Is it just me or when you purchase a bag of chips at the store do you get at least half a bag of just air? I mean there are some chips down at the bottom of the bag somewhere but when you open the bag you get that little “poof” sound as the smell of your particular chip flavor rushes out of the bag. And if you like salt and vinegar that rush of air might even sting your eyes or burn your nose with it’s force. Really, these folks could make the bags smaller (save the material) and fill the entire bag with chips, then charge me less and we’ll all save. The tiny bags of chips at the HEB that are like $.50 have like three chips in there!!! That said my current fav bag of chips are Mrs. VIckie’s Japaleno chips!

I’ve been pretty absent in posting for the last week. Mostly because I’ve been working on a “Flip That House” type of project. Mostly just remodeling a room, but I’ve been coming home from work and spending 2-3 hours each night, painting, tearing out carpet, etc. I haven’t even brought my computer home at night. On the nights I’ve been painting I’ve had a window open with a fan pulling the fumes out of the room (so I don’t suffer from some sort of poisoning) and music piping into two small speakers from my phone. So I’m painting away with the roller, standing on a ladder singing, concentrating on what I’m doing oblivious to anything else. Big C walks up to the open window and I quote “Hey C, phone’s for you” but he startled the heck out of me and all I could do was let rip a girly scream, which in turn made him scream and claim that I scared him so bad he may have “peed a little”. After taking the phone call I spent the next hour giggling at making my big, strong husband scream like a girl. He’ll probably tickle me without mercy for this blog post. So it just goes to show you, don’t scare me I’m might scare the pee out of you.

I finished the book “The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers” and it was great. I would highly recommend it to anyone, Christian or not. It’s filled with wonderful reminders to slow down and that the mantra of treat your neighbor like yourself is really what we all need. That being said I’ll try a new weekly feature - quote of the week. Without further ado here it is -

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
~ St. Thomas Aquinas

Z Man is a dreamer. I don’t necessarily mean a day dreamer either. He has dreams and sometimes what he calls nightmares, he’s gone so far as to acquire a real Indian dream catcher when we were on our spring break trip in New Mexico. I even helped him hang it above his bed. Most of the time I don’t understand his dream sequences when he tries to relay them to me. However, yesterday mornings bad dream almost left me in stitches. He began like this:

“Mom, I had a bad dream. In it this alien was chasing us but he would go back to his home if we could just find him a chilli dog.” At that statement I about lost it, I’m giggling as I write it. He has a very serious look on his face the whole time. “But I couldn’t find him a chilli dog anywhere in this town so I had to convince him to leave us alone and go back to his home planet just by being nice to him.” I was really at a loss at this time, then he added “Mom do you have any idea where to get a chilli dog in this town?” “Yeah buddy, I’m pretty sure you could try the DQ or Sonic.” “Awww man mom, I wish I’d have thought about that last night when the hungry alien just wanted a chilli dog.”

Oh man, the phrase “chilli dog” now just sends me off into a fit of laughter.

I’ve always wanted to set up certain weekly or monthly postings like book of the month or wine of the month type things. I am so undependable on my blog lately I haven’t taken the time to implement any of this. But since I am working late today and have already fed the boys their dinner now is as good of a time as any. I’ll start with books first. Keep your mind sharp and learn a thing or two maybe, or just entertain yourself. Yesterday I found a book in the clearance area of Hastings called “The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers“. I picked it up and decided it looked interesting enough for the $6 price tag. It was written by Amy Hollingsworth who had a friendship and correspondence with Fred Rogers until his death in 2003. I’m only about 20 pages into the book and it’s absolutely wonderful. Most of America grew up with Mister Rogers Neighborhood, we remember him changing into his sweater and sneakers, Trolley and the land of make believe. I think even folks who have no religious or spiritual beliefs could benefit from and enjoy this book. I certainly recommend it and as soon as I finish I’ll do a better review on it.

All who know me know I border on mild geekiness. It’s not my fault really. Some really nice undergraduate adviser in the computer science department convinced me that my high math scores would make a BS in CS a piece of cake. Man what a good liar he was, although I didn’t tell him such when I saw him at a local beer shop/gas station a few months ago. What, I was getting gas there, I swear. So I changed my major to Computer Science and no one told me how hard Calculus was, never mind the imaginary math. I am pretty sure someone who sounded smart just made that stuff up. Or more like stole the line from Toy Story “to infinity and beyond…”

Anyways…. on to why I have buyers remorse. Ever make a purchase and then have a stomach ache for a day because you aren’t sure you really wanted to spend that much money on something? That’s what I am suffering from today. I bought my first real notebook when I went back to school after having Zach, at the time I paid about $1000 for it and it was top of the line. She has served me well and I’ve only had to do minor repairs to it. Lately she’s been a bit more ill than usual and a little on the flaky side. I depend on her so much for work I really need error free performance so I’ve done the unthinkable.

I’ve ordered myself a new notebook. A DELL to be exact. I’ve always been keen on Toshibas. They are reliable and hearty but my decision came to a Dell because I’ve been consulting on so many for customers lately and the specifications on it were really good, especially for the price. But there is nothing like cleaning out an account to purchase a piece of hardware. I’m a firm believer in you get what you pay for though. My girl has served me well but soon you’ll see me toting one of these around -

and hopefully this stomach ache will go away soon! Maybe the red case will even improve my productivity. Hah, not. That will increase in about three weeks, when the wild monkey boys go back to school. The countdown is on!