Can the Browns play on Monday night football every week?  

Please don't let this be another cruel joke on all the fickle, yet adoring Browns fans.

Kthnx

Angela

Your result for The Brutally Honest Personality Test...

Pollyanna- INFP

47% Extraversion, 80% Intuition, 33% Thinking, 20% Judging

Take The Brutally Honest Personality Test at HelloQuizzy

He's sitting in front of the TV, what is on the screen?
the Cleveland Browns or Nascar, Myth Busters or Family Guy

You're out to eat; what kind of dressing does he get on his salad?
Ceasar. 

What's one food he doesn't like?
strawberries or hard boiled eggs

You go out to the bar. What does he order?
Rum and Coke

Where did he go to high school?
McComb

What size shoe does he wear?
13

If he was to collect anything, what would it be?
Volkswagens - in any size or shape, running or not

What is his favorite type of sandwich?
One that he didn't make himself - something grilled/toasted with swiss cheese and peppers and spicy meats

What would he eat every day if he could?
This one is actually kind of hard.  He's kind of a foodie so he likes variety.  Maybe gyros? 

What is his favorite cereal?
Any of the maple brown sugar crunchy varieties

What would he never wear?
corduroy

What is his favorite sports team?
The Browns

Who will he vote for?
Senator Obama

Who is his best friend?
The dogs with me as a close second :)

What is something you do that he wishes you wouldn't do?
Make stunningly accurate guesses on Christmas/birthday/anniversary gifts.

How many states has he lived in?
Just one - Ohio.

What is his heritage?
German and Abominable Snowman/Bigfoot

You bake him a cake for his birthday; what kind of cake?
Pineapple Upside Down

Did he play sports in high school?
Football and track

What could he spend hours doing?
Reading Volkswagen magazines from the 80s to present, playing Madden, piddling in the garage

LOL!

21 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Ahhhh Monday morning.  I have a fresh to-do list and a staggering plan of work for the week so what am I doing pretty much first thing?  Posting here.  Yes, that's right :)  I'm a model employee.  

I never got around to doing an update from last weekend but pretty much it was a lot of being lazy bracketed by a lot of eating.  We had family gatherings on Friday and Sunday and Saturday was just so dismal, cold, gray and wet that I was totally unmotivated to do anything.  We messed around with doing some laundry and cleaning in the morning but by the middle of the afternoon I just quit.  I went upstairs and found Dave and told him "I am quitting today" and that I was going to go to the movie rental place and rent The Jerk.  And that I was going to sit on the couch in a blanket, quietly scold the weather for continuing to be such a pain and watch The Jerk.  So that's what we did.  We also rented Stranger than Fiction (which I thought was great) and we watched them pretty much back to back.  I only got off the couch to eat.  Again.  And it was fabulous!  I usually feel a little guilty if being lazy on the weekends but, dammit, we needed that.  Plus I needed my rest to be up to dealing with MIL all day on Sunday.  ha!

This Weekend...

was a strange mix of days.  I haven't posted about it here before but Dave's cluster of radio stations is one of the small market groups being spun off as his parent company is going private.  He and the other employees are not too stressed about it I guess because this is pretty common in his business.  But, his general manager is making everyone crazy.  I should preface this with the fact that she is a great person but is very under qualified for her job.  She maintains very few of the managerial skills needed for her kind of position and she struggles with hiding the fact that she doesn't know what she's doing and getting angry when people (intentionally or not) uncover her inadequacies.  So she's probably reasonably more worried about losing her job because she should never have had it in the first place.  And she's making everyone else's lives a nightmare in the process.  
On Friday Dave came home from work and I went over to him to give him a hug and was stunned because he had clearly been drinking.  Apparently he and the others in the building (this is like 20 people) were so fed up on Friday because of something she did that was about 1 straw beyond The Last Straw.  In response they sent a few people out to get some beer and other festivious drinks and sat around for the last couple hours of the day kicking back and venting about how out of control the place has gotten (no doubt that they were helping regain control by getting drunk at work! lol).  Normally the place is a pretty laid back  and open environment but highly productive.  So I just cracked up at the thought of them all sitting around drinking at work.  I asked what they would have done if the boss had come in and he said he didn't think she would have bothered them too much - he thinks she knows she has a mutiny brewing.  It's that bad!  So in the spirit of his crappy boss we went out to eat, drank a bottle of wine and went home and polished off another.  We sat around and talked and generally lounged about the house and promptly went to bed full of wine.  We. Are. Awesome.  lol

Saturday Dave needed to go visit a friend of his that has some parts for his newest car restoration project and I was going to ride along and go shopping while they played in the friend's garage.  But I was grouchy because, once again, the weather is acting more like November than April and its really playing on my nerves.  I sort of grumped around an antique store, some furniture stores and Target.  Nothing really jumped out at me so I mooched some free couch space off a bookstore and paged through some home decorating magazines until Dave was done.  That night went to see my two younger cousins perform in their high school musical which was fun.  They go to the same high school we went to so we always run into random people we once knew when we go to see the cousins perform.  We talked with some old friends and my aunt and uncle and then left the school with the intention of going to see a band we've been wanting to see play.  It was snowing really hard (again) and neither one of us was really in the mood to be out in the snow (noooo...my cute springy shoes!) so we went home and caught a movie on TV.  Nothing exciting but it was nice to stay in again.  

 Weekend summary :  drunk.  highschool.  painting. 

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/News/StudyRevealsOverwhelmingWealthGap.aspx?GT1=8816

I thought this was pretty provocative article especially in light of what we in the US consider wealthy compared to what would be globally wealthy.  $2200 versus a medical emergency, the birth of a child, a job loss, etc is nothing!  And yet, comparatively, it's a heck of a lot more than the other half of the world.  My financial planner croonies would argue that in order to be financially stable we should all really be looking toward that upper %10 number and then retirement accounts!  So not only is being wealthy by global standards not enough, we really need to be in the upper 10% to get by in the US.  Does it really take that much wealth to survive or are we just using those numbers as an excuse for our consumer tendencies?  And even with such advice, I regularly see people who would have to stretch and pinch and do everyting they could to even save $3 a month.  We have a lot of people who fall into the bottom half living right here even with the "wealth line" being so very low. 

I certainly cannot talk badly about saving but this article definitely gives me some food for thought as we finish off our holiday spending and consider giving to various charities at the same time. 

An RSVP!!

So we got our very first RSVP today! Part of me is all giddy inside because it was so fun to get the little bugger in the mail. The other part of me says it really isn't that big of a deal. I have only sent out 1 invitation so far. We went ahead and sent one to our friends who will be in Ecuador for the next 2 months and we wanted to make sure they got it before they left. Both of them are IN the wedding so we knew what the RSVP would be, but STILL! It's fun :)

I'm hooo-oome!

I'm also getting really excited and nervous about moving in to our house. Dave has been living there for a while and I'm gradually piling my stuff in. My lease is officially up August 4th so I have to be in by then. I'm excited to have a place again. Moving and renovating has taken a deep toll on my eating and exercise habits and I'm ready to regain some control over my time and groceries again. I know we'll do OK with the transition (not without bumps, though, I'm sure) but the part that has me nervous is his mom.

Apparently he and his siblings are all in agreement that it is a good idea to not tell FMIL that we're moving in together a whole whopping 2 months before the wedding. She is UBER conservative (it about chokes me on a regular basis) and they all think it's better to leave it on the DL. I refuse to lie to her and think it's stupid to try and hide, not to mention, she's not dumb. She'll figure it out. It's obvious to me why they think it's better to not say anything to her about it but it's also hard to manage for me because my family simply does not operate in this way. Things are how they are - take them or leave them. I'm sure my mom wishes we were waiting until October too but she won't say anything, wishes us the best and respects our choices. FMIL has a long way to go before I'll say that she "respects our choices" Dave is her baby and he does no wrong and so therefore this "bad choice" of ours will most definitely be seen as MY "bad choice" when she finds out. (sigh) Anyway, I'm excited despite her possible objections.

How are we going to manage this ride?

Since our officiant lives in New Orleans, we have more or less been on our own to find some kind of marriage prep course (or whatever it should be called) which we both agreed we would like to take advantage of.  Add into the mix that neither one of us has strong connections to a church where we live and it's taken a while to find a place/priest to work with us.  Luckily I finally found a taker this week but since it has taken so long to get it organized we might end up doing some of the discussions after we're married.  I think this actually makes more sense, or as least as much as doing it all beforehand.  I don't think he's entirely thrilled with our last-minute efforts at roping him into this but we will warp him into loving us with our never ending wit and charm...right?  lol

In the mean time, we have been reading through a couple of books that have been helpful.  I was a bit grumpy about the selection of books that are out there for couples.  They are all "Fix It" books - as in, we have something broken and we need to fix it, which is not how we want to approach our marriage.  A friend turned us on to The Exceptional Seven Percent which we love!  The idea of this book is more along the lines of "you have a good relationship - here are ways to make it even better"  I have really enjoyed talking through it with Dave and can definitely see the challenge that it presents for us and our relationship. 

Plus, this week he got a review copy of a new book called 52 Fights; A Newlywed's Confession.  The author wrote little stories about how she and her husband got through the weeks of their first year of marriage.  I can feel myself already identifying with her and I can imagine that Dave thinks in much the same way as she describes her husband.  So I'm glad we live in a time where there are so many great resources to help us through all this crazy transition and also entertain us at the same time. 

And I'm especially happy that our single existing RSVP is the current placeholder in the book.  :)