Happy V-Day ...A day late

I want to say thank you to my sweet husband who got me such a great Valentine's gift! We went to Green Life one night and across the parking lot is an art gallery and I've always loved theses pictures:

I got this one and one that says "Live" -

I told Michael I wanted to be able to make my own but the only letter I have been able to find is a "T" made out of a telephone pole. And those aren't so unique.

Half of My Heart

I cannot think of a better way to have spent the night:

Heartbreak Warfare
Crossroads
No Such Thing

Vultures
Bigger Than My Body

Perfectly Lonely
Assassin

3x5
Comfortable

Waiting on the World to Change
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

Half of My Heart

Why Georgia

Gravity

Who Says

Say

Happiness x10

My sweet friend, Emily, tagged me in her blog to share 10 things that make me happy:

1. PHOTOGRAPHY. I could probably spend my day online finding photographers' websites and looking at picture after picture. I am also trying to learn a little more about this art so hopefully one day soon I can show off some stuff.

2. Being WARM. Climbing into bed on a cold night and curling up under the covers. Getting out of the pool on a summer day and feeling the sun warm up your skin. Walking out of the freezing cold and letting the heat of a warm building hit your face.

3. Getting to the LAST 100 pages of a book. I know I am close to the end and the excitement of seeing how the story is going to come together is too much for me to put the book down. So if I get to the last 100 pages, I'm probably going to finish no matter how late I have to stay up.

4. The SMELL of summer. Not the way too sticky, hot summer. The kind we had last year where the temperature didn't get over 100 and you just want to be outside all the time.

5. A new pair of JEANS that fit perfectly. I don't usually try on clothes in the store so when I get them home (or in the mail) and they fit, I might wear them for a few days straight.

6. CHEESE BISCUITS from Red Lobster. I am pretty sure I could go to Red Lobster and have a meal entirely of these biscuits and be in heaven.

7. My sweet dog, BELLA, hopping up and down like a kangaroo when I come home from work. She does this every day. Even though I usually go home for lunch so its only a couple of hours since she saw me last. I also love to watch her little nub of a tail wag back and forth as fast as a little nub can.

8. Being able to drive with the WINDOWS down. And turning up my radio really loud. Sometimes it just feels good.

9. STARS. I love to look up in the sky and see millions of them just twinkling their lives away. This either stems from or is the cause of the fact that I also love things that sparkle. If it were not so tacky to have a house filled with sparkly things, I might do it.

10. All the RED and PINK at Valentine's Day. Its really the only time of year when its okay for these colors to be together in such large quantities. Seeing them out there just makes me happy.

Have you ever...

read a book and it took you forever to finish? I am sure the answer is yes. That's how it was with this last book I read. I could just not get into this book. I wanted to finish it because I didn't want to leave it unfinished. But ugh. I did not really enjoy it. Maybe in another time or place... I actually considered for a brief second, with about 20 pages left, putting the book down. I just knew it was going anywhere. Not only that I knew how it ended before I finished it due to the fact the author wrote from about 5 different perspectives and one of those started from the end and went to the beginning. I just kept holding out hope that, in the end, the author was going to throw me a bone. She was going to throw some surprise in the end and it was going to have been worth the read. Fail. This did not happen.

This isn't to say someone out there won't love this book. I just didn't. And as a result of me taking a week to read this book, I didn't read as many books as I would have liked to this month.

I also didn't get a chance to work on my photography class assignment this weekend. In the excitement of leaving work early on Friday I completely forgot the handout/assignment that was sitting on my desk at work. But my last class meets on Saturday this week instead of Thursday, so maybe I'll get the opportunity to make up for it in the extra days.

Sweet, Sweet Summer

It has been TWO long years since I have been able to enjoy summer. It has been two years since I got to play during summer. This year I am free and praying for a sweet summer.

It makes me so happy (literally smiling to myself) to think that I do not have to spend two nights of every single week in school. I do not have to to spend the rest of the week nights reading and/or studying. I get to be free. I do not have to worry about mid-terms and feel sad that the only good night of Riverbend (yes, I do still go to Riverbend) happens to be on the same night as one of those mid-terms. I do not have to plan going out and having fun around school nights. I get to be free.

When I started working full time I was a little bummed that no matter what I did or how late I stayed out at night, I had to get up and go to work the next morning. But at least you still get those summer nights... Having devoted two years of my life to school took those nights away from me. And now I get them back. I don't have to plan my vacations around school nights or worry about missing a class. I just get to go have fun. And I do not think I can put into words how happy this makes me.

So, here's wishing to a sweet summer full of fun and friends and NO SCHOOL!!

20/20

So I spent an hour at the eye doctor yesterday. I don't think I have ever looked forward to a doctor's appointment so much. I had been wearing my glasses for almost two weeks and I was really struggling. I can see fine with my glasses - but I hate wearing them. Unfortunately I am pretty near sighted. My doctor did some little math formula yesterday and I learned that without any type of corrective lenses, I can see a whole 22 cm into the distance before things start to go fuzzy. And let me tell you, when that is the case and you are wearing glasses, forget about glancing down or out of the corner of your eyes. Because you can't. You just see blur. And taking a shower... that is fun. I can't wear my glasses in the shower because the fog up (yes, I've tried) so that just means I'm stuck just seeing blur. It is not fun attempting to shave your legs this way. Glasses also tend to minimize things. So, even when I wear those, I am seeing things slightly smaller than they actually are. Which you might not notice so much, except when you do things like read or look at the computer. I get less of a headache holding a book right up to my face than I do when I read wearing my glasses. Overall, I find it much, much, much more enjoyable to wear contacts.

But even contacts, when worn correctly can be a pain. You are supposed to take them out every night or every other night or something like that. I don't do that. I enjoy living in my false sense of reality that I have 20/20 vision. At least until I get something in my eye or some small little tiny piece of dust on my contact that hurts like you would not believe. Most of the time I just make myself suffer through it. Again, I find this easier than giving up the ability to see.

In hopes of making my life a little better, I am considering having LASIK done. I don't mean in the next month or anything. But maybe in the next year or so. I actually talked to my eye doctor about it for a while yesterday and the more I think about it, the more I want to do it. So, maybe, hopefully in the next year or so I can be glasses/contacts free!

Starting all over

So it is the start of a brand new year... at least it was 12 days ago. I wouldn't say that I made any 'resolutions' but there are some things I want to work at - spending money would be on the top of the list. Unfortunately I don't mean spending more of it. I need to stop shopping online for clothes and I need to stop buying 1 or 2 new books every time I go to Target or Books A Million. Well, maybe just Target because I'm pretty sure the point of Books A Million is to buy books. I also need to work on my organizational skills. When you live in a small house built in the 1930's you are not afforded a lot of storage space. Therefore I need to be more organized. I love the location of our house. And if I could afford a $300k house, I would have no trouble finding a larger house with lots of space in the same area. Unfortunately, that is not the case. And we are not really looking to move in the near future. So I am stuck with the task of becoming more organized in a small house.

After 2 looonnng years of Law School I am not going back. And this makes me so happy! I do not regret making the decision to go. I thought it was what I wanted to do and I tried it. And I hated it. So now I know and I don't have to wonder for the rest of my life if I should have done it. This leaves me with more time at home, more sleep and a much better outlook on my Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tuesdays and Wednesdays will now consist of Biggest Loser, NCIS and Criminal Minds.

I was supposed to start a photography class last Thursday, but due to all the inclement weather, it was moved back a week. So this Thursday I will start to learn a little about the art of digital photography. I think for now it will be a little hobby. But if I am able to actually pick this up and become good at it... well, I'll just see where it takes me for now.

Now that I have time to read for fun (which, in protest for hating the last half of school last year, I did anyway) I want to read a lot more than I do now. I was poking around on a website one day and saw where someone had set a goal of reading 100 books in a year. And I thought to myself, that is something I can do. So I am going to attempt this. The key word is attempt because I have come to realize that to accomplish this I have to read 2 books a week. I think its possible. I read fast. But if I make it to the end of the year and haven't done this, well, hopefully I will have put a dent in it. We shall see...