T minus two months and counting

My mom is getting remarried exactly 2 months from today. I'm still having mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I know she's really happy with Ken and I'm glad she's happy. I really feel they are meant to be together. But at the same time, its really hard for me to picture her with anybody besides my father.

D and I are flying out to Vegas to be there for the wedding. I'm trying to decide whether to tell my Dad or not. I have to tell him that we're going to Vegas. He needs to know that much in case something happens while we're out there. But I'm not sure whether to tell him the real reason we're going. I thought about just telling him we're going with Mom and Ken but then I'm afraid he'll expect D. and I to go somewhere with him in the future (I could not go on vacation with my dad; after all those trips as a kid that went bad, somebody would not be making it home this time). I probably should tell him the truth in case he finds out somehow but I don't want to be the one to tell him. I just want left out of it and I know he won't handle the news well. Its been over 3 years since Mom left and he's still not over it. I know you can't just get over something like that overnight but he won't even try to deal with it.

So what should be a fun trip to Vegas is causing me way too much stress. At least its getting me out of gray old Ohio for a week.

Nothing new...

Its been a pretty boring week around here. I worked Sunday so I have Friday off (woohoo..3 day weekend!). I'm hoping to spend all day Friday working on D's Valentine's Day/anniversary present since I only have 3 pages done and I only have 3 weeks left.

We're planning a Super Bowl party since the Steelers made it. It should be lots of fun. I think a lot of our friends are going to show up too. Not sure where everybody is going to sit yet since we only have a couch in the living room.

I just found out that my favorite band, The Clarks, are coming back to the area. They usually come here twice a year, March and October. Its great hearing a Pittsburgh band here in Ohio. It makes me feel less homesick. They usually play at this small club/bar and it gets packed if they play on a Saturday (OSU's hockey team has a lot of players from PA and they bring all their friends). This time, they're playing at a larger place. I'm really happy for them. Check out their website and listen to some of their music.

For Steelers fans...

I saw this posted by doublej24 on TwoPeas and I loved it so much, I wanted to share.

Nation Building

January 18, 2006
Scott Paulsen


Think about this the next time someone argues that a
professional sports
franchise is not important to a city's identity:


In the 1980's, as the steel mills and their supporting
factories shut down
from Homestead to Midland, Pittsburghers, faced for
the first time in their
lives with the specter of unemployment, were forced to
pick up their
families, leave their home towns and move to more
profitable parts of the
country. The steel workers were not ready for this.

They had planned to stay
in the 'burgh their entire lives. It was home.

Everyone I know can tell the same story about how Dad,
Uncle Bob or their
brother-in-law packed a U-Haul and headed down to
Tampa to build houses or
up to Boston for an office job or out to California to
star in pornographic
videos.

All right. Maybe that last one just happened in my family.

At this same time, during the early to
mid-eighties, the
Pittsburgh Steelers were at the peak of their
popularity. Following the
Super Bowl dynasty years, the power of the Steelers
was strong. Every man,
woman, boy and girl from parts of four states were
Pittsburgh faithful,
living and breathing day to day on the news of their
favorite team. Then, as
now, it seemed to be all anyone talked about.

Who do you think the Steelers will take
in the draft this year?

Is Bradshaw done?

Can you believe they won't give Franco
the money - what's he doing going to Seattle?

The last memories most unemployed steel
workers had of their
towns had a black and gold tinge. The good times
remembered all seemed to
revolve, somehow, around a football game. Sneaking
away from your sister's
wedding reception to go downstairs to the bar and
watch the game against
Earl Campbell and the Oilers - going to midnight mass,
still half in the bag
after Pittsburgh beat Oakland - you and your
grandfather, both crying at the
sight of The Chief, finally holding his Vince Lombardi
Trophy.

And then, the mills closed.

Damn the mills.

One of the unseen benefits of the
collapse of the value
systems our families believed in - that the mill would
look after you
through thick and thin - was that now, decades later,
there is not a town in
America where a Pittsburgher cannot feel at home.

Nearly every city in the
United States has a designated "Black and Gold"
establishment. From Bangor,
Maine to Honolulu, Hawaii, and every town in between
can be found an oasis
of Iron City, chipped ham and yinzers. It's great to
know that no matter
what happened in the lives of our Steel City refugees,
they never forgot the
things that held us together as a city - families,
food, and Steelers football.

It's what we call the Steeler Nation.

You see it every football season. And
when the Steelers have a
great year, as they have had this season, the power of
the Steeler Nation
rises to show itself stronger than ever. This week, as
the Pittsburgh team
of Roethlisberger, Polamalu, Bettis and Porter head to
Denver, the fans of
Greenwood, Lambert, Bleier and Blount, the generation
who followed Lloyd,
Thigpen, Woodson and Kirkland will be watching from
Dallas to Chicago, from
an Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota, to a tent
stuck in the sand near Fallujah, Iraq.

I have received more email from
displaced Pittsburgh Steelers
fans this week than Christmas cards this holiday
season.

They're everywhere.

We're everywhere.

We are the Steeler Nation.

And now, it's passing from one
generation to the next. The
children of displaced Pittsburghers, who have never
lived in the Steel City,
are growing up Steelers fans. When they come back to
their parents'
hometowns to visit the grandparents, they hope, above
all, to be blessed
enough to get to see the Steelers in person.

Heinz Field is their football Mecca.

And if a ticket isn't available, that's
okay, too. There's
nothing better than sitting in Grandpa's living room,
just like Dad did,
eating Grandma's cooking and watching the Pittsburgh
Steelers.

Just like Dad did.

So, to you, Steeler Nation, I send best
wishes and a fond wave
of the Terrible Towel To Tom, who emailed from
Massachusetts to say how
great it was to watch the Patriots lose and the
Steelers win in one glorious
weekend. To Michelle, from Milwaukee, who wrote to let
me know it was she
who hexed Mike Vanderjagt last Sunday by chanting
"boogity, boogity,
boogity" and giving him the "maloik". To Jack, who
will somehow pull himself
away from the beach bar he tends in Hilo,
Hawaii, to once again root for the
black and gold in the middle of the night (his time),
I say, thanks for
giving power to the great Steeler Nation.

All around the NFL, the word is out
that the Pittsburgh
Steeler fans "travel well", meaning they will fly or
drive from Pittsburgh
to anywhere the Steelers play, just to see their team.
The one aspect about
that situation the rest of the NFL fails to grasp is
that, sometimes, the
Steeler Nation does not have to travel. Sometimes,
we're already there.

Yes, the short sighted steel mills
screwed our families over.

But they did, in a completely
unintended way, create
something new and perhaps more powerful than an industry.

They helped created a nation.

A Steeler Nation.

4 Things

Shann tagged me! Yay, my first tag! Thanks Shann.

Four jobs you have had in your life:

1)Counter girl at a dry cleaners
2)Cashier at Dollar General
3)Research Assistant (for 2 different companies)
1)Virology Specialist


Four movies you would watch over and over:

1)Wizard of Oz
2)Croundhog Day
3)Dirty Dancing
4)50 First Dates

Four places you have lived:

1)Sarver, PA
2)Johnstown, PA
3)Clarion, PA
4)Columbus, OH (5 different parts of town in 4 years)

Four TV shows you love to watch:

1)CSI
2)Survivor
3)Desperate Housewives
4)My Name is Earl


Four places you have been on vacation:

1)Disney World
2)Myrtle Beach
3)Michigan
4)Wisconsin


Four websites I visit daily:

1)Two Peas in a Bucket
2)Yahoo mail
3)MSNBC for the news
4)Local news station

Four of my favorite foods:

1)Shrimp
2)Cheesecake
3)Pizza
4)Pasta

Four places I would rather be right now:

1)Anywhere warm and sunny (anything's better than Ohio in winter)
2)Wisconsin with my grandma :(
3)In Donni's arms relaxing
4)Sleeping

Four Bloggers you are tagging:

I think everybody's done this already. Jes, if you want to add this to your myspace blog, you can

34-17

Pittsburgh's going to the Super Bowl!!!

15 hours and counting...

Look what I just bought.

I love the color purple. I gravitate to anything that color. Every time I see Converse shoes in a store, I always look to see if they have purple ones but could never find any. Well, I was bored this afternoon and was looking at Zappos.com. What do I find? PURPLE CONVERSE! I didn't know if I should spend the money or not but they're purple Converse! I went back and forth but I finally broke down and ordered them. They should be here in about 5 business days. Yay!!

To dye or not to dye. That is the question.

I have been dying my hair red for the past 2 years. When I was really young, my hair was light, light blonde. As I got older, it got pregressively darker every year until it reached the point of being pukey, boring light brown (not that's there's anything wrong with light brown hair; mine was just really boring looking). When I turned 25, I had just broken up with a long term boyfriend and was in the mood for changing more than just my love life. I had always wanted red hair so I bought some temporary hair dye and dyed my hair auburn. I was terrified but it actually turned out really nice. So nice, I decided to keep dying it auburn.

After awhile, the auburn wasn't red enough for me so I took the plunge and bought some dye called "Intense Red Copper". My hair was RED. At first I wasn't sure about it but I ended up loving the color. So much that I kept using that color. People that met me thought that was my real hair color. I even fooled the people at my salon.

Fast forward to today. I'm getting sick of dying my hair. I love the red but its getting old having to dye it once a month (red fades fast so you have to keep up with it more than other colors). I'd go to the salon and get it done but its just too expensive and I can get just as good results for $8 at home. I started to let my hair grow out a little bit. The red faded to a brown. My roots weren't too noticeable at first. Then, to my surprise, GRAY started to show. GRAY!! I'm 27 years old! And since my hair had mutated to brown instead of blonde, the gray was really noticeable.

I guess that answers the question.

On a roll...

I've gotten a few layouts for my scrapbook done lately. I've done 4 in the last 2 weeks. It might not seem like a lot to some people but I hadn't worked on anything since at least August. First we were busy packing to move and then I just couldn't get into the mood. I was upset b/c I finally have my own space to make as big of a mess as I want while I'm scrapping and I couldn't work. I'd pull out some pictures and paper and nothing would happen.

I'm going to try to get a scrapbook done for D. by our anniversary (which happens to be Valentine's Day). He loves music so I'm going to try to make a "soundtrack" for our relationship. I've seen it done before but I think he'd really like it. I'm looking for some really obscure lyrics to fit some of the pictures we have so he can tell I worked at it. A couple pages won't be related to music b/c I had them done before I decided what to do but I like them and don't want to redo them. So far I only have 3 layouts done for it but I've got a ton of ideas so it should be too hard. Here's one I just finished tonight (let's hope D. doesn't see this blog until after February 14th).


I did change the lyrics so they say "4 cats in the yard" instead of 2.

I'm going to burn all the songs I used onto a CD and make a layout with that. I think I'll add to it every year from now on too.



In other news, I'm going to visit my grandma in mid-February, a week earlier than I had planned. I switched Sundays at work with another lady so I could go earlier. The only bad thing about going then is I'm working the Sunday before our anniversary and I'm leaving the weekend after. We had planned on getting a hotel room downtown (we did it last year and had a ton of fun being away from the "kids" for the night). We didn't have reservations already so its not like we have to change plans but it would have been nice to do it right around then. But seeing Grandma is so much more important. Luckily, D. understands that too.

Well, I rambled on long enough. I better get to bed soon so I have a big smile on my face at work in the morning (yeah right).

Best. Game. Ever.

I think today's Steelers/Colts game was one of the best I've seen in awhile. The last minute was so suspenseful. When Bettis dropped the ball, I thought it was all over for us. Thank god the Colts kicker (can't think of his name right now and I don't feel like looking it up) missed that field goal. I loved how they showed Cowher, Dungy and Bettis saying "he missed it". I can't wait for next week's game.

Here we go Steelers, here we go!

Too funny...

I got the following link from a post on Two Peas in a Bucket. Its Will Ferrell impersonating "Dubya". You probably shouldn't watch it if you're a fan of GWB.

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002648.html

P.S. You need quicktime to view the video but its well worth it.

Sad phone call...

I just got off the phone with my mom a little while ago. I guess my grandmother in Wisconsin isn't doing very well. She's been in a nursing home for over a year and she's been slowly going downhill every week. Mom just saw her yesterday and said she's the worst she's ever been. Grandma is in the early stages of Parkinson's disease and wasn't been able to walk on her own for a long time now. She's been upset that she has to call people to come and help her do the simplest things. Now, I guess, she's having trouble swallowing so they have to puree all her food so she can eat. It seems that every month, one more thing we all take for granted is taken away from her. She's told mom that she's ready to go. She's done everything she needed to do here and she wants to go be with Papa. According to her, "this isn't living". I'm going to try to make a trip up to Wisconsin in February. Since I've started working every 4th Sunday at work, I get a Friday off to make up for it. I'll probably fly out Thursday night to Mom's and then we'll drive up and see Grandma. The only problem with that is February in Northern Wisconsin can be pretty snowy but Mom's boyfriend Ken said he'd get us up there if the weather is bad. So, I guess we just have to wait and see what happens.

Here are some pictures of my grandparents. Papa passed away almost 10 years ago. They had been married 55 years.









Papa and Grandma on their wedding day in 1941.
















At their 50th wedding anniversary in 1991.

Can't sleep. Clown will eat me.

Ok so maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit about the clowns. But its 1:00 in the morning and I can't fall asleep. Why? My lovable monkey, D., is still congested from his cold and is therefore snoring. Very, very loudly. So loud, that I'm in the next room with the space heater on and my iTunes playing the Stephanie Miller show and I can't still hear him. I shouldn't complain b/c he doesn't usually snore. If he does, he's usually lying on his back and I can roll him onto his side to get him to stop. But not since he got this cold. I'd go sleep in the other room but I know if he wakes up and finds me there, he'll be hurt. So, here I sit until I get so tired that nothing will keep me awake. But I wonder, since I've been sick with the same thing, am I snoring too?

Here we go Steelers...

4 minutes until the start of the Steelers/Bengals game. We're going to go over to the neighbor's house in a bit so I'll be surrounded by orange and black. Let's hope the Steelers kick some Bengals ass!

Sick...

We're a bunch of sickies around here. D. had a respiratory infection last week and missed 2 days of work. Then he gave the infection to me. I've missed the last 2 days of work. It sucks being sick but I have had lots of fun playing GTA.

Happy New Year

Well, its now 2006. Hard to believe. Last year went by sooo fast. Overall, 2005 was a pretty good year. D and I bought our first house together. D. got the motorcycle he had been pining over for awhile. We made it through a rough period with my health. Hopefully, 2006 will be even better for us.

We didn't do anything exciting last night. We had planned on having people over to our house but D. came down with a cold the middle of last week so he didn't invite anybody until Thursday. Well, by then, most people had plans. His old roommate, RJ did come with his new girlfriend S. We just hung out, played some old school Atari and drank a lot of vodka. Afterwards, D. and I chilled out on the couch with the Christmas tree lights and some candles burning. It was a nice night.

Dumb ass

Clarett accused of robbing couple with gun

Ex-Ohio State star wanted on two counts of suspected aggravated robbery

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Maurice Clarett was wanted by police on Sunday after he was accused of using a gun to rob two people in an alley behind a bar.

The troubled former Ohio State running back fled when the bar owner or manager, who knew Clarett and the victims, came into the alley and identified him shortly before 2 a.m. Sunday.

According to police, the 22-year-old Clarett left the scene in a white sport utility vehicle with two other men and took only a cell phone from his alleged victims, who weren’t injured. He was wanted on two counts of suspicion of aggravated robbery.

Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said he was informed of the incident on his way to the Fiesta Bowl news conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. Clarett helped the Buckeyes win the national championship in 2002 but has found only hard times since.

“Obviously, my reaction to that is it’s sad,” Tressel said, “because, as I said the last few times people have brought up the subject, my hope would be that he would have an opportunity to go over to NFL Europe and make a comeback.

“I hope it’s not true, but beyond that, I don’t know much, but my reaction is, I was sad.”

Clarett sat out the 2003 season after he was charged with misdemeanor falsification for filing a police report claiming that more than $10,000 in clothing, CDs, cash and stereo equipment was stolen from a car he borrowed from a local dealership. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

Ohio State suspended Clarett for misleading investigators, and for receiving special benefits worth thousands of dollars from a family friend.

He later began an unsuccessful legal fight that went to the U.S. Supreme Court to be allowed in the NFL early. Clarett was chosen by the Denver Broncos in last year’s draft, but the team cut him in August.

Tressel said he had spoken with Clarett “three or four times in the last six weeks.”

“It’s been along the lines of hoping he would have a chance to get things together and make a run at things with NFL Europe,” the coach said.

Clarett would have been a senior on this year’s Ohio State team, which meets Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl on Monday.

“It’s real troubling,” Tressel said of Clarett’s fall. “Not just with youngsters that it becomes newsworthy, but with any kids who don’t go the direction you know they’re capable of or hope for them. It’s one of the tough things when you compete. Sometimes things work out and you’re successful and sometimes it doesn’t. That doesn’t have you back off from competing and teaching and trying to help people.”

link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10672212/

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I have never liked Maurice Clarett. Yeah, he was a good football player, but he's a little too cocky for his own good. At least he managed to get another article about himself on national news. Way to go Maurice!