So today of all days, a day when work is slow, a day when very few people are at work, a day when I have to ride the bus home, is the day I forgot my iPad.  It makes me sad. What is this spell you have on me technology? I have to settle for view Facebook and Twitter via my smartphone with its small 4” screen.  Oh the travesty!! Well I’m not really that heartbroken but it does bum me out a bit. Like I said, Technology has a magic spell on me.

On that note, yesterday I went to a Business Update and Outlook seminar at The Depot.  It was a day of training.  The afternoon session focused on social media and its effects on the business world.  It was very interesting. They discussed the risks of putting a company out on Facebook and Twitter, but also the benefits too. I have to say it is interesting to see the evolution of the internet from it infancy to what it has become today. I mean you can now take a picture of a check with your smart phone and deposit it into your checking account with a click.  That is crazy but also scary at the same time. One of the other sessions talked about hacking a business’ servers and networks.  The hackers are always a step ahead.  As the presenter said, it isn’t “if” we get hacked it is “when” will we get hacked. Somebody asked if the US can go after them.  Sadly, most of the hackers are from Russia and China and a lot of times the government is paying them to do it.  They aren’t stupid, they know that if they get into some company’s network and find out secret information on something they are working on, they can steal it and do it themselves. They play dirty! Overall it was an interesting day, but some of the sessions were boring…almost to tears.  And the room was freezing! 

On a sad note, the Minnesota Twins don’t care about winning…as evident in their most recent trades.  Denard Span, our amazing center fielder, is now with the Nationals.  I was ok with that. I was sad to see him go but what the heck we have Ben Revere who is just as amazing. Well, I should say “had” Revere as they trade him away yesterday to the Phillies. I found that out during one of the sessions…it was boring and I was surfing Twitter. It makes me very angry that they are giving away quality players for some minor league pitchers. So much for “build us a stadium and we will put a good team on the field,” that lasted a year. 20 years of sucking here we coming.

Firstly, I did not win the Powerball. I know shocking. Somebody in Missouri and Arizona won.  It must be nice!

Hansel and Gretel

Well this weekend wasn’t really busy but yet it seemed like it was.   Friday night and most of Saturday Eric was writing his final paper for the term. It was on terrorism…such a nice topic to write a 15 page paper on huh?  By the time we went to church at 4:30, I had almost 8 pages typed.  Not a bad start considering it was due in less than 24 hours. After church we meet up with Greg and Celeste and went to the Holidazzle parade.  We sat in the “hot seats” but it was such a mild night that you could have stood outside in a sweatshirt and been perfectly fine.  As it was, we were roasting in the tent.  Same floats as last year but the Princess and the Pea were missing.  Eric was very dismayed by that. We parked in the Target Parking garage…BIG MISTAKE…it took almost an hour to get out of there.  It was awful.

Yesterday Eric was cruising and gave me more pages to type almost as fast as I was finishing them.  We got to page 15 but he just couldn’t come up with enough to fill the page.  Between the two of us adding more stuff we couldn’t get to a full 15 pages but at that point Eric didn’t care.  It was about 3pm, 2 hours ahead of his deadline.  Whew! 

After a shower, we ventured out for the first time of the day and went to Kohl’s to use up my Kohl’s cash, filled gas and got Culvers.  Exciting day!

Painting crew

Actually the exciting part happened last night.  I met my friends at the Paint Pub in Maple Grove (yes all the way up there) for a Wine and Painting class. I know what you are thinking Kim and wine?  But I went for the painting part. I was a little annoyed that they actually gave us instructions but I guess it was a “painting class.” I just wanted to paint.  It was fun but it made for a long night. Yawn!

I’m not happy today. I don’t know why…maybe it is the hump day blues, or maybe it is because I gained 5 pounds over the past 2 weeks or maybe it is because I’m tired after a long night. Whatever the reason, even a salted caramel hot chocolate hasn’t made it better.   But you know what would make it better? Winning the $500 million jackpot tonight in the Powerball.  It only takes one ticket.  Could I bet holding the lucky ticket? I really hope so but my numbers aren’t that great.  They are all even and the highest number is 26.  So probably not…but stranger things have happen.

So what if I win $500 million tonight, what would I do with it?  Let’s see first things first I would buy a new house…but not a big McMansion, just a nice 4 bedroom house with a large fenced in yard, maybe close to the ocean.  Yea I know there are hurricanes but with $500 million I can afford to build a few new houses if mine gets destroyed. Secondly, I’d buy a dog for the large fenced in yard. Maybe a beagle named Banjo (I love that name) or a golden retriever (no name for the golden retriever but Banjo doesn't seem to fit).  Thirdly, I would by a new car, nothing too fancy, but it has to be fast and not a sports car either, they are death traps. Finally, I’d travel around the world, touching each continent (even Antarctica). I know what you are thinking, how is travel last on my list? Well it really isn’t last. There are other things I’d do with the money, like give some to church, family and friends.  But there are so many other things to add to the list that this would go on and on and I don’t want to bore you.

I saw in the news today that you will now be able to buy Powerball and Mega Millions tickets at the gas pump. Seriously? And you don't actually get a ticket...they "text" your numbers to your cell phone...and the biggest kicker is they automatically deposit your "small" winnings into your bank account.  Crazy!  I'm not sure if this is such a good idea. Could you imagine the fraud? The gambling addictions?  Yikes!  What a crazy world we live in.

In other news, I’m slowly recovering from the busy weekend.  Saturday we went touring around Omaha.  First stop was Whole Foods for gelato, then Von Maur to see Samantha working, then Trader Joe's (Hiram takes us to all the fun places) and then finished up looking at the decorated Christmas windows in some uptown like area.  It was really nice.  After that we went to Chris and Leilani’s house because we pink swore with Banyan that we would come visit her.  She even threatened our lives if I didn’t come over.  We played Apples to Apples (which the only card I got was “Fat n’ Sassy”…seems fitting) and finally I got my Chick-fil-A at around 8pm.  They opened two locations near Bonnie’s and Chris’ houses.  It was delicious as always.  I can’t wait until they move up here (besides the one at the airport)…if they ever move up here.

Sunday we went to church, eat lunch, visited Starbucks (again!) and drove home. We got home around 8pm, just in time for my show. It was nice to get home and see Swirl too. Eric hooked up the new TV which is beautiful.  What a great investment.

Last night was a very BUSY night.  After work I had to get ready for my first concert of the Christmas season.  It was at the inside amphitheater at Edinborough Park in Edina. It was pretty good considering we didn’t know about the concert until 24 days ago and we hadn’t practiced since the Thursday before Thanksgiving.  The crowd is always good there so it is fun to play.  Greg, Celeste, Evelyn and Greg’s parents came to my concert. I didn’t talk to them too much because I had to rush off from the concert to Central Middle School in Eden Prairie for my 9:15pm volleyball game. It was rough. I was tired and cold and all I wanted to do was wrap up in a blanket at home and watch TV.  But it was fun playing so it is all good.

Today is Evelyn’s 3rd birthday. We are going over to their house after work for a birthday party. Fun! Fun!

Only 27 days (17.2 days of work) until Jamaica! Let the countdown begin. :-)

Happy Thanksgiving!  I know I’m a few days late.  I’ve had a great holiday week. Monday and Tuesday were rough days at work…because I had to be there. LOL!  Wednesday we drove down to Omaha. It was so warm we had the AC on for a while.  I’m thankfully it was an uneventful drive.  Once in Papillion we made our first trip to Wal-Mart for water. Soon after we got to Bonnie’s we went to Wal-Mart to pick up food for Thursday. Like tradition, we had Juliette-cotti for dinner.  

We woke up at 4:30am Thursday morning to see if we could get the $97 TV.  Well that of course didn’t happen.  There was a line down the street!  This is crazy, it is Thanksgiving morning!!!  As we tried to get in the door, a woman banged her shopping cart into my Achilles heel. Really woman, why do you have a shopping cart in the line to get into the store…did you have injury me?  Neither one of us were getting the TV and we already knew this! ARGH! We picked up some birthday presents for Evelyn. After that we drove past Best Buy to see if there was a line and there was.  This was 7:30am on Thanksgiving Day!  Seriously people!  We went to Wal-Mart and got kicked out.  Well we got kicked out of the Christmas tree area.  We were looking at the Christmas trees in the garden center and they happen to be storing all the TVs for the 10pm sale in there. Eric started counting them and a very crabby Wal-Mart woman came back and said “what are you doing here, you need to get out here, this is a restricted area.” Um we are looking at Christmas trees and there is nothing saying this is a restricted area. After she bitched us out she put the restricted sign up.  Stupid woman!  After we got home from that we took Michael to Starbucks.

Thanksgiving dinner was great.  The whole family was there. It was great.  Soon after dinner Juliette, Eric and I started our Black Friday Shopping.  We started at Wal-Mart. We got in the really long line for the 32” TV.  The one that they guarantee would be in stock for an hour.  I left Eric and Juliette in the line and I went looking for a present for mom.  While I was walking around a woman with skunk hair did a double hit to my Achilles heel with her shopping cart.  That is 3 times today my Achilles heel has taken a hit.  Good news is we got the TV and got out of there.  After that we went to Best Buy.  We saw the line and decided it wasn’t worth it.  It was out the front door, around the side of the building around the back wall. Wow!  So we went to Starbucks (trip #2 of the day) at the Hy-Vee store, we got there just in time because they closed at 11:55pm.  We went to Target and it was dead.  They had been open for 3 hours already and you could tell it must have been busy at 9pm because the place looked like it had been trampled.  We went back to Best Buy but the line was still really long and the store had been open for over 15 minutes so we decided it wasn’t worth it.  We went to Kohl’s and the checkout lines were ridiculously long so we just went home.

Yesterday Eric, Juliette, Adam and I went to Kohl’s and Best Buy to pick up the things we decided weren’t important the night before.  We made another stop at Starbucks and went to spend time with Chris and Leilani.  Eric and Chris watched the Nebraska game.  When it was done they went to Starbucks.  Juliette, Morgan and I went to Panera Bread and eventually made our way back to Chris' house.  We had some quality family time by watching Maury and then Juliette, Morgan and I went to Victoria Secrets, Bath and Body Works and Claire's. Morgan was so excited to go to Victoria Secrets.  We spent the whole night at Chris' house and got back to Bonnie’s around 11pm.  It has been a very busy holiday week.