“Well it’s aaall right, we’re goin’ to the end of the line!”

So I made a pretty big decision this past weekend. While we were deep in the heart o’ Texas visiting my mom’s family (Jenn had an absolute blast, by the way), I got to thinking about how life will be for us once we’re married. I mean, I’ve thought about our married life since a few months into our relationship, but I digress. Anyway, I was thinking about this blog, and I asked myself, do I really need to keep up with this after we’re married? How much time will I be taking away from our quality time if I continue to update a blog that’s just for my life as an individual?

So I made a choice. I’m going to officially end this blog when we get married in June.

Now now, friend, dry those tears (haha!). I’ll still be around. In fact, I’ve already registered a NEW blog for both Jenn and myself to use after we’re married. Plus, I’ve registered another blog that we will be using for a specific purpose. I don’t want to say anything about it, but I think y’all are really going to get a kick out of it. It’s something else I thought up while we were on the road this weekend. And now I’ll stop talking about it, because I REALLY wanna tell y’all about it, but I want it to stay a surprise! GAH, I’m terrible at this. 🙂

Anyway, I’ll update here as much as I can over the next six months or so. Obviously, I’ve been more and more infrequent with the updates lately, and it’ll prob’ly stay that way until the end of the road here. But I do hope you’ll stick around until then. And once I’m done here, I hope you’ll check out our new blog when we get started on it. And that other blog, too. Y’know, the surprise one. Teehee.

BTW, in case you didn’t notice (and seriously, are you blind?), changed the theme here for the Christmas season. Yay!

Have a great day, friend!

Berfday

Man, what a weekend!

I turned 27 yesterday. That’s a weird number to say, y’know? Not because I feel like it sounds old or anything, but it’s just such a weird number. I felt the same way when I turned 26. I don’t see myself feeling this way when I turn 30. It rolls off the tongue better than 27.

Anyway, yep, awesome weekend. Saturday night, we had a big ol’ bash at BJ’s. Lots of family and friends showed up, and it was a rollicking good time. Oh yes, I used “rollicking.” Eat that. But yeah, freakin’ great time. Had some great laughs and got to spend time with some friends that I definitely don’t get to spend enough time with in this crazy, mixed-up world. Good food, too. I had the BJ’s Favorite pizza. Sucker’s loaded, just the ways I likes it. Got some of their nachos too, which are just heavenly. Erin and Jana got their pizzas late. I don’t know if they got eaten en route to the table, or if they forgot to make them, or what, but that just wasn’t cool. But they got comp’d’d’d, so that worked out nicely. The waiter was a pretty cool guy. He defied his manager by leaving the carafe of Dr. Pepper on the table for us. Livin’ on the edge there, friends. Also, he brought me a free Pizookie for my birthday, which is this tremendously evil deep-dish chocolate chip cookie smothered in vanilla ice cream. It was one heckuva treat.

I must say, though, he did a couple of things that got on my nerves. The guy was seriously tweaked up on something. Pretty sure it was Red Bull. I mean, he practically THREW our appetizer plates down in front of all of us, because he was in such a hurry. And he kept standing over (I mean, OVER) Erin and/or Samantha while talking to everyone, which was really pretty creepy. Then, when he was collecting our checks, he asked Jana how much change she wanted back. Call me crazy, but that is INCREDIBLY unprofessional. I told Jana the next time a waiter asks her that, she should say, “ALL OF IT.” That wasn’t the only incident. My dear sweet friend Kim, the special ed. nurse at my old job, was relaxing and enjoying herself while talking it up with some other folks at the table. The waiter was sitting there being friendly with everyone, and he suddenly looks at her and asked her if she can finish writing her check, so he can go home. What the heck!? That’s just not right, my friend. There’s a fine line between outgoing and pushy, and he totally obliterated that line. Not cool. Don’t mess with my friends like that.

But I digress. It was a freakin’ blastie blast. Those of you who came, thank you so much! I had such a wonderful time, and my babygirl did so good getting it all put together. I have the most awesome fiancé in the world. 🙂 She got me a pretty sweet batch of goodies. Got a new shirt, which I’m always in need of, along with a LEGO set that I’ve wanted for a very long time, the Benjamin Button DVD, a very slick Texas Rangers hat, and the comic book adaptation of the new Transformers movie. My sweetie knows what I like, that’s for sure! I also got some cash from my future in-laws, which was very sweet.

Sunday night, we hung out with my family for my “real” birthday. Had some good pizza and had our first swim in the pool for this year. The water was just the right amount of cold to be refreshing, and it felt great to take a dip. After dinner, we had some REALLY good cake and ice cream, and Mom and Dad got me a card with a couple of $25 gift cards to Olive Garden and AMC Theatres in it, which will definitely come in handy. 🙂

Overall, it was an absolutely awesome weekend. I’m so grateful for all my awesome friends and family, and especially Jenn. It was certainly a birthday to remember.

Now for some bad news… or awesome news, depending on how you feel. LOL This will be my last PBSoD until August, because my coworker isn’t going to let me check out this iMac for the summer. So I’ll still be blogging as much as possible throughout the summer, but the Photo Booth antics will be put on hold for the next couple of months.

Photo Booth Shot of the Day:

*beeeeeeeeeeeeeep*

Oops.

I totally didn’t blog or take my PBSoD yesterday. Unbelievable. I’m so sorry, I know you’re crushed. I can change, please don’t leave me!

Yesterday wasn’t even that busy. I had a few computer issues I had to go fix, but nothing that totally ruined my day. Just slipped my mind I guess. I turn 27 in twelve days, I must be getting senile in my old age. Heck, I don’t even know what I want to do for my birthday this year. Last year’s party was a blast, but I don’t know if I want to do the same thing again or try something different. I’m not really a huge fan of celebrating my birthdays in a public locale, ie. Dave & Buster’s. … Well, that’s not totally true, but I’m still not sure what I want to do this year.

I cooked dinner last night for Jenn and me. Grilled some steaks and sliced them up to put in tacos. It was pretty darn tasty, if I do say so myself. Enjoyed a nice quiet night in and watched the Dancing With The Stars finale. Yes, I enjoy Dancing With The Stars. And you can have my Man Card when you can pry it out of my cold, dead hands. Hey, I’m secure enough in my masculinity to enjoy shows like that with my sweetie pie. Heck, I’ve got the guts to tell you right here and now that I enjoy watching Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives. So pick yer jaw up off the floor and deal with it, Charley, because I am all that is man.

If it makes you feel any better, “I prefer Dos Equis.”

In other news, I won the Photoshop contest over on Steve’s blog! I can’t wait to see what I won. So awesome. 🙂

Photo Booth Shot of the Day:

Obligatory Pop Art Filter PBSoD

Sink-oh day My-oh.

Well, hi there.

Sorry I haven’t blogged the past couple days. Friday was the proverbial pits. Spent the entire day in the foreign language labs working on the ancient Windows 98 machines, making sure they were all ready for the AP Spanish Testing that is going on today (which I’m supervising right now, in case tech support is needed). There were numerous epic failures to deal with, but we got just about all of them up and running for today. I’m watching the kids start their testing right now, and so far things seem to be running smoothly. They have to listen to some dude yak at them in Spanish via a recording on the master console, then answer some multiple choice questions. Later on, there’s a conversation portion where they have to talk to a pre-recorded person using their headsets. The fun part will be having them save the mp3 files and turn them in, so I can burn them to CD to be graded. Hopefully they’ll be able to save them across the network properly!

Anyway, other than this wackiness, things are going okay. Jenn and I spent the entire weekend painting the living room and hallway of her house. Misty, Colin, and Jenn’s mom all helped us out on Saturday, which was really cool. Jenn and I really got to have a lot of bonding time this weekend while working, which made everything so much more fun. 🙂 I’ll have pics from the painting experience up soon as I can.

I had yesterday off for Cinco (Cuatro) de Mayo, which was really nice. Got to sleep in a little late, and I went up to Jenn’s school to see her and her crazy kids in the afternoon. We even got to have a Subway date before I had to go to UTA, which was awesome. I love when we’re able to eat dinner together during the week. It helps both of us feel so much better when we’re able to do that.

This week is dead week at UTA. Finals are next week, so it’s the calm before the storm. I’m praying that I pull through all my courses okay. I’m feeling pretty confident about them all, so hopefully everything will work out.

Oh, and we’re going to see Star Trek on Friday at Studio Movie Grill. Woo-Hoo!

No Photo Booth Shot of the Day for today, since I’m not using the iMac in my office today. So instead, here’s a picture of Captain Kirk after eating too many tamales:

I NEED PEPTO NOW!!!

That’s better.

Ahhh, WordPress. I missed you. I’m sorry I have to wait until the afternoons to come see you now. Can I buy you a beer? Maybe some… words… to press?…

Anyway, so now WordPress is completely blocked at work (I’m so irritated I just spelled that “owkr”). And that’s not just my blog… that’s every single thing ever hosted in the universe by WordPress. Oh, and it gets better: Flickr is blocked, too! And Twitter! Joy of frickin’ joys!!!

All right, all right. I know, it’s not the end of the world. Unless Reverend Patterson’s visions have apocalyptic walls of fire in them. … That was another joke there. Walls of fire. Firewalls. They block– nevermind.

Hey, on the bright side, I can post more stuff on here that I normally wouldn’t be able to post while at work. Like random YouTube videos!

Photo Booth Shot of the Day:

Dang.

Dang.

I just got an email from Networking…

The need has arisen for us to block a category of web sites from internet access in the district. The category is titled (by WebSense, our internet filter manufacturer) as “Social Networking and Personal Sites”. facebook.com and myspace.com are just a couple of the sites under this category. In the past we have blocked these types of sites on an individual basis because we are not allowed to view all of the web sites listed in a category, therefore we don’t know what else it may block. However, blocking sites individually also allows for the more sophisticated sites to provide workarounds to our filter.

This email is to inform you we plan to block this category beginning tomorrow (Wednesday) at 2:00pm. If a previously unblocked, legitimate-for-educational-use, website becomes blocked after 2pm tomorrow, please submit a help request and we will unblock the individual website. It is important that you provide the actual URL (www web address) for us to expedite unblocking the site.

Thanks for your assistance in this matter.

Which likely means no more Twitter on the computer, for one thing. But I have a bad feeling that instituting a new block may have an impact on other sites I visit during downtime, including this one. Might have to start blogging from school in the afternoons. A minor inconvenience, but I guess I’ll have to live with it. I’ll let you know tomorrow if it happens…