GPS Fail!

What ho, friends! Ben and I took a small trip down to Chillicothe a few Saturdays ago to visit the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park. It was pretty sweet. And it was only an hour away, and it was FREE! This is just one of the many places in Ohio (and throughout much of the midwest we found out!) where there are a series of mounds built by Native Americans.

It was kind of an adventure getting down there. We trusted our GPS, and it totally led us astray, taking us past this creepy house.

To give the GPS credit, the site it took us to was technically part of the National Park, just part of it that was not excavated, and that did not have any official tour, was closed to the public, was located in a very creepy area and was only marked by a small plaque.

The part of the park with the nice visitor center that was open to the public is actually located in the middle of three, yes THREE, state and federal prisons. (And they send school groups to this park all the time! Maybe it's a "scared straight" thing?) So, I'm not sure which one I found creepier. But, the mounds were really cool, and you could walk right up to them, just not on them.

One more interesting fact about the mounds: During WWI there was a big military training camp, called Camp Sherman, that was built right over the mounds! They built army barracks right on the mounds! Just disregarding them all together! This seems so ridiculous to me, because it seems like it would be hard to build a building on top of a big lump of earth rather than on the nice flat part right next to it, but hey, what do I know. I'm just a civilian. :)

Any way, that was our trip! It was cool, I highly suggest it. But be careful, and don't get lost in Chillicothe, because you'll either end up in a creepy area or a prison parking lot.

Operation: Trying to make a house more of a home.

We finally got some curtains up in our kitchen! They ended up being red, when we really wanted blue, but now that the red is up there, we actually really like it. Yes, I realize they need to be ironed. Also, I'm trying to make some blackout lining for them because we lose SO much heat through these sliding kitchen doors! Hopefully that will help with our gas bills this winter!

So, this is my latest sewing adventure. Good thing it still only requires sewing in straight lines. Although the fabric is MUCH thicker than anything I've used before, so that's a new challenge. :) Wish me luck! Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

Blogging for sleep.

Blogging for sleep is my version of walking for the cure, or racing for the cure, or swimming for the cure, or whatever people do these days*. Except I'm blogging to try to help me fall asleep. It's a long shot, I know.

But, it's 3:50 am, and I'm in the throws of a fun night of insomnia, so this is what's happening. "They" always tell you that if you aren't asleep after twenty minutes that you should get out of bed and do something else until you get sleepy, so you don't associate your bed with NOT sleeping. Welp, that's all fine and good if you're the kind of person who can fall asleep within twenty minutes of laying your head on the pillow. I am not that person. I can't remember ever being that person. I'm not even that person when I'm doped up on Nyquil, or Benadryl, or melatonin, or a combination of the three.

I have toyed with the idea of trying Lunesta or Ambien, but something about the commercials with the radioactive butterfly tend to make me wary of that. Also, I have a friend who may or may not have had a bad Ambien experience in which she ended up in her sister and brother-in-law's bedroom, in nothing but her skivvies, in the middle of the night, hallucinating that her fingers were turning to liquid and falling off her hands. I'm just sayin'.

So instead, I'll blog. And I'll leave you with this gem. I smooshed my finger in the bathroom door the other day, and developed this awesome blood blister in literally 5 seconds. Cause that's how I roll.

*By the way, while I fully support the breast cancer awareness peeps, and think it's a very worthy cause, etc., those people have a serious monopoly on the fund raising events these days! Practically every other day there are loads of people wearing pink wigs and boas walking down the street! And, almost every product at my Kroger is now packaged in pink with proceeds donated to the Komen foundation! Even the NFL players are wearing pink now! Someone has a seriously brilliant marketing team, that's all I'm sayin'. JDRF, you totally missed the boat on this one.

Thievery!

We had a breach of security a few weeks ago. I forgot to post about this earlier, but I took pictures (for the non-existent police investigation) so I thought I'd share a few.

The break in happened in the middle of the night. Of course our car was the only one broken into in the whole lot! They broke our window, ripped out our stereo, and stole a bunch of (monetarily worthless) stuff in the middle console. LAME!

It happened on a Friday night/Saturday morning, which is lame, because most window replacement places are not open on Saturdays. This is our only vehicle, so we had to get it replaced ASAP, because we needed it for church on Sunday, work on Monday, etc. Luckily, after much calling around we found a place that could come out that day, and not charge us TOO much.

We still haven't gotten the dashboard repaired, but a friend of ours from church "knows a guy" who can get the parts for us, so he's going to help us out with that.

We were very annoyed by this whole experience. My car was broken into about a year ago, so this is the second time in a year we've been through this, so while we knew what to do about everything, it was still obnoxious. In Columbus, you just report the break-in on-line. On-line! Can you believe that?! They don't even come out to take a look at it or anything. Ridiculous! Plus, the stupid thieves ripped out our whole dash! Take the stereo, just leave the dash board intact, please?!

Also, I got a piece of glass stuck in my hand while trying to clean it up, and still have not gotten it out. The skin has now grown over it, and it is pretty much a permanent part of my being. So yeah, VERY annoying.

All in all, just a VERY LAME experience.

(I promise a more up-lifting post will be on its way!)

Confessions Part II

Some things that intimidate me:
1. Cooking large hunks of meat. For example, Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas ham, roast, etc.
2. Baking artisan breads, especially ones that require any sort of starter.
3. Sewing anything other than a straight line, or anything that could be messed up without exact measurements.
4. Standing up in front of people to do anything. (examples: directing music, giving a talk)
5. Making small talk with people I don't know (or with people I do know, for that matter).
6. Driving strange cars in strange places. Or just driving strange cars. Or just driving in strange places.
7. Women with skinny jeans, Ugg boots, over-sized purses and large sunglasses (and men with those things, for that matter.)


I started to make a list of things that do NOT intimidate me just now, but I could only think of 2 things, so I got discouraged and stopped. For the record those 2 things were:
1. Waiting until the last minute to write 10+ page papers. (EASY!)
2. Baking (with the exception of #2 above).

Operation: I Will Never be a Hoarder

Last week, Ben's brother, Phillip, introduced us to Hoarders, a show on A&E (first season available instantly on Netflix) all about, you guessed it, hoarders. You know, those people who keep absolutely everything, including trash, rotting pumpkins, really old food, and cats. Like, 40 cats. Plus some dogs. Plus a bunch of dead cat skeletons because they have so many cats and so much stuff, they can't keep track of them. Yeah, that kind of hoarding.

Needless to say, we were horrifyingly fascinated and watched three episodes in a row. And then I watched another two by myself. Thanks a lot, Phillip.

This week, operation eliminate-all-my-possible-hoarding-tendencies has commenced. So far, I have organized the pantry, and am finally organizing my sheet music binders. I anticipate that my next project will be our closet!

I will never be a hoarder, I will never be a hoarder, I will never be a hoarder!

These are my confessions . . . .

1. Okay, so obviously, the first confession has to be that I like Usher. Yeah and Burn are two of my guilty pleasures. What can I say? I'm hard like that.
2. Along those same lines, I saw Jay-Z and Eminem perform on Letterman a few weeks ago, and I LIKED IT!
3. I really only have enough will power and self control to work on one thing at a time. For example, if I'm trying really hard to control my blood sugars, my other goals of say, exercising more, or eating less junk usually go out the window. Seems counter-productive, right? Welcome to my world!
4. I'm fascinated by disaster movies. I could watch Twister and The Day After Tomorrow every day of the week. I even like the cheesy made-for-TV disaster movies.
5. I've probably eaten chocolate at least once a day for at least the past 8 years. There may have been an occasional day here and there where I was trying to give it up. But, I really don't think I've ever gone more than 24 hours. Yikes.

So, that's all I could think of right now.

You can certainly expect a Confessions Part II some time in the future.

" . . . . and I don't know what I'm gonna do wit out my Boo."