Random Musings of the Week

I kinda like these posts as I can share bursts of things all at once!

Anyways, I've been working on my 101 in 1001 list lately!

One yearly thing I can cross off for now is #94 - go to a hockey game once a year.

The Chicago Blackhawks at the United Center in Chicago

Last Thursday I found out that hubby and another co-worker of his had pitched in to get some tickets to a Chicago Blackhawks game for another co-worker friend of theirs whose birthday was this past Sunday. The guy's been feeling a bit down lately (or so it would seem from his Facebook status posts) and they wanted to make sure he had a fun birthday. Hubby and I both went and it was pretty fun! I had never been to the United Center before, despite it also being the home of the Chicago Bulls and in the 90s when we were kids the Bulls were THE team to go see (I told hubby we were both deprived/jipped when it came to that! lol...). Our tickets were at the very top, in the standing room section, but fortunately I took breaks to sit down a little bit here and there so it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately the Blackhawks lost, 4-1, with Philly scoring 3 points in the last half/quarter (what do they call it in hockey since there's 3??).

Hockey reminds me of soccer though as it's similar - there's a goalie and you run across the field/ice trying to get the puck/ball in the opposite goal - and watching hockey makes me miss playing soccer... I played for 5 years, 8th grade all through high school. I wasn't really any good until my coach switched me to defense my junior year, then I was actually pretty decent and got to start quite a bit! I hated all the constant running that the midfield and forward positions had to do and couldn't handle it - with defense we only had to worry when the ball came down to our end of the field and then the goal was to either a) kick it up the field real hard, b) pass it on up and out to one of the midfielders or forwards so they could run it or aggressively steal it from the other team's players who were running it and then do either a) or b).

I've also worked on #4 a bit too (Watch at least 2 Netflix DVDs and 2 Instant Queue movies a month).

I mentioned earlier this month I finally watched The Blindside which we had gotten in the mail back in November. The other DVD we watched this month was Predators. It was a decent movie for a Predator action flick and better than I was expecting (only other Predator movie I've seen was AvP:Requiem and I wasn't impressed) - I figured it was produced and written by Robert Rodriguez (in which I LOVE most of his work) so I figured it couldn't be THAT bad... The premise is that a handful of different military people from all over the world (including a Black Ops turned mercenary, a Spetsnaz, a drug lord bodyguard among other similar types) and a doctor come to as they are being parachuted into a strange jungle. At first they're not sure why they're there or who put them there but they start to put the pieces together and realize that they're not on Earth anymore and that the planet is used for hunting by the Predators and that they're the game. This one stars Adrian Brody (whose face drives me nuts, it's too narrow as is his nose!) and Topher Grace with appearances by Danny Trejo (who is AWESOME in everything he's in) and Laurence Fishbourne.

I also watched the documentary called Babies on Netflix's Instant Watch last night. It was cute and interesting - there's very little dialogue in it but for an hour and 15 minutes it follows 4 babies from different cultures (Africa, Mongolia, Tokyo, and San Fransisco) from their newborn days up until around their 1st birthday as they interact with others and discover the world around them. The African culture was quite different, as the baby was part of a tribe in the wild. I also didn't understand why the farming Mongolian family let their baby boy run around with no pants or diaper on half the time - the African baby I get, as that's the culture, but yeah... it was definitely an interesting watch though!

Tiger intensely watching the Babies documentary

About 30 minutes into it Tiger came into the room and joined me - she sat down and stared at the TV for a few minutes before getting up and moving even closer to it! At one point, the Tokyo baby was crying and throwing a fit due to frustration with toys - Tiger's ears perked up and she was practically climbing in front of the TV, pawing at it and meowing, like she thought the kid was stuck in the TV! lol... for the remainder of the movie she seemed pretty intrigued and intensely watched what was going on on the screen! My kitty is hilarious... I have no idea what goes on in that little brain of hers and if she can comprehend what she's seeing, but she often gets really into watching TV with us!

So the talk on Twitter today is that OMG, Taco Bell doesn't use real meat! Honestly though... is that *really* a surprise to anyone? I thought that was old news... maybe it's just cuz I'm a Taco Bell-aholic, but yeah... regardless though, like I saw someone pointed out, the ingredients don't sound any worse than what's in a veggie burger patty. Must be a slow news day!

Also, as I mentioned on Twitter the other day, in the Illinois and Wisconsin area, this past week it seemed like the Superbowl came early as I swear people in this area were more pumped and excited about this past Sunday's Bears vs Packers NFC Championship game than the actual Superbowl! The rivalry around here is a bit crazy between fans of the 2 teams and it was all anyone could talk about this past week. Even area Walmart's got in on the action, selling Bears and Packers cupcakes for all the football parties that were happening! Now, hubby and I are both Dallas Cowboys fans, so we weren't *that* concerned about the game as our season's been over for a few months now, although I do cheer on the Bears when they're not playing Dallas (the only time I *ever* root for the Packers is when they're playing against Brett Favre as I can't stand him), so it was a bit sad to see the Bears lose, especially as they started to make a comeback in the 2nd half of the game. So for the Superbowl it looks like I'll be cheering on the Pittsburgh Steelers this year as my parents are both natives of the Pittsburgh area (dad grew up in Uniontown, mom grew up in Brownsville, both of which are about an hour drive southeast of Pittsburgh) and we still have a lot of family out that way.

In other news... hubby's getting a VERY nice raise at Verizon as the District Managers (one of which is one of my brother-in-laws) put their foot down and petitioned the owner of the company for more money as there's been a huge issue with sales reps turnover due to it solely being based on commission and well, the economy sucks. Not to mention that the person who was getting paid the most wasn't making more more than hubby and yeah... there was no possible way a person could raise a family on that, let alone barely get by themselves! So they "won" and sales reps are getting paid hourly now, but since a sales rep working 40 hours a week would be making more than a manager, well they had to redo that too and decided to restructure the entire company. Previously, hubby was the store manager of the store where the warehouse is and so he was also doubling as an administrative/executive assistant as he dealt with all the inventory and orders as well. Well they're condensing some of the store management positions, making 1 person incharge of several stores in their nearby area, thus eliminating hubby from that, but he's now the inventory manager and will be incharge of the warehouse and inventory, placing orders for all the stores and often delivering them as well in addition to training sales reps on how to better sell/push accessories. This goes into effect February 1, although we won't see the pay for it until March 1. It's pretty neat though!

Jay's 30week growth  ultrasound pic

In baby news... I mentioned it on my baby blog, but since I'm sure not all of you read that, they found ANOTHER abnormality on the ultrasound yesterday (last week during the growth scan it was showing Jay's femur to be a bit small) - one of his kidneys is larger than the other. The doctor said it's possible he just hadn't peed yet and it was full, but since that's 2 things in the course of a week they want me to meet with a high risk doctor and have an ultrasound over at the hospital either at the end of this week or beginning of next week to have both looked at on their more high-tech ultrasound machines. Sooooo annoying! They've looked at his kidneys plenty of times on the ultrasounds and they were all fine... I'm really guessing it was just full at the time of the ultrasound yesterday as that just makes no sense! Grrrrr... I'll be 37 weeks on Sunday, which is considered full-term, so yeah... Jay, you can come out anytime after this weekend, okay??

My father-in-law was released from the hospital on Friday. He seems to be doing alright and they have him doing outpatient dialysis. Our church also offered to put the family up in temporary housing until their house is "fixed" and more liveable. It seems my in-laws have come to the realization that living out there is probably not the best for them at this point. They live out in the country, over an hour away from the rest of us with the nearest city/town being halfway between there and here. Their house is also on 5 acres of property which with my brother-in-laws all grown and working most of the time, there really is no one around to help maintain the property as needed. So the plan now is to get the house out there fixed up (ie: strip the basement as the mold damage was that severe) and to sell it so they can move somewhere closer to town, which would also help them save on travel expenses too as they come into town several times a week for ministry-related work and now for dialysis several times a week. The big problem is going to be with their pets, as they have a mini-zoo - they already had 1 cat and then acquired 4 kittens a few years ago that were mysteriously left on their back porch and while the original plan was to give them away to good homes, my little sister-in-law got attached and they named them all and yeah... that never happened. They also have 3 remaining dogs too, one of which is a pitbull that my brother-in-law acquired from a friend who got deployed soon after him and his wife had a baby and she couldn't handle the dog with a newborn on her own. Not sure what they're going to do... I told hubby if we had a house with a fenced backyard I'd be okay with taking 1 if not both of the non-pitbull dogs temporarily (I like pitbulls, but this one's a bit spastic and I don't feel like dealing with that with a newborn), but like he said, we don't yet so we can't.

And that's my update for now!