They moved my desk today to what is called "the fishbowl".  There are four desks against each wall and one at the end (in the shape of a horseshoe).  I typed in a little diagram below.  Maybe it will turn out.  My desk is highlighted in purple. I am in the middle of the room.  The woman next to me wears really strong perfume.  It is really setting off my allergies.  My head feels like it is going to explode.  This is not good.  sigh. 

 

 

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Quail Cove

Do you know anyone that buys stuff from Quail Cove?  I am thinking about buying whole wheat and grind it myself.  But it still is very expensive... As in $3.75 for a 5 pound bag.  It is cheaper in the store.  It really isn't worth it.  I want cheap whole grain flour!  Any suggestions?

I miss not having NBC.   I think that every year the Olympics take place.  Maybe if I watched them I would not enjoy them as much.  

I am reading several good books at work right now, Goforth of China and Stepping Heavenward are at my desk right now.  They are both really interesting and challenging.  Jonathan Goforth was crazy; I wish I were 1/10 as dependable and persevering as him and his wife.  He gave away over half his missionary salary!

I am teaching ESL for the next few weeks for the beggining class.  Please pray for me (and my students).  Numbers have really been declining recently and I would like at least a few students to teach.  I am actaully pretty excited about getting up in front of people again to teach.  I like teaching.  I haven't taught anything since my Chemistry class ended.   We are going to be talking about money and food.  It should be pretty fun.  Prayer is always appreciated. 

You can also pray as I teach a training class at work for our 20+ engineers and help with 3 other classes for manufacturing.  I am not so keen on teaching them especially as a new employee and on a topic that I am not so sure about.  But God is faithful and He will see me through.   I figure chocolate chip cookies can't hurt my cause either.  ha ha.  So I am bringing those along next Thursday to my meeting.  :)

Thanks!

On the way out to the gym yesterday, I checked the mail. In the mailbox was a box from Amazon.  I hadn't ordered anything, but I thought maybe Jared had ordered something for school.  I handed it to him and he got all excited and told me to close my eyes.  Then he opened the box and handed me the book inside.  It was a German Cookbook!  :) 

Yay!  I have been saying for the past month or so that I really wanted one for my birthday so that I could try a few recipes from Germany.  I never expected him to order it for me.  I was so surprised and happy.  Jared gives some of the best gifts.  It is so much fun to be married to him.  Thank God for Jared and the gift of marriage.  I love sharing my life with him.

For the first time ever, in the history of the company I work for, they closed because of snow! Those crazy New Yorker work through all sorts of snow (except when the city declares state of emergency and doesn't allow people out on the roads). Good thing because our road still hasn't been plowed and is a six inch slab of ice and potholes. Jared head out to shovel out my car and after working on it for half an hour he came back inside the house to take me to work. Thankfully I thought, maybe I should call and see if there is a delay or something (even though they told me that they never close). When I called they said, "first shift is canceled today".

So, on Thursday I had a snow day and so did Jared. He read me Lord of the Rings while I worked on my new quilt and while I cooked (soup and cinnamon swirl bread) and while I hand sewed one of my old quilts. We worked on a puzzle together, played a few board games, and watch a Jeeves and Wooster. It was so great and relaxing. Thank God for a husband who loves me and a day to enjoy being together in the same house.

I do like my job; the days go by very quickly.  It is extremely amusing.  However, it was nice for a day off.  

Oh, and grocery shopping is so much better with Jared!! But Walmart on the other hand is terrible. It is such a mess and nothing was in stock. sigh. It was annoying. Boxes were all over the floor and things were thrown everywhere. They didn't even have green peppers. I wish we had a Super Target. I would totally pay the few extra cents to shop in an environment that was friendly and clean and cheerful.

Mom, where do you buy that awesome stir fry sauce? Is it only sold at Food Lion? And what is it called? I went to Walmart and Super Fresh last night and neither of them had them. :(

1.  I had a great time at my parents house this weekend during the snow.  Friday night we went to the Shelton's to celebrate Pastor Shelton's birthday.  Then we came home and spent the night at our house.  When we woke up we didn't have power so we headed to my parents house because they have a woodstove!!   YAY!  Jared didn't have to work so we all played in the snow all afternoon building an igloo (that never got a roof - ha).  Jared and Luke dug a snow cave that Luke tried to sleep in Saturday night.  Sunday we just hung around the house and took a few walks in the snow.  It was great.   If you ever need a good Bed and Breakfast you can stay at my parents (we have done it the last two weekends and it has been so much fun).  Thanks Mom and Dad.

 

2. I love pita and cream cheese.  I also love english muffins, butter, and honey. 

 

3.  Kickboxing is now offered at nights at the Y!  Yes.  I think I am going to have to go.  I miss kickboxing. 

 

4.  I have decided, yet again, (while at work today) that Delirious is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) Christian band to ever exist.  I am so very thankful for them and for my Dad who shares my love of them.  :)  And for my husband who likes them better than most of my music and will listen to them with me. 

 

5.  I am also thankful for a husband who helps me put away the dishwasher, wash the bathrooms, grocery shop, and vacuum.  I am also glad that he will read to me while I fold clothes and clean out piles of papers from last semester.  I love that he goes to the gym with me and likes my cooking.  Life is more fun with Jared. :D  He makes me laugh and smile so often.   We have so much fun doing the most boring and everyday tasks.  Marriage is great.  Jared and marriage are better than I ever thought possible. 

My job is really funny. It makes me laugh. I enjoy coming in to work each day (not the whole waking up at 5:50 thing, but I have worked out pushing my snooze until 5:55 and still making it to work in plenty of time - ha). The days go by really really fast, which is a good thing because otherwise I don't think I would enjoy my job half as much.

My car has new struts and rotors and brake pads. My Dad is bringing it to me either tonight or tomorrow. I am so excited to drive it again. It is going to be smooth.

I love Jared and being married to him is so much fun!! He makes me laugh all the time and he eats my food.

And in other news, it is snowing outside. I have already taken three walks in the snow. One at morning break and two during lunch time. ha. People must think I am crazy, but I love it so much. :)

Lunch is over, but there is a quick update.

As disruptive as the storm will be in the Midwest and Plains, plan on "no travel" in the Virginias, central and southern Pennsylvania, the Delmarva and much of New Jersey Friday night into Saturday.

Apparently, we have become "the delmarva".  This is funny to be because the va in delmarva stands for Virginia, so why mention it again?

A few shots from life

Photos on the kitchen wall.

Hudson after being sprinkled by "magic dust" by Bright.   I leave for a minute to put something in the oven and I come back to flour all over the ground and Hudson.

Our tree. Sideways. I can't get it to flip. Sorry.

 

Our street the first night it snowed. 

Something that amazes me is that I have this little basic sewing machine (thank you, Mrs. Bailey), but I can do so many amazing things with it. This quilt I am making right now if by far my favorite thing that I have done and my little machine keeps sewing along. The only problem I have sewing is that if I sew too fast the table starts to vibrate and makes the machine jump up and down, but that is the table's fault and not the sewing machine's. Plus, going slower makes me learn patience. That is something I really think is good for me in quilting. I have to do all these little steps to make the finished product and if one little dimension is off the whole thing looks sloppy and junky. I have to really think through each step and what I am doing and make sure my measurements make sense and take the time to iron all the seams. It is fun. I really enjoy it. I hope to finish the top tonight and then maybe put on boarders and try to assemble the back (if I am extremely adventurous). I have to go to SU to use their Internet to pay a few bills online (so maybe... if I remember... I will bring pictures... maybe).

New Quilt

I have started a new quilt and it is eating me up inside.  It is all I can think about at work and it is making the day go extremely slowly.  Mrs. Shelton gave me the pattern for it for Christmas, but I hadn't found the right fabrics to match some of my older fabrics.  Saturday I found the perfect fabrics that go amazingly and they are so colorful (maybe if I remember I can take a picture).  So Sunday while Jared took his nap I cut out all the squares (I guess they are more rectangular).  It was really quite simple;  I really like when a pattern has you cut bigger pieces and then sew them together with other bigger pieces and then cut more pieces for that.  I started sewing some of it when we came home from evening church and Jared was watching the end of the Saints/Vikings game (which went into overtime and I had even more time... YAY). 

 

I just thought I would blog about it because it is all I can think about right now.  I WANT to be home quilting and not here at work.  Thankfully Jared has classes tonight and so I can spend the entire evening sewing.  :)  YAY!!  I have great plans to have this finished by the time he comes home.  I have a great idea for another quilt that I am hoping to start as soon as this one is finished.  I just need to go out and buy some cream colored fabric. 

 

I am so excited.  I can't wait.  I love fabrics (especially when you find the perfect colors and patterns to go together). 

I might run out in this crazy rain and wind on my lunch break just so I can sew for 20 minutes...

update

Friday: I worked and then Michelle came down for the weekend.  I made mini cinnamon buns and we, along with Jared because he had the night off, went to the Townsends for a game night.  It was a lot of fun.  I hadn't been invited over to someone's house since the holidays and it was nice to get out of the house.  It was also awesome to have Michelle there!!

Saturday: Jared worked.  Michelle and I made a cake (she really made it, I just pulled ingredients out for her).   Michelle went bowling with Anna, Andrew, and Luke.  I watched.  Saturday night we went to my parents house and Michelle made us all a delicious dinner.  After which we headed over to the Robins to watch Michelle's favorite team beat up on the Ravins. 

Sunday:  Jared got sick and missed church.  When I came home from church I brought him blankets, made him jello, and bought him some Gatorade.  I watched TV for the first time in forever (other than sports).  I watched the Lawrence Welk show documentary and then Jared and I watched some of Anne of Avonlea.  Sigh.  What a great movie.  Jared went to bed at 5:45.  I read until 7:30 and finally turned out the lights. 

Monday: I worked.  Came home and made chicken noodle soup for Jared and we finished watching Anne of Avonlea.  We then rented Julie and Julia and watched that too.  It was a really cute movie.  I really enjoy ed Meryl Streep's performance. I forgot I wasn't watching Julia Child.  Julia Child has always sort of annoyed me, but I found her very endearing in this movie. 

Tuesday: I went to work.  I came home.  Jared went to his first class. He is taking macro economics and statistics this semester.  While he was in class I tried to fight with itunes and finally straighten out some of my music files that have been messed up since I graduated over a year ago.  Sigh. I made some progress, but I still hate itunes with a vengeance.  I don't find it user friendly at all!  I was going to start loaded cds onto my external hard drive, but after three hours of organizing and fighting with it I decided to go to bed.  Maybe I will make more progress with it next week while Jared is at class.

Wednesday: Jared went back to work!! Hooray for him.  He was so excited, especially since he is going back to work to run a job, which he hasn't done (since there has been no real jobs) in over 8 months.  He was pretty excited last night.   I am kind of sad that I don't have the chance to eat lunch with him each day, but I am also glad because my lunch break now is twice as long since I don't have to drive home and park and all that fun stuff.

I still love my job.  I love my husband more than ever.  I think he is absolutely perfect for me.  He is so great at making me feel loved.  Did I mention he bought me orange (with yellow tips) tulips for our 6 month anniversary?  He is grand.  I love being his wife. 

God is good!  He proves himself faithful over and over and over and over again in our lives.  He is altogether holy and his plans and ways are perfect.  :)   

blogging

I am testing the blogging posting ability with my email... will it work?!? 

 

If it does I can post from my computer at work during breaks!!

1. Our tree is up and it looks amazing. I will post pictures (probably after Christmas... ha ha). It looks beautiful!!! It is so fun to have our house decorated with Christmasy things. :)

2. Jared is amazing. I think he is the best husband ever. He makes me laugh every day many times a day and it is so much fun living in the same house and trying to take care of him. We start laughing at the weirdest things and it is so much fun to laugh with Jared. He is so thoughtful and thinks of me all the time even though he is working two jobs and taking two classes.

3. I love cooking. It is so great getting to use all my super nice things that I received for my wedding. Everyone was so nice and sweet to buy me such nice things. I enjoy them all the time. I love my crock pot (oh wait, I bought that... ha ha), hot water kettle, no stick pans, air bake cookie sheets, all my cake pans, spatulas, rub away bar, my sifter, my little plant that Auntie S have me, and my knives. Oh, there is so much that I have so much fun using.

4. My job is going well. The people are all so funny (and if I didn't have a sense of humor and think of myself as a real live Dilbert character I would probably think it was really annoying). Yes, I think that I am working in a real live Dilbert strip. It is great. I work right next to accounting and purchasing and it is great. I laugh to myself all the time. I should write down some of the things I hear, but mostly what makes me laugh is the attitudes and atmosphere of the place. Oh man, it is truly hilarious.

5. Merry Christmas. I don't know what I will be near a computer with blogging access again for a while. Spell check isn't working so... you are going to have to deal with the errors.

Yesterday, while waiting for my sweet potato cans to boil and seal, I went and looked at my phone. I had a missed call from some number I didn't recognize. So I called my voicemail and I had a message from Harvard Custom Manufacturing asking me to come in to an interview today at 9:30. So I called back and confirmed that I could come at 9:30.

When I went in today they interviewed me and made it sound like they wanted to hire me, but in the future when they had a position open. Well, they asked me to wait in this hallway, right by the receptionist. I started talking to her about life and work and other things. The guy who interviewed me came back out and asked me to follow him into another office, which I found out later was the human resource director's office. He talked to me for a while and told me that my credentials were really awesome, but I had no experience so they were going to have to pay me less than a regular engineer with experience. At this point I am going, what? Hire me? Then he said, we really want to hire you because you seem to good to pass up, what would you work for? I should have asked for something, but I really didn't care. ha ha. And his offer ended up being only about 3000 grand less than I was going to ask.

So you are now reading the blog of Harvard's newest junior electrical engineer. Yes!! I am an electrical engineer. I am going to play with wires and circuits and electrical things. I am going to help design the electrical systems for defense vehicles (airplanes, tanks, cars, helicopters... etc).

Praise God. He is so good to me. This job seems like it is perfect for me AND it is only five minutes from my house and it has the same hours at Jared's job (7-4)!! YAY!!

P.S. Did you know that Harvard has over 900 employees? I didn't. The building is HUGE!! They started as a division of Northrop before they became Northrop Grumman. And they work with Lockheed Martin and Boing and Northrop Grumman on most jobs. It is a job that I never expected to find on the Eastern Shore. I thought I would have to be in the DC area to find a job like this. I am so excited. I just have to pass my drug test. :)

Today I came to SU to check my email. I parked in the faculty parking since I figured, "I paid for the permit, why not use it?" The woman I parked next to got out of her car (after I started walking towards the building), looked at the front of my car, and walked back to her car. I am pretty sure she checked to see if I had a red parking pass and if I hadn't had it I bet she would have called the police. ha.

For the last two months I have challenged to not spend any of Jared’s money, or the little money that I earn at SU, on groceries. I have to find creative ways to earn grocery money. I have done a few sewing projects, helped clean Mrs. Shelton’s house before she left, and babysat my nieces and nephews. Also I have cut my grocery bill down to about $15 - $20 a week. This week I spent a little more because I was stocking up on several things we use a lot of (and that won’t go bad). Really the only groceries I need each week are all for Jared’s lunch: lunchmeat, granola bars, yogurts, bananas, oranges, pretzels, and/or chips.

So...what can you buy for $23.43?
I bought all of this.

As seen above, I bought:
* 10 Dannon Fruit-in-the-Bottom Yogurts ($4.00)
* 2 bananas ($0.36)
* 1 can of mandarin oranges ($0.89)
* 8 boxes of Stovetop stuffing ($3.92)
* 5 boxes of Jiffy corn bread ($2.00)
* 1 block of gorgonzola cheese ($1.98)
* 3 tubes of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls ($2.25)
* 4 cans of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup ($1.35)
* 4 can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup (1.38)
* 1 package of Always Infinity Pads (free)
* 13 cans of Swanson’s chicken broth ($5.30)

Original price: $65.69
I paid 35.7% of the original price (or for those of you that don’t like percentages, I saved $42.26). Also, note that I bought the nice brand for this price and not just the store brand. That is why I was so excited about my flour last week. Regular flour has a much better feel to it than store brand flour. Most things I will buy store brand, but real flour is so nice. I usually buy the store brand cream soups unless I can get Cambell’s for cheaper, as I did today (34 cents versus 55 cents (at Walmart))! Yay.

I love grocery shopping. It is so much fun. It is a big puzzle that I have to solve each week.

Example: I went to Food Lion (the sale ends today) and went through the line three times today because the chicken broth and cream soups were buy 1 get one free, but it was limit two. But if I bought a combination of six of those products I had coupons for another dollar off. So the first time I bought 4 chicken broths and 2 soups, the second time 4 soups and 2 chicken broths, and the last time 4 chicken broths and 2 soups. I had to buy 4 soups the second time because I also had a coupon for 35 cents off 4 cans of soup.

Oh, and did I tell you that Jared signed up at Wor-Wir to get the Sunday paper for Fwwwweeeeeee!!! I love coupons and matching them with sales. Plus, you can print off coupons online and match them together and save even more money. I can’t do it as well as some of these people online, but I am pretty happy.

Since I don't have internet at my house now, I only check blogs, facebook, and my email about twice a week. I logged on to facebook today and I noticed that it had started making suggestions of who I should talk to (or as they say "reconnect with").  I thought it was sort of amusing when they suggested that I talk to Matt Robins and my sisters more, but today they really made me laugh.  And I realized again how stupid and pointless facebook relationships are. 

I mean honestly, do they need to tell me to talk to my husband. There should be some sort of feature on facebook that senses when you are married to someone and it knows that probably you speak more in person that online.  I am so thankful that I live in a real world and not a digital one and that my husband and I can communicate face to face instead of through an artifical means.

I love you Jared, but I am not posting on your wall today because facebook told me to.  I will give you a hug when you leave for work and when you come home.  I will have dinner waiting for you when you run out the door to your next job. I will clean our house today and wash your clothes and put them away.  :)  I don't think I need to message you on facebook to let you know I love you.  Plus, you won't log on to your account for another week or so.  I'd rather let you know now.  :)

Anyhow, being removed from the internet makes most of its uses seem so dumb and a waste of time.  I am thankful I don't have internet at my house anymore.

*edit* Oh, and as you can see I am not friends with Mr. Howard in a digital world either.  I didn't even know he was on facebook until today.  ha. 

I am pretty excited because yesterday I found flour at Super Fresh for only $1.50 a bag and if I bought ten bags I received five dollars back. So really they ended up only being $1 a bag. The normal price is $3.13 a bag. You might say that ten bags of flour is a little excessive, but I have gone through five bags of flour since I married Jared. Plus, I am selling my Mom four of those bags. So basically I should have paid $31.30 and I paid $10. I saved $21.30. That is one third of the price!! Yes! I wanted to buy 20 bags, but I don't have enough space to store that many. I hear bread goes on sale at Christmas and Easter too, so hopefully I can restock on more then before the summer rolls around.

Tomorrow I am babysitting the niecews again. I watched them Monday and we made an apple pie. :) That was really fun. Tomorrow I think we are going to build a fort and maybe make an obstacle course. Won't that be fun? It sure beats having our brains sucked out by the television.  I would bake something, but I am only going to be there an hour and a half this time.  I don't think it allows enough time for clean up.  Maybe it will stop raining and we can dig a hole in the ground outside.  :)  I am making a list of ideas.  We are going to have a lot fo fun in the next few weeks.  Next time we bake we are going to do pizza.

This is a new flannel baby quilt that I am making.  I love the purple dots on boarder!!  It is so soft and wonderful.  :)  I am planning on finishing quilting it today or tomorrow.  

 I have made two new aprons out of this material. This is a close up of the bottom and the ruffle.  They are both full aprons and so much fun for Christmas.  I need to think of more people to give them to.

 

These are a few of the things I have made this week:  thin crust pizza, chocolate cake truffles, and apple muffins.  My favorite thing I made was gingerbread thin and chewy cookies.  They were so good.  Yum. Yum. Yum.  I think people are going to get a lot of baked goods for Christmas this year.

I am going to babysit the nieces and nephews today (there should be a word, like sibling that covers all of them... maybe niehews or niphews or nephces).  I might get some pictures if they aren't too crazy.  ha.