HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

Well, another year has gone by and I officially no longer have to scale down the age settings on the elliptical at the gym.  Excuse me while I go into a corner and sob a bit. 

*one hour later*

OK, I'm much better now!  Actually, I had a very nice birthday this year.  Well, at least there was little to no mayhem, so that's much better than some years.  I spent most of it at work, though.  Generally, I take the day off from work, but I didn't think of doing it soon enough.  I'm not kidding, this birthday sneaked up on me! (Sneaked doesn't sound right to me, but spell check says it's a real word.)

The pastor and the youth pastor took me to lunch, which was nice, but it was a little weird.   I mean, it wasn't weird in a bad way, but I'm still not used to being so causal with my preacher, so it was weird just hanging out and having lunch with them.  Shut up, I'm still getting used to it!  :)  We went to a place called Shane's Rib Shack.  The youth pastor had been telling me about the place and since I couldn't think of anywhere else I'd rather go, I picked that.  Honestly, I can never think of a place to eat when people ask me.  I'm terrible at it.  I panic, name a place, and then spend the entire meal worrying that the people I'm with don't like it!  However, this wasn't a bad choice at all.  It was actually really good! I mean, it was no Dreamland, but really, you can't expect that.  My only complaint, and it's really my fault for not knowing this already, was that I ordered a rib sandwich expecting it to be a sandwich made of rib meat.  Nope, it was two pieces of Texas toast with ribs in the middle.  Like, actual ribs on the bone in between bread slices.  It tasted good, but I had to remove the skeleton before I could eat it!

I actually had planned to leave early, but I wound up staying later to try and upload a video to Youtube, a video that refused to be uploaded.  I just got disgusted with it and left.  On my way home I stopped at the Cafe City Diner to pick up my birthday cake substitute, a couple of giant pieces tiramisu, for after dinner.  They were the size of Steve's head!

It was "Punch Someone In the Face" delicious.

When I got home, I saw where a bunch of people had posted happy birthdays on my Facebook page!  Look, I know that doesn't really mean much, and I know most of them probably didn't know it was my birthday until they saw it online, but I don't care.  I still thought it was nice.  They didn't have to take the time, so I took it as a plus!  Where else but Facebook will people you never talk to, never see, and probably don't know well enough to have a conversation with, tell you happy birthday?

Steve came home and we gave each other our Valentine's day gifts.  I'm so grateful that he knows I wouldn't like to get flowers or jewelry on Valentine's day.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's bad for people to give their wives or whatever flowers or jewelry, but it isn't something I personally like.  I got him jellybeans and he got me a t-shirt with a cartoon of the Dramatic Groundhog on it.  Tres romantic, no?

It makes me laugh. Don't judge me.

 We had to run a couple of errands, and we grabbed some 5 Guys burgers (and fries) on the way home, which I think put me over my daily allowance of meat for the next couple of days, but they were so feckin' good.  I opened my cards from my family and my birthday gift from Steve (a plotter, like the one I used at the Sprocket -pitooey- but for personal rather than industrial use. Awesome!) and we watched TV.  It was a lovely, low key birthday.  However, I didn't know it wasn't over yet!  I didn't actually get it until the next morning, probably because I had fallen into a meat coma after dinner, but I got - hands down - the best birthday video that has ever been made/ will ever be made. 

So, unless the universe is saving it up for later on in the year (which I sincerely hope it isn't, 'cause last time that happened it was really, really bad) the birthday curse was relatively mild, possibly absent this year.  Well, except maybe for what happened to Russia.  So, Прошу прощения, Russia.  My bad.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to think of me!  I'm really not worthy, but I'm glad you guys don't know that!  :)

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1)  You know, I can't believe that it's been so long since I've written anything on here.  My blog has always been a fun thing for me to do, but these days I never seem to have the time or energy!  That kind of sucks.  Anyways, I have no intention of stopping, but I hope you lovely people don't give up on me.  My life is just kind of boring right now.

2) Well, I made it through my first round of preparing taxes for the church workers!  Yippee!  Actually, make that a hesitant yippee, because I have no idea if I'm going to get a sternly worded letter from the IRS telling me that everything is wrong and I'm going to be arrested for tax fraud or something.  Since the church is a tax-free organization, all I really had to do was prepare income tax stuff (1099 & W2 forms) for the church employees, and that wasn't super hard or anything, but it was nerve wracking. I had to use a typewriter, y'all.  I might as well have been chipping the darn forms on pieces of slate. I type fast on a computer, but it took hours for me to do the forms because I didn't have spell check or any way to erase what I'd typed if I screwed anything up.  Yes, you can do all of your tax forms online, or at least with software, but the church can't afford to upgrade our Quickbooks so that we can automatically print the tax stuff.  People get very weird about their money, and rightly so, but being the one responsible for making sure it's right is awful.

I also had to make sure the church contribution letters were done, and that was another kind of pain in the ass.  If you aren't familiar with what contribution letters are, they are detailed reports of the offerings that are given to the church so that people can get tax deductions.  Some people don't bother using them, but some people are meticulous and they want every penny they give to be counted.  Of course, since I wasn't the only one working with the records this past year, and since a new program had been used (on a separate computer and the files hadn't been transferred) there were a lot of mistakes.  I had to manually, and individually, type in dozens (possibly hundreds) of new entries because our pastor didn't want anyone to get sheets from two different programs.  The work was tedious and sometimes confusing, so I have spent the last week or so correcting people's letters if they needed them corrected.  Fun stuff, you guys.

3) So I'm still trying to do the weight loss thing, and I still hate it.  Actually, I haven't been as careful as I was before because I think I've lost my mojo.  For one, I had a specific date and event to work towards back in October.  Having a goal date with a planned event made it easier to work towards losing weight.  For two... wait, is that even a thing? Secondly?  Is that better?  Secondly, the holidays happened and all of that lovely food was around and I didn't want it to go to waste. :)  For three...I don't have as much time to devote to going to the gym as I had before.  I've been trying to get back into the groove, but now that I'm working, it's more difficult to get to the gym because I either have to go really early, or after work, and I'm always too tired after work.  It's very frustrating.  I know this is a stupid thing to say, but I'd almost rather be able to focus on losing weight than working.  That is probably vain, and I'm sorry for that, but damnit, it was working!!!! 

I wasn't going to say how much I'd lost because it felt like I was jinxing myself, but at this point it doesn't matter. To date I've lost 35 pounds, and now I'm stuck.  I'd lost 37, but the last two pounds keep on coming back, going away, & coming back again.  After steadily losing weight (albeit slowly, but that works for me) for so long, being stuck is really frustrating.  Keep your fingers crossed for me, guys, because I've got a goal and I want to reach it. I just need my mojo back. Send me vibes.

BTW, 35 pounds probably sounds like a lot, but I'll be darned if I can tell where it came from.  Seriously, I see those commercials where people are all "I lost X amount of pounds by using this diet!" and they have the before and after pictures where they look so drastically different, but I don't think I look that different.  I mean, I can kind of see it, but mostly I think I must have lost it all from my head or some other useless place.  Maybe other people can tell, but I can't.

4) The other day I tried a drink that was so weird that I need everyone to go out and get it because I don't want to be the only one.  I wrote about it on my other blog, so you'll have to go there to read about it.  Mamma Chia...the slimiest drink on earth!