It's Official Now

I got this "congratulations on your acceptance to UAH" letter in the mail today:
Along with a packet of other materials and a UAH pennant. Go Chargers!

So, I guess I'm going back to school. It's a scary thought, but I'd love to finally have a degree in music. I hope I have the time to do this, and do it right.

At least they have cool school colors.

Thanks Peter

Thanks to my son-in-law I found another way to waste time. But just a few minutes. His blog led me to this web site where I created this:

This could come in handy for Danny, Mark, Tina and Morgan, and perhaps David if I hung it on my music stand. (Although Morgan and Tina are used to the, uhh, noise level!) ;-)

Blog Surfing

Every now and then, when I have a few spare blogging moments, I'll surf the wide world of blogger.com. It's interesting what you find... sometimes you click really fast to the next one, sometimes you stick around and read somebody elses take on life. Half of the time it's a blog in another language. That happened yesterday... I was poking around and came across a blog in some completely different language that I had no idea what it even was. But at the top was a poem in English. It's a simple yet poignant poem that I think expresses something that everyone at some point in their life feels. I didn't get a source on this... but I liked it, in a depressing sort of way.

[ri'jekt]

I breathe, you hold your breath.
I smile, you smirk.
I’m opened, you’re closed.
I’m slowing down, you stop.
I step in, you walk away.

Hhh…
I’m tired.
and I’m... DONE.

Black Friday

5:00 am: Phone alarm goes off. I fumble to find the phone, trying to silence it before it disturbs hubby. Am a little disoriented since I am not at my house. Hit snooze button.

5:10 am: Alarm goes off again. This time I have it in my hand. I fell back asleep with the last snooze. Hit snooze again.

5:11 am: Purposely remove covers and face bright sunny window to try to wake me up.

5:15 am: Turn off alarm before it goes off again. Drag myself out of bed into the bathroom.

5:16 am: Get dressed and all that.

5:30 am: Grab hubby's car keys, my coat, scarf, purse and all the newspaper ads. Quietly sneak out without waking anyone up.

5:32 am: Get in car, wrap blanket around my legs, turn defroster on full blast. Wait a minute for ice to melt.

5:33 am: Defroster actually works in this car. Pull out and am on my way to Staples.

5:48 am: Arrive at Staples. Line is LONG. Feeling a little depressed thinking there's no way I'll get the items I wanted.

5:49 am: Get in line. With aforementioned blanket. Watch kid in front play with laser pen. Enjoy new neighbors behind me, three college boys, talk about their all night escapades of standing in line at Walmart to get laptop. They don't get one.

5: 53 am: Bored with laserlight entertainment, call daughter and son-in-law to see if they are up yet. No. They are now.

6:00 am: Doors open. Half of line disappears into store. Line suddenly stops moving. Manager comes out to report phones are sold out. There's still hope for my items! People behind go up around line and get right in the doors. Someone sends wife to find out why people are able to cut line. Find out that if you don't want something from front page you can go right in, but the front page items are being distributed by ticket.

6:03 am: Enjoy college kids talking in different accents, and quoting movies.

6:10 am: Finally get in. Get tickets for everything I wanted. Get the flash drive ticket, even though I don't need it, and give to college kid who wishes he could get two.

6:11 am: See very long check-out lines, ask manager if I can keep tickets and bring back later to purchase. Yes! As long as it is before 10 am. Sweet.

6:12 am: Head to Walmart. Slim pickings. Pick out some dvds.

6:50 am: Daughter calls. She meets me in the toy department. Do some nice price matching and check out quickly.

7:30 am: Head back to Staples. Get my schtuff. Shorter check out line! Got two new hard drives, one for my lappie, one for the desktop. Head over to Joanns, right next door. Pick out a few items, see check out line that goes all the way to back of store. Put items back, and leave.

Rest of morning... hit Circuit City, Target, Best Buy, Gamestop, Kohls. Score some nice dvds at some of the places. Others are a bust. Kohls had the same problem as Joanns. Way too long a line. They lost two customers.

Done by noon.

Made a dent in my Christmas Shopping List. My non-existant shopping list, that I will have things to cross off of as soon as I make it.

Happiest about the Staples purchases.

Got home tonight by 8 pm. Read the paper. Set up my new harddrive for my lappie, backed up my files. Read email and some message boards.

Found out I could have ordered all my Staples stuff online and not have had to get up before the crack of dawn.

Oh well. It was fun. Really!

Tragedy

I didn't want to write about it, yet I did. So I am.

Our town had the unfortunate experience of being on national telelvision because of a tragic school bus accident. I had several people call me from out of state because they saw us on CNN. Not us, or me personally. Thank goodness, no one in our family was involved in this tragic bus accicdent.

A school bus carrying over 40 students crashed over the side of an elevated interstate ramp. It fell more than 30 feet to the ground and killed, so far, 4 students. Three are still in critical condition.

A big focus that has been brought to our attention, here and on national news, is should seat belts be required on school buses? Would they have saved lives or hurt more? I don't know. I'm certainly not an expert. But only 10 children have been killed on school buses on average per year. That is a good safe number compared to the number of car related fatalities.

Still, it makes a mother unsure. It will take a great deal of faith to let my child get on a school bus and go on the next field trip. But I will. Life goes on.

One other thing I learned from this is the variety of *truths* presented by the media. There were so many rumors flying about so many different aspects of this accident.... on the TV news, in the paper, by word of mouth. Don't always believe everything you hear. (A good motto for any news report!)

I have a friend who works at the high school where these kids were from. I'm glad she is okay. She says things are somber and chaotic at the same time. She said it was heartwrenching to hear screams coming from classrooms and hallways when siblings or friends found out about who had died. I asked her if someone came in to inform siblings there at the school.... no, the kids find out these things from text messages. That's how some of the rumors started flying in the first place. Some called from their cell phones right from the bus. There's another controversial subject... students with cell phones.

My heartfelt sympathy goes out the families and friends of all involved in this accident. What a hard thing.

Cool Songs

On My Playlist Today: (or music to listen to while severe storms pass by)

Collide by Howie Day
Sugar We're Goin' Down by Fall Out Boy
Far Away by Nickelback
I'll Be by Goo Goo Dolls
Over My Head by The Fray
Vertigo by U2
This is How a Heart Breaks by Rob Thomas
Boston by Augustana
Lips of an Angel by Hinder
Clarity by John Mayer
I Don't Wanna Be by Gavin Degraw
Dani California by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol
For You I Will by Teddy Geiger

Now if I just had an mp3 player. I'm stuck to my computer.

Sometimes I surprise myself with the type of music I like. There is one thing in common with all these songs...

Can anyone guess? Anyone? tap... tap... tap...
Is this thing on? ;-)

twenty things

Here's another Two Peas in a Bucket Blog Challenge:

To keep this on a lighter note, I just typed the first thing that came in my mind. (Scrapper's have recently been accused of having no sense of humor in this article. ) So I don't want to be too serious.

one. I am woman hear me roar.

two. Nobody knows me best.

three. I feel stuffed. (I just ate a bowl of cereal. Yes, for lunch!)

four. the most important thing in my life is my family.

five. I always carry my cell phone.

six. I think sometimes. Most of the time I don't.

seven. I’m at my happiest when I've gotten a good night's sleep. Or when I'm with people who make me laugh.

eight. on a Monday morning, you can find me in bed if I can get away with it.

nine. my favorite food ingredient is cheese or chocolate.

ten. my eyes adored you Though I never laid a hand on you, My eyes adored you Like a million miles away from me you couldn't see How I adored you: So close, so close and yet so far. (Thank you Frankie Valli and this stupid challenge for getting that irritating song stuck in my head.)

eleven. my favorite material possession is my flute.

twelve. to relax, I like to sleep. Oh, you mean relax, relax! Okay, I like to snuggle down on the couch with a warm fleece blanket and watch a movie, and then fall asleep!

thirteen. the town I live in is known as Gruntsville, or Hickstown.

fourteen. my worst habit is eating while I talk on the phone. Sorry, I know it's rude. I just like to eat. :-)

fifteen. my guilty pleasure is watching a silly tv show called Grey's Anatomy.

sixteen. when I look at someone, the first thing I see is that piece of broccoli stuck in their teeth. Or their eyes.

seventeen. I think I've already told you I don't.

eighteen. I can live without rootbeer, if I had too.

nineteen. I wish I had my new cell phone or a Honda Pilot. Or even just a new car.

twenty. my life is more than halfway over. Now that's depressing. Sorry to end on that!

Cell Phone Envy

I need a new cell phone. Okay, I don't really NEED one, I just want one. Mine is several years old. I can update for free at anytime I want to extend my contract. The problem is, I don't like any of the phones out there. I like my phone. It's just sorta beat up. I have the Nokia 6800.
I love how you can open it up and have a qwerty keyboard. (By the way, what a fun and easy word to type with one finger... qwerty!) I can check emails and even type things without having to use that cumbersome number pad. Alas, they don't make this phone anymore. So sad. But they do have a new one that is even better! The e70.
Unfortunately, it's just recently been approved to sell in the USA and so it's mighty costly, running around $450. But it's so cool. It has just about everything you'd ever need in a cell phone that acts like a pda. Can I justify the cost? After all, it's a mp3 player (with upgradable memory) and it's a 2 megapixal camera. It has bluetooth, wlan and a host of regular phone features. I think I can wait for it to be mainstream, and in the meantime, hang on to old faithful. After all, my old phone still works just fine.

Why Don't We Do It In Our Sleeves?

I know, I know. You probably think I've gone off the deep end with this blog entry. I can explain. In fact, I have a very good explanation. (Besides, it's an appropriate entry for a blog named "wordsneeze".) You see, Josh said his friends at school were making fun of the way he sneezed. He sneezed into his shirt and they thought it was gross. They said you should sneeze into your hands. So, being the thoughtful mom that I am, I decided to do a little research, and I came across this little movie. Turns out Josh is the non-germ spreading one. When you sneeze into your hands you tend to spread germs more. This video explains it better, albeit in a cheesy, humorous way. You can buy this dvd on at coughsafe.com. Their motto: "Let's get the whole world coughing and sneezing properly!"

You Know What Today is...

It's the first Tuesday in November, so you know what that means?

It means I've seen my first Christmas commercial. It means there are commercials on the radio for gift cards for teeth whitening. It means that the Santa Clause was on TV. Yuck. I hate early Christmas.

And it means voting day.

I did vote. Hurray for me! I did my civic duty.

Email

Ever notice how when you read your emails you divide them into catagories?

When I open up my email account, the first thing I look for is fun emails from people I know. Newsy emails from friends and family. I rarely get these gems, but I look for them first, and then, strangly enough, save them for last to read. Unless it looks really exciting or I just can't wait to read it.

Next I look for all the spam and delete, delete, delete.

Then I look at the newsletters and read them. Then I read the advertisements I'm interested in.

Then I go back to the emails from friends, and savor every morsel. I love getting email. Good email, that is.

Just like I love getting comments on my blog, which, as of late, I don't get any. So sad!

Midnight Photo session

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and realize there was something you forgot to do?

That happened to me last night. I went to bed early, and about midnight I woke up. I realized I hadn't taken any halloween photos. Every year on Halloween for the past 24 years I've taken photos... of the kids in costume and of the newly carved jack-o-lantern. This is the first year I didn't have a kid go trick or treating. Josh just wasn't into it, so he handed out the candy. We had carved the pumpkin with a funny design that I had seen online. (It looked like it was throwing up it's innards.) But I didn't take a picture of it.

So at midnight as I was lying there willing myself to fall back asleep, the thought kept running through my mind... "you didn't take a photo of the pumpkin!" So what does a good scrapbooker/photographer do? She gets up at midnight hoping that some neighborhood teenager hasn't been in a smashing pumpkins mode, unlocks the front door, and with camera in hand tiptoes outside barefoot and takes several shots of the pumpkin in all it's throw up glory.