You know you've been bad about blogging when you have to craft an outline to get out all you want to in the blogs.

Catch up: So I haven't blogged since before Thanksgiving.  In the month of November not only was I bogged down with the Election (and then because of the Franken/Coleman results, still bogged down after the election) but I also took the GRE and started applying to Grad School. A few days before Thanksgiving I turned in my first application and am officially a Grad School Applicant. However it happens to be tot the program that I don't have much of a shot in hell at getting into. (They only take 3 out of over 100 applicants, and most of the 3 they take already have their masters, which I don't). I'm currently working hard at getting out my other application for the program that I'm more likely to get into.  Wish me luck.

Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving went well, except we weren't able to see Ilon's mom this year, which always sucks. Other then that it was nice.  My folks came over to my house and </a></b></a>wearsthelettuce  and exorcizo_te joined us.  We did like a pot luck thing and everyone brought some portion of the meal. It actually got to feel like a real thanksgiving to me because I got to have Turkey, mash potatoes and Pumpkin Pie.  I'm such a simple creature, but with my mother, I always have to fight on this.  It sucks.  Everyone was really awesome at helping get stuff set up, which is nice, cause it got  kinda stressful there for a bit. (We have such a tiny kitchen that it makes it a little harder). Afterward we all sat around in food comas and watched Dogma.

Anniversary: This December first was Ilon and mine's 3rd year anniversary....damn dude.  Since last year we went all out (or should I say Ilon went all out with the fancy dinner, the hotel and the LIMO) this year we realized we were both broke and decided instead to just have a chilax day.  So we went to the mall and grabbed lunch and then went to see 2 movies; Twilight and Bolt. Twilight was an interesting movie.  I was a bit worried (partially worried about the crazy teenies who are psycho fans-did not want to sit in a movie theater with them) and partially worried because its a book turned movie which usually goes bad.  My review: not bad. I mean its based off the first book, which is the worst of the saga in my point. And there was apparently a huge rush to make the movie, so there are LOTS of small errors, but in general, I didn't hate it. And it made me want to see the others, always a good thing. The oddest part of this movie, I think, is that most of the time they say if you loved the book, you'll hate the movie.  In this one's case (and I'm having a hard time accurately judging) I would say if you haven't read the book, you'll hate the movie. I think there was a lot that they just depended on people being cult fanatics to get, and without that...it might seem a bit weird. Anyways.  We also saw Bolt in 3-D which was really cool for me. Most of the time I have a hard time with 3-D because my eyes don't work well together (one eye is dominant) so for the most part I don't get anything out of 3-D because they use to do that one side of your glasses is blue and the other one is red thing and all I saw was blue. (or red). It sucked. Now a days they have new technology and I got to see it too!  The movie itself is very cute, with some funny parts and actual good messages (don't abandon your pets, don't declaw your cats) that kind of thing. All in all, not bad Disney.

Holidays-So now its the holidays.  So the best time to work at GRS, hands down, is the holidays.  They make it THE company to work for. For one, instead of one day, or even two days for Thanksgiving, we got three days off. Very cool.  For Christmas/Hanukkah/etc we get TWO WEEKS OFF. Yeah you heard me right. Two weeks of paid holiday time.  So be of this Friday, I don't have to go back to work again until Monday January 5th. Super cool. Also we are getting a holiday party that is catered by this place called ChowGirls (yummy) and all the wine/beer/liquor we can drink (always a plus).  We are getting gifts that only I and the co-owners know what it is (I won't post it yet in the event that someone I work with stumbles across this blog) but I know the company is going to have VERY happy employees...damn. (I'll post after Friday). Also we get holiday bonuses, which I get to find out today how much that will be (I have no idea right now, but I've done some estimations and it sounds like a decent hefty hunk of change.-IE I should have enough money to buy myself a laptop for grad school.  An apple laptop at that). We'll see. I could be totally wrong and all I'm getting is $50 bucks.  Who knows.

So yeah.  That's my update.  This week I also have a GQ night on Wednesday, I'm going to see Marley and Me with </a></b></a>wearsthelettuce  on Thursday because my coworker had free tickets and can't use them.  Friday is our holiday party. Saturday is a funeral for a very dear friend of mine who's father passed away and then we go from that to Ilon's Holiday party.

Monday we head up to Wisconsin to spend some time with Ilon's family before the brothers and sisters get shipped to their prospective other parents. Tuesday we come back down. Wednesday I kidnap my folks (they're going to spend the night, we'll make food, watch movies, open gifts-very laid back). Then Friday we are back up to Wisconsin to try to drive to the middle of nowhere to see Ilon's Grandparents. Monroe stands for Middle Of Nowhere Really is On Earth. 

Then I have to figure out New Years. Crap. I have no idea.

I also have to finish up my shopping but I am almost done. I need to pick up the gifts I already bought my dad, buy my mom one last gift and pick up on more gift for Ilon. Then presto-done!  I am also waiting impatiently for our cards to arrive so we can start mailing those babies out!

(Thank you, btw, to everyone who has sent us a card. We really appreciate them-and all the new updated pictures we now have!)

Happy Holiday everyone!

I feel like death leftovers (death warmed over). Yuck.  I've been sick since Wednesday October 8th and I'd like to be done now! I have some ear/thought infection that feels like mono without all the good sleeping and losing weight.  Blechk.

And I'm at work cause it turns out I ran out of sick days...damn.  So I just have to not be sick until um December. Ouch. Guess I should be happy this doesn't seem to be mono!

So this morning I brought Ilon into work (we both started at 8:30-ish and Ilon's work is almost walking distance from mine).  I honestly like bringing Ilon into work.  You think I wouldn’t because I can get pissy about becoming a cab driver, but it’s sort of like stealing moments in the morning.  Ilon and I have never really had mornings together since for the vast majority of our relationship I've been pulling the 9-5 and Ilon has been a college student (tiny bit of resentment there that I'm hoping I can make up for when I can get back into grad school ^_^). So whenever I drive Ilon to work it’s kind of nice cause its moments we don't normally get together.  I also treated myself this morning (I treat myself most Friday mornings, so who am I kidding).  As I swung out of Dog Days I realized I my lips were feeling super chapped and I could really use some chap stick and I can't find mine! Plus Halls has these awesome cough drops that taste like candy (I essentially need hard candy right now for my throat and regular cough drops are like yecht! so this is a nice combo of meds that are tasty.  So I decided to stop by Holiday and get both of these and grabbed myself some yummy Starbucks vanilla iced coffee and a pumpkin muffin! Yum.  I love muffins. Like I think I love them more then doughnuts, or pastries or really any other breakfast yummy. And iced coffee is wonderful and almost what I needed in this dismal morning. (I could really use a shotgun to put me out of my misery, but I'll take coffee instead).

Plus I just picked up Sarah Bareilles from the library (I only requested in umm February) and got to listen to Love Song on repeat.  Love that song. Even if I've heard it like 1000 times.  Whatev.

So I get to leave early today! Woot! For a dentist appointment...um not woot.  Ouch. Eh I'll live....unfortunately ^_^.

So tonight Ilon and are I going over to Beth and Nate’s to see how two kitties interact with one another. Ilon and I both like the thought of Tux going to Beth and Nate because she is such an AWESOME kitty and it be good to know she's going to good people.  Plus its pretty obvious that Tux really likes to have other cats in the house, since she and Gheara now play all the time.

I only have 4 hours and 45 min left.

Sweet.

mood: sick

Ok so I mean to post about my last weekend last week and it never happened.  Things are starting to get interesting around here-yeah! The weekend before last (So September 12^th-14^th) was mostly calm on account of Ilon still needing to get through the mass of homework. Yeah!.

The wedding was really nice.  I got out of work around 11:45 and ran over to Target to get last minute needed items and then ran to the gym for about an hour. I got home and ran around trying to get ready in time. Ilon was at Heather/Travus’s house getting the hair done (which had to be a small feat since we’ve been so busy it hadn’t been cut for months!). Ilon came over and then we headed over. We were super worried about being late since we’ve been late to the wedding shower, the bachelorette party, the bachelor party, etc.  So we worked super hard to get this in order and we actually showed up before the bride and groom! Woot!  The wedding was at the Japanese Gardens in Como Park.  It was small but really lovely. I pretty much tried to stay out of the way (though I had lots of fun taking pictures cause we borrowed one of AI’s super awesome cameras). My only weirdness was I found a pretty black dress, which usually goes great with weddings in the evening….except the bridesmaids were all wearing black dresses. Whatever-I probably over worry about things.  We then went from the wedding to the reception.  We had a stroke of genius because everything was in St. Paul and we don’t know St. Paul at all. So we had no idea how to get to the reception site!  We were hemming and hawing when we saw the short limo/lincon drive by with the happy couple, so I bolted on after it!  It worked out except for the glitch that the Bride and Groom made a pit stop at Burger King and we weren’t expecting it!  Ilon and I both had lots of fun at the reception though.  The site was super awesome looking-it was like medieval with weird little caved off hallways.  Very neat. Ilon and I had fun though, cause this and the last wedding has been like research to go to (besides going for the other reasons, of course). It keeps this interesting conversation of If we do this.

Ilon actually looked at me the Friday of the wedding and said, “if its ok with you, I’m ok with saying ‘When we do this’ instead of ‘If we do this”.  There was something that happened deep in my chest for that discussion. I think it was a combination of fear and excitement.

Or maybe just love.

Saturday was nice and chill. I decided it would be good to come up with plans that meant I a) left the house and b)did stuff on my own so Ilon would have lots of undisrupted time to work!  I had called my mom earlier that week, because during a conversation with my cfo, I realized I had not made it to the Farmers Market this year.  Shame on me.  So Janet, Al and I went to the Farmer’s Market Saturday morning. We decided to not go to the big one by the impound lot for once and meet up instead at the one down by the YWCA.  I really liked the YWCA one! It was so much cooler then the big one. It was way more organic, and more grassroots, and the people were super friendly.  It was like mayday!  I got a tomato, and a few awesome brand new apples (their U of M apples-similar to Honey Crisp, and this is there first year out). I also shared half a head of cauliflower with Janet (cause one head was huge!!! And only $3). –The cauliflower was awesome by the way. We put half of it in my steamer and had it with cheese on top! Super yummy. After the Farmers Market we wondered around the quarry-I needed ot pick up crickets for Lex, Janet needed to pick up flour, we wandered around Target cause…why not. Ilon called me during this and let me know that Travus and Heather had just stoped by (to pick up the tux-very nice of them!) and had told Ilon a very interesting story. Apparently when everyone was at their house (everyone being the wedding party-so Heather and Travis’s family) after Ilon left some had mentioned the name Issa.  And someone else was like “who’s Issa?”. And someone else replied- “oh you know, the gay guy who left.” OMG! Ilon and I think this is hi-lar-ious. And fitting. Kinda…well as fitting as anything else would be I guess. I think Ilon was just like…um I just super passed as a dude, even though I was speaking. And if I’m going to be a guy, might as well be a gay guy!

So after the hilarity and shopping ended I wondered down to Urbanimal cause Ilon and I are going to become foster parents!  We are going to foster with Under Dog Rescue and foster kitties (and when we have a house, puppies).  So if you want to see some extreme cuteness come to our house after October! (Or if your looking for a cat-we’ll tell you how good/bad it is!

After all the weekend craziness we settled in for a relaxed Sunday filled with football and watched the Steelers game (we would have watched the packer game but Comcast is a bunch of bitches and decided to show PAID PROGRAMMING instead of the game!!! WTF?)  The Steelers won against the Browns! Woot! (like they have for years, but this game was tight. The Browns are improving!) Oh speaking of improving we did actually watch the Vikings game (instead of paid programming, the bitches!) and the Vikings are um…actually getting better (this pains me to admit).  They almost beat the Indiana.  Like Damn.  And I forgot in between the Vikings game and the Steelers game, Megan and I went to the Town House to shoot some pool and get to hang out. (since we haven’t been able to in For-ev-er!).  After shooting pool, we decided we um…suck… and need to go back to playing more often.

This last week was actually kinda busy.  We had our fall fete at work (this event down at Jitters where we invite all of our clients and have free wine and food).  It was actually much more fun then I thought it would be-since I super hate mingling events!  I got to chill with some guy who works at the same company my friend Dell does, and we had SO much in common! Like it was ridiculous! I hope I’ll be able to some how magically touch base with him again, cause he was awesome. And then afterwards I got to hang out with J.J and Frank and Sassy.  Super cool.  I left the fete and was supposed to hang out with Lynn to study math for my GRE but my head was all over the place and neither of us were feeling it, so we just hung out at blue moon and had fun.

Friday was Dragged Out, which I’ve mentioned before that I usually look forward to every month.  This month it..umm..sucked… The sad thing is last month it also kinda sucked.  Like I was hoping it was just a fluke, but now I’m actually a bit worried. The one thing that was cool was that I got to reconnect with someone. Travis use to/still does perform at the Town House for drag, and the show was lead by this awesome queen named Jamie Monroe. I’ve seen Jamie perform a bunch of times, I’ve talked to Jamie, whatever.  So Jamie was at Dragged out, just as himself-Tony, and one look and I realized-I’ve totally hung out with him like a hundred times back in the day!  Way, way back many centuries ago, when Tim and I were first going to the gay bars, I use to hang out with Tim, and Tony, and Matt and Andrew.  We had all like crashed at Andrew’s tiny studio one night till like 8am!  We all use to go to the 90’s and out to restaurants at 3:00am, etc. Like holy hell, I hadn’t even realized this the entire time!  I talked to him outside for a bit (during one of the nights many…awkward numbers) and he was hilarious about it!  Apparently he, like the rest of the gay male community, has a thing for my brother! Damn!

So Saturday we kept things pretty chill and Ilon and I went to Aveda and got our hair cut (finally!).  I had a lot of odd fun cause my girls supervisor was swamped and she couldn’t come over so my girl to start the hair cut. So my girl-I think her name was Suzette- kept doing all these neat little Aveda things to keep us busy. So I got a head message, and hand messages and some aromatherapy stuff-the works! Plus the hair cut (I didn’t do anything drastic this time, since I’m still trying to grow it out,  but it looks nicer and the split ends are gone!).  Ilon however didn’t get all the bells and whistles (whatever, it can happen there) but the thing that pissed me off is that the stylists are required to give you a survey to fill out to tell them how they did and when Ilon asked the girl lied and said they didn’t do those anymore!  WTF?  So I called and complained (we realized this after we left) and now they are sending Ilon free hair coupons! Sweet!  Super Laine to the rescue J

Sunday we went to the renfest finally this year! We had planned on going before but couldn’t cause Ilon NEEDED homework time. So we went and met up with our friends Jess and Lynn. It was awful getting there cause we got lost like a hundred times which SUCKED and I was in a super bad mood but whatever.  We still had fun.  The only really bad thing: I um ran into someone I wish wasn’t on this earth anymore. WTF? He doesn’t even live in this state!  According to his myspace (he messaged me) he’s in Italy!!!!! I liked the idea that at least if he had to be alive he was a few oceans away from me! I feel…exposed that he’s here. And terrified. And angry.

Anyway to move onto any other topic, we went home that night so Ilon could again tackle the homework.  I got to catch part of the Steelers game – we lost for the first time this season.  Super sad.  But the eagles defense was sick.  Like they sacked Burgerman like a hundred times! (ok like 8 but whatever). Ilon’s packers also lost. It was not a good day for us and football.

So this week should be interesting.  Tonight is MTHC board meeting and then I’m going to try to make it to the gym and then off to pick up Ilon. Friday is the portfolio show and Ilon’s mom is coming down! We get to have her for part of the weekend!  Super excited. I’ve been looking up recipes of awesome stuff to make when she’s here. I’m also trying to find recipes for food for the graduation party!

Anyone have any ideas? I think I’m going to try deviled eggs for the first time-should be interesting!