Nearly 3 weeks ago I was on my merry way to work when a guy pulled out of a parking lot to the right of my car right into incoming traffic. He hit the passenger side of my car - more specifically, he dented the cast aluminum wheel, poked a big ole hole in the brand new tire, and damaged the steering so badly the front wheels pointed in different directions. His car? Scratches and dents on the bumper.

No one was hurt, and the police didn't file a report, calling it a minor accident. However, he told his insurance company that he wasn't at fault so it took them two full weeks to look at pictures, hear our stories, and then finally decide that yes, he was indeed at fault, and they accepted the claim. So we finally started repairs on my car last Wednesday and got a rental for me then. Sharing Hubbie's truck for two weeks was not super fun.

I cleaned off my desk three months ago and it was beautiful. Then I cleaned off the bookshelf in the office to get rid of the nasty old thing and put a better one in. Now my desk is covered in crap again. Whups.

I'm in such a food mood today! So far:

-Started refreshing the sourdough starter to bake bread this weekend
-Baked sweet potato fries for lunch
-After grocery shopping, made a bowl of pasta with marinara
-Want to make some pumpkin butter but there aren't any pumpkins in the store yet
-Am planning on making some pesto later on today with my homegrown basil...mmm

I love my job.

I love my hubbie.

I love my car.

I love my dogs.

I love the guy who's leading worship this weekend. The other person who was on the schedule got sick, so he got called to lead yesterday. He's so funny and so much fun. He was singing Rubber Duckie for sound check. In Ernie's voice.

Next weekend I'm going to visit my sister in Colorado :D

I was just chasing my husband across the house and he totally threw that wall up in my way so that my foot ran into it. Poor toes! It's ok though. I still won.

Yesterday was my birthday and it was a really good day. The highlight of my day was coming out to my car after work. I always go to the passenger side of my car first and drop my bag in there. When I opened the door and looked inside I saw a card sitting on my seat! At first I thought I'd left the window cracked and one of my coworkers dropped a card in there. Then I thought, no, that's silly; it was raining and I wouldn't have done that. I went over to the driver's side and picked up the card. It was from my hubbie!!

Now, it was 9 o'clock and although there was a full moon it was cloudy and thus quite dark in the car. I called Hubbie right away and exclaimed, "Are you up here!?" (as in, up in the city where I work) He said no...why would you think that? I knew he was being all mysterious and I told him I found his card and couldn't believe he'd driven 20 miles to drop a card in my car. He goes, "Did you look around?" I was like, "Huh?"

He'd not only dropped a card off in my car, he'd taken it from the parking lot and driven over to a car wash place and totally cleaned out the inside! I didn't even notice at first, I was so engrossed in the card. I love him so much! He parked his truck where my car was parked and then returned my car to exactly the same spot in the same orientation so that I wouldn't notice it had been moved. Awwwww.

He also bought me a REALLY expensive bowl gouge for my turning! I felt silly about one thing though. I have been wanting a chuck for my lathe. A chuck is a way to hold the material at one end so that you can work freely on the other end. They run from $100-250 and I had been debating between a couple different brands. Then Woodcraft had a big ole sale on one chuck where if you bought the chuck you got another $120 worth of accessories free. So I bought it last week, thinking that surely no one would spend $100 on me for my birthday.

Yeah, Hubbie was planning to buy me the chuck. Oops. But he knew that the next thing on my wish list was the bowl gouge, so he was able to get that for me. I love him!

AND he also made me a wonderful cheesecake.

13 days during the month of July so far have clocked temperatures over 100. You can imagine how awesome that has been.

Well right now it's noon and a mere 81 degrees. Internet! That has been the LOW temperature for the last two weeks! I am so freaking thrilled.

And yet I sit inside the office where it's 87 degrees and rising because I'm addicted to my computer.

Ok, that does it. I'm going outside.

My job is so cool. The head of our department asked me the other day, "So, is this the easiest job you've ever had?" I replied, "Not the easiest, but I love it!" It's true. I'm getting much better at what I do, and I just love everything I'm learning.

I also LOVE the flexible schedule. I work 40 hours a week. As long as I get 40 in and get all my work done, they don't really care when I work. Last weekend I got four days off - all in a row! - and I didn't know what to do with myself, lol. Thus this week I was trying to cram 40 hours into four days when I found out that they needed me to work the marriage conference on Friday and Saturday. Now, our workweek is from Saturday through Friday. That means that I can work a short day today and the evening tomorrow and have my forty hours. And then I will start a new week on Saturday and work over 20 hours this weekend, between the marriage conference, 6 weekend services on Saturday and Sunday, and the jr. high service Sunday night. Then I will have a very short week Monday-Thursday.

AND - hubbie and I get to attend the marriage conference for free! We were going to try to attend it but decided not to because of the cost. But now I am being paid to work for it and we get to attend. Woot. :)

Gah, I haven't been very good about posting every day, have I?

I love my new job at the church. I have a LOT to learn but it is a good challenge for me. My coworkers are so much fun, too.

My computer for use at the church is a MacBook Pro. I wasn't too sure about it at first, but now I am a big ole fan. It's pretty AND functional! And this means that now I'm using Windows Vista, XP Pro, Ubuntu, and Mac OS X. GEEK.

I went outside for 15 minutes this morning to water my garden and came back inside with three mosquito bites.

Speaking of nasty bugs, on Sunday I went outside to look at my veggie garden and saw that two of my three tomato plants had been completely defoliated. Then I spotted the culprit: A

I documented my last day at work for the ditl community.

Check it out.

I keep forgetting to update this every day! Gah.

Today is my last day at work. Last night I had a brief freakout on my way home. Well, ok, I don't ever really panic, but I had second thoughts. And then I thought about my new job and my second thoughts disappeared. I am sad to leave my current workplace, for sure, but so excited about what's happening in our lives!

Last night Hubbie and I went to the woodturning club we belong to and there was a guy there who had a horrible accident with a table saw recently. He was cutting a piece of wood with his hand on the wood (HUGE no-no; you use push sticks) and the wood caught, then jumped straight into the air, taking half his index finger and mashing his middle finger. Repeating that: It wasn't the blade that took his finger off, but it was the wood itself, being slammed so hard by the blade. EW. OW. I am not letting my husband cut wood on the table saw any more! Well, ok, he works safer than that, but now that we have a bandsaw he will use that a lot more, and it is a whole lot less dangerous.

Last night at the laundromat Andrew and I were waiting for our clothes to wash and dry, so I brought along my jewelry making toolbox to make an ankle bracelet for my coworker. A lady saw what I was doing and asked me to make her one pair of earrings...and then a second...and before I knew it she had two new pairs of earrings and I was $20 richer! But now my hand hurts from squeezing the pliers so much.

I've been on a home decor kick lately. I have some fun ideas about what I want to do to the office and the spare bedroom. The community saucydwellings has been a huge inspiration. I love going through their tags and seeing what other people have done.

One more week at my job :) I am so glad! Hubbie apparently has many things he wants me to help him with. I'm really looking forward to it. And, of course, I'm looking forward to my new job. It will be interesting learning more about live production and my role therein.

Saturday I worked in my shop. Hubbie found two bandsaws on Craigslist for $200 each. That is a complete STEAL. The metal saw worked and the wood one didn't, so he spent a couple days tearing apart the wood one and rebuilding it. And it works! I am constantly impressed with the man's ability to do that. If I even get as far as taking something apart, it's pretty much a sure thing that it ain't gonna work if it ever gets back together.

I turned two baby rattles and one hairstick, all three custom orders. Well, all three are gifts, but still custom :) I love the way the baby rattles came out. I turned them on the same piece of wood at the same time to save myself having to mount two different pieces of wood on the lathe. They are similar but not identical. I forgot to take a picture of the one I delivered this morning, but I will take a picture of the second one before I mail it tomorrow.

As for the hairstick, I need to incorporate a piece of sea glass into the stick before I mail it out, and I think copper wire will be involved somehow, but I haven't quite got all that figured out yet.

I was avoiding making one Father's Day phone call because I was dreading it. My granddad started having mini-strokes about 4 years ago, and nothing anyone did could stop them for long. I don't know if he still experiences the strokes but the damage is done. He's not been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but the effect is the same. He doesn't know his family. He's a danger to himself and to my granny, and he has to live in a specially equipped center three hours from where my granny lives because all the similar places in my granny's town kicked him out.

When he was my granddad, he was a treasure to know. He was the best salesman I have ever met. He could get you to agree with him in any argument and you'd be friends when it was all said and done. Oh, he was funny. He injured himself all the time doing stupid things - one time, about ten, fifteen years ago, he got a rock stuck in the lawnmower and without turning it off tried to get the rock out. He lost the tip of his middle finger in that incident and from then on it was always up his nose or in his ear so that someone would laugh at him. He'd honk and wave at strangers just to make them do a double-take.

He was always on the go. We knew when Granny and Granddad came to visit to expect them several hours earlier than they said they were going to arrive and to leave early, too. We loved it when they came because he was a very successful businessman and always came equipped with the coolest gifts. He retired about 4 or 5 times, and the only business that wasn't a raging success was the last one.

But all that is gone. All he wants is to come home, to be with my granny and their little dog. He can't. He falls too much, and my tiny little granny can't help a 6'5" 250+ pound man get back up.

It is agony to wish it would all be over, and to feel guilty that you wish it would all be over. It is horrible to watch as his very soul slips away while his confused body is still doing fine. I wish he could just come back. I miss him already and he's not even gone yet.

I did end up calling him, and although he slurred his words, forgot who I was several times, and kept telling me my granny was on her way to pick him up, he also reassured me, over and over, that he and my granny love me very much. It made me cry. That is what I need to remember.

Work is crazy today. I didn't think it would be but we have a lot to do...and one of us is just in training, which means my productivity levels are down because I spend a lot of time helping our trainee.

But if our coworkers would just stop procrastinating none of this would be an issue! Duh.

Well, it's Friday, and it's my second-to-last Friday here, so that's ok. It's homemade pizza night! Maybe hubbie and I can play Age of Empires III or Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars together. I love Fridays!

Tomorrow I think we might go over to our friends' house for dinner. I have some carrots I want to use up. Ooo, maybe I'll make carrot cake cupcakes!

I also need to turn two baby rattles and at least one hairstick this weekend. I hope the hairstick goes ok. I only have one piece of this wood and it's a custom stick. Yikes.

I have this twitch under my right eye that's been there for about three weeks - ever since I started considering whether to take the job at the church or not. But I've been getting lots of sleep and I'm not stressed any more, so why the heck am I twitchy!?

For some reason I am totally into makeup right now. I feel like a 14 year old only with less, er, dramatic taste. The book Making Faces was recommended to me and I really enjoyed reading it. Some things in it are a bit dated (blue mascara anyone?), but overall it was a thorough study of makeup. Normally I wear no makeup at all and, in fact, I think the last makeup I bought was a tube of mascara for my wedding three years ago. No, that's not true, I paid for the shipping on a sample of Bare Escentuals mineral foundation at the beginning of this year. ANYWAY.

Yesterday I tried a technique for more interesting eyes, and during a meeting with my boss, she kept exclaiming about it. She said my eyes were striking anyway, with the blueish green eyes and red hair, but with my makeup it was hard to look anywhere else!

That's pretty fun. It makes me want to buy some new makeup and try something different :)

The hubbie had a meeting this morning in Southlake and has another tonight in North Richland Hills, and in the in between he came up to north Dallas to take me out to lunch! I'm so excited! He's here now sitting behind me. I love it when I get to see him in the middle of the day.

After the last year not updating the LJ, now I feel the urge to turn it around entirely and make a (short) post every day. Let's see if this can last a year!

My sister has her first-ever boyfriend and oh my gosh they are so cute together. I love it when we talk about him because she gets all giddy and giggly and that makes me smile. They're both redheads too, so I'm hoping they'll get married and make lots of redheaded cousins for our (future) redheaded kids!

Hey, someone's gotta keep the red hair around!

I had the most vivid dreams last night. I love running in my dreams. I go so fast without breaking a sweat or feeling out of breath.

Ok, that's all for today!

Dear all my friends: I am indeed a dork of the highest degree. I noticed a month or two ago that it had been nearly a year since I updated my LiveJournal, and so I decided to wait till an entire year had passed before I updated it again. …Well, just because.

And you know what? The last month I have thought of about 80 different entries to make in this journal and I couldn’t!

( But now I can )

I've gotten the hairbrained idea to try a new recipe every week so I can broaden my range of cooking skills. Here's two recipes for a fantastic dinner I made Wednesday night.

Caramel Apple Pork Chops from allrecipes.com with my modifications

4 (3/4 inch) thick pork chops 1 teaspoon vegetable oil 2 tablespoons brown sugar salt and pepper to taste 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 2 tart apples - peeled, cored and sliced 3 tablespoons pecans (optional)

1.	Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Brush chops lightly with oil and place in hot pan. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes, turning occasionally, or until done. Transfer to a dish and put it in the microwave to keep warm..
2.	In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, salt and pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add butter to skillet, and stir in brown sugar mixture and apples. Cover and cook until apples are just tender. Remove apples with a slotted spoon and arrange on top of chops. Return to microwave.
3.	Continue cooking sauce uncovered in skillet, until thickened slightly. Spoon sauce over apples and chops. Sprinkle with pecans. Caramelized Squash Layer thinly sliced zucchini and yellow squash in a skillet with pats of butter. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cover and cook over medium heat on the stovetop for ten minutes. Keep a close eye on it otherwise you will have stuck squash. Uncover and increase the heat to medium-high. Stir frequently until the squash is browned. Devour and wish you'd made more.