L as in L-Shaped Pillows

IF ONLY my brain would have thought that the way I arrange my pillows every night could have been sewn together in one pillow case and sold as and L.  This is how I sleep at night in order to satisfy my comfort requirements and now it can be purchased.  I don't think I need to buy one though. Where the heck do you put it when you make your bed?

Autumn Photoshoot

I am clearly NOT a photographer.  On Saturday I went out to try and take some cool "fall pics" since the bluffs are starting to change.  Needless to say, I am glad no one else was around.  I started at a place near Garvin that had a pretty steep slope to climb and my clogs were not fond of the terrain.  With all the rain we have been getting most areas on this hill were pretty washed out.  I ended up falling more than 5 times both on the way up and down and with my camera around me neck it most likely looked like I was trying to save an egg from hitting the ground.  Here are some of the pictures, the sweetest thing is that all of these below are completely untouched.  My favorite is the yellow leaf on the ground.  

I need to learn how to not have the Sun make that circle in the middle of the picture.

"completely untouched" does not apply to this one.

Dirty and Thirsty

Right now the river is pretty high and also living up to the "Dirty Mississipp" nickname.  There are whirlpools everywhere.

Wanna go to the beach?

Oh shucks, you can't even step foot on the sand!

Latsch Island is pretty bad.  A lot of people have had to re-locate and it even looked as if some are living out of conversion vans.  The have to get to their homes by boat.

There is still a few feet before the water hits the bridge.

You can see the whirlpools, they are everywhere.

Good thing Jim didn't choose to live here.  He would have to go on a dingy ride just to use the port-a-potty.  

Wanna go fishing in the parking lot?!

The Glasses Make the Outfit

Top Two

1-Pottery

2- Malt-o-meal

I have no idea what it is about this strange breakfast food but I could eat it for Breakfast and dinner 4 times a week (and I often do because it is so cheap). It could be the fact that it is fool proof. If I take it off the stove a few minutes too late I can just add water and WALAA it is the right consistency. Or that it is packed with nutrients and keeps my hunger away for more than 3 hours. I do have to top it with brown sugar though otherwise it tastes too bland, and I only buy the maple sugar flavor-Original is not good and it even cooks differently. I just found out that their headquarters are in Minneapolis. How did I not know this? I also went on their website and they have a position open for an executive adm. assistant. hmmm...very tempting. I wonder if I would get free maple sugar m.o.m. for LIFE? But right now would not be a good time to quit my job. It is customer service week starting Monday and that means a full blown celebration in our dept. Its a full out jean's WEEK instead of jeans FRIDAY and on Monday morning we are being served pancakes. I will let you know other treatment we will be given. On Friday we received a professional day to day activity planner for cust. service week and on Friday it simply said, "relax" so I said "Wow, we don't even have to come into work on Friday!" ...I tried but it didn't work.


P.S. Do you find it as funny as I do that ever since I posted all the deer pictures that my ads have turned strictly to the subject of deer?  I wonder how long before it switches to something different?  Maybe if I keep talking about malt-o-meal...

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE

So there is a "deer sanctuary" in Winona that Jim and I found in the beginning of the summer.  However the last time we were there either Mr. Buck was hiding in this shed or he hadn't arrived yet.

You can walk around the outside of the entire enclosure and by the time you are on the last loop, the deer are curious enough to come up to you.

We also learned that they  really like the leaves that grow outside of the fence.  I am kind of glad this picture didn't turn out because now looking back, feeding deer out of my mouth is a little strange.

Well HELLO there!

The buck proved the point that Jim is a "man's man" 

He really liked Jim.

This gives a perspective as to how big he was.  All I could think about was what a cheap shot it would be to pull a trigger this close.

Scoooooteerrrrzzzz!

The only bad part about this activity was that I now have 5 mosquito bites on my left temple.
 I'd say it was worth it though.

LONG HOURS = DIRTY CLOSET

Lately the long work days have been taking a tole on my closet.  

I decided to tackle this problem a few Saturday mornings ago.

It only took two hours.(This picture made me realize that I need to switch my grey's and browns around if I want to really obsess about the color coding going on...)

But I went through every mis-placed article of clothing and made sure it was in the right spot.

Don't tell me I need to down-size, I already know that. 

I have a closet floor after all! It has been two weeks since this took place and it still looks this good.  I am hoping to keep this up.

Baby Nora

We got to see Nora and she is just as perfect as a porcelain doll!

The #1 reason turning 22 could be a good thing??

Today I found out the best thing about now being 22. I opened my insurance bill and since I am a whole year older, my monthly insurance rate has gone down $2.68 for both my jeep and scooter. I haven't quite figured out how I should handle this amount of monthly savings. I can't decide if I should spend it each month or save it???? Which brings me to my next point. Starting today, 9-1-2010, for the month of Sept. I am going to see how little I can spend during one month. It is not like I have a spending problem or anything but I want to see how far I can stretch my dollars. Since I have somewhat of a competitive personality when it comes to things like this I have made it into a competition with Jim. I am also going to see if Nathalie wants to enter it as well. The things that don't count are rent, insurance, and loan payments (and gas)-I guess those are the staples of our lives right now. But food and everything else is fair game. I have an excel document that I started to help me keep track.

I am interested to see how much self control I have. Like right now I am craving ice cream but I don't want to have to add this to my excel budget so I am going to eat some plain sugar instead to see if that helps. Just kidding, I am not that desperate....yet. I knew I should have gone grocery shopping last week--now I will have to see how far I can extend my peanut butter and soda crackers.

Some more news--My work hours have now been moved up so I work 7:30-4pm. It is nice being done so early...even though right now I am not exactly walking out the door at 4pm, we are still too busy for that nonsense.

I think I just got over a cloud of salmonella. Do you want to know what I think gave it to me? No it was not eggs...even though I did eat a few that expired on July 30th. But it was this.



For those of you who thinks this looks like Chicken, you are crazy. It is indeed chicken. It is chicken that first started cooking on a gas grill. Then that grill ran out of gas. Then it waited for a generator to power a single burner on a boat. Then that generator didn't feel like running that burner. Then it waited for a bonfire to make some hot coals. Then it was layed on a grate over a "bonfire" and cooked. Let me tell you, I ate the whole thing because when I mixed it with my salad, it didn't taste AS salty but still didn't taste right.



I am still not sure why I ate it. But the whole next week all I had to eat was 2 bowls of malt-o-meal and a subway sandwhich. I was not able to keep that down so I resorted to cans of 7up. Thankfully I think it is gone. But it was awful. I don't have sick time yet at work and I would take 1 hour lunch breaks and come home and moan.