Off to Nicaragua

We are preparing to travel to Nicaragua on Friday to attend Gene & Mache's church wedding, and then will sightsee in Leon and Ometepe Island. My parents and sister are going as well. I realized it'll be the first full family trip since the mid-90s when Gene graduated from high school and its a larger family now, we've grown from 5 to 7 since then.

We are excited (and nervous) about our trip, its the most foreign place for any of us to travel to. Gene and Mache are already there, and will be our guides while we're there.

Keep us in your prayers that we have a safe and enjoyable trip, and that we don't run into any hurricanes, bandits, or tainted food while we're down there.

We'll post photos after we return on September 6th.

Ants in my Pant(s)ry

Last night I was putting away stuff from dinner and saw ants on the wall in our pantry (argh!), so I spent a while clearing out those shelves and finding out what they had gotten into. Of all the things in the pantry the thing they seemed most interested in was taco shells, strange I always thought they liked sweet stuff. They were also in a hot cocoa mix and some chocolate - now thats my kind of ant! But I hadn't realized they'd want starchy, not necessarily sugary things. I threw some other things away that I thought they might've gotten into and then shop-vac'd the hell out of them :) I'll have to keep an eye out for if they come back.

Its been so rainy this week that I assume that is part of why they came into the house, and the pantry is right near the back door and nice and dark (and out of Smokey's reach), so it was the perfect place for them to set up camp - until we spotted them. They hadn't been there long (thankfully) since they'd only made it up to the second shelf.

and oh yes, I did think that was the perfect title for this entry, how sad that I think of blog titles while I'm cleaning up!

Coupon craziness

I am such a dork, Kevin suggested we do price-matching to get some deals at Wal-mart, and I did it for the second time today and the price differences are really ridiculous - 88 cents for a loaf of bread instead of $1.97 or $2.24 at HEB, grapes for a full $1 less per pound, and the list goes on. We are able to use the ads for some smaller, less known grocery stores that have great advertised deals - FoodARama, FoodTown, and Fiesta. As Kevin says, woohoo for ghetto grocery stores nearby :)

I'm a dork because I decided to take it a step further and do some other comparison shopping, and even made a spreadsheet. At Sam's last weekend, I wrote down prices of some things we commonly buy and wanted to find out what is truly a better deal at Sam's and what is the same (or less) at the grocery store. I also want to find out what is cheaper at Wal-Mart and what is cheaper at HEB. So, while doing my shopping today at both I wrote down prices, and find that its a mix and some things I bought for the cheaper prices but other things I ended up paying the higher price because I had to make a decision at WM whether or not to buy it or leave it for HEB, and then we needed it so I bought it anyway even though it was a little more at HEB.

HEB is crazy with their coupons! I get coupons each week at the register, and last week I got four:one for a free case of water, and one each for $3 off $30 purchase, $4 off $40 purchase, and $5 off $50 purchase. My groceries were about $60 so I figured I could only use the $5 coupon, and would need to spend $80 to use two ($50+$30) - nope. The girl ringing me up said I could use all 3! So I saved $12 plus I got the free case of water, for a total of $16 of savings and I got another $3 coupon at the check out, and on the way out they gave me two free car wash coupons ($8 each). What must the margin be on some of this stuff to give out so many coupons and still make money? I probably don't want to know.. I make myself laugh with phrases like the Mastercard commercials: Time spent finding coupons - 5 minutes, time spent explaining them - 10 minutes, feeling of accomplishment at saving some money - priceless.

It really becomes a game and a personal challenge to try to save money and get the most for my money at the grocery store.

Hectic Week

I am actually EXCITED to go to work tomorrow and be in my office all day. Its been a long, crazy week. I call it my "Tour of Texas". Here is a quick re-cap..

Sunday - my parents came up for the day - we went to Sam's then made dinner (grilled shrimp, corn, and squash)., I think we ruined boiled corn, because grilled is better. That night I drove to Waco to attend a meeting on Monday.

Monday - attended the meeting and then drove home afterwards

Tuesday - at work

Wednesday - got up early to fly to Austin for the day for another work meeting. I'm not sure how useful my attendance was at this meeting, really had no idea what to expect and what I got out of it is that I was not the person to be at this meeting. It did get out early so I got to take an earlier flight home, woo-hoo! Kevin and I went out to eat since we were unexpectedly able to eat dinner together.
EDIT (addition): On the way home the airplane shifted strangely, and then later the pilot said something pretty close to this: we had to take it off auto-pilot because a small craft was coming right at us and we had to avert hitting them, something I really didn't want to know!

Thursday - went to the dentist for my follow-up, then later in the morning over to UH main campus to meet with the people at the other campuses who do the same work we do. We want to get a handle on what sort of data we need to provide to the Chancellor, and try to anticipate it. Was a good meeting also to put faces with names of the people I email regularly when we try to collect system-wide data. The Chancellor's Chief of Staff attended part of the meeting too, I had no idea that position existed, and kept thinking - are we in the White House?

I am going to watch a movie and love being a home for a full evening :)

08.08.08 and News rant

yay the Olympics! I'm excited to watch the summer games (we actually plan to watch the opening ceremonies tonight - any bets on how long before we get bored?), and also glad the commericals for 08.08.08 will end. I wonder how many people got married today, 7/7/07 was a HUGE day for weddings, of course it was also a Saturday.

soapbox time...

I hate the news sometimes. Here is one of many reasons. So that I can be informed about big events and get weather updates, I subscribed to a local news channel's "breaking news" email alerts. Overall, I'm fairly happy with it, I find out about whats going on during the day, since I won't look at much news while I'm at work. Honestly, when I have time to websurf, news isn't the first thing I go to - other people's blogs, my netflix queue, or whatever web search I feel like doing at the time are where I tend to surf to. But I often question what they consider Breaking News. I've gotten emails about happenings with Britney, who I could not care LESS about, and then today - its all about Joel Osteen and his wife in the trial for the lawsuit filed against her by a flight attendant. Aside from these emails (and my morning radio station), I wouldn't even know that it was happening (and I still don't care)! I kid you not, I got separate emails when each of them took the stand! UGH, I don't care and I definitely don't want to go to the website to see updates or transcripts.

I get emails about going to their website for news conferences. I get emails because I am NOT in front of a tv, so NO I won't go watch your news conference that is probably just your tv news streamed online.

I know I have to take the good with the bad - and I suppose these are breaking news to someone. If I don't care about the topic from the subject I should just hit delete (most of the time I do). I just wonder who is sitting on pins and needles to find out the outcome of the Osteen lawsuit. Of course, I still find it strange that I went to see a concert (Depeche Mode) in what is now a huge church.

Rant over :)

Tropical storm day

Work announced yesterday afternoon that they were going to be closed today for TS Edouard (why do I have such a hard time spelling this?). That is a perk of working for a school, with students from all over town they are pretty good about closing in bad weather - and they are always listed on the news to find out if they close overnight/early in the morning. I like their outlook on it, from the website: Edouard poses no immediate threat to the University of Houston-Downtown, itself, but high winds and flooding could put travelers in danger tomorrow.

Last night Kevin and I brought in everything from the patio and the front porch. He even trimmed the yard and cut the grass. We decided to leave the grills out but used rope to tie down the covers – unfortunately I lost all the knowledge I had of knots from my Girl Scout days, Coletta and the rest of my leaders would be disappointed! – so the best I could do was a square knot and then when I had only one end I had to just kind of rig knots as best and as tight as I could, its not pretty but I think it’ll work.

After we had the house prepared, I made a drink – a 7 and 7 (but with Sprite instead of 7-Up). I rarely drink on Monday nights, but I also rarely don’t have to work on Tuesdays. I’d bought sprite zero a while back to make it, but never made one and Kevin drank most of the sprites that I bought, who knew he liked Sprite – I’d only seen him drink diet coke and coke zero. The random things I learn. It is refreshing though, and no caffeine.

Today I slept in (until 8:30 when Smokey came to snuggle with me – it was so dark I thought it was much earlier – even on the weekends I never sleep that late!), worked out, watched the coverage of the storm, finally finished filing (one of my never-ending chores), and re-arranged the living room for the new sound system we’re getting for the tv. Kevin ordered it online and the pieces started arriving Monday, and even with the rain the rest of them came, by FedEx and UPS today!! UPS even came hours earlier than usual (early afternoon rather than 7pm), my guess because a lot of the places on his route were closed. So we were actually able to get the entire system set up! Kevin made two trips to RadioShack, we underestimated how much stereo wire we’d need. I helped him by stripping the wires and connecting each of the speakers to the receiver, I felt very DIYer! After he had it all set up and adjusted it he ran tests to optimize the sound (Smokey did not like that ~ he was confused by it and kept running over near the speaker that was making sound. We finally had to put him outside, oh and my prediction was right: Smokey wanted outside IN the rain, and when he was out there he’d DRINK FROM THE PUDDLES on the patio. Looking at him you’d think we didn’t have a nice bowl of water for him inside the house, but he loves rainwater). In the evening, we watched our first movie with the new system: The Bourne Ultimatum, and it was a great one to see with it! The speakers make for a very different viewing experience, almost like a movie theater, with speakers in the front corners, a center speaker and a sub woofer, and a speaker near me, another near Kevin for surround sound. We already watched a lot of movies at home, but I think we’ll be watching even more!

We were even able to put most of the stuff back out on the patio, but will leave the grills roped up til we need to use them.

All in all, a great Tropical storm day. The storm came on land near High Island, so we got some much-needed rain (an inch and a half total) but little wind. And there were no serious injuries or damage from the storm. The only injuries I heard about were 3 brothers who had to get rescued in Galveston because they decided to go in the water and got pushed into a rock wall, not too bright! Aside from that, it was a fun experience for a lot of the tourists in Galveston (they interviewed people who were at the hotel who stayed because it was coming)

preparing for TS Edouard

This weekend a tropical storm formed south of Louisiana - Tropical Storm Edouard (a strange way to spell it, but oh well - I have to copy/paste it to spell it right). It looks like it'll make landfall near us tomorrow morning, so we are currently preparing for it. We've already brought the umbrella into the garage (the wind yesterday flipped it on its side since the base is broken), I brought the front porch stuff inside this morning, and we will bring in the rest of the outdoor furniture tonight. We have plenty of food, water, and batteries. All our clothes and dishes are washed, the trash all went out this morning, so we'll just stay put at home, in the window-less bathroom if needed. Prediction: Smokey will want to go outside no matter what the weather.

I already do not plan to be at work tomorrow, I want to abide by the: if you don't have to be on the road - don't advice the emergency preparedness people state, and really don't want to be downtown in the midst of it. I did see that the school's emergency team is meeting now and should have some further information later this morning. Hopefully they've gotten better at informing everyone then UST was when I first worked there - they didn't always let the whole campus know when they'd decide to close!

A lot of people woke up this morning surprised that the storm was there, but we've been watching it since Saturday when they said planes were going to fly through to see what was going on. Lucky for me I have a news junkie husband who has a special love for the weather - in another life he would've been a meteorologist. So we watch the news, especially the weather (and the sports) a LOT, good thing though otherwise I wouldn't know a lot of what is going on around town, and even now sometimes I ask him what is going on in the news since he keeps up with it all much better than I do.

To everyone else preparing for it - be safe :)

my planned blog this morning had been called It starts. The hall of fame football game was last night (Washington vs Indianapolis), and next weekend the Texans and the rest of the NFL start their preseason games. So, Kevin's long wait for football season is almost over. I am excited about fantasy football and getting to see some great games, but will never be anywhere near as excited about it as he is. Once regular season starts, every Sunday will be football day, so my football widow-dom is about to begin. Its really not that bad, he'll even answer questions I have about the game. He's been looking forward to it since last season ended, and then had the teaser of the draft. So, GO TEXANS!