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...

Blogger 411

I saw a few of you in my G-Reader this evening (okay, it's technically morning, but whatever - I haven't been to bed yet =) ) doing this link-up and it looks pretty fun!

1. How long have you been blogging? And what got you started on blogging? Has your blog changed?
This blog has been around since 2008/2009 but I actually started blogging back in 2003 when I was in college, on an old school Diaryland journal before switching to Livejournal for the majority of my college years. From there I blogged on Myspace for a bit and eventually I settled here on Blogger. I started blogging just as a way to share what was going on in my life, my thoughts, fun events and memories, etc. My blog has changed a lot - originally, back in college, I used to blog almost daily about my day to day adventures (or lack thereof). Then I started adding in movie reviews and thoughts on this and that. Then when I became pregnant I chronicled that whole adventure and now, being a mommy, a lot of my posting includes things about my son.

2. Did you go to college? If so where, and what did you study?
Yep, I went to NIU - Northern Illinois University - in good ol' DeKalb, IL. I started out as a journalism major, as I wanted to go into newspaper layout and design, however after working a semester on the school's newspaper doing just that, several of my fellow designers suggested I switch to the Visual Communications (VisCom) program. So I started art classes my 2nd year there, going through the art school program's prereq's for any art major, and began my VisCom classes my 3rd year. Due to stupid department politics though, I didn't pass my portfolio review. Since I already had half the requirements for a BA in Art done, I decided to just switch to that and do a journalism minor. I took every non-VisCom program graphic design class the university offered and eventually graduated (studio art classes were not my thing but unfortunately I had to take a certain number of them). I'm 3 classes shy of finishing my minor as 2 of the ones that were more design/art focused had to be taken consecutively and the 1st one wasn't offered the semester I had intended on taking it as the professor that taught it was on sabbatical or whatever that year.

3. Where have you traveled?
All over the US - growing up we always took a family vacation every year. I've done Disney World 3 times, Disneyland once, various trips to Pittsburgh area Pennsylvania to visit relatives (with stops in West Virginia as my grandparents like a few places just over the border there), St. Louis, CedarPoint in Ohio, Myrtle Beach, Virginia Beach several times, Mall of America, Pikes Peak in Colorado, Louisville Kentucky, the Wisconsin Dells... hubby and I have gone to Vegas and Dallas together... recently we just took a mini family vacation (Jay's first overnight trip!) to Madison, Wisconsin. I also took some school trips - 8th grade class trip to Toronto Canada, High School Band and Choir trip to Georgia (we visited Atlanta and Stoneledge Mountain), and our Senior class trip to Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak.

4. If you won the lottery, what would be the first thing you would buy?
I would pay off our debts first - hubby's car, our house, our credit card, outstanding medical bills, payback my parents money they've lent us over the years, and then by myself a newer car that has air conditioning. Then I would probably pay for an addition onto our house so we can stay here much longer and get our landscaping/yard fixed. After that... probably save the rest, sitting some aside for Jay's private school tuition in the near future and some in an account for college tuition.

5. What are your 3 biggest pet peeves?
Having to repeat myself, people not picking up after themselves, people who suck at driving

6. What is your favorite movie?
I can't pick just one - here are some of my favorites though:
The Wedding Singer, Eurotrip, 300, Fight Club, Napoleon Dynamite, Zoolander

7. What is your drink of choice; wine, beer, or liquor. Or Water, Soda, Tea?
Usually water, or flavored water/lemonade. As far as alcoholic, I prefer mixed drinks (lately I've been enjoying TGIFriday's pre-mixed Mudslide mix, just pour over rocks!)

8. What is something you enjoy to do when you have me time?
Reading, watching TV, and doing stuff online like blogging

9. If you could have a $10,000 shopping spree to one store, which store would it be?
Target

10. Share with us an embarrassing moment of your past? Or present.
I thought I blogged about it, but I guess not... years ago, I had a pair of jeans that zipped all the way up the outside of my legs. Now it was just a fashion detail, not intended for use, but the zippers really did work. I was making a quick stop out at the mall when the zipper broke at the top of one of my thighs! I noticed quickly and since I was heading to Victoria Secret to redeem a coupon for free underwear I showed the sales clerk my "problem" and asked if I could use one of their fitting rooms to try and fix it. It took a good 10 minutes or so until I got my pants back to a less revealing state. I quickly made my purchase and headed straight home, throwing out those pair as the zipper somehow was busted and wasn't really staying shut! Having to walk through the mall with nearly my entire leg hanging out (in winter no less!) was a bit embarrassing!

11. What day would you love to relive again?
Probably my wedding day - we had a lot of fun!

12. If your life was turned into a movie... what actor would play you?
Maybe Kate Hudson...? Or Avril Lavigne if they were documenting my high school/college years

13. What are the jobs you had in high school/college/the early years?
Like most girls, my first actual job was babysitting for families in our neighborhood. My first "official" job was for a market research company where I would sit in a cubicle, my computer would call consumers from all over the country and I had to persuade them to take a survey for research purposes - many people thought I was a telemarketer, but it paid really well at the time! The summer before college I worked for my aunt doing apartment maintenance work on several buildings her in-laws owned but her and my uncle managed. When I went off to college I started working for the school's newspaper doing design and layout which I worked at several nights a week all throughout college save for my last semester. I spent a summer as an unpaid graphics intern at my hometown's newspaper. I started working at the movie theater down at school and was there for several years, eventually joining the management team (this was my favorite job ever - if I wasn't a mommy I would totally go back to it!). 6 months after college I got a job for a small, family owned furniture sales promotion and consulting firm doing graphic design work for the business as well as for the stores we worked with. The poor economy affected that job though and my hours got cut to just being on-call and I haven't heard anything from them in nearly a year. When they first cut my hours to 2 days a week I got a part-time seasonal cashier job working for a Sears Essential store for a few months, but they couldn't afford to keep any seasonals on as they barely had enough hours to go around for their full-timers. Right before the next holiday season was when my hours got cut to the on-call so I went out and applied for jobs and being 5-6months pregnant, The Children's Place hired me for seasonal and decided to offer me a part-time position after the holidays. I'll have been there 2 years this November and am basically the senior associate on staff as the store manager is the only that's still around from when I 1st started. I don't mind it most days now that my schedule is to my liking (2-3 days a week), it gets me out of the house and around adults to somewhat socialize with, plus the discount is a great perk of the job, having a toddler who needs clothes, and it's a little extra spending money that we can spend on Jay or myself or housewares! They've talked to me about moving up to the management team several times now, however I'm not really interested in that - I was working 30+ hours a week during the last holiday season and as a mommy, it was killing me giving up that much time with Jay. Since hubby is the "bread-winner" in our house, I technically don't need to be working so I really don't want those kind of hours; 2-3 shifts a week (10-15 hours) is just fine for me.

14. Show us a picture from high school or college.

Move-in day my first weekend at college, August 2002, in my dorm's lobby
That's my 1st ever roommate, my little sis
(with the Huskie dog mascot she gave me that I *still* sleep with) and me

15. If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, where would you go?
Europe! I would LOVE to visit Europe someday - especially France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia (specifically where my family's "motherland" Bohemia used to be)

16. Show us the most current picture of you or you and your family.

 

 Me, hubby and Jay at my sis's wedding back in March

And our pets:

Tiger 

She's a domestic Egyptian Mau who will be 4 in October
(hubby gave her to me for Christmas 2008)

 

Lady (aka Lady Girl) 

She's a super sweet 3 or 4 year old Border Collie/Lab/Australian Shepherd mix
whom we recently took in from my in-law's house

17. Where do you see your life 5 years from now?
5 years... I'll be on the verge of turning 33... similar to where we are now but hopefully we'll have another child added to our family and hubby will be full-time at his job at UPS so he he won't be working the crummy day job he hates and will be around more and our finances will not be so tight.

Getting my blog "out there"

So many link-ups today!

For those of you that are jumping over from Neely's blog discovery link-up, WELCOME to Point Me to the Sky Above! (and by the way, you rock if you know where I got the title of my blog from =) )

I'm RAY J, as they know me in Blogland. 

I can also be found on Twitter - @RAYJ829.

I've kept a diary of sorts off and on growing up, blogging online for almost a decade - I first started out on Diaryland, switching soon after to Livejournal during the heyday of my college years to using the blog function the now deceased Myspace to eventually making my current home here just over 2 years ago. While I do enjoy seeing my number of followers increase and getting comments is nice and assures me that people are reading what I write, I really just blog to get out my thoughts and opinions and to document things in my life (especially milestones with Jay!) as well as hope that someone may stumble upon my writings and benefit from what I've gone through in regards to certain things.

Speaking of Jay, Jaydran is my recently turned 1 year old baby toddler boy. He was born on February 4th, 2011.

He's had a bit of a rough start in life - 3 weeks after he was born he was diagnosed with Failure to Thrive and spent a week on the pediatric unit of our preferred local hospital hooked up to a feeding tube as he wasn't eating enough to grow. We learned later that they noticed a knot in his umbilical cord after he was delivered which we believe played a part in this problem, as at 28 weeks gestation he was measuring big, yet somewhere between weeks 30 and 35 his growth had significantly decreased and they had me deliver him via induction at 37 weeks, 5 days as they were concerned he had stopped growing. We think his stomach never reached its full size, therefore he was used to eating very little - just enough to survive - and never knew the feeling of being full. The week on the feeding tube stretched his stomach out though, and now, almost a year later, you would never know he had any eating problems as the kid eats like a champ! I can't even sneak a cracker without the kid toddling over, wanting some too! Did I mention the kiddo LOVES Goldfish crackers as well as applesauce? We buy both in bulk, lol...

At 35 weeks gestation they also discovered he had an enlarged left kidney, which continued to be enlarged post-birth. He was diagnosed with hydronephrosis - which I guess is pretty common among baby babies - and after some further testing it was discovered that his blockage is actually a UVJ obstruction, meaning his ureter tube is pinched shut at the bladder and not up at the kidney (which is more common). We were planning on him having to have surgery to unblock it around his 2nd birthday, however at his check-up last week, the fluid in his kidney has significantly decreased, meaning that it appears the blockage might have opened up on its own! His pediatric urology specialist in Milwaukee would like to monitor it a few more times, making sure this isn't just a fluke, before doing further testing to confirm the blockage has opened up on its own (which is very rare!).

Anyways, other than that, Jay's quite an active little guy, making messes of toys all over the house and tormenting our kitty. He's a typical little boy in the sense that he likes Elmo, Thomas the Train and Super Why - a boy superhero that teaches reading. He also likes playing with toy cars that zoom across the floor. He has a Super Mario Bros themed room and had an Elmo and Sesame Street Friends themed 1st birthday party. He was also the cutest little Ewok you've ever seen for his 1st Halloween!

I mentioned Jay likes to "play" with our kitty - Tiger is our almost 3 and a half year old domestic bronze Egyptian Mau that hubby gave me for our 1st Christmas as a married couple. In college, my long-term roommate had gotten a kitty shortly after we moved in our apartment, so for the previous 3 years I was used to having a furball around. When hubby and I got our own place around the time we got married, it was a bit lonely at night, with him working 3rd shift, so he gave in and surprised me with a kitty of my own! Tiger's mellowed out a lot, especially since we got her fixed last summer. She likes tormenting Jay as much as he likes tormenting her though - we have a gate blocking off the open stairs to our basement, she likes to hid on the steps and "encourage" Jay to throw toys at her, jumping out of the way. Jay thinks it's hilarious! She also likes to make him chase her, only to eventually jump over the gate and down the stairs or up somewhere high where he can't get to her!

Rounding out our family is hubby. As I mentioned last week in the Our Love Story link-up, hubby and I have known each other since 8th grade, going back to December 1997. He usually sat behind me in our small 2nd hour Sunday School class (I was 1 of 2 girls that regularly showed up), and he stopped me afterwards one morning, handing me a folded up piece of paper before quickly running off. I wouldn't have known his name had it not been signed at the end of the love poem he had written me! We eventually became friends over the years, him becoming one of my close friends in college (and one of the few from high school who bothered to keep in touch with me during those years) and eventually 9 years after that 1st introduction the timing was finally right and I gave the guy a chance. Yes, I made him wait 9 years to date me - oops! We got engaged shortly after our 1 year anniversary and got married 8 months later on September 13, 2008. We've had our ups and downs (more so than some couples do, or so it seems), but we try to put the past screw ups and mistakes behind us, focusing on the future instead. It is hard though and marriage takes communicate, that's for sure! Hubby's a hard worker, doing his best to provide for us as he currently works 2 jobs - part-time as a supervisor for UPS (although he's in training to go full-time in the near future) and then full-time as Inventory and Purchasing Manager for a growing, local authorized Verizon Wireless retailer (and yes, we're an Android family - since paying off my $2000 fruity paperweight, the only i-Products that still work in our home are old iPods - feel free to read why I'll never waste money on another i-Laptop again). He is also an aspiring author sticking to the sci-fi and fantasy genres, hoping to have his first major novel published in the near future.

Our recent family photo for our 2011 Christmas card.

Some things about me...

• I'm a full-time mommy (if you didn't already pick-up on that).
• I'm from the Northern Illinois area, not too far from Chicago though, and have lived in this area most of my life.
• I went to good ol' Northern Illinois University and have a bachelor's degree in Art (with an emphasis on Graphic Design). A lot of my art is showcased here.
• Despite a graphic design background (specifically with print layout, design, and graphics) the economy kinda sucks and my job doing that is kinda defunct at the moment, so I work part-time several days a week for a great national children's clothing retail chain at our mall - as you can imagine, with a constantly growing little guy, my discount comes in handy!
• I am a Christian, and while I'm nowhere near perfect, I do try my best to set a good example and outwardly reflect Christ in me.
• Hubby and I are both big Dallas Cowboys fans since we were both kids, despite never living down south. We did take a trek down to Dallas in fall of 2010 though and witnessed in person the Monday Night division rival game against the New York Giants at awesome Cowboys Stadium!
• I have 2 tattoos.
• I take part in various swaps around Blogland here, despite getting stuck with the occasional crummy partner.
• I've regularly been linking up with Savannah and friends for the Monday Phone Photo Fun posts and Neely and Ashley for Boob Tube Babble.
• I regularly watch Once Upon a Time, The Walking Dead, Glee, New Girl, Community, The Office, Game of Thrones, True Blood, Conan, and a lot of TBS. Sometimes we watch Spike or Comedy Central. We also have PBSkids or Sprout (the 24hr PBSkids channel) on during the day as well.
• While I do enjoy a GOOD chick flick here and there, I prefer comedies or awesome action movies (Jason Statham = yummy!)
• As far as music goes, I'm definitely more into rock, metal and industrial, but I also enjoy electronica and techno/dance. Some pop stuff isn't too bad either. I used to go to a lot of rock shows in my high school and college days - Static-X and Powerman5000 are 2 bands I've seen live the most. My 25th birthday was spent in Chicago seeing Nine Inch Nails' last show ever in Chicago - it was pretty epic!
• I also enjoy reading - usually sticking to the fantasy genre but I do branch out. Right now I'm on book 2 of The Hunger Games trilogy, squeezing it in before the movie comes out. I'm also working on the Game of Thrones books and waiting on Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest to come out in trade paperback format at the end of the month so I can finish that series. I also enjoy the Sookie Stackhouse books as well as the Harry Potter books. I'm sucker for the Chicken Soup for the... Soul books too!
• And I'm a bit of a gamer. I grew up playing Nintendo and Atari since the age of 4, owning a Sega Genesis, a Playstation, a PS2, a Wii and a PS3. I also got sucked into World of Warcraft during it's early days and continued to play for most of 5 years. I quit playing shortly after Jay was born though, as I didn't login enough to make the $16/month worth it. I have recently started playing Fable: The Lost Chapters though for PC, having briefly tried the original Xbox version back in college and enjoying it. I'd love to play the new Star Wars MMO, however until I can commit to playing a game regularly, I think I'll stick to non-MMOs for now as I can't afford to be paying for something I rarely have time to play.
• Oh and in case you couldn't tell, I have a bad habit of rambling - oops!

Are you visiting from the link-up? 

If so, lemme know in the comments below and share a link to your blog so I make sure not to miss it!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you add me to your G-Reader!