I swear, I think our weekends are getting to be busier than our weekdays! ;P Friday was pretty hectic, and add the bad weather on top of that, it made for an interesting start to the weekend. Jessie’s karate test was Saturday — she’s now moved up from orange belt to a purple belt! Jim and I took pictures and filmed, so hopefully those will be up soon. We had a chance to talk to Jessie’s senseis for a bit, and both had nothing but good things to say about our little ray of sunshine. I noted that ever since beginning taking karate, she’s shown so much improvement … both in the dojo and outside of it!

Jessie left after the test with her mother. Jim and I went over to see my folks and saw my brother Jeremy and his wife Christy. They had Ryland with them, so I got to spend a little time with my favorite niece.

Isn’t she precious?

Stupidity knows no bounds

Today Jim and Jessie took me to brunch for Mother’s Day. I got a little aggravated earlier because I specifically told her mother that I was picking her up early and that we were going out to eat. Originally it was supposed to be breakfast … I pick Jessie up and find out that her mother had her EAT BREAKFAST right before I was to pick her up!

*beats head into wall repeatedly*

I swear, one of these days I’m bound to say something to this woman that I know I will regret, but that she also fully DESERVES.

So we waited a bit and went for ‘brunch’ … Jessie was hungry enough and Jim and I were starving! There was a slight ‘incident’ with a group that cut in line infront of us and another family. When I said something to one of the party members, she muttered something about us being ‘racists’ — the party members were black.

They moved on before I could say anything else, but I was fully ready to retort with, “It has nothing to do with race. The color of one’s skin does NOT exempt one from using common courtesy and manners!”

So I fumed a bit, but got over it. We were at Ryan’s and the food and service were great, which fully made up for the inconvenience before being seated. In their defense, it WAS packed, which made it a bit hard for the staff at the front to keep track of who should be where. However, that being said, I find it hard NOT to notice the general lack of manners by people I run across in public nowadays.

To most of these people, I am dying to say, “I *KNOW* your mother taught you better!”

A heart-felt and belated “Thanks!”

If all goes well, it looks like I’ll win this round in the Lunarpages’ WordPress theme design contest. I am completely overwhelmed by the response and surge in votes from family, friends, and extended community. I emailed a few close to me, and just about every one of them emailed their friends and family, and so on and so forth; and I posted on here and you each voted and responded in kind. (thank you!!) My Cotillion sisters rose to the occasion offering support and votes (thank you, girls! I love y’all!). Jim reached out to his guild and the guys have been very supportive with votes and feedback. (thank you!!) And last but certainly not least, the gargantuan legion of members over at the Soldiers’ Angels forums were a tremendous help in attaining and keeping the lead. (thank you very very much, Angels!!!)

You’ve heard of wine clubs, right? Well, what about wine pawns?

According to Slashfood, the Crédit Municipal de Paris is accepting wine as collateral for loans to its customers.

A spokesman for the pawnbroker says that this move attracts customers who wouldn’t want to pawn jewelry or the like, but a valuable bottle of wine is discreet enough to remove from the home.

Funny thing … in our house, alcohol would be one of the first things we’d notice missing!

There’s a Monty Python skit in there somewhere, I just know it!

“Bring out your wine! Bring out your wine! … ”

I have absolutely HATED the taste of lemon in my sweet tea for years. To this day, one of the quickest ways to get on my ‘bad side’ is to put one of those sour slices of Hades in my tea — especially if I had just asked someone not to do so. I’m pretty obsessive/neurotic about this, and don’t see myself getting past it anytime soon.

Someone recently asked me why, besides the taste, I didn’t like lemons in my tea; and why couldn’t I just quietly take it out (and not make a fuss over it) like a “normal person.” I told her that I didn’t like the idea of someone (not me) putting their fingers in my drink. She said that if they do it right, no fingers touch my drink, just pop the lemon on the edge of the glass. I replied that we were assuming that the lemons being distributed were cut on a clean (sterilized!) cutting board or similar surface, and that the person or persons handling the slices/wedges were wearing gloves at the time, or used whatever scooping device to prevent them from touching unclean hands and/or another unclean surface.

That’s assuming a lot if you ask me.

I’ve worked in the food industry and I know for a fact that not all eatery/restaurant employees would be as diligent as I am about working with clean hands when dealing with food of any kind and maintaining a sanitary working/cooking environment so as to prevent any kind of contamination. That said, I’m glad to know that there have been many recent studies done which backup my “lemon paranoia,” including this one featured on SlashFood today! There’s even an entry on Snopes about it.

While the following video could be seen more as a scare tactic, the issue itself seems to still be open to debate. In the meantime, I will continue to be overly cautious about what I eat/drink when going out. (I can thank my mother for this neurosis, LOL!)

Decide for yourself:

Jim and I went out for the evening and on the way to dinner, we ducked into Wal-mart for “just a couple of things.” Boy oh boy, I should know better than to shop when we’re hungry. I think we came home with half the store. LOL!

Rather than buying Jessie a pre-made Easter basket, we stocked up on various candies, stuffed animals, and other toys and goodies and will be putting her basket together manually. All together it probably cost 3 times as much as the basket, but she’d have more stuff and it’s more personalized. After all, who can resist camo Easter eggs?

Jessie’s so gonna be spoiled.

A couple of hours later, we finally get out of Wal-mart and headed up to El Carreton in Gardendale. It looks like a hole in the wall place, but trust me, it’s got the BEST Mexican/Spanish food I’ve ever had!

I highly recommend their chimichangas!

Several of you have emailed me, wanting to know if I’m feeling better. Thank you for your concern. I’m doing better. I had a slight headache last night, and woke up with it again this morning (nothing near the monster I had last week!) — but I know that’s from the crazy roller coaster temperatures (good grief, what’s with this weather!?) we’ve been having (hooray for full term insurance [sic]) and the lack of sleep from last night. Jessie is sick, so I was up most of the night with her.

This morning I went to check on her before leaving for work. Poor thing was crouping/coughing all night and could barely speak. She had a temperature and was having a hard time keeping the medicine down when I gave it to her. At one point she asked if I was going to stay home with her. I told her that I couldn’t, that I was about to have to go to work. She grabs my arm and says in a weak voice, “But I want YOU to stay with me!”

That broke my heart.

I’ve been uber-busy this morning and luckily don’t have anything pressing to attend to this afternoon, so I’ll most likely head home after lunch. Her favorite thing to eat when she’s sick is egg-drop soup, so I’ll probably stop by our favorite local Chinese place and pick up a couple ‘to go’ containers.

In other matters, I’ve applied for a CTL (Community Team Leader) position at Soldiers’ Angels. Hopefully I’ll hear back from them within the next few days. Everyone at SA has been really great at answering all my questions and has made the whole process seem a lot less overwhelming than I initially thought.

There are tons of other things I want to share, but am a little short on time and have a sick little one who’s been asking for me. Hopefully I can catch up one evening this week, (heh, my desktop is FULL of shortcuts to articles and things of interest that I’ve been dying to comment on!) but for now this will do.