Wiki Famous!

Just had to take a second here and brag....


HUBBY'S NOW WIKI FAMOUS!!!


My mom brought it to our attention the other night as I guess she was trying to describe Gunpowder Fantasy to one of her weekly coffee ladies and when she did a Google search for more info it took her to the Historical Fantasy page on Wiki and listed it as a sub-genre. Under the Gunpowder Fantasy section it lists 3 examples of Gunpowder Fantasy authors - one of which is hubby!!!

How neat is that?

And no, he didn't edit himself into the Wiki page, I asked. It was just as much a surprise to him as it was to the rest of us =)

One of the other guys it lists is an older gentleman who mostly writes Warhammer novels for Games Workshop. So hubby's in good company it seems!

But yeah, here it is if you'd like to check out the Wiki page! It has a link right to hubby's website too which has all the info about his Gunpowder Fantasy series.

5 years...

Today the hubby and I celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary.

I'd like to say it's hard to believe it's been 5 years already, but in a way it's not...

In 5 years we've...

• gone to Vegas
• gotten a cat
• totaled a car
• survived a major hurdle in our 1st year
• went through marriage counseling
• went to numerous weddings
• traveled to Dallas
• hit a buck
• had a baby and became parents
• bought a house
• lost jobs and gained others
• got a dog
• went through a major family crisis
• began raising a teen
• buried a parent
• and many other "minor" life experiences that are too numerous to recall off the top of my head.

Needless to say, it's been a crazy 5 years! Hopefully the next 5 will be less dramatic =)

And while it's not an anniversary trip to Vegas like we had mentioned long ago (but sadly forgot about until it was too late to start saving for), we're planning on making our trip to see the Cowboys play the Bears in Chicago this December our anniversary gift! =D

Happy Anniversary hon! I love you!

That time I wrote a fanfic...

A little plug for myself here...

I wrote a fanfic.

As dorky as that sounds...

I believe I've mentioned it before but I got into Gossip Girl last summer (2012) right before the final season started and needless to say, I'm sort of having withdraws at no new episodes, rewatching a good chunk of the series and favorite episodes and reading some fanfics to help fill the void. I'm also a Chuck & Blair (aka Chair) shipper (Dan and Blair - Dair - was just ewwww!).

I was a little disappointed to find that there were no fanfics with alternate endings to the 100th episode with Blair's royal wedding (or at least none that I could find) so I decided to write my own and post it on fanfiction.net.

Feel free to read it and even review!

I haven't really written much fanfiction ever so this was kind of a first, but I like how it turned out. I wrote it all in one day too as once I started it just kinda flowed.

Thanks in advance!

Riddick Review

Yesterday hubby and I went to see the latest installment in Vin Diesel's Riddick franchise.

I gotta say, while it was entertaining, I was a bit disappointed - it basically felt like a Pitch Black reboot.

It starts out with Riddick injured and left for dead on a strange desolate planet. In a brief flashback we see how he came to no longer be the Necromonger Lord Marshall that he was awarded at the end of Chronicles of Riddick and how he got stuck on this new planet. The first portion of the film is basically Riddick tending to his wounds and living off the land with a dingo pup while fighting off the planet's predator creatures. Then he sees a storm brewing and with the storm, comes deadly predators (kinda like in Pitch Black, with the darkness comes the predators) so it's time to make an exit off the planet. He lures some bounty hunters to his location with a plan of commandeering one of their ships to make his escape.

So in short, the majority of the film is Riddick trying to get off the planet before all hell breaks loose, just like in the first film of the series.

Yeah... I was disappointed.

Even in Chronicles he got trapped on a planet he had to escape from but it didn't take up the whole movie.

In this one, the plot barely moves forward.

I would have liked to have seen more between Riddick and Vakko (Karl Urban) and the Necromongers and his quest to find Furya...

I did like the interaction between him and his pet dingo dog, despite the animal's fate being predictable.

Any of you guys see it yet? Thoughts?

By the way, this meme totally cracks me up:

The time Jay gave me a mini heart attack

We took Jay to the fair last month.

It was a fun time, for the most part.

Hubby and I had our regular fair food favorites - boy scout baked potatoes, boy scout sweet corn, Merry Maids ice cream... etc.

We spent time walking the exhibits and booths, Jay refused to go near the petting zoo, we caught the end of some dueling pianos and watched a magic show.

Eventually we headed over to the midway to play some games and ride some rides.

Jay won a ball from the pick-a-duck game and then I decided to try my luck with the quarter betting game where you pick a color and they let a mouse run around and pick the winning color. I had a dollar or 2 worth of quarters and decided to spend them. Hubby stood a few feet away with Jay in the stroller while his sis and her friend watched behind me.

I played my last quarter and looked over to hubby to see if he was ready to go. Then I looked down at the stroller and there was no sign of Jay. I looked at hubby to see if he had picked him up, but nope. I looked over at hubby's sis and her friend to see if maybe they had picked Jay up... nope! I asked hubby where Jay was - he got this puzzled confused look on his face, looked down at the stroller and had the same panicked look I had. I asked his sister and her friend if they saw him, when I said no I told them to start looking. They both were on the verge of panicking too.

Fortunately I had dressed him in a bright red shirt for this exact reason - to make him easy to spot if he wandered off! Well, that's exactly what he did - something caught his eye, he climbed out of the stroller (as we didn't bother fastening him in as he was doing fine all evening) and took off. Hubby found him a few seconds later wandering back behind one of the booths, grinning when he saw daddy coming towards him.

He gave mommy a mini-heart attack though! So glad he was safe and unharmed though! I don't even want to think about what could have happened!

Becoming a big boy!

A few milestones for Jay recently.

First night in big kid bed!

First, we transitioned him into a "big kid" bed last month. I always wanted to get him the race car bed and my parents had offered to buy it for him when the time came. While he was content in his crib, he was getting a bit big for it and we decided we didn't want him to be 3 years old and still sleeping in a crib.

So we made the switch. He did good the first night... then a few days later he was up half the night playing with his books and everything he could get into, pulling out all the clothes in the drawers and whatnot. Plus he can reach the light switch now to turn it on.

Most nights, if he's tired enough, he'll go right to sleep, others he'll sit and look at book. He seems to be doing better as the weeks go on.

He also got his first "big boy" haircut recently.

Up until this point my mother-in-law trimmed his hair and when she walked out on us I took over keeping it trimmed. But hubby and I talked and decided it was time for him to get first real big boy haircut as the bowl cut style he had been sporting was getting a bit old.

So I took him to CostCutters, he got to sit in the car chair while the female barber did her magic. He was a bit puzzled as she cut it and it fell to the floor and he saw himself in the mirror with much shorter hair. He was shaking his head "no" at one point too.

But it's done.  Sadly, he can't whip his hair back and forth anymore like he used to. And he looks soooo much like a big kid now too! Makes me a little sad that my baby is no longer a baby!

Achievement Unlocked: Golden!

So being the crappy blogger I've been this year (my bad guys, assuming any of you still read/subscribe/follow this here blog), I totally forgot to mention/post about my golden birthday!

Yeah, it's kind of a big deal I guess...

I turned 29 (!!!!) on August 29th this year.

And I wanted to make it memorable.

Granted, it wasn't quite as memorable as my 25th birthday (seeing NiN's final farewell show in Chicago on my exact birthday... which is kinda dumb now as NiN's touring again - damn you Trent Reznor!), but we still went out and made it fun!

Dueling Pianos and purple fishbowl drink!

We spent the night of my actual birthday going to Gameworks in Schaumburg. I've posted and tweeted about it before - it's a 2 story arcade place with a bar and after 9pm they kick the kiddies out and you can drink and game at the same time. Plus on Thursdays they have $10 unlimited gaming on all the non-ticket giving games. So we went and spent several hours doing that on my birthday since it was a Thursday. I had several drinks and was definitely tipsy!

Then Saturday night we went one of the local nightclubs in town for Dueling Pianos! This particular place has 2 guys that do dueling pianos perform on the last Saturday of every month. Since it was 2 days after my birthday, why not? It was a lot of fun and I got this giant purple fishbowl drink for $10... yeah was definitely feeling my drink! I also got some yummy cheesecake to celebrate too! I've been wanting to see Dueling Pianos ever since our trip to Dallas and we had planned on going to one place down there that does it only for it to be blacked out the night we had available to go... got a little treat of it at the fair last month... I definitely recommend checking em out if there's any place near you that has them! It's so much fun! I'd love to go again in the future!

For the most part, I really don't want to turn 30 (yeah, I'm one of those people!). So I'm forever staying 29 (at least for now, I may change my mind some day lol...) which means every year will be my golden birthday! lol...

The time I finally saw Sevendust

Or should I say the time I finally saw an entire set of theirs?

This post has been like 14 years in the making.

It's taken that long for me to finally get to see one of my favorite rock bands play an entire set live.

It all started back in the fall of 1999, my freshman year in high school. Sevendust was bringing their headlining tour with Kittie, Powerman5000 and newcomers Staind (back in their heavy days) to my hometown's annual labor day festival On the Waterfront. Only problem though was that my aunt and uncle had gotten my best friend and I tickets to see either Fastball with Blessid Union of Souls or The Wallflowers (I forget which band was the big festival headliner that year, as one played this year and one played a different year that we went) and the shows were both at the same time, on opposite sides of the festival/river. Needless to say, we were obliged to go to the one we had paid extra for for tickets but the plan was that as soon as it was over we'd run across the river to catch whatever we could of Sevendust. Sadly, we got there during the last song.

Something that would become a running joke for me.

Fast forward a few years to 2003. Sevendust is co-headlining a tour with Staind and playing the Aragon in Chicago. Me and lazyass ex were big concert goers at the time and both liked Sevendust and Staind's older stuff so we decided to go. Only problem though - I had class til a certain time and couldn't leave any earlier than we did. And we hit some traffic on our way into the city, getting there about an hour late. We figured we'd be fine though as there was at least 1 opening band... well as we park and rush into the theater we hear Sevendust playing their encore! WTF??? Apparently the opening band canceled or something or went on earlier and we literally caught the tail end of Sevendust. I wasn't too happy... especially by this point Staind was in lite mode, only playing their heavier songs here and there (much to the displeasure of the majority of the crowd). I paid to see Sevendust, but got stuck only seeing Staind lite.

A few years later (circa 2008 I believe) I got a notice that Sevendust was coming to Chicago again, this time to my favorite venue, the HoB (House of Blues). I *really* wanted to go but sadly it just wasn't in the cards financially. Plus with my luck, I'd make it just into to catch the last song again.

Which brings us to now.

I found out a few weeks ago via the app BandsInTown that Sevendust was playing a show at the nightclub in my college town 30 miles away. Hubby and I both had the night off from work and if it wasn't on my bucketlist, seeing a full Sevendust set should have been cuz I was determined to see a set of theirs live at least once in my life. There was some confusion over the start time - 1 site said 7pm, the tickets said doors at 8 show at 9, the venue when we called said 8... we got there about 845 and the 1st band was just finishing so it was definitely happening!

They did a few new songs, including the latest single Decay, as well as a slew of their old hits (Bitch, Waffle, Too Close to Hate) as they made the point this was more of a fan reunion for them since they've been doing it so long and the majority of the crowd was people my own age or older that had been following the band for years (we stopped at one of my favorite local joints for food down there and the chick making our pitas/gyros had never heard of them while the chick that was working there since before I graduated 6 years ago teased her about being young).

I was down in the crowd for the first half of their set before moving back to where hubby stayed, eventually getting up on the board covered pool table he was sitting on. It got a bit rowdy too - considering how security was there when I saw Papa Roach and Nonpoint 10 years ago there, they pretty much didn't care - people started crowd surfing, moshing... saw a fight break out at the end, other girls and a drunk guy on one of the other board covered pool tables... it was pretty fun! They opened with Denial, closed it out with Face to Face (one of my favorites!). I also heard Xmas Day and Praise... only ones I wish they had played that they didn't were Crucified, Live Again, Enemy, and Broken Down (can you tell I liked the albums Animosity and Seasons? Glad they did Face to Face though, as that's one of my favorites from those 2!).

While the sound wasn't the best, considering the venue it wasn't terrible. (Another reason why I love the HoB - the sound there is amazing!). Night club shows rock though as it's such a small intimate setting, you really aren't far no matter where you're watching from!

So I can cross seeing a full Sevendust set live off my list now! Woot!