Oh for the love...

I didn't get any sleep last night. Absolutely none. Zip zero nada.

I stayed up pretty late because my parents got into town and I want to spend as much time with them as possible since they're heading back to their boat on the 24th and will be gone for 6 months. Once I finally got to bed, things just got worse. First I had a bad stomach ache that kept me awake. When that calmed down, Nathan started snoring every time I was about to fall asleep. Eventually, I gave up and moved to the couch in order to read for a few minutes then hopefully fall asleep, since my parents were in the guest bedroom. At which point my parent's dog started whining down in our basement...loudly. So yeah, no sleep for Lindy.

And now I have to work a 12 hour shift AND get through opening night of the play I'm in tonight. I have no idea how I'm going to do it. Unfortunately, one of our dispatchers is now on maternity leave, so all of our reserve dispatchers are schedule to cover her shifts. Which means that there really isn't anyone to cover any other shifts.

When 10:00 am rolls around, I'll have been up for 24 hours...and then I'll have another 12 or so to go before I can collapse.

But in good news, I just found out this morning that I got bumped from a Level 1 pay scale to a Level 2, because I've been at this job for a year. So I got a raise! That's always a good thing.

Back in the Saddle

I've decided that I need to get back into doing Weight Watchers again. I lost 20 lbs on it during the summer and then slacked off and gained half of that back. So it's time to start again!

In order to motivate myself and keep myself accountable, I put a weight loss ticker on our blog. It shows my goal weight loss (30 lbs), and how far I've gone towards that (0 so far since I just started today). If you see me remove that ticker before I get down to my goal weight, call me on it, it probably means I'm slacking off again!

While I was on Weight Watchers, I absolutely loved it. I loved how I felt, how much energy I had, how comfortable I was in my body, and how easy it was to use. The point system pretty much rocked my world because it forced me to be completely honest with how much or little I was eating each day...but it only works if I actually write down what I'm eating and the points for each thing! Things started going downhill when I stopped writing down my points and tried to keep track in my head...it's too easy to cheat that way!

Now that I'm motivated to start eating right again, I just need to get motivated to work out more often. That, as much as eating right, is what made me feel so good, because my body was doing something besides just sitting. Not only that, but it helped me actually have energy during the day, which is almost unheard of.

I just found out that WW now has a weekly meeting here in Baker, at the Baker Towers on Tuesday nights. I'd like to start going to those every other week (they end about the same time I get off work), so we'll see what happens. I've decided that I'm going to weigh myself every Monday...your weight can fluctuate several times a day, so it's not good to weigh yourself more than once a week. So stay tuned for the newer, slimmer me!

New Bed!

I know I've raved about our new bed several times, but I still can't get over how well we've both been sleeping. We finally got the 4 poster bed that I bought from Goodwill in college (it's been in my parent's storage unit for the past year and a half) and set it up with the new mattress set in our room. That required a little rearranging in our tiny room. Unfortunately, the legs of the bed frame were so tall that I literally had to jump to get into bed. So Nathan took a miter saw to the legs and now it's a much more manageable height.

Here's a couple of photos of our bed/room. It's pretty hard to get a decent photo in such a small space, but that's the best I could do.

Photos

I finally had a chance to take all the photos off of our little point and shoot digital camera. I have photos on there all the way back from my trip to Arizona with my mom in the middle of October. So I decided to make slide shows of each group of photos and put them up in one post. Here they are.

The first slide show is from my trip to Arizona. The first photos are from our trip to the art village down the road from where my grandparent's live. The rest of the photos are from our trip to Kitt Peak Observatory, a astrological observatory outside of Tucson. It was a beautiful clear day, and I got some really fun photos.

The next slide show is from when we put baby gates up around our back landing so that Bandit could come and go through his doggy door without having access to the rest of the house. But we made the mistake of putting one of his doggy beds in the back landing with him...this is the result.

When we went to get out Christmas Tree from my parent's property out on Pine Creek, Bandit took off and went into the creek that runs through the center of the property. Because he was so wet, we threw him in the back of the truck with the tree for the trip home, something we've never done before. He seemed to actually enjoy it, and you have to love his batboy ears.

And finally, the pictures I promised of how our house was decorated for Christmas...a little late, I know, but better late than never.

Funny

Here's a funny article I stumbled upon on msn.com. It's about car steriotypes. The really funny part is about half way down.

http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=445065&topart=passenger

Whew

I got my first annual evaluation at work today. And it wasn't as painful as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it actually had some praise in it (gasp!) and other than that, it just reiterated the things that I heard from our Police Sgt. What a relief! The only part that kind of surprised me is that my boss said that I need to become more comfortable with processing warrants and detainers...umm...as far as I know, I can enter and process warrants/detainers with the best of them. So I sent him an email asking him to clarify where I could improve in that area. The evaluation ended with my boss saying that the last 6 months of my probationary period will be the hardest, during which I will hopefully pick up that 15% of my job that is instinctual, the 15% that no one can teach you, that is your 6th sense...I'll get on that.

I was talking with Arly today about how my ride along with the Sgt went, and it made me realize something about myself...I will work my butt off for you if you treat me with respect and honesty. I can't say that I've been treated that way by certain people in my work place, which could account for my lack of enthusiasm towards working hard for them. Even if your complete honesty hurts a little bit, I will respect you immensely for having enough respect for me to deal with me face to face. Nothing loses my respect faster than taking your problem with me to a higher-up, without attempting to fix it with me first.

The other highlight of the day is that the Guitar Hero III for the Wii that I ordered on the 26th arrived today!!!! Super excited!!! Nathan set it up during his lunch hour and got to play it first (pout), but I can't wait to get done w/ rehearsal tonight at around 7 and go play it for the first time!

Speaking of shopping online, I just have to share with all you other bargain hunters out there...I got a $50 Old Navy gift card in my stocking for Christmas. I love shopping at Old Navy, but their prices are getting to be pretty rediculous, so I figured that I was only going to be able to get two or three things with the card. I decided to go online and see if I could find any good deals, since I know my sizes there. I ended up getting nine...yes NINE things...I didn't pay over $7.25 for a single item. My purchases included: 3 U-neck long sleeve tshirts (brown, blue and white), one Perfect Fit tee (deep red), one V neck tee (blue), three holiday tank tops (maroon, blue, and white with snowflakes on it), and some really cute earrings. With shipping being $5, the total came to just $0.49 above what I had on the gift card...so I actually paid only 49 cents for 9 items. Yes, I know, my girliness is showing, but I was just so proud of my ability to get so much for that price. Hopefully that will be delivered in the next couple of days.

On a completely different note, the play I'm in, Laundry & Bourbon, opens on the 11th. That means we have less than 2 weeks to rehearse...I think we'll be just fine. It doesn't feel like we've been rehearsing for very long though. If anyone is going to be in the area, it's playing Jan 11 & 12, 18 & 19, 7:00 pm at the Rodeway Inn in Baker. It's a dinner theatre, so dinner starts at 7:00 and the play will probably start at around 7:30 or so. Should be good food (Lynne Burroughs and my mom are doing the cooking), and the play is very entertaining with some great one line zingers.

Well, I'm off work in half an hour (this 6 am - 6 pm shift kinda rocks) so I better make sure all my call screens are finished. Later!

Here's to 2008!

I'd be lying if I told you that I'm sad to see 2007 go. It was a tough year and I'm looking very forward to what 2008 has in store for us.

For New Year's Eve, Nathan and I went down to Barley's, had some dinner, and were joined by our friend Dana. We had some good laughs and some good drinks until just before 11:00, when they closed the place down...not sure why the heck they did that. They could have made a lot of money in just one more hour of staying open. Anyway, the three of us then headed back to our place, where we proceeded to sing some karaoke until midnight and then went to bed.

By the way, have I mentioned that our new bed is freakin' fantastic?! I sleep so well at night, and I'm assuming Nathan does too because I never feel him move during the night.

Today we slept in a little bit then Nathan made breakfast before we went up to Anthony Lakes for a day of skiing. What a BEAUTIFUL day! A blue bird day, to be exact. The only clouds in the sky were little wispy things that didn't block any of the sun. We were able to take some great pictures. The highlight of the day was when my ski glove fell off of the ski lift while I was trying to take some pictures on our first trip up the lift. Thankfully it was a nice warm day, so skiing down the hill without a glove wasn't a big deal.

Unfortunately, at around 2:00 I got a raging headache. As in, the kind that makes you feel like you're going to vomit any moment. We went back to the car, got some ibuprofen, then went and sat in the lodge for a while. But instead of feeling better, I started feeling worse so we came home. I immediately went to bed until I started feeling better. Which brings us to now.

Not exactly the way I was picturing the first day of our new year, but over all it was really fun. And now...pictures!