Off Work!!

It's official: I'm on vacation! I worked a few hours yesterday, but now am off work until January 4th. I'm so excited to have a little break to rest and get some things done!!

When I got off work yesterday, Brandon and I went to Tupelo to get a new futon for our back room. First we went to Kyoto, one of our favorite restaurants, for lunch. Instead of sushi, we decided to get something different this time. He had the hibachi steak lunch special, and I got the bento box lunch special. I was really impressed with the variety I got with that: soup (LOVE their soup!!), steamed rice, teriyaki chicken, tempura shrimp, and California roll...just a little bit of everything and all for $7.50. Can't beat that! Anyway, we enjoyed our little lunch date!

The futon we wanted was at Sam's. Before getting that, we decided to wander around the rest of the store. We rarely go grocery shopping together anymore, so that was fun. We ended up with all kinds of stuff but really didn't spend too much money. After we got someone to come help us load the humongo box that the futon came in, we made our way up to the checkout lines. It really wasn't as busy as I had feared, being Christmas Eve. It didn't take us long to check out and get out of there. Loading and tying down the box was another story. And the WIND yesterday...it nearly blew me over! Needless to say, I was nervous riding home in our little pickup truck. We were pushed around the road all the way home!

I'm really happy with the futon we got. It's still in the box in the living room since Brandon had to go to work last night, but hopefully we'll get it put together this morning when he gets home. We spent a little more on it than I had planned, but it's really comfortable and I think well worth it. Now our company will have somewhere to sleep besides on an air mattress. Brandon's sister, Abby, and her husband are coming down to visit next week, so we found something just in time!!

My goal for today is to get our nasty house spic and span. I'm still in bed drinking my coffee, but will get up and at it pretty soon. Between all the overtime I've been working and being sick as a dog last week, the house has really gone downhill! If I can just get caught up on all the laundry, dishes, and general house cleaning today, then I can enjoy my time off. In the next few days, I want to get some organizing done, lots of scrapbooking, reading, service, and relaxing. First order of business though is the house!

A Dollar Well Spent

I found the dogs a couple of new toys this afternoon while I was getting some groceries. Bogart practically took this duck out of my hand when I got it out of the bag. I'd say it was $1 well spent!

Disclaimer: Please ignore the napkin Bogart found and shredded when no one was looking!

Sick Sick Sick

After months of work on our project at work, working toward our inventory and "go-live" yesterday, I had to come down with stomach virus at just the time to knock me out of the whole thing! I came down with it Wednesday night and pretty much wanted to die for the next 24 hours. Yesterday was better, but by no means good. Needless to say, I missed two days of work and an inventory count that I was supposed to be there for. :o(

I'm still recouping...trying to eat and get some strength back. Our house is a disaster. Hopefully I'll feel like cleaning some this afternoon. For now, I'm sacked out on the couch watching Brandon play Mario on the Wii.

Crazy Busy Work Week

This week has been one of the busiest work weeks I've had in a long time. I have a big project I've been working on for a while now, and my deadline is looming over me. I've already put in about 50 hours this week and will be working from home this evening, trying to finish before Monday's deadline. Hopefully I will get it done!!

I did take a break on Thursday. I left work on time, and Brandon & I went to Tupelo for dinner. We went to one of our new favorite restaurants - Kyoto - and had sushi. (Mine was cooked, of course!) Yum, yum! We also went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and looked around in the kitchen department, and to Kroger. At both places, we picked up a few items for attempting to do sushi rolls on our on at home. All we need now is the nori, which I have to order online. Anyway, should be fun when we have all the ingredients on hand!! (Cheaper too!!)

In the last few weeks, I haven't gone to the grocery store for more than just what we needed for one night at a time, and so our new refrigerator was pretty much empty by this weekend. We were also out of lots of other necessities around the house. As much as I needed to be home working, we do have to eat around here, and so yesterday I headed back to Tupelo to restock on all the things we were out of. I had no idea it would be a mad-house of crazed Christmas shoppers. Traffic was horrible. Horrible!! Not to mention the millions of people inside Sam's. What was I thinking??? Eventually, I did get what I needed and got to go home.

I have to say I was really proud of some of my purchases, especially at Kroger. I had a buggy FULL of food, including a treat for us for dinner one night - snow crab legs - and other fairly expensive items like cat litter, etc., and after allllll my many coupons, our bill was only $120. Yay! It's nice to actually have food in our new fridge! :)

Replacing our Refrigerator

We made the unfortunate discovery over the weekend that our refrigerator was starting to go out. A visit from a friend who works on them confirmed that it was indeed going out and really not worth the money to fix it, considering it's over 11 years old.

So, Monday Brandon & I headed to Tupelo to shop around for a new refrigerator. We found one we liked at Lowe's that was also within our tight budget, and so we placed an order for one in black. The nice thing about Lowe's is that they have free delivery, setup, and haul away of your old fridge.

This morning I was checking on the status of our order (Do you know how difficult it is to live w/o refrigeration?? We're so spoiled!!) and saw that the price had dropped by $55 since we placed our order!! So typical!! Not really thinking it would do any good, I called customer service, and to my surprise got a credit for the difference. Yay!

Now if the thing would just get here...