Five-Year-Old Cheesecake

I made a box of no-bake cheesecake for Ray today that expired in 2003. Yep, you read that right! I inherited the cheesecake when I married Ray, along with a lot of other expired foodstuffs. Most of it was tossed shortly after I moved in, but the cheesecake stayed. You see, Ray is not afraid of expired goods - not even if they've been expired for five years.

Yes, Ray got fair warning of how long the cheesecake has been expired. He happily ate it anyway. So far, he is not dead or sick.

Anyway, it was my birthday last week, and I wanted to show off my awesome birthday present:

Don't know what it is? Well, let's take a look inside:

A sewing machine! Ray's mom loves old sewing machines, so when I asked Ray for one, I knew I'd end up with a classic. It's really heavy, but it works great! Definitely quality. Isn't the carrying case awesome?!? Thanks, Gimpy :)

Archie, The Three-Legged Cat

I mentioned my parents' cat, Archie, in my last post. Here he is in his Christmas finery :) The missing leg would be in the back on top. He gets around really well. Missing a leg doesn't seem to bother him at all!

Funny People

I will be the first to admit that I'm not really funny. I'm sure that's evident from reading my blog. Informative, maybe, but it's definitely not funny. I do know some funny people, though. I'm even related to a few :)

My husband, Ray, has a pretty dry sense of humor that really cracks me up. He's especially good at writing zingers in emails. Ray sent out one of these emails recently.

My immediate family (parents and siblings) picks names for Christmas. Before picking names, we each write a few ideas of things we might like for Christmas. These lists then go into a bucket and that's how we pick names. We do this on Thanksgiving Day every year and then my mom spends from Thanksgiving until Christmas trying to figure out who has which name.

Recently, my mom sent a silly email out saying that she knew which name everyone in the family has. In response, Ray sent a "picture" of his person's list, to show that Mom had guessed incorrectly. This is what Ray sent:


To explain, my parents have this really cute cat. I wish I had a picture of him, I would have posted it. At any rate, the cat's name is Archie and he's an indoor/outdoor cat. This past spring, Archie showed up one morning with a broken leg. My mom took him to the vet and they said that they couldn't fix the leg. The only thing they could do was to amputate it.

I grew up on a hobby farm, so usually a case like this would have resulted in the cat being put to sleep. My mom had grown really fond of Archie, though, so she had the vet amputate Archie's broken leg. Thus, a new leg is the only thing on Archie's Christmas list this year!


To continue with the funny people theme, I started reading a cute blog recently. It's just called Big Mama and chronicles the life of a wife and mother in Texas. How can you not love reading a blog by someone who can come up with the sentence "She rolled out the dough with the grace and precision of a monkey after too many shots of tequila."?! Too funny :)

Orthodontic Update: Bad News Bears

I had my most recent orthodontist appointment at the beginning of December. I got bands around my last molars on the bottom (fun times).

At the end of the appointment, I asked Dr. Olsen where we were in the process and what he is currently doing with my teeth. He said he's currently turning and lining teeth up. After that, I will get new impressions done (more fun times), and then he'll see if my teeth are lined up properly for the surgery... yeah, the surgery. Dr. Olsen said that it's currently not looking like he'll be able to get my teeth where they are supposed to be without the surgery. Needless to say, I was pretty bummed.

It took me a day to recover from that news, but I'm ok with it now. At this point, I just want to hurry along with things and get the surgery done as soon as my teeth are ready. Let's get this over with already! I'm guessing it still won't be until Fall 2009, but I didn't ask (I think Dr. Olsen is sick of all of my questions!).

*sigh*

ps- How weird is it that I'm trying to look at the surgery positively by thinking that it will be an easy way to lose some weight??? (I'll be on a liquid diet for a couple of weeks after the surgery)

The Schommagel's

Last weekend, I attended my last wedding of 2008. This year has been a busy wedding year for Ray and I. We were invited to at least ten weddings and attended seven, one of which was in Arizona. I stood up in two weddings, and Ray was an usher in one.

Last weekend's wedding was one of the ones that I stood up in. There are three of us girls that went to high school together, Julie, Leah, and I. Julie got married in 2005 and Leah and I stood up in her wedding. Then, I got married last July and had Julie and Leah standing up in my wedding. This past weekend was Leah's wedding, and (of course) Julie and I stood up. Pretty cool!

I don't have a picture of the bride and groom (yet), but I do have one of the beautiful bride before the ceremony:

Me, Leah, Julie

Also, Leah was hoping that her thank-you gift to me would make it into my blog. I'm very happy to oblige since my gift was pretty awesome:


The slippers and socks are from The North Face, where Leah works. The slippers are made of down, and I have been wearing them constantly since I got them. They are really warm and comfy, I didn't even want to take them off long enough to take the picture of them! I don't think I'll ever be able to wear $5 Walmart slippers again :) The bag is also from The North Face and all of the little goodies were inside, a kind of "emergency" bag for the wedding day. Very fun!

By the way, the title of this post is something that Leah made up. Her husband, Craig's last name is Schommer and Leah's last name was Pagel, so before they were married, Leah smooshed their last names together and they called themselves the Schommagels. Pretty cute, huh? Now, of course, they are Craig and Leah Schommer! Congrats, guys :)

Memoir of a Carwash Manager

My brother Neil (the one who recently got married) works as a manager at a local full-service carwash. As manager, he is in charge of the hiring and firing and deals with some interesting people. Here is a story he recently shared with the family:

The following is a completely true story. Liz found it to be very funny so I thought I would see what the rest of you thought. I'm thinking of writing a book. Ok, not really. But I could because things like this happen to me quite regularly.

I employ any where between 30 and 45 employees depending on the time of year. On average I’ve hired 120 people every calendar year over the last three years. I have to increase our staff in the fall to accommodate an increase in volume. Since we have a short period of time to hire a good amount of people, we end up just about hiring anyone. I’m telling you this to justify to myself that it's not my fault that I am surrounded by complete idiots.

On a cold fall morning I had an individual come in to fill out his new hire paper work. He was interviewed by my assistant the day before so this was the first time I was blessed by his presence. I was not surprised by his appearance though. He was 6’2” and maybe 250 lbs. Caucasian. Blonde hair and in his mid twenties. The sides of his head were shaved down to his skin and the long hair on top flowed over his sides and down to his shoulders, a style that was probably cool in the mid 90’s. He had one eye that shot off to his left and was missing a tooth in front of his “grill”. I use the word grill because I assume that is the word he would use to describe it. I had him fill out his W-4, I-9 and other basic paper work, not an easy task as I have found out in time here. He forgot to write his name. His name was James. I figured it would just be easier to fill it out myself. I started to write his name down and asked him if he had a nickname, as James sounds kind of stupid in my opinion.

“Eclipse” he responded. I stopped writing mid word and just sat in my chair for what felt like an hour, more likely it was several seconds.

“What?”

“Yeah, Eclipse. All my friends call me Eclipse."

I continued to sit silently staring at him. I assume he must have thought that I was unsure how to spell it on his W-4 because he stood up, turned, and lifted the hair off the back of his head. Right there, clear as day, tattooed across the back of his head was the name “all his friends call him.” I am glad he showed it to me because I would have made an ass out of myself by spelling it wrong. Of course he spelt it E-K-L-Y-P-S-E. He turned back around seeming very pleased that he was able to settle this miss understanding.

“I was looking for something more along the lines of Jim or Jimmy.” I said with a bit of a smirk.

“No, You can just call me EKLYPSE.”

I took a deep breath, stared him in the one eye that was pointed in my direction and said, “There is no way I’m going to call you EKLYPSE.”

We both sat there silently while I filled out the information he was too stupid to do himself, like his name and address.

Finally I asked. “How did you get the name EKLYPSE?”

He quickly replied with a tone as if it was obvious and I was the idiot, “Well I just came up with it one day.”

After he left I just sat in my office and stared with the light turned off looking into the vast darkness of my meaningless job.

Living Room Remodel

Ray and I have been working on our living room all summer. Ray spent many hours repairing a ton of cracks in our walls and ceilings. That was, by far, the most time-intensive part of this project. My mom helped out a lot once we got to the painting stage. We have a huge living room, so we went through a lot of paint!

The living room is more or less done now (I just have a grate and some shelves to paint, yet... and pictures to decide on and put up). I figured it's time for some before-and-after pictures!!!

Before:

My mom came up with the idea to do an accent wall, and after going back and forth on it for awhile, Ray and I decided to go ahead with the idea and make these two walls the "accent" walls.



We have "blonde" woodwork that definitely has a yellow tone to it. The walls AND the carpet in the living room also had a yellow tone, so everything just kind of washed out. On top of that, the carpet was worn and the padding underneath was almost non-existent. It was time for an update!


After:

We love how the accent walls turned out! As an added plus, our tv is here, so it makes for a good dark movie-watching background. I still have to find something really cool to put on the wall over the fireplace. Ideas, anyone???


The new color in the living room is a very light gray, with the carpet also having a light gray tint. This really dresses up the woodwork! The room looks a lot more elegant, and the carpet actually has padding under it!

Ray and I are both very happy with how the living room turned out, and even happier that it's over!!! We don't plan on repainting this monstrous room again for a long time :) Ray is especially excited to get back to the bathroom project I dragged him away from. It's quite awhile off yet, but those before-and-after pictures will be really awesome!