What a nice weekend!!  I’ve always loved the Fourth of July and even though B and I didn’t wind up going to any cookouts, we had a great night at my apartment, sitting on my balconey, watching fireworks a little ways in the distance.  My complex is very close to some townhouses and residential neighborhoods, so there were a bunch going off at once.  B is from Connecticut where fireworks are illegal (I think?) so he wasn’t used to fireworks that were unassociated with a public show.  We decided not to drive out to a public show because it was somewhat rainy, so we saved gas and any expense to get in (though the nearly all are free to get into, you can get charged for parking or any food you may want to buy).

We also rented a couple movies at the Redbox at the Giant close to my apartment.  I looked online and got codes, so got the movies for free.  Only we didn’t return them on time, so I still had to pay a dollar (plus tax) for each one.  B and I have trouble agreeing on movies, so we ended up with The Comebacks and P.S. I Love You.  He lucked out and didn’t have to watch the chick flick with me; I watched it yesterday after he left and cried buckets.  It still makes me want to cry right now when I think about it (It’s soooo good, though!!).

Saturday was my cousin’s wedding, and we got there late.  It was all my fault.  And when we sat down, I was under a drip (we were outside and it had rained earlier) that kept hitting my right shoulder every thirty seconds or so.  After coming in late, there was no way I was going to draw MORE attention to myself by trying to scoot my chair and B’s, so I just dabbed at it with a tissue that my dad handed to me.  I also had to deal with him laughing too loudly right behind me.

It was a lovely ceremony and a fun reception for such a small wedding.  I’d estimate that there were fewer than forty people altogether, and only about four or five single ladies which made it easy as pie for me to CATCH THE BOUQUET!!!  This is the second time I’ve caught one, and here’s what’s funny:  both times the bride threw it too high the first time, it hit the ceiling, I picked it up and handed it BACK to the bride to throw again, and THEN caught it.  That first wedding, though, a year ago, has already ended in divorce.  I hope that’s not an omen for my cousin.  I hope that it’s not an omen for ME, either!!  B  said that if I want him to propose, I have to get the hat trick.  I don’t think those are the rules.

On the way home, we filled up on gas at $3.97!!  Cool!

On Monday I almost won $1000.  I was listening to WMZQ, the country music station, when I heard the Cash Cow moo.  On my third try I heard it ring, only to hear a computerized voice say, “Caller Eight!”  They were looking for caller nine.  Drat.

I got a raise today!  It’s not very much because I’ve only been working here 6 1/2 months, but 2.89% is better than nothing.  Once my 3% contribution to my 401K and taxes are taken out, it’s less than $37/paycheck, but that’s still helpful, especially since I’ve decided to continue living by myself.

And Happy Independence Day to all!  This is a time not only to enjoy fireworks and cookouts, but to remember what our founding fathers wanted for this country when they signed the Declaration of Independence 232 years ago.  They wanted freedom for themselves and for all the Americans later to be born.  Unfortunately, we do not have the kind of freedom that they originally planned and we continue to have to fight for what should be ours in the first place.  I’ll get off my soapbox to end with a reminder to have  a safe, three-day weekend, and thank any soldiers that you see.

A good friend of mine, a Psychology grad student, e-mailed myself and our friends last night to ask for three things that we’ve struggled with since graduation.  I didn’t have to spend much time thinking about it, so perhaps everything I said wasn’t worded well, but I thought that I’d share it with those of you who read this blog:

I’ve decided that I need to suck it up and stop complaining that I’m busy.  Last year this time I had just gotten out of a job that I didn’t like, that consumed what should have been my free time and left me somewhat depressed because of my failure to be awesome.  My personal life was great when I had time to hang out with people…in fact, it was the highlight of my life.  Anything that made me forget about my job was awesome.

Now I really like my job.  If I go over my forty hours a week, it’s not by more than an hour and a half and that’s usually just because I get to work a little early.  I’ve never been asked to stay late, though I’ve volunteered to do it a couple times to make sure something got done that otherwise might not have been, which is great because I’m salaried and the extra hours don’t help me monetarily.  One of the things that I love about my job is that all the work has to be done at the office…so once I walk out the door, I don’t have to think about work until I walk back in the next morning.  This is unlike teaching which consumes your every waking moment.

So I don’t have many work stresses.  My relationship with B is wonderful, though I’d like things to move forward a little faster.  I don’t need to be married yet, but I’d at least like to get engaged so that I can start the long process of wedding planning…this is probably also stemming from most of my friends getting married.  Three weddings this summer, and another couple just got engaged last week and are getting hitched in April.  The boyfriend of a girlfriend of mine already has a ring (and she knows it) though he hasn’t proposed yet.  Another friend is moving in with her boyfriend soon.

We’re young yet, B and I, so it isn’t a problem that we’re not already settled.  He just moved out of his parents’ house in January, so he’s not in a hurry to end his bachelorhood and I can’t blame him.  I’ve enjoyed living alone for the past ten months (about) and being out of my parents’ house for nearly two years.  It’s just part of my nature to want to get where I’m going as quickly as possible…that’s why I speed in my 4Runner constantly.  If you’re not moving, you’re standing still and I have to remind myself all the time that it’s not a bad thing, especially when we’re so happy.

So work and family and B are awesome.  My friends are I are pretty good, given how many invitations I’m getting to things, and I’m going to stop complaining about it.  I’m glad that I have so many people in my life who want me around.  Life is great overall, and I just need to relax and enjoy it for what it is.

The weekend is over!  I can look at it one of two ways; either I’m happy that it’s over (so I can relax) or I’m sad that it wasn’t much longer (so I could’ve had time to relax).

I’m a fairly lazy, noncommital kind of gal.  I’m committed to my boyfriend, but what I mean is that I hate committing to plans far in advance.  This drives people nuts when they ask me to do something and I give a ‘maybe’.  It’s not that I’m necessarily looking for something better to do than what they’ve asked, it’s that I hate saying ‘yes’ and then having to say ‘actually, no’ because something else came up that I couldn’t get out of.

So imagine my surprise (and chagrin?) when my calendar started filling up to bursting.  Part of it’s being in a relationship; the weekends that aren’t taken up by my friends and family are taken up by B’s friends and family.  Two weekends this summer are devoted to his family (not a lot, nor too much), we have two weddings (my cousin and my college friend), and several weekends are taken up by me going to the beach.  We also might have a third wedding, but I’m supposed to be at the beach, he’s supposed to be in New England for a family reunion, and I was really hoping that I wasn’t invited to this wedding until I received an invitation to a bridal shower.  Frick.

I’m no longer being invited to things that I can easily blow off, or things that don’t have a set day (”Let’s get a drink sometime”).  I’m being invited to weddings, bachelorette parties, graduation parties, 4th of July cookouts, birthday parties, bridal showers, music video premieres, and reunions.  This does not count my two (separate) weeks at the beach with my family.

So my summer is practically over already.  After that is football season.  I already have a schedule made for that, and it looks like I’m busy every Sunday through the Super Bowl.  Try me again sometime in February.

I’ve been pretty good about not buying random extra things for myself for several months.  My mom bought me a bunch of clothes (with Dad’s money) back at the beginning of May, so I haven’t felt the need to spend.

Until the last couple of weeks.  I finally got my free new phone from Verizon, an LG Black Cherry, but they know what they’re doing with the extras.  I bought three new ringtones (my last phone had one that I purchased), signed up for the monthly insurance (even though I’ve had a cell phone in one form or another for over five years and never needed a replacement, something niggled at me that I should be safer than sorrier), and…alas…signed up for the VZ Navigator for $9.99/mo.

I love it.  Love, love, love it.  I’ve been wanting a gps for a long time because I am AWFUL when it comes to following directions.  I get lost constantly; I have zero sense of direction.  I don’t have the money to spend on a normal gps system at all, even though I wouldn’t have the monthly payments, and I decided that I NEEDED this service immediately over the weekend when B and I were stuck in traffic in Connecticut on our way back from spending time with his family.  It was fine except that B hated the gps voice and made me turn it off after yelling at me (which he NEVER does) when I didn’t want to.  We took the route he wanted and he groaned when we saw more traffic.  I decided not to say, “Oh, if only we had a device that would have warned us about the traffic and taken us another way,” but I wanted to.  Shortly after B apologized nicely for yelling and I told him what I’d wanted to say–he said that it was a good thing that I didn’t then, but it was funny now.

Anyway.  I’m spending a lot on those unnecessary things and now I have a new expense.  The girls are dressing up for the bachelorette party on Saturday night and I had no idea what to wear!  I gchatted my pal, L, a party gal and asked her what I should wear.  She instructed me to go to Forever 21 and get a summer dress for $20, or to go to her closet because she has 80 of them (probably not a huge exaggeration).  She and I are not the same size, or even close enough to it for me to borrow her stuff, so I’m going to go to Forever 21 after work and see if I can find anything that works with what dressy shoes I have currently.

So, another expense.  I saw some dresses that I liked on the website, and I hope that they’re in the store in my size when I go there…the most expensive was less than $25, so I don’t mind too much the spending.  I have two weddings to go to in August and I bet I can wear the dress to the one not associated with this bachelorette party, as well as to Mass throughout the summer, and to the beach in July/August.

*Crossing fingers that I find something I like!*

I tested negative for everything, so no strep and no mono!  The antibiotics are slowly bringing down the swelling of my throat glands, so I feel just fine.  Although it might not be from the antibiotics, it could just be time in general.

I’m just wondering what got me sick in the first place!  Was it something I could have planned against?  Did I need to go to the doctor or receive antibiotics?  Did I need to shell out $45  for no reason?

The world may never know.

Ten points to anyone who catches the title reference.

My cousin is getting married on July 5th which is great.  She’s three years older than me and we get along very well when we see each other, which isn’t often since we have our own lives and she lives about an hour from me.  Her bachelorette party will be this Saturday night in DC and I’m sort of ambivalent about going.

I WANT to hang out with her for sure.  Her younger sister, three years younger than me, is her maid of honor and planning this thing.  She and I are less close.  And since she wasn’t at the bride’s Christmas party in December, I haven’t seen her since…gosh, for 2-3 years.

Anyway, this bachelorette party.  The plan is to meet at a hotel at 6pm and get on a Girls’ Night Out bus at 8:30.  Then we’ll go out to clubs and things and get back to the hotel at 3am.  The snag in these plans for me (besides that I can barely keep my eyes open at 12, nevertheless 3am!) is at 7pm there will be a “male dancer”.  Seriously?  Do women really still do this?  Why?  What is hot or sexy about a man who is willing to share his wares with a bunch of strangers?  Does he enjoy doing this?  Does he respect himself?  Does he brag about his awesome job to his parents, grandparents, etc.?

Anyway, I would be furious with B if he attended something where there’d be a female dancer because I do consider it to be a form of cheating, so I’m not going to attend that part of the “entertainment”.  Even if I didn’t mind a g-stringed guy shaking his thing in my face, it is absoluting revolting to me to stick my hard-earned dollars down his underwear.  I’m already going to be shelling out my share for the night AND probably having drinks in DC (expensive!!!) and I don’t have any to spare for…that.

To end, I’ll say that I have no problem with strippers in general.  If people make a choice to do it, that’s their business and up to them.  I do think it’s sad when men and women in committed relationships think it’s fun to stick their hands in another person’s underwear (best case scenario), but if the significant other is fine with it, so am I.  B and I talked long ago about how much it would upset me if he went to a strip club or a bachelor party with something like that and he confirmed that he wouldn’t really like it if I was the one seeing the entertainment, so I think that we’re good there.

He’s also insisted that he will meet me in DC when I’m ready to go home so that I won’t have to ride the Metro alone.  Part of me wants to insist right back that I’ll be fine, but the bigger part of me recognizes that this is much safer, if inconvenient to him, and I love him for looking out for me.

So I’ve had a sore throat for the past few days, but nothing major.  Hurts when I swallow and my throat glands are swollen.  Yesterday I hit a CVS by my apartment and called my parents to ask what OTC medicine I should get for my throat since I didn’t (and still don’t) have any other cold/flu/plague symptoms.  Both insisted that I should see a doctor in case it was strep.

“Is strep throat something that I can just wait out?” I asked my mom.  “I mean, won’t it go away eventually?”

She disabused me of this notion, so I went home and called my HMO to see what they had to say.  What they had to say was that I should come in and get a strep test.  Of course the closest after hours center was in Falls Church, about 25 miles away and much closer to where I work than where I live.  I briefly considered scheduling an appointment for this afternoon, but remembered in time that I’m having dinner with a friend and can’t be in two places at once.  So I hied myself over to Kaiser Permanente and got my throat culture done at about 7pm.  My appointment time was 7:50, but I was just hoping to get into a room by 8:20…I figured that was reasonable.

It was.  I got into a room at about 8:15, thankful that maybe I’d get home at a reasonable time.  Except the doctor didn’t come in until nearly 8:45.  I always thought that ten minutes was long, but this was ridiculous.  I found out that my strep test was negative (yay!), but that I could have mono (boo!).  I told her that I had it two years ago, but she told me that people can get it more than once (boo! hiss!).

So off I went back to the lab where they took out my blood and tested it for I don’t know what and mono.  Then I went back to wait for another hour until those came though, only to find that there’s nothing wrong with me.  They think.  The mono test won’t be ready until tomorrow, but as of last night the mononucleides (sp?) were not elevated at all.  I also don’t FEEL like I have mono.  When I had it before, I was SICK and had to take five weeks off from student teaching and went to the ER three times.  I couldn’t have alcohol for nearly three months (due to my enlarged liver), but that actually didn’t bother me because I didn’t feel like drinking or eating anything.

So if I have to have it this time, I wouldn’t mind the no appetite thing if I can do without the exhaustion.  *Crosses fingers*

I paid $30 for my copay and $15 for an antibiotic to relieve the swelling of my glands.  So $45+gas.  And I didn’t get home until after 11:30, making last night the third in a row that I’ve gotten less than five hours sleep.  Crap.

Please read “Tear Down That Wall” by Michael Reagan.  Mr. Reagan, son of President Ronald Reagan, discusses what should be done about our gas crisis, namely allowing drilling in United States territory where it isn’t presently allowed.

I know that many who might read this completely accept the global warming myth, despite the earth’s temperature actually getting colder each year for the past ten years or so.  Unfortunately, the scientists that speak out against global warming alarmists are largely ignored by the media which dictates what average Americans know about the world.  As a bonus, please read “Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas”, John Coleman’s Comments Before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce.  The creator of the Weather Channel is outspoken and makes much sense.

If we are allowed to drill in Alaska and other places in our own country, we won’t receive gas for another, what, 10-15 years?  That’s absolutely true.  Our economy is heading for a recession; unemployment rates are going up.  One way to combat this is to open more refineries, allow more drilling, and create more jobs.  Maybe it won’t help much and maybe it won’t help for a dozen years or more, but we have to do something now so that our economy isn’t completely crippled by proposed cap and trade laws and astronomical gas prices.

If you feel like I do, please visit AmericanSolutions.com and sign the “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” petition.  If you completely disagree with me, I don’t really care.  Simply disregard the post.  I’m not here to argue, but to give my opinion.