Vegetarian Experiment

So I have decided to go meatless for an entire month.  Gosh I'm going to miss chicken casserole.  Josh was watching How It's Made the other day.  Well, "watching" is a very generous term.  He turned it on and then fell asleep while I watched.  This episode was about chicken tenders.  Then we watched another one that was about processing chicken and putting it in CANS!  Cans!  I think the chicken tenders was slightly grosser but only very slightly.  That is what led to this decision.

I started tonight.  I had planned on starting tomorrow, June 1st, but I have a friend's wedding on the 30th of next month and I want to eat whatever I want then!  lol  Tonight I pattied out burgers for Josh and I had a portabello mushroom burger.  It wasn't a big sacrifice because I don't like ground meat, but I know it will be harder as the month goes on.  Josh already asked if I wanted to go to Chik-fil-a tomorrow for lunch.  :(  I Love Chik-fil-a!  Still, this will be good for me.  I want to kind of revamp my system and decide how much meat my body really craves/needs.

I am thinking about going more natural.  After seeing the How It's Made stuff I am thinking I may have to resort to organic meats.  Organic meat is SO expensive, but not ingesting lots of chemicals is a good thing too.  I wrote to a friend of mine from my old church and she sent me a huge email full of tips for eating healthier.  My favorite tip that she gave me was to start off the meal with something raw:  salad, apple slices, carrot sticks, just whatever that hasn't been cooked.  I'm kind of excited to see how I feel at the end of the month and to see if I can actually go the whole month.  I'll keep you posted especially if I make something cool with no meat.

The Doin's of the Week

 Josh and I went to our favorite park on Memorial Day.  Ain't he cute?  It was lots of fun.  We walked and held hands, you know, the couple thing.

 I got these new earrings!  Aren't they cool?  They are an African Tree of Life and they are a donation toward a relative going to Africa on a mission trip.

 Been reading A Game of Thrones.  Awe-Some!  Oh my goodness, it is great.  Fairly mind blowing.  I love a book that creates a world and this one does.  More on this when I finish it.  It's long so it may be awhile lol!

Flowers!  Lilies are my favorite.  I planted these at Mom's house a few years ago and they Still come back!  For someone who can't keep plants alive, this is amazing.

That's my week so far.  I hope yours is great.  Big shout out to all my foreign readers.  I LOVE to see people reading in other places!  Hi!  (Waving excitedly)

New Furniture

Josh and I got new den furniture two weeks ago and I Still haven't shown you!  I know, I know, where is my commitment to keeping you abreast of the details of my life?  We love it.  I especially love my chair, sometimes I miss it when I am at work.  I'm not kidding; it's really that comfortable.  We also got a tv stand after over a year of searching!  Children have been conceived and birthed and are eating solid food in the time it took us to choose a simple piece of furniture.  Decision making isn't our strong suit lol.

5 Books That Changed My Life

 I have read hundreds of books over the course of my life.  I have enjoyed many and sneered at some, but only a few have actually changed my life.  I was laying in bed thinking about this last night when I couldn't sleep so I thought I'd share it with you.  These are the five books that have, in some way, made me who I am today.  Note:  I'm not including the Bible because I think it's impact goes without saying, except that I just said it.

Fun with Dick and Jane was the first book I learned to read.  My Bubba taught me to read when I was three.  I remember her pointing to every word as we went along the page while I sounded them out.  My personal fav was the story where Jane (or maybe her little sister Sally) got a new coat.  Dick and Jane opened up an entire world of wonderful adventures and new friends.  Plus, look at Jane's cute little dress!  And "Mother" was always dressed to the nines as well, very June Cleaver.

I read P&P when I was in 7th or 8th grade.  I was totally absorbed and amazed.  I credit P&P with making me an Anglophile.  I love all things British and have the highest respect for their authors.  Maybe it's just that they have such a rich literary history to draw from but I think British writers are leaps and bounds better than American authors.  P&P broadened my reading to include the classics but might have made me a bit a snob when it comes to reading a good romance.  It's just hard to compete with Mr. Darcy.  I actually own two copies of this book, one in hardcover in a boxed set that is kept in pristine condition and one that is paperback and so very worn because I pick it and start from any point whenever I need the comfort of familiar friends and a laid back pace.

I was in Mrs. Whitt's sophomore English class.  She was the bane of 30 years' worth of high school students in our town mainly because she actually expected something out of her students.  We had a huge reading list that we had to pick a certain number of books from (six maybe?) and I picked The Jungle for a totally unknown reason.  I have never looked at meat the same way again.  The Jungle isn't even primarily about the meatpacking industry, it's about the struggle of making a life in America and is more a social commentary than an industrial expose.  Still, ask anyone who read the book what they most remember and their answer will be the pages describing the meat packing plant.  It totally ruined all the ground meats and extruded meats (like bologna and hot dogs) for me.  It honest to goodness changed my eating habits.  I defy you to read it and not cringe at the processed meat fridge at the grocery.

I read this book in my Junior year when I was in AP Bio.  I've read it at least once more since then; it is just That good!  It is a thought provoking glance into different areas of science and the evidence that can be seen in each of those areas that points toward a Creator.  My favorite, of course, was the genetics chapter but I remember being blown away by the astrophysics chapter too.  Deep stuff, but explained in a dumbed down way so that you could get it.

I read this last year when we realized that my BC was the culprit behind my long lasting and incredibly painful migraines.  I got the recommendation for this book from strangers on the internet lol.  Some girls I chatted with on a forum told me about it when I was asking where should I go from there since hormonal BC was obviously not an option.  Now, at the risk of sounding like a feminist, this book actually made me feel empowered.  Using the stuff detailed in the book, I finally felt like I was in control of my body instead of just floating along wondering when crazy PMS would hit or if my monthly friend would show up unexpectedly.  I seriously recommend this book for anyone who can't take BC pills or who just doesn't want to put unnecessary chemicals in her body.

Those are my top five life-altering books.  What are yours?  What should I add to my reading list and prepare for my mind to be blown?

So Much Has Gone On

I have had a small blogging hiatus.  First I was crazy cleaning my house and then I had a party and then I went to the beach!  So much happening!

Right after we moved in I wanted to have a party but our carpet was infested with fleas.  EWWW!!!  I was pretty much beside myself.  Of course we had to jerk it up and I didn't want anyone to see our nasty bare wood.  Now that it was fixed I wanted to have a gathering.  It was So much fun!  I had about 20 people down for desserts.  It was a sugary buffet.  I meant to take pictures but I am a terrible remember-er so I didn't.  My bad.

Then Josh and I loaded up in the truck with Mom, Dad, and Eli went to Myrtle Beach.  It was so relaxing and wonderful.  We stayed at The Horizon on 77th.  It is a really nice hotel.  There was practically no one there.  We honestly had the entire pool complex to ourselves for a couple days.  I was glad to go but I was very very glad to see my own home!  Here are a couple pictures 

Does this not take the stereotypical crazy cat woman to a whole new level?

 If Josh said he wanted a straw hat once, he said it 300 times.  I kid you not.  It was the mantra of the trip.  Well here is a lovely hat for him.  Snicker snicker.

Myrtle Beach on Dwellable

I Am So Low Maintenance

I am super easy to please.  I don't need fancy stuff.  I was never the girl who needed a dozen roses or designer jeans or the newest phone to be happy.  One of the great pleasures of my life is school/office supplies.  It's true.  Getting school supplies the week before class started was a day I truly looked forward to.  I have a new component to my job so I have two desks.  Naturally this meant I needed new pens and highlighters so I didn't have to run upstairs just for a pen.  Look at this rainbow of gorgeous organizational potential!

Is it pathetic if I tell you that I put off opening the package so it could be a treat at the end of the day?  Oh, then I won't tell you that, um...that was a purely hypothetical question! ;)

Here's What I Don't Get About Time Travel

I really like scifi time travel stuff.  Right now am I watching The Time Traveler's Wife and I've been listening to Voyager by Diana Gabladon on my iPhone.  Also you know my love of Dr. Who.  All three of these have time travel at the center of their plots.  Let me pause here to say, if you haven't experienced the wonder of any of these you need to get on it and check it out!

So here's what I don't get.  In these stories the characters frequently see themselves or see something they have written/left evidence of from the past in their present.  There are theories about parallel times and that is what these stories generally give as the cause.  Here's the thing:  parallel means things running along together.  I've never heard this described as anything besides lines.  Parallel lines like on the highway.  Let's work through this together and you figure out the what I'm not seeing.

Let's talk about Claire.  She, by happenstance, is the female character in both The Time Traveler's Wife and the Outlander series.  This is kind of a combo between the two story lines to show what I mean without having to give a lot of back-story.  Claire is born in the mid 1900s.  Let's say that an older version of herself visits her.  Now young her will see that she lives to a certain age and knows a few things about herself, but she also knows that she will travel back to this time to see young her when she is old her.  So how is this parallel?  It seems to be intercepting circles or maybe an infinity sign.  It will never be that old her returns to this spot and young her isn't there.  She is living in this loop over and over and over again.  Not that she is cognizant of this.

I just don't get that.  That isn't parallel.  That's horrible!  It would be like that movie Groundhog Day where you just keep going back and reliving.  So yeah, I don't get it and no movie or book has ever explained this loop issue.  Tell me how this works.  It's a very chicken and egg like paradox. 

Sweatin' to the Oldies

You know those comics that are He said/she heard or vice versa?  Josh and I definitely had one of those moments.  We were sitting on the couch talking about needing to diet and exercise and I said that I had heard good things about P90X and we should think about doing that.  Now what I meant by that was "we should live vicariously through some other thin, fit person while we sit on the couch and eat Oreos".  What Josh heard was "we should do P90X".  Men!  How did he get that out of that statement?  ;)

After Josh finished up school we decided we were ready to start on this "adventure".  Last night was the first night.  Before I tell you how it went let me tell you about my normal day:  I sit at my desk, I sit at the biosafety cabinet, I stand at the stove, I sit on the couch, I lay in the bed.  I know it's sedentary but I like that life lol!  So now, from that information, how do You think that my exercising went?  Yeah, it went THAT well.  I have all the upper body strength of a newborn puppy, the really newborn kind with eyes that still aren't opened.  The first night was chest and back.  I was using two BBQ bottles as weights (Mom used to use cans while working with Richard Simmons, I grew up to be just like her lol) while the guy on tv lifted 45 pounds and talked about it being "too light".  Josh yelled at the tv a little.  Tonight was legs.  Seriously, I kicked more tonight than a stinking Rockette at the Macy's Parade.

Josh and I are definitely having to encourage one another.  By the end encouragement is slim because we are both gasping for any oxygen we could force into our lungs.  It doesn't help that due to poor design our den is hotter than the rest of the house.  People talk about hitting a wall in exercise, but let me tell you, this is toiling through waist high rubble.

I will definitely be keeping you posted on how this works out!  Heh heh, works out, exercise, so punny.  Well, if I don't stop breathing and collapse and die!

Love Affair

Josh and I have a love affair.  We are in love with Knoxville.  Is it weird to love a city?  We love how much there is to do and how many places there are to eat and shop and hang out.  We went down there today to shop and eat at The Melting Pot.  Eating at The Melting Pot is becoming an annual tradition.  I am so stuffed right now that I Never Ever Ever want to eat again in my entire life!  Never. 

We went to Williams Sonoma which is one of my favorite stores in the entire world.  Josh says it is my Sears, meaning I just go in and starting touching things and saying "I want this, and this, and this, and oh! that!!"  But look at these cookie cutters.  Are they not the cutest things ever???

The only problem is that I don't know if I like the Snow White ones or these Marvel Heroes ones better.  I think these would be so cute if you did an Avengers party before seeing the movie and served these.

Then we went to a wholesale furniture store and found everything we need for our den.  We have looked for months for a tv stand (seriously, like 16 months) and a couch and coffee table.  We have looked at every store around the area and couldn't find anything we just loved.  We literally found all those pieces in one store.  It was amazing.  They were also at wholesale prices!  Score!  Now we have to figure out which piece(s) we want now and what we should wait on til a little later.  This is a terrible picture of chair in the couch set we like.  It is black leather with the softest fabric.  The chair is a swivel chair and Josh and I are already fighting over it!  It's actually way nicer looking in real life lol.

 Then I found two pictures to hang in the guest bathroom.  It was at this place called HomeGoods.  My friend Bev took me there once and I managed to find it again.  They have such great prices on stuff.  We also got super cheap King size pillows for our bed.

After that we walked around down town and ate.  Then we saw a groom in a Prosche (Josh estimated a $300,000 car) wreck it into his rented stretch Hummer with the bridal party inside.  You could hear his pretty demure bride yelling F#&@! all the way up and down the street.  I chuckled just a tiny bit.  Apparently it was one of the groomsmen's father's car and he and the groom starting arguing loudly about the damage.  That would ruin your day.

We had a way better day than the bridal party and now we are safe at home and pretty sleepy.  Hope your day was great!