Not Me Monday #15

The biggest "not me" since my last post is not that I am writing this post on Wednesday night and back-dating the post date to Monday. To make it up to you, I am including pictures this week!

We did not spontaneously decide to buy a new washer and dryer last Tuesday during the work day. The most that I had even seen of the pair was only the picture of the washing machine from Home Depot's website! We will definitely be saving some money with this new pair.


I got a chicken ready for John to put in the oven on Wednesday morning before he left for work. I usually put celery in the chicken for extra flavor. I did not first realize that what I had stuffed the chicken with was romaine lettuce instead of celery when I was driving home from work that night.


I did not run into a gal I used to teach with at the School of Music at Rainbow last Wednesday night. It had not been 2 years since I saw her last, wow time flies...

Because the chicken was in the oven all day during work, I did not worry that something would go wrong with the oven. I was very happy to see that the row of townhouses was still standing as I turned the corner at the end of my drive!

John did not find many good deals at Mackenthun's Dollar Days sale this week. See our good meal from Friday? Everything was from Dollar Days! (Country Ribs, Tater Rounds, and Broccoli...ooh, can't forget the awesome pork seasoning on the ribs!)


I did not successfully eat my entire meal at Khan's with chopsticks. I did not sneak several extra pair of chopsticks home with us. Khan's does not have Mexican men cooking the Mongolian food.




Saturday night I did not post my first ever Craigslist ad to try and get rid of our old washer and dryer. I was not lucky enough to receive a reply within a couple hours of the post and get rid of the set the very next day! We did not sell our old washer & dryer pair for only $60 ($100 was the asking price but I didn't want to take a chance of not getting any more inquiries. This reminds me, I still need to remove the ad from the listings...).

John did not try to introduce me to an elderly lady at church who semed to remember him from when he was a baby just to get shot down and not really seem to care at all.

Our Plecostomus did not bite the dust last week. I bought a new one and a couple more fishies, 3 of which did not already die. I guess I know which kind not to get next time!

I did not find out that one of my best friends recently got engaged a week ago through my mom who heard it at church!

A coincidence?

It's already been a busy day for me. So far:

John and I played bells at church (8:15 am service)
Dropped John off at work
Went to Petco to buy a new plecostomus and a couple more little fishies
Called someone back in response to the Craigslist add I posted last night regarding our old washer & dryer and arranged a pickup for this evening
Found out from my mom that one of my best friends is engaged to her 6-year boyfriend!
Called another girlfriend of mine to see if she had been told before me
Got a call from the church I used to work at wanting me to play piano for them in March & April
Already spent an hour in the car commuting between home and church

Between the two services at church an elderly lady stopped John in the lobby and told him what a wonderful job he did playing bells this morning and that she really enjoyed watching him play. After John told her who he was she was speachless - she remembered John and all his siblings as little babies and children years ago....coincidence?

I got a call from my mom after I got home wondering why I hadn't told her the news of my friend Angie getting engaged. She has been patiently waiting over 6 years but recently became engaged last weekend. No wonder I was thinking of her so much yesterday....coincidence?

During church this morning John mentioned that Pastor Mike hadn't called in a while asking me if I wanted to play for a church service. I knew they had a pretty permanent pianist but that she would be gone for a few months coming up and he would probably call. Sure enough, around noon today he called saying I could play all I wanted to during March & April....coincidence?....good timing...? No...God-timing!

Not Me Monday #14

Another Monday, another Not Me Monday post...except, this past week was not as exciting as the rest have been...until this morning's drive into work.

Up until this morning, I thought the only things that I "didn't" do since last week's post were find out that my sister and her boyfriend broke up (sad), me sleeping in again on Sunday (I wish John didn't have to work on Sundays..booo), our family really enjoying Rachel's orchestra concert (go horns), being surprised when John bought me Iron Chef for wii (who's cuisine reigns surpreme?!?!) and making the kitchen cleaner than it has been in the past 9 months (ooh-la-la).

This morning trumps it all... I was (not) driving on the frontage road right outside of my work when I hit a patch of black ice (I think) and my car did a 180 leaving me driving back the way I had just come from. Luckily, there were no other cars on that road at the time. And since my car is made of plastic, it would have bounced right off of the snow piled up along side of the road, right? This was not one of my scariest driving moments ever.

What a great way to start off of the week...stay tuned...you never know what next week's Not Me Monday post will bring!

Jenny

I just found out that Jenny, my friend and co-worker from North Carolina, will be coming to Minnesota for some training at the end of February! Jenny is in North Carolina where she works onsite at one of our clients. I think Jenny started working at YA about 3 months before I started my employment at YA and she was out to MN for training right away. I worked on that account with her for about a year before I was moved to a different account and shortly after that she was laid off. Long story short, she has been back at YA for several months now and coming out to MN again for some more training. I kept in touch with Jenny even when she wasn't employed. After she left I started helping out part-time again on the old account and now that she's back at YA I get to talk to her on a daily basis but am excited to work with Jenny in person.

This will be Jenny's third trip to MN. She actually came out for John and my wedding in April which really meant a lot to us. The bad thing with that trip was that we were so busy with wedding details that we didn't really get to talk to each other at all. Jenny came and gave me a hug while we were doing pictures before the ceremony and that was it :( She had to duck out right at the end of the service to catch her flight back to NC.

I have reassured Jenny that, yes, there will still be snow at the end of February. Hopefully the ice is still thick enough that we can go ice fishing. The CVFT's Sound of Music will still be showing so she and another co-worker of ours are going to be able to listen to me in action! I'm sure that we will even be able to snag a couple of Lewis & Clark pictures (if you know what I mean)!

Not Me Monday #13

When my dad called me at work last week to give me an update on my car situation, he did not have to tell me that it would not be $600 to fix the car but instead $1700.

We did not decide to fix up the Saturn instead of getting a different car after going back and forth on the issue many many times.

We do not still have the rental car from the dealership that's fixing my car for over a week now.

I did not get another piano student for Monday nights. I will be making more money this way but I also will have a 1/2 hour less at home with John since that is the week night we actually see each other.

While John tried to transfer his Chinese takeout meal from the container to the plate by flipping it upside down, the gravy-like sauce did not end up in a big streak down the front of his shirt.

I am not sick of the Sound of Music songs already after only 1 rehearsal.

I did not get a big not in my fishing line again on Saturday when I was fishing with my dad. One cool thing that happened on this fishing trip was that my brother Brian's friend Chris came and brought his Aqua-Vu. By having the camera in the water I could see my hook in the lake and see the fish swim up and bite on my line. I caught a pretty good size crappie that way!

I did not turn down a big steak lunch from parents' on Sunday because I needed to do the dishes.

We did not eat two BIG meals in 4 hours on Sunday night (4pm for Kristin's b-day celebration and 7pm for the Home Depot holiday outing to the Old Log Theater).

After we finished our 2nd meal last night the servers did not come around and ask us if we wanted another meal. We did not turn them down initially. After seeing others with to-go boxes I did not ask a different server if they had extra meals that we could get to go. I'll cut to the chase...John and I did not end up taking home 2 large meals and 2 desserts aside from what we ate at the dinner!

It was not after 11pm until we got home last night from the holiday party and John did not have to start work again at 5am. Needless-to-say he took a long nap when he got home!

Car update

If you read the last two weeks worth of Not Me Monday posts you may recall that I am having a bit of a car problem. I bought my '99 Saturn in October of '04 with 93k miles. Now, 4 years later, it has about 160k miles on it. This was the first car that I ever owned myself and it has been a great car for me. Throughout the years it has had some repairs: muffler, new engine head, brakes to name a few.

The Monday after Christmas my car started acting up again. The reverse was very slow as well as the car thunking when I was accelerating after being stopped. The day after New Year's we an appointment at a local car dealership. After they checked it out they said it was the 2nd cylanoid that needed to be replaced. That meant that when the car was shifting gears it was going from 1st gear to 3rd gear. The 2nd cylanoid was also what controlled reverse. They estimated about $600 for this repair.

Once the part came in and they put it in the Saturn the shifting problem was fixed but the reverse still didn't work. I guess there was a leak in the transmission. If it's cold it would be OK but as the car warms up the leaks get worse. Can't drive a car without reverse!

We then had to decide if we wanted to stick $1700 into the Saturn to get a used transmission or just get a new car. After several days of tossing the idea and switching plans every few hours we settled on just fixing up the Saturn. It will be pricey right now but at least we can avoid the monthly payments that would come with a new car. I didn't want to have to go out in the freezing cold and try to decide on a different car. Hopefully the Saturn can last me until summer and then I can start looking for something else.

We are extremely grateful that the dealership that's fixing my car gave us a rental car to use. All we have to do it pay for the gas and return it with a 1/4 tank of gas. They gave us an '07 TrailBlazer to use and John has enjoyed driving something other than the Explorer for the past 2 weeks. I, on the other hand, am getting a little tired of driving the Explorer. It's great that I am getting out of my Saturn shell and trying something a little different and bigger. However, I'm tired of getting out by jumping out of the driver's seat and getting in by pulling myself up with the steering wheel.

Overall, I am glad we're fixing up the car and hope it at least lasts me until the summer. If it lasts longer than that, bonus! Hopefully I can get my Saturn back early this week!

New Year Festivities

How did you ring in the new year? Below I have several pictures of our New Year festivities.

At Kristin and Patrick's we played a rousing game of Pictureka. It's sort of like a wacky game of Where's Waldo.





Then on New Year's Day my parents invited us out to Lake Waconia to go ice fishing in my Dad's house.

John caught the smallest fish...Ewwww, don't eat that!

I caught the biggst fish! Yay!!

















Mom and Dad caught each other...We told them fishing in the same hole might be a problem...

Not Me Monday #12

Here it goes, the first Not Me Monday post of 2009. I do not hope that everyone's 2009 is off to a great start!

We were not told we could leave early from work on Tuesday because of the inclement weather. I did not choose to stay through my whole shift.

At my parents' place on Tuesday night I did not discover that the reverse wasn't working right in my car.

When I had to drive the Explorer on Wednesday the lock on the driver's side door did not stick which did not force me to enter through the passenger's side door and crawl over. I did not end up unlocking the door with the a needle-nose pliers from John's tackle box.

I was not a little too cocky about my Mario Kart skills at the New Year's Eve party.

I did not catch the biggest fish of the day on our New Year's ice fishing trip.

My car is not going to cost around $700 to fix. (It is the 2nd cylanoid that broke and that is what controls the reverse.) I did not title 2008 as the year of the car repair.

We were not given a 2007 Trailblazer as our rental car while the Saturn gets fixed. Since we only have to pay for gas, we did not choose to drive this around on Saturday during our shopping trip.

Our driveway is not sheer ice. When I went to get the paper on Sunday morning (not in my moccasins), I did not slide down the entire driveway.

I did not let the Explorer warm up for 10+ minutes to realize that most of the ice was still on the windows.

Resolutions

New Year's Resolutions...Did you make any this year? I think almost everyone has made a New Year's resolution at one point of their life and then found that they can't keep it. First, you don't have to wait until New Year's to make a resolution. If you want to change something about your life there's no better time than the present. Second, if you don't want to break your resolutions, don't make resolutions you can't keep. Don't say, I'm going to exercise 30 minutes every day or I'm going to lose 30 pounds in 2 months or I'm going to do the dishes every night...I don't know about you, but I could never keep those. It's alright to be a little more general and make resolutions you know you can keep.

Here are my resolutions for 2009:

• Organize and declutter my life (this is a biggie)
• Keep up with housework and develop a routine
• Keep my blogs going
• Keep in correspondence with old friends
• Continue to grow the relationship I have with my husband and increase our communication
• Become members of the church we've been attending
• Grow in my understanding of God and his will for my life
• Try to stay more on top of current events and what's in the news

Now you have mine...what are some of yours?