Currently browsing: Wedding

So how DOES year old wedding cake taste?

Surprisingly not bad!

Jim and I ate a few bites and saved a small chunk for Jessie to try. We snapped off a few shots:

So score one for Wal-Mart, their cakes freeze well.

One year ago today

One year ago today, I was scurrying around like a mad woman trying to make sure every last detail was in place, the food taken care of, the bouquets were arranged (Teresa saved me on that one!), everyone was dressed, hair and makeup were flawless as good as they’re gonna get for an outdoor wedding in the South, and try not to lose my mind in the process.

I think we did OK.

To my darling husband, Jim:

Happy Anniversary! I love you!

Site changes coming soon!

I’ve been working on a design for this site over the past few months and am pleased to say that it’s nearing completion. I’ve spent just about every lunch hour for the past three weeks debugging scripts and correcting sloppy code. An updated look is overdue and I think it will make browsing easier on my readers (y’all!) — and will hopefully keep any new ones that may breeze in from the random Google search results that I see in my server logs.

My and Jim’s one year anniversary is a week from today, and with that our trip and travel deals less time to concentrate on this. I had originally set a week from today as my “go live by” date. With any luck, I’ll be done in the next couple of days, so I may move it over sooner.

Anywho, I just wanted to post a note of warning … if you see the site down or something’s looking “off”, it’s just me futsing around at the controls!

What Soldiers’ Angels means to me

When I’ve shared my experience with Soldiers’ Angels with people I’ve met and explained how much our efforts make a real difference with the troops, several times I’ve been asked, “But what has Soldiers’ Angels done for you?” I answer simply, “Everything and more.”

Looking back, I don’t even remember HOW I initially found Soldiers’ Angels. This would have been 2, maybe 3, years ago. Things were hectic in my life — but then again, things are always busy. After the wedding, I had some time off from everything to think about what I was doing with my life. I thought to myself, “I have a great family. I have a great job. We lead a pretty simple life, but … ”

Part of me felt as if I wasn’t doing enough — I was missing something. Sure, I did a little charity work here and there, but nothing that felt really meaningful to me. I never felt needed, or as if I truly belonged to a particular cause.

You know, you hear it all the time from various inspirational stories printed online or emailed around via chain letters and such — “one person can make a difference.” I can honestly say that I never FULLY believed that until I joined Soldiers’ Angels. I can honestly say that this is the most rewarding and humbling experience. I’m constantly wow’ed by the awesome men and women in our military that I’ve spoken to and corresponded with over the past year.

I’d like to share a few examples that I have run across only recently:

A thank you from my first adopted soldier:

“I just wanted to say thank you so much for mailing me the letters they mean a lot to us over here. We all look forward to the mail that any Soldiers Angel send us. It is always nice to receive a caring work from home.”

“Mail, believe it or not, is the biggest part of our day; at home we make no time to go look at the mail box, but here we make nothing but time to go and see what we got.”

Comments from another grateful soldier:

“I just want to thank you in your support. It means a lot to the Army and a lot to me as well to know that there are people who support what we do. I think the biggest request would have to be phone cards. Other than that, the simple things are the greatest things such as Hygiene products, snacks, and moral support. Again, I thank you.”

An email from Anthony:

“Hey this is Anthony, the soldier you once wrote. I just wanted to let you know I stumbled upon the letter you sent me and reading it over made me rethink why I enlisted. Again I just wanted to say thank you for taking your time to write.”

A quote from a soldier who received some TLC:

“This Soldiers’ Angel thing is crazy and cool at the same time. We just got mail today again and I got 26 Angels that sent me cards and packages. It was almost overwhelming, but it kept me busy most of the morning. One of my sergeants was trying to screen my letters for inappropriate stuff but I know he was just looking for the single females that live near his home town. He was cracking me up this morning … everyone wants to be my friend now because I have enough candy and hygiene products to make a small army really clean and have no teeth! LOL But it’s nice, I think my mouth was like four different colors yesterday from all the candy I was eating.”

Another hero tells us:

“Thank you for everything you do for us. It is so great to get something from the US, no matter what it is.”

Our heroes aren’t the only ones affected. When I received my first “thank you” from one of my adoptees, I cried. Nothing hits closer to home than true, honest appreciation. I have always admired the brave men and women in our military and wholly appreciate their efforts with all of my heart. It never once dawned on me that someone may appreciate my efforts (however small I thought they were!).

I know I am not the only one. Take this post from PeggyV just before Mother’s Day:

“One of my adoptees is a hero who has been silent since I adopted him in September 2007. Each letter is a struggle since I know nothing about him. Imagine my surprise this week when I received free mail from Iraq and it was Zach! The letter only contained the following, “Happy Mother’s Day. I know you don’t have kids, but you have been like a Mom to me this past year.”

“Wow, let’s all remember that the silence may be hard sometimes, but they really do need us. His few words are priceless to me.”

There are so many more stories like the ones I just posted. Perhaps you have one you’d like to share? Feel free to post to the Soldiers’ Angels forums, or if you’d prefer, the comments form below. I’d love to hear them.

(cross-posted to Bama Angels)

My budding writer

Jessie’s class has been learning to write essays over the past couple weeks. That girl loves to write and I’ve read several of her stories that she’s written on her own. She has a great imagination, and I told her that she should keep writing even if it’s just for fun. (after all, I got my poetry and for a short time did write several short stories and published two of them)

So far, for her assignments, she’s written about karate and cartoons — two subjects she knows very well. LOL! Her assignment this week has been to write a description 5 paragraph essay. She was showing it to me last night — she wrote about dogs. She mentioned that her teacher encouraged her to write about something else (as the majority of the class wrote about animals!), and she was stumped and out of ideas.

I named off several things that she knows well: her various video games (UT!!), Harry Potter, Webkinz (too much like animals she said), Neopets, … she rejected them all and I was running out of ideas. Looking over across the den, we have a box of wedding stuff waiting to go into storage. I suggest writing about her part in the wedding. No dice. My next suggestion: How about the honeymoon?

“Huh?” LOL, she gave me a puzzled look that made me laugh, “You know, Disney World?”

Her face lit up like the 4th of July. Eureka! I hit gold. :mrgreen:

She scrapped the paper she had previously written and started at once writing a new one. She let me read it just before bedtime last night and she wrote more about the hotel cafeteria and pool than the Disney World park itself. LOL!

Good thing we went there instead of the royal caribbean cruise I had been eying, hehe.

So my little budding writer was all happy and giddy when I left for work this morning. She was still talking about the paper she wrote last night and can’t wait for her teacher to read it.

That’s my girl! :cool:

Self improvement

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about how I can improve different aspects about myself and my life. I’ve taken up meditation again, and am attending a class at UAB specializing in shamatha meditation. I’ll also be taking a tai chi class starting next month. I still haven’t found a new place to workout. I would like to pick up yoga and/or pilates again, but the places where I used to go are either closed or not having those classes due to lack of instructors.

Oh well, hopefully something will come along soon. I figure, if anything, it’s warmer now and I can take up walking and running at the civic center again. That’s free. Free is good.

I want to lose a little weight, not much, but close enough to my pre-wedding weight. I can really tell a difference with the amount I’ve gained back and the lack of consistent exercise/activity … I ache more and generally don’t feel as well as I did. (and it doesn’t help that my meds make me want to eat EVERYTHING in sight!)

The other day when Jim and I stopped by Wal-mart, I stopped to look at a hoodia display. I haven’t seen a whole lot about this particular supplement, but I do know several people who swear by it. Part of me (the logical part) tells me that I need to talk to my doctor and see about getting something that she recommends, but another part of me wonders if it really works and maybe I should try it …

Of course, every time I bring up my weight with my doctor, she tells me that I don’t need to lose any.

Assimilated living

Widgetize Me

Ok, after fighting it for at least a year (maybe two?), I’ve fully widgetized my theme. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, but then again, once I figured out how to re-write things in the functions.php I started zooming right along!

I’ve been playing with a few widgets here and there. I found a Twitter one that works ‘ok’ … but I’m a bit annoyed because I had to tweak its code in order to get it to display the way I wanted. I haven’t been able to find a recent comments widget that I like (yet), so I guess I’ll keep looking for that.

I updated the WP Plugins in Use list on the Links page. Looking at it prior to updating, I hadn’t realized how many plugins I had deleted until seeing that list. I think I got it down to about half of what it was before.

I’m already working on another plugin for WordPress … this time it’s an XHTML 1.0 Strict friendly alternative to target="_blank" for opening links in new windows (many thanks to Mark @ Weblog Tools for the idea and code to get me started!). Hopefully I’ll have that done soon.

Married Life

Something that a lot of people have asked me lately … “How’s married life?”

I didn’t think it would be much different, and mostly it’s not. Sure, I have a new name, a different tax filing status, and small legal changes here or there, but I didn’t think it would be too different. In a way it’s not, but there are times when I find myself marveling at having to call Jim my ‘husband.’ Not ‘boyfriend’ or ‘fiance,’ ‘HUSBAND.’

It’s hard to explain … but it’s cool. Things are good. Money’s tight, but at least we’ve finally paid off the last of the wedding debts. It’s good. We’ve bought furniture. We’re looking forward to maybe going back to Disney World for our anniversary. We’re looking forward to buying a house.

It’s nice. :cool:

Of course I’m still getting wedding advertisements and bridal magazines. Part of me misses that craziness — but then I remind myself of how neurotic the whole thing made me. Heck, we’re still getting brochures from various places all up and down the east coast (from back when we were still shopping for honeymoon spots). The place that runs Branson condos is still sending me stuff once a month, LOL.

I think I’ll call this weekend and let them down easy.

He remembered…

I’m sitting in class and Jim texts me just now, realizing that at this very moment 5 months ago today, we were getting ready to leave our wedding reception and pile into our (heavily “decorated”) car to head down to Florida for the honeymoon.

It took him all day to realize it, but he remembered.

What are you doing?

That’s the question Twitter asks me, as do a few other social networking sites/services … what are you doing?

My last Twitter (prior to this post) pretty much summed up my day:

I hate hate HATE hsbc auto, I swear this company employs the most moronic imbeciles on the face of this planet.

Over the past 3 months, I have tried to get my name and contact information corrected on my account with HSBC. They have had our email addresses and phone numbers wrong ever since we bought Jim’s car. I put off correcting that information because I knew I’d have to get my name changed after the wedding.

November: I called and requested the procedure for getting my name and other account information corrected. I was told to mail in a copy of our marriage license and an outline of what I wanted changed, and sign and date it, and a confirmation letter would be sent to me when the account is updated. So I did. A month later, nothing updated in my account, no letter from HSBC. So I called, and was told that they must not have received my letter. So I sent another with another copy of our marriage license, even included a screenshot and highlighted the information that I wanted changed. I waited another month, heard nothing, account still not updated.

I called in just after the new year. I was told that “something was received” but there were no changes to the account and the CSR couldn’t tell what had been sent in. I explained my frustration, and was transfered to the clerical department. I was then asked to fax in a copy of the letter that I had already sent in TWICE and wait another week to check back on my account.

So a week ago, I faxed it in. I checked my account this morning and my name was finally changed, but NOTHING else had been touched. At this point, I was beyond aggravated. I called HSBC Customer Service. I explained why I was calling and quickly summed up my previous efforts to get my account updated. The first person I spoke with was not helpful in any way. She told me that my account had previously been updated, I asked why the updates were not reflected in my account online. She said she didn’t know. I also asked why I didn’t receive a confirmation letter stating that my account had been updated. She told me that they don’t do that. When I asked to speak to a supervisor next, she wanted to know why I wanted to speak to her supervisor.

Why the hell do you think?

I told her that I had a grievance and wanted to speak with someone who could help me. It wasn’t my intention to complain about her, but that didn’t stop her from putting me on hold and transferring me back to their AUTOMATED MENU SYSTEM. I was furious. I called back, and got her again. When I told her that I was still waiting to speak with a supervisor, she hung up on me.

At this point, I was livid. It was bad enough I had to keep calling back, and each time I had to hunt through their automated menu system to find an option that would get me through to a real person — they removed their “speak to a customer service agent” option some time ago. I have not spoken to a CSR that actually SPOKE ENGLISH in over a year. On top of that, that pinhead was not only being non-helpful in the worst way, she was PISSING ME OFF!

I called back again and finally got through to a CSR. I explained who I was and why I was calling and that I needed to speak with a supervisor. I finally get through to a supervisor and of course his English is broken. I explained why I was calling and the trouble I had been having trying to get my account updated. I think I frustrated him as much as I was frustrated by the previous CSR because I had a hard time understanding him and kept having to ask him to repeat himself.

In the end, he agreed to get a letter out to me confirming the account updates. I’ll tell you this much, I will not ever again use them as a financing institution. I get letters all the time from them for things like auto insurance promos, offers for home insurance quotes, and so on. They won’t get any more of my business — as soon as we’re able, I’ll be re-financing with someone else.

Are You a Real Alabamian?

Here’s 20 ways you can tell …

1. You can properly pronounce Arab, Cahaba, Opelika, Sylacauga, Oneonta, Eufaula, and Wedowee.
2. You think people who complain about the heat in their states are sissies.
3. A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in the yard and look for a funnel.
4. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to the door, but by the availability of shade.
5. Stores don’t have bags or shopping carts, they have sacks and buggies.
6. You’ve seen people wear bib overalls at funerals.
7. You think everyone from a bigger city has an accent.
8. You measure distance in minutes. (It’s about 5 minutes down the road)
9. You go to the lake because you think it is like going to the ocean.
10. You listen to the weather forecast before picking out an outfit.
11. You know cowpies are not made of beef.
12. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date.
13. You have known someone who has a belt buckle bigger than your fist.
14. You aren’t surprised to find movie rental, ammunition, beer, and bait all in the same store.
15. A Mercedes Benz isn’t a status symbol. A Ford F-350 4×4 Extended Bed Crew Cab dually is.
16. You know everything goes better with Ranch Dressing, or Ketchup.
17. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned how to multiply.
18. You actually get these jokes and are “fixin’” to send them to your friends.
19. You have used your heater and air-conditioner in the same day.

    Finally: You are 100% Alabamian if you have ever had this conversation:

20. “You wanna coke?” “Yeah.” “What kind?” “Dr Pepper.”

One of my coworkers sent me this. I’m guilty of a few of these … particularly #12.

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