Stuff

Oh lets see, today I helped out with a field trip at Kera's preschool--this time they went to a local church's Pumpkin Patch. It was pretty cool, they watched a little movie about pumpkins & how they grow, had a pumpkin snack, made a pumpkin necklace, watched a pumpkin puppet show, got a cute lil' pumpkin of their own and were able to wander around this huge pumpkin patch. I thought it was really well done and the kids had fun. See:

And I also committed myself today. I signed up over at NaNoWriMo. What's NaNoWriMo you ask? Well, it's the nickname for National Novel Writing Month. It is where crazy literary prone folks write a lot (like 50,000 words a lot) for one one month, From November 1 til November 30. The goal is to write a novel in one month, I guess 50,000 words is approximately what it takes to make a novel. I broke it down to see how many words per day, and its about 1700. Obviously, because you only have a month, the emphasis in this writing is on quantity and not quality. So at the end you won't have a fine-tuned beautiful piece of writing, but thats okay, because if you've written that much in a month the chances are pretty high that you have a lot of good writing and are well on your way to a decent novel. That's the idea, anyway. We'll see!! I've still got to come up with an idea to write about, but I'm confident that I can in the next 8 days. (Ack!! Only 8 days! Ohmygoodness...) I'm toying with the idea of keeping my NaNoWriMo stuff in my other blog...

Yesterday was interesting, to say the least. Okay, first off I got a call from my bank on the way home from the grocery store in the afternoon --they are really good about calling when I've charged something out of the ordinary on my credit card (once they called over a $15 charge to a online game I bought). So she starts rattling off all my recent purchases...Micheals & Target aren't really out of the ordinary I am thinking, then she lists iTunes and Napster and I'm like, "NO! That is NOT me! No!!" So it turns out someone, somewhere stole my credit card info--I still had my actual card. The bank shut down the card and are sending me info on what I need to do and are also sending me a new one. I'm glad they called early--the fraudulent charges had just been made the day before--but I'm irritated that it even happened. I only shop online at secure sites so its very puzzling where my info got stolen. Erik says its possible for sites like Amazon to be hacked and they might not advertise it. Oh well, it was probably a rare thing--I have shopped a lot online and have never had a problem before.

So while I was still fuming a bit over the inconvenience of not having a credit card for a few days, I got a call from Erik...he had gone out to ride his dirt bike but had gotten a call for emergency on site computer help before he even got his bike out of the truck. It was like 4pm at this point and so he says he may not be home in time for dinner or for me to go to church. I was fine with that, but I was really hoping he'd be home in time for me to go out to dessert after church--the plan was that us women were going out for dessert to celebrate my birthday after church since we were all already out w/o kids. I called him about 6:30 and he's still there and the computer he is working on is majorly messed up. He didn't even think he'd be home til nine o'clock. So I bitterly resigned myself to staying home and put on my pajamas. I was so bummed about not being able to go out, I was feeling kind of sorry for myself! But after the kids went to bed I sat down by the fire w/ a glass of red wine and relaxed, so the night wasn't a complete bust, even if I was really looking forward to Jaker's Creme Brulee. lol And get this, Erik didn't even get home til almost 11pm!! It was crazy.

Today is my actual birthday and its been nice--phone calls, emails and several cards in the mail--thanks to all who've wished me a happy day! :-) Tonight we'll eat at home and probably watch a movie, relaxing at home sounds just really nice and eating out with kids is NOT relaxing!! :-) I got a lil' gift from Erik and the girls this morning: new perfume that I needed and was the perfect scent (it helped that I gave Erik the empty one to know what kind to get! hee hee), chocolate (they know me oh so well!) and a new milk thermometer for steaming milk when we make our lattes. :-) I'm pretty spoiled, I love my family.