Ladies and Gents, we have a winner!  Keri is the winner of the No Fear giveaway! Yay!

Now that the giveaway is done and I am finally back from Texas, we can resume our regularly scheduled programming.  Unfortunately this means that I am turning comment and trackback moderation back on because holy crap! I have never had so many spam trackbacks in my entire blogging career!  So…yeah.  If you’ve already commented here it won’t affect you and if you haven’t yet, you might have to wait a few minutes for your comment to show up (unless you leave a comment in the middle of the night while I am sleeping, in which case you will have to wait a few hours for me to wake up and check my e-mail.

Congratulations Keri! Woo!

Today has been spent mostly packing and cleaning the house to get ready for our trip.  I wanted to take my time with this entry but my friend (and house sitter!) Katie will be here any minute and I don’t want her to have to sit around and wait while I type this up.  Damn me and my procrastination!

Thankfully I have the perfect activity to keep you all occupied while I am an internet-less (most likely) home in rural Texas–a giveaway! Yay! Free stuff!  Here’s the info:

No Fear Energy Drink is launching a promotion–its first-ever under the tab code promotion—Earn Some Cred.  You crack open specially marked cans of No Fear Energy drink, find the code under the tab, enter that code at earnsomecred.com and start earning cred for No Fear gear or if you’re super lucky, instantly win the VIP Credentials for 1 of 8 once-in-a-lifetime experiences, including a Hawaiian Surf getaway.

Here’s what you can win as part of the No Fear Earn Some Cred Giveaway:

2 – No Fear Hoodies

2 – No Fear T-shirts (one of each style)

1 – No Fear Bloodshot Hat

1 –  12-pack of the new No Fear Bloodshot Energy Drink

1 – Lamb of God’s latest CD “Wrath” releasing on Feb. 24

1 – Sticky Bumps Surf Wax

Cool stuff, right?  Who doesn’t like free clothes and drinks?  So here’s how the Giveaway works:

Because we are coming up on Spring Break for most colleges and because Will and I are off on our own “Getaway” (such as it is), I want to know what your ideal vacation would be. If budgets and time weren’t issues, where would you go, how long would you stay there, what would you do while you were there and why?  If your ideal getaway is simply staying at home and vegging out, you can enter that too!

Now the legal stuff:  This, once again, is for US Residents only (sad face) and will go until Sunday (March 29) night.  On Monday, March 30 I’ll draw a name out of a hat (or use a number generator on line if there are enough comments) and that person will be our big winner!  I’m also opening up the comments section completely–you won’t have to wait for me to approve the comment to see it on screen!  Make sure you leave a valid e-mail address that I can use to contact you once the contest is over! Play nice kiddies!

It occurs to me that I should post a link to my twitter profile!  Here’s a link to my twitter profile!

Though….

Is it just me or is twitter being a major pain the butt today?  I updated my settings a few days ago to get updates on my phone instead of just via the web.  It worked fine but then this morning there was, like, an update outage where twitter was eating the updates I sent from my phone and then sending me a whole bunch of updates one right after the other that were hours old… Honestly I don’t know if it is my Sprint service or Twitter.  Or a combination of the two. Or something.

I am very proud of the fact that I met my deadline yesterday and might be able to get ahead of another one before we leave… depending on how much I get done today and tomorrow morning.  Though, I only got three hours of sleep in the last twenty four hours and those were between nine and noon today, so we’ll see how well my brain functions or whether or not I spend the day accidentally zoning out.  To be honest I’m not sure why I didn’t get any sleep.  I felt fine, was happy that I met my deadline, not very stressed out at all and had a good dinner (yummmm Wendy’s hamburgers) and then spent the evening watching television and reading the boards at iVillage (totally addicted).  I had almost no caffeine yesterday.  Weird.

Last night I went to sleep thinking “tomorrow I will get up and I will be crazy productive because I have to! Deadlines approaching! Must get stuff done before vacation!”

So far today I have:

• taken a nap
• checked the mail
• looked at wedding favors online
• read some blogs
• started writing this post.

Um.  Oops.  I do have to get stuff done this afternoon because I promised a client that I would send a package of stuff to him before the end of the day.  Thank goodness that, while I haven’t been writing per se, I have been researching and doing a lot of thinking.  Yes people, I have resorted to my college ways once again: think about it constantly while looking like you aren’t doing anything and then just sit down and write it all out in an hour.  Woo!

Also, before I forget:  Even though I probably won’t have internet service there, I’m fairly certain that we will have cell service so I will probably be doing a fair bit of twittering.  If you twitter and haven’t added me yet (perhaps you missed the pretty blue “t” over in my sidebar) make sure you do that!  That way you’ll be sure to get all of  my scintillating updates!

• We slept in until noon and ever since we have been running behind…not that we had a bunch of plans (other than sitting on our arses and hanging out) but you know, it was six before I ended up taking a shower and nine before we had dinner.  Oops.
• Earlier today Will started making fun of me for buying “Calcium Rich” butter.  He asked me “What are you trying to do, get us healthy?” to which I replied “isn’t ‘healthy butter’ kind of an oxymoron?” and then we laughed ourselves stupid.
• I have slowly been getting Will to watch West Wing!¹  I’ve started playing the DVDs while he sits in the living room with me and plays WoW on his laptop.  A few nights ago he said “I just want to know these characters in real life!” This makes me a tiny bit too happy.
• The trip is looming closer every day and the amount of things that I have to get done before we leave is…intimidating at best.  I know I can do it.  I thrive under pressure and am usually quite a lot more brilliant when working on a crazily close deadline so I am not worried…yet.  I just keep telling myself that even if I have to work pretty much non-stop between now and when we leave for the airport that’s okay because we are going to spend the following eight days doing pretty much nothing.
• While I am…wary of the trip I am also looking forward to the possibility of being able to spend eight days doing nothing but crocheting, taking pictures and napping.  A lot.  Of course now that I have written that down we’ll probably have jam packed days of on the go ness, which would be interesting because there is not really a lot to do in the area of Texas that we are going to be staying.
• Also? I checked the weather for the town we’ll be staying in and it looks like it’ll be high 70s/low 80s most of the time.  I am beyond excited to be warm for a week!  It’s supposed to rain for about half of our trip out there but rain in 70 degrees is a lot easier to deal with than rain in 40 degrees.  Mmmm. Warmth. And humidity.
• I have another give away to do!  Kathleen, the same awesome lady who contacted me about the Pepsi giveaway I did for the Superbowl offered me a chance to do a giveaway for an energy drink.  This very nicely solves the problem of what to do with my blog while I’m gone.  I’ll post the contest on Wednesday night and then you all will have eight days to enter and I’ll choose a winner when I get back!

I downloaded the new MSN (or Windows Live Messenger or whatever its called) and it came with this thing called the Windows Live Writer.  Apparently I can use this thing to write blog posts and then publish them whenever or however I want.  I am thinking that this could come in handy while I am in Texas so I thought I would try it out!  Let’s see how it goes…

Last night Will and I went out to dinner and desert with a friend of his from school and that friend’s girlfriend.  I’ve been hearing about these friends for a long time so it was good to actually meet them and join them in their “oh my god I am so glad that the term is finally over thank god thank god thank god thank god”-ness.  It reminded me of how I felt when I was heading into finals week and feeling relieved that one term was ending and jazzed for the next term to begin.  And it kind of made me feel old since my college days are long behind me now (until I decide to go back and actually get a degree).

We started at Olive Garden and I think I ate so much that my stomach exploded.  Yes, right now I am pretty sure that Fettucini Alfredo is just haning around draped over all of the rest of my organs saying “so how do we get digested now?”  and then, even though we were all stuffed, we drove into downtown (where the friends live) in search of this cupcake place that they love but that they weren’t exactly sure how to get to while driving.  Oh yes, walking around in downtown is much different than driving and finding a place to park because of all of the one way streets.  It took us long enough to find the place and then find parking that we actually managed to find room in our bellies for cupcakes.  And that’s saying something.

The cupcake place (the name I can’t remember) was very cute.  It was all brown and pink and white–there were big polka dots on the walls and the tables were all round and even at 9:30 (a half an hour before they closed) the place was hoppin’.  Will compared it to Voodoo but seriously, this place was way too cute.  Pretty much the only thing it had in common with Voodoo doughnuts was that it sold yummy treats. I told Will it was like saying Miley Cyrus reminded him of Nirvana…which this morning I realzied was kind of insulting to the cupcake place which, really, was adorable and fun.

I like that we are slowly but surely making new friends in Portland in addition to starting to find time to spend with friends of ours we knew before we moved up here (who we looked forward to hanging out with but never seem to be able to).  Will and I are….well, we’re lazy.  We enjoy meeting up with friends and hanging out but we never seem to think about doing something like that spontaneously.  We’re pretty much “home, dinner, television in the evenings” kind of people….which is nice though I distinctly remember being an “okay, what should we go out and do” kind of person not so very long ago.  Maybe I’m old.  Or lazy.  Or both.

Still though, it is fun to get together and hang out and talk and laugh.

Today Will had to be at work at eight (gross) but I slept in until 11:30 again (this is becoming a serious bad habit) and snuggling with the cat on the couch for a while. Then I got up and cleaned.  Oh how I cleaned.  I mopped and swept (but not in that order) and sanitized the counters and vacuumed and even stuffed a lemon down the garbage disposal to get rid of the “old food” smell in the kitchen.  Thankfully it only took a few hours because our apartment isn’t huge but wow.  It’s clean.  And that makes me happy because it means that on Wednesday when I’m waiting for my friend Kt to get here (she’s house sitting) all I have to do is a quick wipe down of stuff and maybe some dusting and can spend the rest of the time visiting and showing her around the neighborhood.

Tomorrow I will probably spend working but that’s okay.  I’d rather get the work done and have extra $$ for the trip than not do the work and feel like I’m behind when we get back!

I used that phrase on a Facebook update but it is too good to not use again.  So last night, in an effort to be supportive (and because I have gotten addicted to the In-Law Issues boards at iVillage¹) I stayed up with Will until 3:30 in the morning. Whoops. And then we got back up at 7:30 so that he could be at school early to work on a project.  And after he left at eight thirty I crawled onto the couch with a blanket and meant to sleep until eleven but slept until noon.  Whoops again.

It’s weird–I’ve only been up and around for a few hours but I am already to crawl back under my blanket and go back to sleep.  It’s a good thing I’ve got stuff to do or I could absolutely spend this entire day sleeping on the couch.

I’ve been taking a lot of naps lately–I don’t know if it is because I am truly tired (I don’t think so because I wake up each morning feeling fine) or because it is the easiest way to deal with the stress of the last few months (most likely) or because I’m becoming narcoleptic (wouldn’t that be interesting!).  All I know is that I spend the majority of each morning napping on the couch with the cat.  Maybe it’s the snuggliness of my cat (she isn’t so snuggly when I am awake) that keeps me wrapped up in blankets and snoozing away.  All I know is that I need to knock it off and get into a regular sleeping and waking pattern.  Maybe the trip to Texas will help with that.

You know how you know you’re going to be wayyyy too tired when you wake up in the morning?  When the evening before your fiance tells you (as he starts his homework at 9PM) “I’ll try really hard not to keep us up too late tonight.  I want us to at least get an hour of sleep.”

Yeahhh…. I say “Hello my little blue Advil PM friend” (for me at least) if we aren’t in bed in the next hour or so.

I was all set to start this post by making fun of Will for watching 90210 or some other CW crap because he’s too lazy to get up and change the channel.  Then I turned around to make sure I had the show right and realized that he is actually watching Reaper which is totally okay for a twenty something dude to watch.  Oh well, there will be other opportunities for me to say “guess what Will is doing?!?”

Honestly though, I was kind of hoping that, for this moment anyway, he was being lazier than I am because I honestly just said this out loud:

“I want to crochet, but it’s too much work to get out the yarn and get it set up and then actually make stuff.  I just don’t have the energy!”

People, whining that took more energy than it would have taken for me to just get up and go get my yarn.  But, um, it’s “girly” week here at the Steiner-Farley compound so I blame it on my raging hormones and cramps.¹

In other, non related to laziness news, I have been trying to come up with ways to cope with the massive amounts of time I will be spending in Texas with no internet connection.  I am perfectly capable of spending eight days sitting on my bum watching television.  Heck, that sounds like a mighty fine vacation to me, but only if I get to choose what is on television and Will’s Dad and I? Do not exactly have the same taste in viewing goodness.  I like fiction (for the most part).  I like involved stories and characters I can care about and dialogue that makes me squirt soda out of my nose it’s so funny.  Will’s Dad likes the Discovery Channel and all of its reality shows (when he was here in September we watched an entire season of Ice Road truckers because that’s what was on) and shows about guns and shooting guns and how guns were made for shooting and the various people who were famous for shooting guns and the guns that they shot.   I? can handle the Discovery channel and shows about guns for a couple of hours.  And then I kind of want to pull my hair out.  Though I do enjoy biographies and historical documentaries from time to time.

I’m thinking of taking the fancy schmancy camera with us and playing around outdoors and taking photos.  I’ve been looking for an excuse to spend a bunch of time playing with the camera.  This could be it!  What better way to avoid the conversations in which I am forced to defend my registered as a Democrat status (AGAIN) than “sorry, I have to go take pictures of all of the blades of grass in your yard!  See you later!”

The problem is that we want to keep the packing pretty light.  We are already taking both laptops (Will is determined to find WiFi somewhere even if he has to park his Dad’s truck in someone else’s driveway and steal it whereas mine will be more of a DVD player that will rarely get used) and I was hoping to take some yarn on the plane.  Oh that I could afford a Kindle but, that ship has not yet been built, let alone had a chance to sail.  Taking the camera (no way in hell am I going to check it) is one more thing to lug around crowded airports as we fly there and fly home.  I like the idea of one (flat) backpack.  I do not like the idea of having to fork over money to hire an airport sherpa.

Oh my! My life is so hard! I have to many fun ways to fill empy time!