Randomness

• This guy rocks my socks off!! I'll admit that often times when I do something "good," I selfishly want to make sure other people know about it. I suppose it's possible that this guys motive was also selfish, if for no other reason than to make himself feel good. The whole thing reminds me of the Friends episode where Phoebe and Joey are arguing about whether or not you can ever committ a truly selfless act, because often times the person that's doing the supposed selfless act is getting the reward of feeling good about themselves, so in part at least, they're doing it for themselves. At one point, Phoebe says that she finally found a selfless good deed: she let a bee sting her. She figures the bee is happy and she is not, until Joey tells her that the bee most likely died after it stung her.
  
• The weather has been very confusing to me lately. I don't ever remember dealing with fog in the winter before. (That's not to say it hasn't happened, just that I don't remember it...) But I know I have driven to work in the fog at least 3 times in the last couple weeks and driven home in it at least 2 times. And it seems like we usually don't get this much ice over the course of an entire winter, let alone before winter has ever started. I suppose this weekend's storm will fall into the winter category, since today is the official start of winter though.
  
• Have you baked your Christmas goodies yet?? Aaron and I started last night. We made the dough for Pepperming Spiral Cookies. We've never made them before, but I think they'll be pretty good. The dough has to be refrigerated overnight, so we'll be baking them off tonight. We also attempted to make homemade caramel, but we knew as we were going that they wouldn't turn out. We must have had the stove too hot, because they heated up way too fast and didn't set up much overnight. So we'll have to try those again tonight. We have our plan of attack figured out for the rest of the weekend. Hopefully we can find some time to hit the gym too, because we aren't making anything "light."
  
• Today is my last day at Almaco. It just wasn't the right fit for me and a full-time position opened up at Gateway that I know I'll enjoy (it's my old job, only full-time!!) I'm very excited to go back to Gateway and also very excited that my first day there isn't until January 2nd. That means after today I have 11 days off in a row!! I'm very thankful that it worked out this way, so that I'll be able to spend lots of time with friends and family over the holiday week!!

Trying to Understand the World...Part II

I'm always amazed by product packaging. Sometimes the jaw-dropping occurs because of the warning label attached to it. I bought a curling iron that had a picture of a curling iron going straight into the eye (think perpendicular to they eye) with a line through it - essentially saying "Don't stick the curling iron in your eye!" Well thank you very much for such an informative warning. I was just about to jab my eye with something hot and pokey!! But then it hits me that someone must have done that at some point or they wouldn't include such a crazy warning!! Go here for other wacky warnings.


Then there are other products that just have strange packaging. The hot sauce packets at Taco Bell have little sayings on them like "My brother was killed by a bike tire." I can guarantee you that the saying on the hot sauce packet will not influence my decision on whether to go there or elsewhere. I bought a bag of chocolate covered pretzels this morning that seem to be trying to sell me on the goodness of the pretzels - not the taste, but the behavior of the pretzels. "Rold Gold pretzels must have been bery good this year, because their wish came true - they got dipped in chocolatey fudge. Enjoy the sweet and salty flavor of Rold Gold Dipped Twists Fudge Coated Pretzels. Proof that if you're good, your wishes come true." I already bought the pretzels. Don't lie to me about how if you're good all your wishes will come true. And how do you measure whether a pretzel behaved or not?!? They are tasty though, so that's a plus!!

1+2 vs. 2+1

I generally check www.kcci.com a few times a day for the latest news. I think their website - of the local news channels sites - is the easiest to navigate. However, sometimes I just want to write them a letter and ask if they'd like to hire me on as a proofreader. Sometimes there are sentences that don't even make sense with the combination of words they use or other times a spelling error. Today, it says this in one of their stories:

"Tonight, there is a chance of freezing rain, snow and sleet in the evening, then snow, sleet and freezing rain mainly after midnight."

Is there a difference between "freezing rain, snow and sleet" versus "snow, sleet and freezing rain" that I"m just missing??

I'm back!!

And our kitchen is finished!! There are a few before-and-after pictures below. We did sooo much work on our kitchen, which took a long time, so it's fun to look at the pictures to really see the difference.

We took out the weird scalloped wood above the sink and put in a new light fixture and new window treatments. All of the cabinets were painted and got new hardware. The countertops and floor was tiled and we put in a new sink. The floors in our mudroom were also re-tiled with the same stuff we used in the kitchen. We used appliance paint to make our stove white instead of bisque, so it matches the fridge. I think that's everthing...




Staying true to before-and-after pictures, our kitchen is a mess in the before pictures and fairly clean in the afters, but it really does look amazingly better, not just cleaner!!