Ernie so graciously came and got me to carry out this intricate puzzle.

Also…

Congratulations to Becka and Jason on the birth of their son Aidan, born Monday, June 27!

I finally updated the photo gallery.

I still haven’t found my cable to hook my camera up to my computer though. Hopefully I will be able to find it soon so I can put pictures from Sabrina’s wedding up next week. But for now, for your enjoyment, are pictures from Jason and Ben’s birthdays and Sam and Greg’s moving day. I know you’re excited.