And the DJs thought that this was the most ridiculous thing ever.  “Watching what?” one asked.  “Well, Jane Austin is a writer, so I guess Emma was one of her books that they made into a movie?”  And then they made comments about how he must have been sitting in his mom’s basement doing this and so presumptuous with his “white zinfandel” and how he’s not the sort of man that either one of them would ever hang out with.

And I don’t know about you, but I figure that if a man has that much refined taste, there’s a strong chance that he was actually watching this movie snuggled up with his beautiful wife.  And there’s also a big chance that he “got lucky” before the end of the evening.  I mean, really!  It’s Jane Austin!  I can’t be the only girl who gets lovey-dovey after Jane Austin’s stories.

Anyway, by my figures, a guy who’ll watch a chic flic and, presumably, enjoy time with his wife, comes out ahead of the guy who talks down on that sort of thing.  But I guess it might just be my crazy female logic.

We didn’t watch the game.  Justin played video games and I curled up in the chair beside him reading a book.  Not one of Jane Austin’s – it’s by Jim Butcher.  But I still think it was a very enjoyable way to spend the evening.

I’ve wondered if they were going to close work, but nothing so far.  And those of us from colder climes have been laughing at the people freaking out.  Not that the threat of black ice isn’t real; even people who are familiar with it need to be careful about it.  And I sincerely appreciate the trucker who slowed down to 20 miles below the speed limit going over bridges and potentially treacherous stretches of the road.  I appreciate drivers like that much more than the ones who passed me in order to zip around the responsible trucker and speed on down the road.  But really, when do I ever appreciate those jerks?

Last night was a very quiet evening.  I picked up some chicken from the grocery store so I didn’t have to make a lot of noise in the kitchen making dinner, and we ate in the near dark of the kitchen.  We set my netbook to the dimmest setting on the monitor and Justin sat there with sunglasses on while I read a book under the light of a tiny red-light flashlight that I got from Luke years and years ago.  Justin felt well enough to watch Castle when that came on, though we turned off the sound during the commercials and he kept the sunglasses on.  And then I went to bed because I had to get up at 5:30 in the morning, and he stayed up because he’d slept all day long and couldn’t quiet his brain enough to rest.

Migraines suck.  Just so ya know.

He’s doing a little better this morning, I think.  He didn’t really wake up much when I left the house.  But the little I did get out of him was cheery.  I’m optimistic.  The weather should start to clear up by this afternoon, and the weather is what usually sets off the headache.  So with any luck, the clouds will clear and the headache will evaporate in the cool light of the sun.

And that’s pretty much the story of my last 24 hours.  The only thing left to add is the book I picked up is Howl’s Moving Castle, a book I found in the teen section of the public library and didn’t have a clue it even existed – I loved the movie, though!  Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki, wonderful stuff.  And the book has not disappointed so far.  It’s nice, light reading, and the story is enchanting.  I wish I was curled up at home reading that rather than sitting in my chilly office doing work.

Well, we did have 1:00 plans, but we were up before that.  We went to our book club meeting about Moon Called wherein most people discussed how much they didn’t enjoy the book, even through they were able to talk about characters that they really enjoyed and favorite scenes from the story.  I’m still kind of “meh” on the book — it was irritating, but it was the first of a series and apparently they get better.  I probably won’t read the others because I have enough other books to keep me busy for a while, but on the whole, it wasn’t that bad of a read.

Anyway, we did that and it was pretty much the extent of our day.  The rest was spent catching up on reading and cleaning up the kitchen, starting to cut out leaves for a craft project, and catching up on my NCIS: Los Angeles. And now I’m wishing that I wasn’t caught up because!  Ugh!  That last scene!  I need to know what happens in the next episode!  Also!  Gah!  I finished the latest Pendergast book and!  Ugh!  That untied thread!  I need to know what happens in the next book!

Anyway, nice and relaxing. Tomorrow I’ll have to be more productive, but I very much enjoyed today.

And I was doing pretty well for the first several months.  I had one month where I read a really short book in an afternoon in order to meet the goal, but I was keeping up.  I was doing well!  It felt good.

And then I picked up Iron Council and things s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-w-e-d down.  Way down.  Like, holy buckets, am I ever going to make it through this thing?!

Part of my problem was that I tried reading the Oxford English dictionary at the same time as reading the book.  It’s one of the wonderful, and difficult, things China Mieville.  He uses words I don’t know!  LOTS of words I don’t know.  I’ve never heard of these words and I might be able to figure out what they mean contextually, but IT’S WORDS I DON’T KNOW!  And I should!  So I’d write them down if I didn’t have a dictionary nearby.  Or I’d read with a dictionary on my lap and stop and look up words I didn’t know.  Sometimes, I’d stop six or seven times on a SINGLE PAGE.*

It was slow.  And frustrating.  And a little uncomfortable because my dictionary is really big with sharp corners.**

So I finally just gave up and just started skipping the words I didn’t know just so I could finally make it through the whole book.  Which I finally did on Sunday.

I started the book on our trip up north for the Barnett Reunion.  At the very beginning of July.  It took me until the end of October to finish it.  That’s 4 months!  This book went to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Florida, and all the states between South Carolina and Pennsylvania and back.

That’s a lot of mileage for a book.  I really wish I could say I enjoyed it more.

So, I missed my goal of reading a book each month because of that one taking me so forever long to finish.  Which means I need to switch up my goal a little bit:  instead of reading one each month, I will read one FOR each month – meaning I’ll finish 12 before the end of the year (and my year starts and ends on my birthday, BTW).  So, I have to catch up on a few month’s worth of books, but I can still make my goal by reading 12 total.

So on Sunday, after finishing Iron Council, I picked up the book for the book club meeting on Saturday, The  Hunger Games, and got a few pages in, just to whet my appetite.

And then I read it at lunch on Monday, and in bed on Monday before bed, and again at lunch yesterday, and then I sat there, wishing I could read all afternoon while sitting at my desk.  So last night I sat and read the whole rest of the book.  It’s a much shorter book.  Much easier to read.  I read it in two days. (Also, got me much more emotionally involved.  I enjoyed this book a lot more than Iron Council.)

And I think I might hold off to start anything new until after the book club meeting just so I can keep the characters and story fresh in my mind, but it was really fun – sitting down and inhaling a book that quickly.  It reminded me of why I used to put my book under the mattress of my bunk bed in college.  Because my roommate could see it there (she was on the lower bunk) and help make sure I was actually doing my homework instead of reading all night long.  Because I would.  I did it many times.  The next day was almost always awful.

Anyway, that’s what I was doing last night, instead of baking cookies or calling Sara, whose birthday was yesterday and who I thought about calling all day long until I got swallowed up by that book.  (Sorry, Sara!  Happy Birthday!!)  I got to bed around 11:30.  This morning was rough.

I think I’ll read Dawn of the Dreadfuls next.  Sounds like a great book to read on Sunday.

————————————————————–
* This really makes me want an e-book reader with built-in dictionary.  This would go so much faster!!

** E-book reader also so much lighter!

I never did get downtown for the arts and crafts show.  We did make it down for the fireworks, but it was a little disappointing.  We made delicious dinner after getting home, though.

Church singing today was good — three-part harmony on wonderful songs.  I wish you could have heard it.

And I finally finished the book I’ve been working on since the beginning of July.  Seriously.

And now it’s late and tomorrow is going to be brutal.  All this week is going to be brutal.  So I’m going to sleep now so I can be ready.

I have been up to things though.  I’ve been working on switching things around for spring.  Saturday afternoon I reorganized the porch closet so I could get to the gardening tools and the grill.   I reorganized the dining room closet to move the scarves and mittens into storage and the picnic supplies and bicycle helmets up front.  I reorganized the hamper drawer at the bottom of the steps, packing away the ice scraper and getting the sun screen, bug spray, and umbrellas up and accessible.  And while I was at it, I reorganized under the kitchen sink because it was just a mess and I wanted to be able to grab Windex without crawling all the way to the back of the cabinet.

Yesterday I organized 3 months of receipts, checking them against the categories they were marked as in my budgeting and finding out how many I’m still missing (about 5, for the whole 3 months).  It’s a long task, but rewarding in the end, when I’ve got envelope after envelope of receipts all organized and in rows.  It makes it really easy, come tax time.  I’ve got everything marked down in my finance program on my computer, so I can search for whatever I need, and then I can go to the envelope for that month and look for the physical receipt and read that.  If I need a receipt, I can find it in under 5 minutes.  It’s a system that requires constant maintenance, but one that can really pay off in the end.

I finished my book for March, but I’m not sure yet what I’d like to read for April.  I’ve got to go look through my bookshelf and see what I haven’t read yet, see if anything sparks any interest.  The last book wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as some of his others.  Maybe I should do a book review for each book I read?  It would be good for my LibraryThing account.  And my GoodReads account, too.  And if I decide to get rid of the book, it’d be good for my BookMooch account, too.

I have a lot of online book-related accounts . . . .

I lost 2 more pounds last week, bringing my current total weight loss to 16 pounds.  I’m very excited about that.

I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIII for the last couple weeks, off and on.  It’s a BEAUTIFUL game and I’m having a really wonderful time playing it.  It is, so far, the only game we have for our PS3, but that’s because we bought it to play BluRay discs on, and not for playing video games.  But let me tell you, this game is AMAZINGLY beautiful.  I could sit there just looking at the pretty pictures for hours and be perfectly content.  But there’s also game play and that makes it even better!

I worked a full day again on Friday because they switched up the schedule on me and now I’m behind on a couple of projects.  It’s frustrating.  I keep hoping that I’ll finally catch up to everything, and then they go and move things on me.  I’m getting really frustrated with working more than 40 hours a week.

My allergies are starting to pick up. It’s about the same time as last year, so I’m not terribly surprised.  My eyes itch.  I sneeze a lot.  I’m tired.  I think the grass is out to get me.

And these are just a glimpse of the things that I’m ready to talk about.  There are other things, like improvements to our bedroom and the yard and my photo collection, that I’m not ready to talk about yet because I want to have everything finished before I talk about it.  But we’re making good progress on those things and I hope to have more news on those soon.

Until then, I just have this one last thing for today:

Two years ago today, I stood on shaking knees and pinched toes with sweat dripping down the middle of my back, between friends and family on one side and a gazebo on the other, with candles that kept being blown out by the wind, across from the most wonderful man I’ve ever met, who promised to support and protect me, and who slid a ring as far as it could go onto my stress-swollen finger.  We danced our first dance to music I can’t remember, and his grandfather cut in before the end of the song.  We celebrated and smiled and danced and ate and had a wonderful time with our most precious friends and family.  And then we cleaned up and went home before the rain started.

Since then, we’ve gone through sicknesses and job troubles, celebrations and parties, days when communication failed and days when we worked together in prefect synchronization, days when there wasn’t enough money and days when there was more money than we expected, days when the world in my head didn’t make sense, but he stuck beside me anyway, days when we didn’t have the strength to get out of bed, but we pulled and pushed each other up and stood on our feet and helped each other make it through the day.

People keep making comments about us being newlyweds and honeymooning and that the glow will eventually fade, but we believe that the honeymoon is the rest of the marriage and that we’re the ones actually doing it right.  He brings me flowers when he goes to the grocery store.  I wake him up in the morning with cuddles and kisses.  We call each other at noon and again when we leave work, and sometimes more than that just to hear each other talk.

I love you, Justin Barnett, and I am so happy to be your wife!  Let’s keep it going for another 80 years or so!

Well, the affinity diagram didn’t go so well.  It was part of my first meeting for the Lean Project I’m heading up in order to get my Lean Specialist certification.  As far as first meetings go, it was apparently pretty good.  As well as projects go, it needs a lot of work.  The activities that we worked through managed to show just how enormous the scope of the project was, as it stood at that time.  So we had a meeting with me, my Champion, and the Lean guy for our area, and we’re going to look into scaling it down a little into something actually manageable in 4 months.  And for a first-time Specialist in-training.  We have a lot of work to do.  My next meeting is this afternoon and hopefully we’ll actually start to get somewhere.

I could talk about how we’re flying to Burlington, Vermont, again because we’re going for a wedding.  And I keep freaking out because Justin’s jacket is wrinkled and we haven’t gotten it dry cleaned yet.  And we don’t have a rental car yet, and since we’re staying at Justin’s folks’ place, we need a car to get from there to the wedding and all that.  And all these things about weddings keep stressing me the heck out so much that I haven’t even started thinking about freaking out about the traveling part of the whole deal.

I already covered the trip to Vermont, but I did manage to keep the freakage down to a minimal level.  We got Justin’s jacket cleaned in Burlington.  We picked it up the morning of the wedding and that was freaking me out a little.  But we got it on time and it looked really beautiful.  And the rental car worked out great and ended up being less expensive than I feared.

I could talk about these books I’m reading about managing money and not undervaluing your worth and taking control of your finances and all the fun and exciting things I’m learning . . . that no one else thinks are fun and exciting at all.  And I’m reading books about marketing and writing business plans and don’t those sound fascinating, too?  No?  They do to me!

Books I’m reading.  Oh, gosh.  I have Family CFO which is talking about taking family finances and running it like a business.  It’s interesting and they have some interesting points, but I’m not buying in to the whole thing.  I’ll probably end up taking a couple of their recommendations, but ignoring the rest.

I still have The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke.  I asked Justin to read the section about buying a car because I thought it had some really good information.  He did and he agreed that it was a good read.  He’s going to read the rest of the book before we take it back.  Or, since we’re on the final renewal for that book, I might finally drag him to the library and get him his own card so he can check it out again under his own name.

I have the Complete Book of Business Plans.  It’s not terribly fascinating to read, but it’s a good resource because I’m trying to write up my business plan.  It’s a complicated pain in the butt and having something to look at for inspiration has been helpful.

The Everything Home-Based Business Book falls into that same category.  It’s not a terribly interesting read, but it’s awfully helpful as I’m trying to write up my business plan and figure out different aspects of working up my business.  I haven’t had time to dig into this one much, but I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in there.

I have the Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide, another great resource that’s basically a brainstorm caught on paper.  It’s idea after idea that could be used to drum up business.  Some of it doesn’t work for my situation, but some of it is really fun and could be very helpful.  I’m reading this one with sticky notes so I can jot things down for reference later.  Like in my business plan, since apparently there’s a Marketing Strategy section of that beast and I’ll have to put something down there.  So, keen!  I have something to put in there.

I have the Ultimate Small Business Advisor, which I haven’t read at all yet, so I haven’t got a clue about it.  But it looked interesting, looked like it might be another good resource, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

And I have Home Staging because I think having that as an option along with helping people pack up their stuff could be a really great service to offer.  I don’t quite have the eye for it, but I know I could learn how to do it.  I haven’t read this one yet, either, but I’ll get there before I have to take the book back, I’m sure.

For leisure I just finished reading Summer Knight of the Dresdon Files series by Jim Butcher.  I’ve got the next one, Blood Rites, tucked into my purse.  They’re fun, easy fantasy books, slightly on the noir side.  Justin and I are devouring those books as fast as we can afford to buy them.

And I have a PDF copy of Suze Orman’s Women & Money.  I’m about halfway into this one.  It’s talking about how women see money and themselves and how sometimes those don’t end up being a harmonious match.  We don’t value ourselves and the money we bring in, we don’t take the time to consider the whole of finance and how it affects us, stuff like that.  It’s interesting.

I could write about how well we ended up with our finances last month–with Justin making more money than expected and us handling budgeting and saving really well and ending up so far into the black that it’s astonishing how much we could potentially put away if we spent every month not going out to dinner or spending money on fun things and sitting at home sitting on our thumbs.  Which we’re not going to do but we might spend more time looking at the possibilities there.

Finances.  I was really concerned when I found out that I would be furloughed and getting unemployment for four weeks in July.  We’d have to survive on Justin’s paycheck and the small amount I’d get from the government.  That put us at a lower total income than I was comfortable considering and it made me freak out a little bit.  I mean, the unemployment checks were about half what I was making normally.  Could we survive on half my income plus Justin’s income?  Answer?  Yes, we can.  Especially if he has a really busy month and manages to bring in a steady amount for the whole time.  And if we cut down on expenses and spend carefully and really hunker down and take things easy.  We even picked up something that we normally wouldn’t have bought but had the opportunity to get on a considerable discount.  The airplane tickets and car rental went onto the credit card.  But we didn’t have to touch the savings account at all.  And I’m pretty sure that I can go in and pay off the plane tickets just from the checking account, leaving all of savings alone.  Which means that we can take that money and use it as a down on a used car for Justin.

Which would bring me into talking about our current situation with Justin’s car.

A friend of mine called me on Thursday and said that her husband knows a good Christian man who owns a car dealership not far from here.  We’re going to get his information and go talk with him about what we can do.  We were hoping to take advantage of the clunker bill, but with the money flowing out of that thing so quickly and our unlikely chance of getting a good loan from the bank right now, we’re looking into cheap, used options.  I’m not really sure what the plan is for Justin’s old car, whether we’re going to try to trade it in or just take it to a place like we took my Buick—a place that takes dead cars for parts and pays for that.  I’m really not sure.

But we’re going to run the numbers this week, check how much of a hit we took with our trip up north, and look at what sort of payments we could really afford.  We can’t buy a car outright right now—our savings aren’t that lush.  But with the down that we can pull from there, we should be able to manage a pretty good deal.  I hope.  We’ll find out soon enough.

And dang it!  I haven’t bought gifts for Erica or Dad, who both have birthdays in the next 10 days, or for the bride and groom on Saturday.

We did pick up a gift for the bride and groom, although what we really did was look at their registry and then go buy them something similar through Pampered Chef.  They’ll get it in a few days.  Last night, I went onto Amazon and hunted around until I found something that seemed like a good gift for Erica and Dad.  The order went in last night; they should ship out in a couple days.  They’re being shipped directly to their new owners, so they won’t be wrapped, but you should get your gifts in a couple of days.

So there you go!  Any questions?