Love this idea

I received a random e-mail a few weeks ago from a friend of a friend who has a great idea for a wedding gift.

Her e-mail was inquiring for recipes and photographs of the providers of the recipes with the bride and/or groom. She's going to make them a scrapbook cookbook. I think this is a really unique and personal, yet useful, gift. As someone who enjoys scrapbooking, when I actually have time, I think putting something like this together would be very fun.

With that in mind, I dutifully pulled some pictures of years gone by, wrote some of my favorite recipes on nice recipe cards, and put them in the mail.

I need to keep this in mind - although I think all my friends are married now.

Clearly, I've reached my limit

As I wrapped up a riveting (sense sarcasm) book on return on investment evaluations tonight, I'm facing the fact that I'm clearly at my limit emotionally. How do I know? I've cried 3 times today over different things! (and I'm not PMSing) I'm just weak emotionally right now because of everything I'm trying to balance.

What did I cry about?
1. A story on the Today Show about Ann Curry learning about her family roots in Japan.
2. An awesome blog entry that CK wrote
3. A life/religion issue that I've been throwing around in my head and talked to J about tonight. I'm not even going to get in to it here. However, I have decided it would be good to reach out to our pastor on this one. She will get it and I believe give me some guidance and clarity on this one.

What the heck!?!

A few more days...that's what I keep telling myself! If I can keep chipping away at things I will survive! I reduced my work inbox from 193 to 72 today. Much better! I will turn in my capstone project plan on Friday and hopefully get my book review done over the weekend. Granted, then it will be on to the next round, but I'll be happy to cross these bridges!

Trying to keep my eye on the goal....not on the hole, as some motivational speaker that I once heard said!

Signing off...to go re-evaluate my survey questions for my capstone project.

Mark your schedules

Tomorrow is the big Letting Go show on WGN radio. They'll play the Susie Bogus song and let crying parents call in as they send their kids off to school.

Mark your schedule - 11 a.m. on wgnam.com or 720 am if you are close enough to get the real signal.

No longer the "scary" neighbor

There is a single guy that lives next door to us. He's a little different, often keeps to himself, seems to always be busy with an "interesting" project, and has a very large garden. We and other neighbors have often wondered what he does with everything that he grows in that garden.

We tend to wave or say hello when he is outside but that has been the extent of our prior interactions. Earlier this summer, our yard was repaired after some utility work in the area. The movement of dirt in the front yard unearthed 30-40 bricks (probably an old sidewalk or something). The neighbor asked if he could have them, and we obliged after we kept a few for various projects in the future.

Last Wednesday our doorbell rang and said "scary" neighbor was at the door with a bag full of tomatoes and several Matchbox cars that he had retrieved from cereal boxes for Jeremiah. He returned again Monday with more tomatoes and cantaloupe. He found Jeremiah and I in the yard last night to offer MORE tomatoes and cantaloupe. I accepted more cantaloupe! We had it for dinner and it was WONDERFUL.

So, I have proclaimed that he's not so scary afterall - maybe a little strange, but not scary. He now our next door gardener! How nice of him to share with us! I'm so glad I didn't buy melon at the farmer's market on Saturday.

And Jeremiah loves his cars! We're going to cook up some yummy stuff to share with him this weekend.

Recent musings

Here's a completely random entry (after much time since the last one), but here goes.

On Bread - I've recently realized that I may be a bread snob. I'm all about being thrifty (see coupons below) but I am really enjoying partaking of nicer bread. My DH bought some chewy, cheap white bread a few weeks ago and it was all I could muster to eat a lunch sandwich on that stuff! It might not be too bad if it could be toasted, but bread should not be gooey! I was much more pleased with my Brownberry Whole Grain for lunch today.

On reading blogs - CK turned me on to Google Reader a few weeks ago and I HEART IT! I am no longer wasting goodness knows how much time checking on blogs that don't get updated, much like my own! Granted, I now check Google Reader but I'm not spending time clicking around.

My office - I've returned to my own office. I'm not sure I even mentioned here that I was misplaced for a few weeks. At the end of June we learned that we would need to be out of our office for a few weeks. I shared what is normally a lounge with 4 other people for about 6 weeks. We are all very happy to have our own space again. I'm especially happy to have an office phone again. However, it may be the only time in my life that I will have had a couch in my office.

Coupons - Again, thanks for CK, I've been turned on to a new blog - Money Saving Mom. It was there that I've been hooked up with printable coupons. Much to my delight, I printed several coupons for products I buy often today. $1 off Bisquick. This coupon was made for me. Now, I just need to work on remembering to take my coupon sorter to the store!