Thanksgiving

So I just looked at the calendar and realized that Thanksgiving is happening in a week! When did that happen? Did I mention the family is coming here? Here's a tale of Thanksgiving 2007, when I last hosted the event.

I need to preface this whole story by saying that my mom doesn't think that I can cook, which was half the reason that I wanted to host Thanksgiving - to prove that we wouldn't be dining on cereal and Lean Cuisines. We'd be eating real food, made by me.  Back in 2007, I was still living in an apartment.

As I was getting ready for the event, my friend, Amanda, told me that the one time she made a turkey, she'd bought one with a pop up timer, so if I'd just get one of those, I'd be golden. Sweet. Butterball Pop Up Timer Turkey on the list. I had a recipe for Yukon Gold mashed potatoes that I wanted to make from Real Simple, cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole, Stove Top stuffing (whatever, I'd never made stuffing), cranberry sauce, caramel rice krispie treats, and corn, probably other stuff too. My sister and mom were both bringing pies, and bread.  Lunch was slated to begin at noon, so I thought people would show up at 11ish or something. 

Sometime in the early morning, I pulled that gross stuff out of the inside of a turkey (YUCK!!) season it and put into the roaster into the oven. Around 9 a.m., I was doing a load of laundry when my parents arrived.  9 a.m. is nowhere close to noon in case you can't tell time.  It's completely different.  I needed trash bags and saran wrap or something like that, so I sent my dad to the grocery store.  My dad has never met a stranger - I figured he'd be gone for 45 minutes.  I needed to run downstairs and throw clothes into the dryer, my mom asked what she could do?  I suggested she start peeling potatoes.  My mom failed to mention that she is a champion potato peeler.  I was gone for about 2.2 minutes.  She had peeled half of a five pound bag if not more in my absence.  No joke.  I picked up a potato and started peeling and glanced over at my mom who was whirling away.  I said something about how she must have "the good potato peeler."  We switched.  The lightning fast peeling continued.

Elizabeth and her family arrived sometime close to 11, because that's normal and expected.  When Elizabeth arrived we kicked food prep into high gear. One problem - my apartment kitchen was small and not open at all.  Insanely small.  And then things start to get amusing, sort of...

My mom: "Rebekah, what do you want for Christmas?"
Before I can even say a word....
My sister, Elizabeth: "A bigger kitchen." 
The three of us in there was a tight squeeze. At some point my mom decided we should check on that turkey - not her first rodeo. 
She opens the oven door: "Rebekah, where's the pop up timer?"
Me: "On the turkey." And I was only trying to be halfway sarcastic.
My mom looked at me, and said: "Well, I don't see one here.  Where's your meat thermometer?"
Me: "Did you ever give me a meat therometer? I don't own one."

So yes, a 15 pound turkey in the oven for 8 - 9 people and no way to tell if it's done. Until my mom says that if we can twist the leg and it nearly comes off it's done. (My timer was almost up too FYI).  The leg thing worked and the turkey was great. I have since acquired a meat thermometer.  Thanksgiving got substantially less exciting from there - my sister brought this awesome French Silk Pie from a bakery that is now closed - it was so piled high that my knife disappeared.

When is it Over?

I'm lucky to live in a state where budgets have to be balanced every year - state, and local. What? What? That means that either services have to be cut or taxes have to be raised. This past year, both have happened in the Omaha metro. Full disclosure - I no longer live in the city, so many things don't actually impact me. Certain things, I honestly admit, I do not notice. I benefit from having a company car (yes, I can hear you telling me how much I suck). I am very thankful for this benefit, trust me. As a result, I don't pay to license my car, and when the county increased the wheel tax, I went, eh.   And when the city decided that they had to change their snow removal schedule to save some money - I thought, no big deal - I PAY for my snow removal every month, and many other things in my HOA dues. The city also decided to implement a tax for people that work in the city, but don't live there (Hi Council Bluffs commuters!). When I lived in Lansing they had something like this too, but I didn't actually work in the city - I found that I when I tried to sign up to pay this tax and payroll shot that idea down.

So what will impact me???  This thing called a "restaurant tax." I eat out a couple times a week.  And I'm okay with paying it, because it's 2.5%. I figure it's like a local option sales tax, which I grew up with.  Many people aren't happy with all of these changes - I'm not sure what exactly they'd like the solution to be other than no restaurant tax.  No snow removal?  Don't fix the potholes that were awful this year? Eliminate Fire and Rescue all together?   And therein is where the rub has happened of sorts - the current mayor inherited some problems that started before I even moved here, a little thing known as "pension spiking." Will it effect some people's dining out? Perhaps, but as a single person with no kids, the 20 extra cents that I was charged on my lunch today had no major consequence on me - I'm more likely to eat out less to save $8.67 not 20 cents.   It's tacked on after at the total, and before the sales tax. Typically, I see it listed as "occupancy tax" or "restaurant tax."  This made me chuckle. Here's what my receipt looked like from Brewburgers (Diners, Drive Ins and Dives and I agree - great place!!!)  "Mayor Fee"

There's a group that's working to recall the mayor, which is well within their rights. By Friday they have to gather 27,000 signatures, so they set up places to sign in parking lots, wave signs, use bullhorns, etc.  They aren't happy about all the spending, so they want the city to spend $900,000 on a special election to recall the mayor so that he could get kicked out shortly before his term is up. Yeah, I'm confused by that too, but it's a free country, do what you want. Doing all that wouldn't result in any MORE taxes ore services being cut by my logical thought process. W

My favorite part of this story just happened over the weekend. Since many of the people that have been hired to work for this "campaign" aren't from Omaha - they apparently don't know what they mayor looks like.  Yes, they did indeed ask the mayor to sign the petition to recall himself. He declined.  http://www.omaha.com/article/20101116/NEWS01/711169925

Mini-vacation

I took Monday and Tuesday of this week off for some mental health purposes. On Monday, I took my nephew, Ethan, to the Iowa State Fair. I figured after chasing after him all day, I'd need a day to rest and catch up.

We arrived at the fair just before 10 on Monday and got a funnel cake. It's vacation, right? There was a veterans parade, so we grabbed some curb and sat down to watch it. As the different troops went by we watched and cheered at different times. Eventually, a WWII replica jeep passed. I turned to Ethan and said, "That's the kind of jeep that your great-grandpas would have ridden in when they fought in WWII." (Keep in mind he has met neither of these men as my maternal grandpa died before I was born and my paternal grandpa died when I was nine). Ethan's response - blank stare basically communicating, I have no idea what WWII is and I don't know who the heck those people are either. I gave about two seconds of thought to explain WWII to Ethan and decided it was a concept for another day.

Posing on a lion, the kid loves playgrounds. I probably could have just taken him to one of those.

We took off for the midway as he wanted to ride some rides and play some games. These are things that I don't normally do at the fair, and I know he doesn't do either. Other than maybe the "Giant Slide" or "Sky Glider." He enjoyed some bumper cars, small roller coaster,I rode something that I thought was going to make me vomit from spinning, and we won some stuffed animals.

Time to find more food and free stuff. He loaded up on some free tatoos, and went to play in the spray fountain, and some nice older lady gave me some free ride tickets. Seriously, is the Midwest great or what?

Fair Squares - Being sold for $2, I opted for the with peanut butter, the plain ones, were also $2, but twice this size.

After a healthy lunch of food on a stick, we sat and watched a free kids show, checked out the butter cow and butter Dr. Suess. And then headed over to the "exotic" petting zoo. We were able to feed the animals here, most of which were goats, which are apparently exotic. Um, okay. After which Ethan and I had a discussion about needing to use the hand sanitizer. Which basically boiled down to because you need to as I didn't quite know how to explain hoof and mouth disease to him.

After almost 6 hours at the fair, we were both tired and decided to call it a day and headed back to the car. Here's what Ethan looked like when I got back to my sister's house....

Wiped out.

Sucked in...

I'm currently having some laptop problems, so until my keyboard is fixed posting is difficult.  In the meantime, know that I've been doing a LOT of reading and have knocked out most of the Sookie Stackhouse books. And one of these weeks I will take/get some curling pics.

cool idea

I like to dye eggs, who doesn't, but I think next year I want to try this idea: http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/03/silk-dyed-eggs.html

How cool? I'm going to check the local goodwill.

Vacation - Day 2: Epcot and a LOT of Rain

My mom and I woke up and headed to breakfast at Kona. The trip we were on provided us with free breakfast at any of the restaurants in the Polynesian. We'd talked to people at dinner the night before about the restaurants. They suggested avoiding the Cook's place in our hotel. (We were going to be having a character breakfast at Ohana on Day 3.) I decided to get the banana stuffed french toast for breakfast. Um, clearly should have asked to see a picture of that before ordering. It was about six pieces of toast, along with the bananas somewhere inside. And it came with strawberry syrup. And a side of bacon. It was massive and literally looked like half a loaf. The guy sitting next to me said he was "going to get that, but decided it was too big." I looked at the hellacious meat platter (bacon, sausage, ham, etc.) he was eating. His platter also included toast and eggs. I wish I'd taken a picture. I finished maybe half of my french toast before giving up since I didn't want to be sick later.

After breakfast we went downstairs to buy Mom a ticket to Epcot. I'd done volunteer work so my ticket was free. :) And then we boarded the tram to make the trek. After arriving I got not only a ticket but a supercool Miss Piggy button. I adored Miss Piggy when I was about 3. And I was amazed that people kept thanking me for volunteering and asking me what I volunteer work I had done.

We started out on some random ride that I was so not impressed with, I didn't bother to remember the name. My mom liked it. People had been mentioning Test Trak, so I wanted to try it. Mom refused. It was a lot of fun - fast moving.

We checked out a few other rides, went to ride Soarin which was A-MAZ-ING!!! It's a tour of California where you feel like you're there - sights, smells, rushing through the areas. Unreal! Then we checked out Honey I Shrunk the Audience before I was really hungry. It had begun to rain, someone steadily so we picked up some fashionable Disney ponchos.

Mom and me in our trendy ponchos

Next we took off toward the world area of Epcot in search of a meal. My mom prefers to sit down to eat. We stopped in at British Pub - that had a 15 minute wait. Nope, mom didn't want to wait that long. Let's go back to that restaurant in Canada. By now it's POURING! We get back there, they're booked for the rest of the day. I made the executive decision that we were going back to the other place because if I didn't eat soon, I'd be gnawing off my arm - it was almost 3 p.m.

Lunch was fantastic - I had some shepard's pie type meal, and we were sitting by a small lake that overlooked all the other countries. Our waitress had been on the cruise we were heading out on the next day, so she offered suggestions. By the time we were done eating - the rain had subsided. So we wondered around and checked out all the countries and worked off lunch. It began to rain again around Norway, and we managed to find another ride just in time. :)

After all that, we stopped in a store, picked up some gifts for the kids and headed back to the hotel. Since we ate lunch so late, we decided to just do some appetizers at the Polynesian bar for dinner. My mom doesn't drink much anymore, so I asked if she was going to get anything to drink. "Yes, a daquiri." That sounded reasonable as I thumbed through the drink book. She continued, "And if they don't have that, a whiskey sour." Wow, go big or go home. I was fairly confident they'd have the daquiri. Which was good, since I couldn't carry my mom back to our room. The bartender also provided some cruise related tips. Apparently everyone has been on a Disney cruise. And with that we headed back out into the rain to trek back to our room.

Viking helmut I made mom try on, she was less than enthusiastic.

Vacation - Day One

Definitely a bit late on this, but I'm going to back up and post about the vacation.

The trip to Florida was entertaining. My mom had not been on a plane in 45 years. Needless to say, things have changed slightly and I'd done my best to prep her for air travel. Easy on/off shoes. Nothing scary in the carry on, etc. Um, she was pulled aside to be searched and her purse had to be searched too. We were insanely early to the DSM airport. After boarding the plane we sat at the jetbridge for an eternity. Eventually the captain told us there was something wrong with the plane and we had to de-board so they could fix it. Looking at the clock, the odds of us making our connection in STL - slim. Once the plane was fixed we were off and running, only half an hour late. Lucky for us, there were 16 people transferring from our flight to the Orlando flight so they held the plane. An added bonus - the connecting flight was closeby in St Louis.

Arriving in Orlando, we were thrilled to find out that our luggage even made the flight. Woo Hoo!!! The travel agency transferred us to the hotel, where we checked in with the Polynesian hotel and then had to check in with travel agency and cruise line. Which would have been awesome, if I had the paperwork that was in the baggage below the bus. So once that was delivered I completed our check in and took a nap. After my mom told me she had decided to leave her cigarrettes at home (in an attempt to drive me crazy) she announced she was going for a walk. The idea of my mom not bringing cigarrettes along in theory is great. I would love for her to quit, but I knew we'd get on each other's nerves easily and her not smoking would not help.

photo of the Grand Floridain

After my nap, it was time to get ready for dinner which was being held on the beach at the Grand Floridian. Dinner was a pirate themed event. Some of the stuff included: pirate band, temporary tatoos for everyone, pirate moustaches. face painting, pirate gear for the kids, appearances by Mickey and Minnie. Due to the fact that I don't talk about work here, I won't be mentioning the people that were there. I liked all of them very much, but I don't want to get into any of that stuff. The food and drinks were great. Afterward, my mom and I headed back to the room to catch the fireworks and call it a night.

fireworks from our room

Progress

I'm about six weeks into the 30 day shred. I will admit that I have not been doing it every day because my knee and I do not agree about doing it every day. But I've still managed to make progress. I'm down 3 pounds. Which I'm happy with, it puts me back into a healthy BMI range. Still two more pounds to go there. And, I've lost 14.5 inches. And a good chunk of that has come off of my waist which apparently is a good thing according to Dr. Oz. (I DVR Oprah.) Apparently the measurement around your belly button should be less than half your height. I have about three inches to go there. But I'm much closer than the original 7.5 inches that I was trying to lose there. I'm also starting to get to the point where I'm between sizes. It doesn't make a ton of sense to me - but I bought a pair of jeans yesterday and they're almost too big. So I'm probably going to need to get them altered. Or try to shrink them in the dryer. I think I'd rather get them altered as option B doesn't always end well.

And I tried sushi for the first time last night. I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. It was there. It's one of those things that if people say, "We're going for sushi, do you want to come?" I'll go, but I'm probably not going to get it to go on my own. Our waiter was hilarious and the mai-tai martinis were great.

Lent 2010

So Lent starts tomorrow.  I have never claimed to be a "good Catholic," nor will I be winning any awards for my churchgoing habits anytime soon. But every year I give something up for Lent. Last year I gave up chocolate. If you know me well, you'd know that chocolate used to be a food group for me. I survived the entire Lent without chocolate, even during Barstool Open when everyone returned rom the bar to Eric's house and was chomping down on Girl Scout cookies - I ate a few Lemonade cookies. These are kind of gross, by the way. And I like lemon flavored things - well I like lemons. But nowadays, I don't keep a constant stash of chocolate candy in my house, which is good.

Which brings me to Lent 2010. What am I giving up this year? Coffee, lattes and all associated drinks. Yup. I know the first few days will be hell. The caffiene headaches are never fun, but I figure I'll do what I did when I gave up drinking pop four and a half years ago, replace it with water. Luckily, when I was drinking pop it was some insane amount like 50 ounces a day. I drink 16 ounces of coffee related beverages a day. Much easier to replace with water. Thank goodness since I live in my car.

2010 To Do list

I was heading down I-29 today enjoying the scenic drive. Really, there's the Loess Hills, so it's somewhat scenic, when I realized, I've never been here. So since I still had about an hour left of my drive, I thought about other things I wanted to accomplish this year. Not New Year's Resolutions, more, a "I've lived in Nebraska for Three Years, I should have...."


1. Hiked the Loess Hills
2. Completed more work on my family history project in Sioux City.
3. Visited Dixie Quick's and  Cali Taco(both have been on Diner's Drive-Ins and Dives. There are three or four other places that were on the show too. I've been to one. I'll get to the others at some point.) Dixie Quick's requires reservations and Cali Taco is a going during the daytime kinda place.
4. Hit up a fish fry or two or three. Lent fish frys in Omaha are legendary. Seriously. Some of them even involve "tailgating" for lack of a better term. Bring your own beer and drink while you wait for a few blocks. They all serve beer.
5. Watched the CWS at Rosenblatt. Not even an option, this has to happen this year at it's moving downtown.
6. Attended a Mavs Hockey game (might have to wait until the season starts again in the fall). My friend, Jason, who was a hockey fanatic in MI even told me that the UNO hockey games were great, he played against them.
7. Visited the Mt. Fuji Inn.

I might add more later.

Jersey Shores....

Everyone and their mom goes on and on about how this show is great. I watched about two minutes of it awhile back and couldn't take it, so I moved on. A few weeks back, a friend again posted on facebook, that she was watching a marathon, so I decided to DVR an episode. I finally sat down to watch it. Yup, still not into it. I thought maybe it would be like Zoolander where I literally turned the TV off at first. And now I can watch this movie whenever I pass by it on cable. Nope, not the case. A duck phone, really? Is it 1984? I kept looking for Rick Schroeder to appear, grab it and head back to Silver Spoons. (I have no clue why I remember that he had a duck phone.) I didn't really find any of the characters likable. More annoying and whiny. Clearly, I'm getting old. I'll stick to some other reality shows instead, like Biggest Loser or Amazing Race.

Two weeks, two weeks, two weeks.

I am so excited that my vacation is coming up in two weeks. Work is stressing me out lately. I feel like winter is neverending. The daily snowfall isn't helping. It's cold and I have a stupid sinus infection. Okay, enough complaining....

I leave for vacation on Tuesday, February 23rd. We're going to spend two days in Disney World at the Polynesian Resort and then we're off for a three day cruise to the Bahamas!! Half of the meals are included in the cost of the trip. I did volunteer work, so I get into Disney World for free. Woot! Warm weather!!! Sunshine! Temps in Orlando should at least be in the upper 60s. And in the Bahamas it should be in the 70s. Can't. Wait.

As if that wasn't awesome enough, it gets better.

Today, I went to the orthodontist and had my permanent bottom retainer put it. It attaches to my lower canine teeth on the inside. Clearly, I'm nearing the finish line. I get my braces off on Monday, February 22nd!! Just in time for vacation.  I am beyond thrilled.

It's all in my head

I'm starting to get yet another sinus infection. This is the sixth one in about 14 months. I have lucked out that I've been on break from the sinus infections since about October. I'm really hoping to get rid of this one sooner rather than later and am starting to give more thought sinus surgery. I'm not real thrilled about the idea of surgery, but continuosly getting sick is getting nuts too. Before I moved here, I'd get sick once or twice a year. Might need to talk to my doctor about my options.

One Household

It's official, I'm down to just one residence. Thank goodness!!! Two houses was a pain in the behind, and January was a killer on the budget. I'd planned for paying mortgage and rent, but paying utilities at two places is not fun. My eyes about fell out of my head when I opened the bill from OPPD (power company). So I'll be thrilled to kick $60 off of that bill next month. Especially when they hit me with their "random" fees at both locations.
In related news I'm getting all but $100 of my deposit back. I didn't get the carpets cleaned myself. I'd thought about having a guy I know come and do the job. He owns a carpet cleaning business. But my apartment had a narrow spiral staircase leading up to a loft. Now envision getting carpet cleaning equipment up that after you've already hauled it up two flights of stairs. I was pretty certain he'd want to punch me. I thought it was worth the $100 hit. So I'm looking forward to that money. It'll be great for the trip I'm going on at the end of February.

New Place, Old Place, Some Place

Having two homes is kind of a pain. My lease on my apartment runs out at the end of this month and I couldn't be happier. I'm in the process of cleaning the old place, continuing to purge stuff, decorate and organize the new place and sell some furniture and stuff from the old place. It would be awesome if my two houses, jokingly referred to as my "summer" and "winter" homes were closer together, but they're a 20 minute drive, one way. I left all the furniture that I wasn't going to keep at the old place because I didn't see the need to haul it down two flights of steps and back up another. I also thought it'd be better to have strangers come to my old house instead of my new one. I'm down to just needing to sell off the stupid couch from hell and then life will be good. I've also resolved that if it hasn't sold by tomorrow (Monday) I'm calling a donation place down the street from my apartment and having them come and take it. Then it's gone, I can finish cleaning, get the carpets cleaned and get my massive deposit back.

One Week...

So it's been one week since I started the 30 Day. Thanks to Velo's fantastic tip - I modified my push ups, and am now using the steps. This is helping my knee immensly. As far as weight loss, I'm only down half a pound which I'm okay with. And you might be thinking, why am I not disappointed but only losing half a pound? Two reasons. A) I lost 45 pounds 4 years ago. I'm still down 40 pounds, so it's not like when I've started a new habit in the past and the first week, I lose a ton of water weight, there's no water weight to dump. And B) I've lost a combined 3.5 inches across the different areas of my body. Not too shabby. I'm eating better, have more energy and feeling better. This is definitely helping out with my stress a bit too. I've been pretty stressed lately.

30 Day Shred - Day 3 check in

I've completed three days of the 30 day shred and I'm finally starting to feel like I might actually be able to survive. The hardest part for me now is the push ups. I don't do the "real" push ups. I do what you would consider to be the "girl" push ups, which are hard on my knees. Minus the part where I'm sore as all get out - especially my thighs, I feel that I have more energy. I'm not sure that makes any sense. I wake up in the more in pain, but once I get moving I'm fine, I'm just attributing this to age. :) We'll see how I'm doing after a week of this stuff.

30 Day Shred - Day 1

I had a pretty productive weekend - worked on reorganizing my home office, which is my work space. Tossed a lot of stuff. A LOT. Also got rid of my table and chairs, which was pure profit, since they were given to me by my friend Kristin, a little over six years ago.

Now, I didn't state this as a New Year's Resolution, but I'm trying to lose 10 pounds and also basically get in better shape. I'd like to lose more inches than anything. If I lose 3 pounds, I'm actually in a "healthy" BMI for my weight, but a lot of it is not muscle. As much as I'd love to join a gym and get coached/yelled at by a personal trainer, that's just not feasible right now. Plus my schedule isn't condusive to a trainer since I travel a lot. What to do, what to do? I'd heard from various people about Jillian Michael 30 Day Shred. So I headed to Amazon, and read some additional reviews, which were mostly favorable.

First of all, the last time I worked out was, um....this summer I walked a couple miles one Saturday. I do a lot of stairs, but I think my body has adapted to my previous third floor apartment and the fact that I now have a three story townhouse. Needless to say, I'm an out of shape person, who isn't that overweight. The only problem that I foresee is that my medication has decreased my sweating. You might think that's awesome, it makes you overheated.

So I sat down to watch the DVD first. There are three levels, and it's recommended that you start with level 1, which is 20 minutes. After a warm up, Jillian and her two pals, go back and forth between strength training, cardio, abs and repeat twice. It looked easy enough when I was watching it. Those of you that work out would probably zip right through level one with no problems. The strength part was no problem. I looked forward to those segments. It's almost like a break, since there are no breaks. Cardio started off easy, but again, I'm out of shape. I wanted to die. But I did it, I did the whole 20 minutes. I'm hoping that by this time next week, I won't want to die by the time the 20 minutes is up.

2010 Resolutions

All right, so 2009 is over, goals for this year....

First of all, I'm going to cook more at home than I did last year. I started working on this about the last couple months of the year. So far this year, the only meal that I've eaten out is Tuesday this week when I took an agent to lunch. That doesn't really count because I recoup that cost. I ate out NYE while watching the football game. I like cooking, it's just finding recipes that are simple and small enough for one person. Eating the same thing for a week gets so old.

Also, I lucked out that my parents bought me a latte/hot drink maker for Christmas. The goal is to knock down the stops at the coffee shop from 5-6 days a week to a max of 1 - 2 days a week.. This should save me some serious cash. You know you have a latte addiction when you wake up on New Year's Day, go home (crashed at Salsa's), and think you're hungover, so you drink some water. It didn't help. So I went back to bed. Which also didn't help. So I went to my local Scooters, which knocked the problem right out. I need to find a rehab program. I went for three years with no caffiene. I can do this. Probably didn't help that I drank double rum and cokes on NYE.

Secondly, I'm going to pay off my credit cards. I'm pretty annoyed that they have a balance since I didn't have a balance on them when 2009 started. The fact that I'm carrying any balance makes me want to vomit. I'm also going to have at least a full three month emergency fund saved up. Another thing that makes me want to vomit.

And finally, in something, I'm not going to get real specific about here... I need to be more aggressive and take charge in certain areas of my life. So I'm going to deal with that, and hopefully quit messing it up.

2009 Recap

Overall, 2009 was a pretty good year. In late January/early February, I made a trip to Chicago for my friend, Amanda's, 30th birthday. I haven't been to Chicago in ages. It was great to catch up with a lot of friends there.  May saw me going to a bunch of concerts, which was a great time - Jason Mraz, the Nadas, Billy Joel and Elton John. I also traveled back to Eastern Iowa for my cousin, Alice's wedding in June. In July, I headed to Vegas for my 30th birthday, it was definitely an experience to remember. August had me heading to Lansing for a week of training for work. I ended up catching up with some friends there too.  And I managed to make a complete idiot out of myself in the process. YES!!! Football season kicks off and I feel like I move to Ames, which is always a good time. This year, I also got to travel to Kansas City to see Kati and Sara and their Justin's along with Stacy. November, hmmm....oh yeah, I bought a house in November. And December seemed to be all about the holidays. So really I can't complain. I managed to not go to the ER last year, so I achieved my biggest New Year's resolution goal since I'd gone twice in 2006, once in 2007 and twice in 2008. My health insurance company probably thinks I'm dead.

Throughout the year, I managed to make a bunch of new friends in Omaha, and reconnect with a few old ones too.