What’s Making Me Happy 4/16/13

Ah, a day off with little sleep.  Hopefully tonight I will sleep soundly, waking refreshed for a long work day!

But here’s what’s making me happy:

  • Getting through overnights at work is always good… another month until it happens again!  
  • I finished “Gone with the Wind” last night!  Woot!  It was a great book, unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of endurance with it, so I read it in shorter spurts than I would have liked.  But I can’t wait to discuss it with others who have read it and to revisit the movie.  So much to talk about!  Scarlett’s coping skill of “thinking of it tomorrow” is something I have employed… sometimes things are just so hard to face that you have to divert attention elsewhere and move forward with plans tomorrow.  It is spoken so often in the book… and it is the final sentence of the book:  “After all, tomorrow is another day.”  I’m so glad I read it.

    Gone with the Wind cover
    Gone with the Wind cover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
  • Book club with the Preston gals was a lot of fun.  We read a great book (“We are all Welcome Here” by Elizabeth Berg) and had great food – rum and Cokes, pizza burgers, cheesy potatoes, and Mississippi Mud Cake.  Yummy!  Always good to see those women!
  • Met girls from work for dinner on a Friday night!  It was good to get together outside of work and to get to know them better.  Hopefully it’s something we can do again and again!  We celebrated having a Friday off before a weekend off!  Doesn’t always happen!  Maybe this Friday we will have a happy hour after we have supervision from 6-8pm!  🙂
  • I had a terrible cold during my weekend off, but enjoyed movies and reading… not a bad way to spend a weekend off!
  • Singing is always good… love the songs we’re singing in choir!  Some river songs, medley style (“Old Black Water,” “Swanee River,” “The Old Folks at Home,” “Mood River” and more!) and some Irish songs (yay!) and “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”  Love it.
  • Had some good days off last week before my weekend overnight work.  Good meals out, good cooking at home, good movie in the theatre (“Admissions”) and hanging out with Marissa.  Good stuff.
  • A great post-tax-day out with Beth today – delicious breakfast at Burdey’s in Peterson (cinnamon roll pancakes – so good!) followed by shopping and fro-yo!  Good stuff.

And coming up:

  • 3 days of work ahead and a weekend off.  No big plans (yet!), but just glad to have a Saturday, Sunday, Monday off!  
  • Hanging out with the kids a little as Dana and  Koni jet off to Vegas!  
  • Starting in on my pile of TBR books – #1 is The Silver Linings Playbook!  Yay!  DVD comes out 4/30, so that’s something I”m looking forward to! Also have 2 book club books going – “The Accidental Tourist” by Anne Tyler and “Sick Girl” by Amy Silverstein (for work).  Good stuff!  I’m listening to the audio of “The Accidental Tourist” and I think it’s read by the slowest narrator in the history of narrators.  Goodness.  But it’s a good book!
    The Accidental Tourist
    The Accidental Tourist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

  • Planning a small graduation party for Marissa is fun… it sure is something to celebrate!
  • Have so many good shows to catch up on – so glad I still have my DVR!  I’ll catch up with them sometime – so no Mad Men or Smash spoilers!

What is making you happy this week?

Snapshot of a Sunday 4/7/13

Frankie and Johnny (1991 film)
Frankie and Johnny (1991 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am thankful that I didn’t make a lot of plans for my weekend off.  I was so looking forward to having three days in a row off – Friday, Saturday AND Sunday! So when I woke Thursday morning feeling a little stuffy and scratchy and sniffly, I hoped it wasn’t true.  I bought salt refills for my Neti pot and hoped for the best.

Friday was a busy and fun-filled day, even though I was sneezing and sniffly all day and a true mess by 10:00 PM.  I went to PT (very little knee pain anymore!), got a relaxing facial leaving me looking positively dewy, and then went to happy hour for a Perfect Margarita followed by dinner at Whistle Binkies on the Lake with co-workers.  That is a good day off. 🙂  But I do apologize for being all sniffly at the end of the night – no one wants to be around that!

Yesterday brought a 4.5 hour work meeting on my day off.  It was fine, although, again I apologized to all for being all sniffly at the end of the meeting! Then I was on the couch, finally watching “The Intouchables” on DVD (yay! just as good the second time!) and then going to Zorba’s for a Greek dinner with Jennifer!  Flaming cheese and souvlaki – yummy!  And the soup… delicious!   Last night was the new episode of Smash on Saturday night!  It was fun to watch.  Oh, that scamp Jimmy.  It’s so predictable, but good fun.

Today I’ve been lying on the couch, watching movies, eating soup, and drinking water and a pot of hot tea.  Tomorrow will be better.  Right?

Cover of "Frankie & Johnny"
Cover of Frankie & Johnny

But in the mean time, Netflix has been keeping me company.  For some reason I have an itch to watch some old Al Pacino movies.  So I put “Scent of a Woman” at the top of my DVD queue and today watched “Frankie and Johnny” on Netflix Instant.  Good stuff!  Loved the movie in 1991 and love it still today!  Last week I recorded “Valley Girl” at mom and dad’s, and really think that I need to add that DVD to my collection!  Such a great movie… ah, Nic Cage before his fake-y teeth.  So dreamy. 🙂

Looking forward to:

  • Mad Men season starting tonight!
  • Cosmo Girls this Thursday – some fun adventures will be had!
  • Finishing “Gone with the Wind” – I’m over 600 pages!  It will happen!
  • and having this cold behind me!

Hope you have had a fun Sunday!

Happy Monday!

Ah.  A great break from work has almost come to an end, but I really like the shift that I am working this week (2:30pm – 11:00pm) so I still get to stay up a little later and sleep in a little bit, so it fits my natural cycle.  I have a suitcase out and started filling it with a few things, and have a list going of other things I need to think about and plan before next weekend!

Halftime @ Mayo vs. Winona – Friday Night Lights

But this weekend was awesome…

  • Book club and Mexican food and catch-up time with the FC gals Thursday night
  • Pampering with free gifts at the Estee Lauder counter Friday morning
  • Mayo Football at Winona Friday night – their Homecoming game, but Mayo won the exciting game
  • Trajan’s football game Saturday morning – a perfect fall morning for football!
  • A singing “gig” in Winona Saturday afternoon
  • Pizza and a DVD (OT: Our Town) at Judy’s in Winona Saturday afternoon
  • Dancing to Hitchville at the Wicked Moose for Kristine’s birthday Saturday (until the wee hours of Sunday morning!)
  • A great sleep-in and matinee of “Trouble with the Curve” on Sunday afternoon
  • Girls’ Night In hair coloring party at Angie’s Sunday night
  • and now… muffin baking and blogging before heading to Rushford for choir and the How I Met Your Mother season premiere!

I just re-watched the double season finale of How I Met Your Mother this morning so I’m ready for this season – is it 8? The final musical selection got me searching the internet to see what it was and I’m delighted to say that I have it in my iTunes!  It ends with “The Wind” by Cat Stevens.  Such good music in that great show – and several Spotify playlists to prove it!

How I Met Your Mother
How I Met Your Mother (Photo credit: tchuntfr)

Back to work tomorrow, but I’m armed with a list of things to do and think about and plan for.  Maybe I’ll have time to blog my itinerary for the fun that begins on Saturday!  It’s all so self-indulgent!  I love it!

I also have a birthday coming up next week (hence the fun schedule to come!) and it’s kind of a cool number, I think.  I’m kicking around some inspiration for lists – nothing as grand as the 40 things to do before turning 40.  But maybe 4 lists of 11 things?  I will see.  I also read somewhere someone was putting together a list for 10/10 – like 10 things to say YES to and 10 things to say NO to.  That’s do-able, too.

Other stuff:

  • I subscribe to a Timehop email and daily I get a re-cap of my Twitter and Facebook posts from one year ago.  It’s been fun to look back at that time and see what goodness was going on.
  • I read a few old blog posts of mine.  I have blogged 225 posts since February 2010.  Crazy, eh?  225 isn’t a lot when you think that I’ve been blogging for almost 3 years (yikes!) but I guess that’s more than a blog a week.  I blogged a lot and was kind of clever when I was unemployed!  For example, I did 40 days of blogs with another blogger who was celebrating her 40th birthday.  I also blogged daily using the Satellite Sisters Uncommon Senses as a theme.  I liked that.  Maybe I’ll reprise it monthly or something.
  • I don’t get any (or many) comments on my blog.  I don’t know why that is.  Probably because the people who really read it get it via email and it’s not as easy as commenting when you’re on the website.  If you do read it via email, I hope that you clicked that dance video that I posted after I saw The Intouchables.  What fun it is!!!

Well, enough for today!  Must get ready and get myself to Rushford!  It’s a beautiful sunshiney Monday!  Enjoy!