I picked up this little gem tonight at the Empty Bowls event here in Racine. The event includes hundreds of bowls like this made by school children. You go and buy a bowl and then you get to eat a bowl of soup (I didn’t eat soup out of mine!) and all the proceeds go towards fighting hunger here in Racine. My friend Patty was involved in the event and she invited me. I wish I had thought to take a picture of all the tables of bowls that you could choose from. I picked this one because I thought it would make a really cool ashtray. Is that bad?

This picture was taken with my AWESOME new camera that I got last weekend. It’s a Sony Cybershot and it is so tiny that it fits right in my purse. My friend Gavin, (more on him in a minute) helped me pick it out, and I’m really happy with it. I’ve been wanting a new camera for quite a while, and I especially wanted to get one before my next trip to Missouri in April, where I will no doubt fill the entire memory stick with pictures of my nephew, Caleb!

So… Gavin. Gavin is a friend I met in 2006 in the Kevin Smith chat room. He’s from Washington D.C. and as it happens he has family in Milwaukee. He was here around Christmas time in 2006 and we met up and had a pretty good time. Then he was here again this past Christmas and we met up again. Then he decided to come out and spend an entire weekend with me, which was last weekend.

He’s a great guy. He is very cute and sweet and he treats me like gold. If not for the distance factor I have no doubt he’d be my boyfriend. We are planning to get together again in a few months and see how things go. It’s hard because I like him a lot but we have different lives in different place. Who knows what the future will bring, but in the mean time it’s nice to have someone to talk to every night and who is interested in what I have to say.

He’s only been gone two days but I kinda miss him.

It has been a rather long journey. Sixteen years of trying and I am finally finishing my bachelor’s degree. This is a list of classes I’ve taken just since starting with University of Ph0enix. This does not count the 3 semesters of college I attended right out of high school, or the two semesters I did several years later. Nor does it count the 13 classes I took to get my associate’s starting in 2005. I’ve been going non-stop since then, and as you can imagine, I am thrilled to be finished.

I’m pretty proud of my transcript I guess. There are a couple of classes in which I wish I had done better, but the two C’s I am writing off because of extenuating circumstances. The first, Research and Evaluation II, was definitely the most difficult class I have ever taken. This C is hard earned because I was unemployed at the time and spent hours studying and I’m still surprised I even managed to pass at all. The second C was in the class I was taking at the time that my nephew was born, and I took a week off work to go see him. I inadvertently missed an assignment during that week, and by the time I got home and realized it, it was too late to turn it in, and that really hurt my grade. But I wouldn’t trade that week at home during Caleb’s first week of life for anything, so I’m fine with that one too.

I think it will be nice to just turn my home computer completely OFF and leave it alone for a while just as a break from feeling chained to it every week night and most weekend mornings.

In other news I’m taking a long weekend in April to go home for my mom’s birthday. I am flying this time, which is a huge relief. My brother and SIL will be there, and my adorable nephew who I can’t wait to love on. It will be the first time my immediate family has all been together since Caleb was born last July, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Finishing school is wonderful and really means a lot to me. So if any of my longtime faithfuls are still checking this site (i.e. Amy, Jim, Rath, Lauren), thanks for enduring my endless bitching and moaning and whining about school (especially Lauren who has had to endure it in person). Thanks for the support and encouragement you’ve all provided along the way.

It’s a big day here in Wisconsin. Our beloved Packers are taking on the NY Giants and the winner gets to go to the Superbowl. So, it’s only fitting that I show off my adorable nephew sporting his Packers pride, thanks to a Christmas gift from Auntie Molly in Wisconsin:

How cute is that??? I am excited to watch the game tonight, and I really hope the Packers win. I’ve lived here for five years, and this is the first year of those five in which the Pack have actually had a decent season. You can’t help but get caught up in Packers pride when you live in southeast Wisconsin. It’s like a prerequisite to becoming a citizen of Wisconsin.

Another prerequisite is that you have to be able to live with extremely cold temperatures. This morning it is -4 degrees here in Packerland, and I can’t help feeling extremely sorry for the football players having to go out and play in Green Bay, where the temperature is probably even colder. But at least the players get to run around and generate some body heat. Those people who will be in the stands in Green Bay have to be classified as die-hard fans. Or just plain insane. I like the Pack, I like to watch them play and I always root for them to win, but I have absolutely no desire to go and freeze my ass off watching them play. I wouldn’t have wanted to go to the game even if I’d been given a free ticket. No, no, I’d much rather sit here at home, warm and snug on my couch with a hot cup of coffee and watch the game that way. Those people who are going to the game are nuts, IMO.

All this week on the news, they have been warning people to be very careful if they are going to the game. They are especially warning people not to drink too much alcohol, because they said that if you get too drunk you can be in the beginning stages of frostbite and not even know it. But, telling a bunch of crazy Packer fans not to drink beer at the playoff game is like telling Britney Spears not to act like a total loon and show her cooch to the whole world. It just doesn’t do much good. My only hope is that no one freezes to death under the stands somewhere!

Should be an interesting game, though. Every prediction I’ve seen all week has the Packers beating the Giants. If they do, it’s going to be one helluva Superbowl party, that much I know.

And I shall leave you with even more Caleb cuteness:

Well it only took me 16 days to post my first blog of the new year. Not bad, considering I am on the once-every-three-months plan at the moment.

My Christmas was a whirlwind of driving to Missouri and back. But I got to spend some time with my parents, who have finally moved into their new house. The house is AMAZING. It’s so beautiful and everything is new and clean. I loved my time there.

I also got to spend a couple of days with my brother, sis-in-law and my adorable nephew, Caleb. See here:

Is he not the cutest baby ever? Obviously I’m a pretty proud Auntie. He’s so happy and smiley all the time. And he never shuts up - always cooing and making some kind of noise. Alex & Marcy joked that he is such a good baby they are afraid to have another one for fear it would be a little monster! I don’t know when I’m going to get back to Missouri to see him again, but my sister-in-law is pretty religious about sending me pictures of him at least once a week. The pictures always make me smile, and I’m sure I drive my co-workers nuts going on and on about how cute he is. I can’t wait to see him again so I can kiss him all over his face.

So far 2008 has been good. I’ve only got 2 weeks of my current class left, followed by another five-week class and then I will finally be a college graduate. I can’t describe how excited I am to be finishing school. Not at all excited to start paying back my student loans, but extremely happy that all these years of hard work are finally going to culminate in something.

I’m hoping that once I get this last class over with, I can finally start to spend some leisure time online and get back into my blog and also into reading other people’s blogs (that means YOU, Amy!!!)

I went to the eye doctor today and had an examine. My blind eye is the same; still blind. My good eye is doing pretty well too and I had just a slight update to my prescription. I picked out a cute pair of DKNY glasses, but I didn’t buy them yet because my eyes were dilated at the time and I want to go back when I can see normally. I’m also going to bring a friend because when I’m trying on glasses I can’t see anyway and it’s hard to tell if they look good. I’ll probably get that done tomorrow and will hopefully have the new frames sometime next week. I’ll try to post pictures.

And now a word about TV. When will the writer’s strike ever end?? According to this blog the best show ever (Heroes) has absolutely no new episodes left and the season could be cut short if the strike doesn’t end. That totally sucks! Lucky for me, I got the first season on DVD for Christmas, and currently have all the season 2 eps saved on my DVR so I can at least get a little does of that hottie Peter Petrelli for a while if they don’t come back. I hope they get things resolved so my Heroes can come back!

In other TV news, I watched the series premier of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Being a fan of the movies, I figured I would like the show and boy was I right. It was AWESOME! It was extremely intense. I do wish the chick playing Sarah Connor looked a little bit more like Linda Hamilton, but I guess you can’t have everything. I’m looking forward to future episodes of this show

Yesterday I spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with my closest friends and had a really great time. I told them last night that if I couldn’t be with my family on Thanksgiving, there’s no one else I’d rather be with than Lauren and Jamie (and Lauren’s fiance who is also a good friend). I got over to Lauren’s about 11:00 yesterday morning, and we watched the Packers win against the Lions - GREAT GAME too, and there were some moments (especially during the 1st half) when we were afraid the Pack was going to lose, but they pulled it out and are now sitting pretty atop the NFC North at 10 & 1.

We had all the traditional Thanksgiving dishes including turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy, stuffing, and deviled eggs. My contribution this year was the green bean casserole, which was very good. I never realized how easy that stuff is to make, and it turned out just fine. We also had another amazing dish that isn’t really traditional Thanksgiving food but it’s so good that it should be! It’s called green rice, and Lauren makes it soooooooooooooo good. It has rice, broccoli and velveeta cheese in it - I’m not sure what else (onions?) and it’s like a casserole-type dish. I don’t even like broccoli but this stuff is so good - you can’t really taste the broccoli in it.

After dinner we played some canasta, and I even won a game. Then the four of us busted out Pictionary and had a great time with that. We played some more canasta and then I came home about 7:00 last night and watched a movie. I talked to my family a couple of times during the day. Even though I was having a great time with my friends, I did miss being at home. My parents have FINALLY moved into their new house. I can’t remember how much I’ve said about it in my blog but my parents have been building a new house on their land in Missouri for the past almost two years. It’s finally ready and they moved in this week. Yesterday they had a lot of people from both sides of the family there, and they all said they missed me, which was really nice.

Lauren, Jamie and I talked yesterday about how different life is since this time last year. It was a year ago last week that I lost my job in Milwaukee, and I was feeling very lost and afraid at that time. Now I’ve got a job I love and I’m three months away from graduating from college. In the last year Lauren graduated from college, got a new job AND got engaged (officially!). So a lot can change in a year. I’m looking forward to next year and being done with school and hopefully on track to eventually buy a house!

And now I leave you with a picture of my sweet nephew, Caleb. He is the cutest thing ever, and I am absolutely dying to get home at Christmas and spend some time with him. The last (and only) time I saw him he was just a week old. At Christmas he will be just over five months old and look at how adorable he is! I am one seriously proud Auntie, and the next few weeks are going to go by so slow until I can hold and kiss and love on him.

I hate it when you’re having a text message conversation with someone, and they send you a new text while you’re still replying to the last one they sent you. Then you don’t know if you should finish the message you were writing, or discard it and check the next one.

It’s fall in Wisconsin. The leaves are turning and it’s getting colder. All the new TV shows are starting, and I’m so busy working all the time I don’t get to watch them on their regular nights. I didn’t get to see the season premier for Heroes, which was on a Monday night, till the following Friday!!! And every time someone at work brought it up I had to leave the room.

So yeah I got the shitty part time job at the video store. “YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO RENT HERE ANYMORE!!” I only wish I could yell this class line from Clerks to about 90% of the people who come in there. Honestly, I know just how Kevin Smith felt when he wrote the screen play, having recently worked at both a convenience store and a video store. They both suck my will to live.

But the extra money is nice, that’s for sure. I plan to continue working there through the end of the year and then we’ll see what next year brings. I am starting the last week of my 3rd to last class, and after this I will only have two more classes to finish. Two more classes and I’M DONE BABY!!! A college graduate. Even I find it hard to believe. I suppose in the end it will all have been worth it, but it has certainly been a struggle at times. This time last year is when I was just about to start my two statistics classes - the hardest classes in the history of the bachelor’s degree in business. UGH I wouldn’t wish that hell on anyone.

Speaking of hell, I haven’t gotten to see my little nephew since that first week after he was born. Ooooh he was so tiny and precious. Now he’s this little 15 pound chunky monkey with the most adorable grin you ever saw. I miss him dearly. For the first time in many many years, I am actually looking forward to Christmas! I can’t wait to get home and see my family, and especially spend time with Caleb. I’ll post some pics of him when I can. I also have some good pics of me in my Halloween costume this year. I’ll try to get those up this week too.

Well here it is Labor Day Weekend and pretty close to the end of what I consider to be summer (hot weather) here in Wisconsin. It’s starting to get cooler in the mornings and evenings, the Packers are in pre-season and people are gathering at bars all over town for fantasy football drafts. The Brewers are actually in playoff contention, although losing to the first place Cubs as I sit and type this.

It feels like the summers get shorter every year I live here. Pretty soon I’ll be busting out the sweaters and jackets, which will be closely followed by heavy coats and snow boots. Needless to say, I’m not looking forward to the changing seasons. I’ve always loved summer, and living in Wisconsin I don’t get to enjoy it as much as I’d like. But, I am slowly adapting to the weather here and after five years I am starting to feel like a true Wisconsonite.

My nephew is growing! I got to spend almost a week with him shortly after he was born, and he is now a little over a month old. I have a ton of pictures I need to upload, and now that it’s starting to get closer to fall I will probably start writing more and including lots of Caleb pics.

On the school front, I just started a new class this week, and when I finish this one I will only have FOUR more to go!! I’ll be done early next year, and I cannot WAIT. I will be so glad to be finished with this program and get back to life without school. For those of you who have been reading this silly website for a few years, you know it’s been a very long, uphill battle for me and when I finish, it will give me a great sense of accomplishment.

I’ve been in my current job about 8 months now, and it’s going very well. I love the work I do, I like my co-workers and the location is great, which is a bonus. I’m not making quite as much money as I’d like, but I’ll be up for a raise around the beginning of the year.

In the mean time, I decided to get a shitty part-time job for a while, and I went down to a local gas station/convenience store and took a position as a clerk. I swear it was like living in Kevin Smith’s movie, Clerks, except without the witty co-workers and absent boss. Working at this place SUCKED. I worked there for a grand total of three weeks, which included about 5 or 6 shifts. Not fun. The other employees were obnoxious, the boss was a rude jerk and the customers treated me like I was a total moron. It was definitely not for me, so I quit.

I just had an interview for another shitty part-time job at yet another Clerks-esque store - a video store. I think I’ll get the job, but who knows how long that will last. I need a little extra money but I’m not sure it will be worth the long hours and lost sleep and school time. We’ll see how it goes.

Other than the trip to Missouri to see my nephew and family, I haven’t done too many exciting things this summer. I’ve been hanging with my girls and I did get to catch a Brewers game. I’m looking forward to hanging out with friends for the long holiday/birthday weekend coming up. I’ll turn the big 33 on Monday, so another year has gone and I’m moving into my mid-30’s. Man that sounds depressing.

So that’s it for a little update on me. Later!

His name is Caleb! He was born Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 10:17 am. He weighed in a 7 pounds, 11 ounces and was 19 inches long. He’s perfectly healthy and both he and Marcy are doing great and got home from the hospital on Friday.

This is the most exciting thing to happen to our family since Alex and Marcy got married almost five years ago. I haven’t been able to see him in person or hold him yet, but I’m taking the trip down to Missouri this weekend to spend some time with my sweet nephew.

He looks pretty much like any other newborn, but I can already tell he has my brother’s nose. My mom said he has pretty big feet, so he will probably grow up to be really tall like his daddy Alex who is 6″ 4′ tall.

Oooooh I just can’t wait to get that baby in my arms!!! It has sucked being so far away during all the excitement. I’ve been on the phone with either Alex, Marcy or my mom a couple times a day ever since Marcy went into labor early Thursday morning. I wish I was there right now!! Next weekend is going to be a blast. I can’t wait to hold him and kiss him and love on him. It’s still kind of surreal to me that my brother is now a father and that I am officially Auntie Molly. My ex-husband had a bunch of nieces and nephews, but I wasn’t with him long enough for them to get to know me or feel comfortable calling me Aunt Molly. But Caleb is my flesh and blood nephew and I want to make sure that even though I’m far away, he knows his Auntie Molly loves him with all her heart.

The addition of Caleb to our family is just going to make everything so much more fun. As you guys probably know, I’m not a major fan of Christmas and I don’t really look forward to it. But this year, everything is changed. Even though he won’t be old enough to really do anything at Christmas, it will still be so much more fun to share Caleb’s first Christmas and to have him there at our family celebration.

I haven’t even met him yet, but I already love this baby so much. I can’t wait till next weekend when I finally get to meet him in person. This is the gift I’m going to give him when I get there. It’s obviously going to say “Aunt Molly” and I think it will be so funny.

I’ve been thinking about old friends lately. 2007 marks the 15th year since I graduated from high school, and some people from my class are planning a reunion. I never thought I’d be one of those people who got all gun ho about a high school reunion, but the more I think about it, the more I am looking forward to it. It just so happens that the reunion is being planned for the weekend after my little nephew is going to be born, so I’m really hoping I can go back to Missouri to meet my nephew, then attend the reunion all in the same trip. I have told Marcy, my sis-in-law, of this plan and politely asked her to make sure that Connor is going to be born on time - HA! She said she’d see what she could do.

So today I was farting around on Myspace, looking at the list of people who went to my high school and trying to see if I knew any of them. I happened to run across the profile of someone who I have been trying to find for a couple of years - my old friend Dani who was my co-star in Dogma. I lost touch with her after I moved to Wisconsin, and I’ve tried to find her a couple of times. I sent her a message on Myspace, but then I got impatient and decided to try and find her phone number. I did a white pages search and found what I thought was her mother’s phone number, so I called it. I ended up getting her son, who gave me her cell number. I called it and she actually answered!! She was happy to hear from me and said she’d been trying to find me for about a year. She happened to be at an auction when I called, so she said she’d call me back when she got out of there. I’m looking forward to catching up with her and seeing if she is coming to the reunion.

I think this reunion is going to be a lot of fun. Besides myself and hopefully Dani, I know of at least 3 other girls who were in my little group of friends who are going to be there. It’s going to be a great time seeing all of them again. I’m not really sure of what to expect as far as the reunion itself goes - I don’t know if there is going to be some kind of program, or a dance or what. I don’t really care as long as I get to have dinner and drinks with my little group. I’m sure we’ll find something to keep us occupied.