Monday, you are not my friend

I really dislike Mondays!  I wish I could just skip them and move on to Tuesdays each week.  :-)

So we carved pumpkins this weekend and it was a good time.  We roasted the seeds, and I have a small selection of them at work for a snack today.  J did the cool wolf one on the left, BF did the goofy one in the middle (it has ears you can't see and that thing in its mouth is a tongue poking out) and mine is the uber traditional one on the right.

We watched a scary movie (The Conjuring) and I watched two more on my own (The Taking of Deborah Logan and The Canal). I'd already seen The Conjuring, but it was good enough for a second viewing with others who hadn't yet seen it!  The other two were new to me and I actually really liked both!  The Canal is an Irish movie from 2014 and it had a great ambiance to it.  It's about a man who suspects his wife of cheating right at the same time he discovers that his home has a rather grisly history and may be haunted.  It was very well made and built suspense quite successfully.

The Taking of Deborah Logan is a combination found footage/documentary type movie, though it's all fiction.  It's about a woman doing her thesis on Alzheimer's, and as part of that she is doing a documentary involving a woman with early onset Alzheimer's.  As the days progress, weird things and behavior start occurring that can't be attributed to her illness, and it starts to become apparent that something scary is going on!

They were both really good movies, which is not too surprising since I found them on lists like "The Best Scary Movies You Aren't Watching" and things like that.  I watched those two on my own because not BF & J don't have the same obsession with all things scary like I do!  I have several more I'd like to get through this Halloween week.  They include:

The House of the Devil
The Sacrament
The Den
The Houses October Built

I'd also like to squeeze in Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, maybe A Nightmare on Elm Street.  But that may be overreaching, especially because I also want to watch Halloween on Halloween.  :-) I still want to do some scary book reading, but honestly...it may not happen.  Too much to watch, too much to do!

Managed to get my Halloween manicure done at home as well yesterday afternoon.  J & I did our nails together and she actually did the reverse of what I did.  I did all black save for two orange nails on each hand and she did all orange with black accent nails.  Hopefully they will survive the week as long as I do my trick of a new topcoat everyday.  Good times!

Ran out to Target briefly and got some orange and black Halloween socks and a purple tank to go underneath a cute black and white shirt I'm wearing Friday.  We have our annual Halloween Hullaballoo that afternoon, which is basically when everyone's kids come to the office to trick or treat and then have cookies and pizza!  It's a really fun tradition and I wanted to dress as festively as I could without donning an actual costume.  J reminded me that purple is also a Halloween color, which saved me from having to get an orange cami that would have been totally unflattering.  ;-)

In non-Halloween news, I got my 2016 planner in the mail Friday.  I'm such a nerd because this is super exciting to me.  :-)  I do use Google Calendar for pretty much everything appointment and event-wise, but I've kept up the paper planner because I tend to use it differently.  It's basically a diary of everything I do, so it's a lot more detailed than what's on Google.  I can't tell you how many times I've referenced it for random reasons!  So it still serves its purpose and I love getting the new one each year.

They sent an email out today updating everyone on forthcoming upgrades and changes for our Firm in the remainder of 2015.  One of them is something I am going to LOATHE....they are blocking all personal email websites and all social media.  I know many employers have done this for ages, and maybe we've been lucky to have the access we have for this long, but it's still a blow.  They claim it's to comply with client's increasingly stringent security requirements, but who knows.  Supposedly this will be implemented by year's end.  They also said that they will be adding internet browsing safeguards and email content monitoring.  Awesome.  Cheers for that coming down the pike.  I just hope that none of these changes affect our ability to check these same sites using our mobile devices when on work wi-fi.  Guess that remains to be seen!

So tomorrow at work is a random Jeans Day.  Granted, it had strings attached in the sense that you had to make a charitable donation in order to wear jeans, but it's worth it.  Jeans make work better! So that makes one less day of choosing an appropriate work outfit, woo.

Speaking of random, I have a random inquiry.  Does anyone have any experience with curling wands?  I've been thinking of picking one up just to try it out.  I love the look of the curls they give, and I've read that it's an easy way to polish natural curls, too.  Just thought I'd see if anyone had any personal experience with them!

Time to go deal with this Monday....

Halloween things

I am excited for a looming weekend of scary movies, pumpkin carving, seed roasting and other such seasonal fun.  Sometimes I really think Halloween is my favorite holiday.  It's in my favorite season and my favorite month, and just has so many good associations to it.  I wish I had more time to do all the Halloween things I wanted...all the haunted houses, the pumpkin patches, reading all the scary books, listening to all the scary podcasts, watching all the scary things.  There's just not enough time!

I also always get the urge to watch the Halloween episodes of everything...My So-Called Life, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Office, Gilmore Girls, Felicity....even Roseanne!  Always a good time.  :-)

I found a couple of new to me scary movies I want to watch to rotate in something new.  They include "The Canal", "We are What we Are" and "The Fourth Kind".  They are varying in subject matter and are not all overtly Halloween type scares, but they sound like things I would enjoy!  I also have the desire to watch some older ones like the original Paranormal Activity, The Ring, The Grudge, The Silence of the Lambs, Stir of Echoes, The Blair Witch Project.  Of course I'll obviously watch Halloween....on Halloween.  :-)

In the meantime, work is just in the way.  Ha!  I really wish it were friday, but at least we are on the downhill slide.  I don't want to rush my way through the last part of October, but I am looking forward to November.  We're driving to Charleston to see BF's family for a long weekend November 13-16, so that will be a couple of days off work and out of town.  Then later in the month is the four day weekend for Thanksgiving, which we are happily staying home for this year.  It will be really nice to have no obligation to travel for the holiday, especially since Christmas is around the corner at that point and always a huge travel hassle!

I really can't believe it's this time of year already.  It seems crazy to be talking about Halloween, much less Thanksgiving and Christmas.  My holiday party is December 10th and I'm hoping for a shining comeback from the sickfest that was last year's party.  I'm probably going to re-wear a dress I own already instead of buying something new, so that should save some money!  Definitely an expensive time of year no matter how you cut it.

My ex-H is in Aruba right now with his fiancee and a group of friends.  I'm ferociously jealous.  I need the kind of life where I jetset off to Aruba for a week.  Ha!  Probably not in the cards.  :-) Hopefully it will at least be decent weather when we visit Charleston in November.  By then it probably won't be much of the awesome mid-70s weather we're having right now!

So this was a boring, fluffy post, but sometimes that's what I have to offer.  :-)  Cheers for Thursday, which is almost Friday!

October-ing

I've been really enjoying October thus far.  It truly is my favorite month!  We went to a pumpkin patch a couple of weekends ago and to a haunted house on Friday night.  :-)  Next weekend we'll be watching scary movies and carving pumpkins.  Must hit all the best fall activities before we slide into November.

We only had J for half the weekend this weekend, so on Saturday night we went out to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch some of the Mizzou game.  They lost, but it was still a fun evening.  When we got home J had texted BF and said something along the lines of, "So my mom/friends/family are asking when you're going to marry Bluemoon".  HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I had to laugh.  BF actually asked me if I'd put her up to it based on my response of, "Hey, you know...that's a good question!  What are you going to tell her?"  I assured him I had not, but that if I was to glean some information from her inquiry what was the harm in that?  He responded, "Eventually.  One day!" and I rolled my eyes until they almost bottomed out entirely.  He later told me that his answer to her was "Could be soon".

I'm not putting a ton of weight into that answer.  BF is the world's slowest moving creature in terms of commitment.  It's a bit goofy because I know we both see each other in our long-term future and I know he's 100% committed to me.  He's just a very marriage-skeptical guy, which I get to some degree, but also to another I'm like...GET OVER IT.  You get out of it what you put in it.  I SHOULD KNOW.  :-)

Anyway, I thought it was cute that she asked and I'm secretly glad that he is periodically reminded that the world thinks we are ready for this next step.  It will be two years in January, which is a pretty solid chunk of time when you're grown adults, esp. once you've lived to together for almost 8 months already and it will be ten months by the time of the aforementioned anniversary.

I know part of this is related to the wedding bug going on around me, which I've mentioned before. My ex-H is engaged and getting married in Mexico in April, another friend is proposing to his girlfriend soon, an old bloggy friend is engaged and wedding planning.  There's definitely something in the air!  But beyond all of that, I just really feel like we've proven to ourselves that we are in this for the long haul, and cohabitation has gone strikingly well, and I feel like his kid is my (step)kid through and through.  She drives me crazy at times, but I love her, anyway and I love that she sees us as another family in her life.

I guess only time will tell, and patience is a virtue and blah blah blah.  ;-)  I have faith in BF that he will set aside his concerns and take a chance on marriage with me sooner than later, although the sooner may be slower to come than I'd maybe like.  Compromise, compromise.  Just last year we spent our anniversary evening discussing the idea of living together, and now we are living together like rock stars!  Things will unfold as they should.

Honestly, life is busy enough that I shouldn't have a ton of time to worry about that too much.  Work has been CRAZY and it's definitely keeping me super busy.  We start our elementary school tutoring partnership tomorrow, which is always fun!  The kids are super cute and it's nice to do something like that for people who need it.  We go twice a month for the duration of the school year for a couple hours at a time, so it's a good time and something beneficial for all involved.

Beyond that, I'm reading a lot, trying to find time to watch a bunch of different things on Netflix and Hulu and trying to remember where my headband and gloves are now that it's cooler out in the mornings.  I think I'm going to have to upgrade to a heavier winter coat because my walking commute is several blocks longer this winter and it gets COLD!  This morning was 33.  :-o  Brr.

I love fall, but I don't love that it leads to winter!

Hello, October!

I so love the month of October!  We started out seriously rainy, but this week has been pretty gorgeous.  It's my favorite kind of fall weather where it's cool in the mornings, but sunny and moderate in the day.  Perfection.  :-)  I can't believe we're already a week in!

Work has been pretty busy lately!  I guess that's a good thing, though.  Yesterday was a bit of a stressy one, but I got out of the office for lunch with my friend, A, which helped.  I recently was given a Blackberry for work purposes, which is interesting.  I don't love having two devices to lug around, but until our IT Dept. can figure out how to make friends with Android this is my lot in life. I'm not a superfan of the BB as a device, though.  It just seems so old school and boring and worky, LOL.  It's half touch screen, half keyboard and I haven't had anything more than a touch screen in a few years!

So we got the house 95% decked out for Halloween this past weekend.  We got to combine my decorations with the ones BF got last year, so that was fun!  I just have a couple small things to finish, some tiny pumpkins to buy (decorative, carving ones come later) and then we're done!  We also got discounted tickets to a haunted attraction out our way that we'll be going to one of these weekends.  Love haunted houses!  I hope to go to at least one in addition to going to one of the area pumpkin patches for some seasonal fun.

I ordered a paperback copy of "The Amityville Horror" recently because I have always wanted to read it, and this is definitely the time of year!  I have been on a Kindle sample spree lately and am trying to decide what to read next.  Some of my recent reads include:

Side Effects May Vary-Julie Murphy
YA book about a girl with cancer who thinks she's going to die and thusly undertakes a bucket list of things to do before her death with her childhood BFF.  Problem is it's mostly not a happy, good inducing list, but more of an "I'm going out with a (nasty) bang" list. Then she finds out she's in remission and has to deal with the aftermath of everything she wrought in that year!  I really enjoyed this book actually.  Good twist on the super trendy kid with cancer book that's been everywhere lately.

Why Not Me?-Mindy Kaling
LOVE Mindy Kaling.  She's funny as always and is just so relatable in so many ways!  I'm also a huge fan of her show "The Mindy Project", which I subscribed to Hulu to watch this season.  Totally worth it!

If I Could Turn Back Time-Beth Harbison
I enjoy this author and her love of time travel related storylines.  It probably wasn't my favorite book of hers, but it was definitely enjoyable


Books on my Kindle waiting to be read include:

Everything, Everything-Nicola Yoon
A Head Full of Ghosts-Paul Tremblay

This is apart from the previously mentioned slew of samples and the paperback copy of The Amityville Horror.  So many books to read!!  :-)

We saw "The Martian" this weekend.  I truly loved this book and I really enjoyed the movie. I thought Matt Damon did a good job!  BF and I went and took J and I think everyone really liked it.

In other news, I desperately need to book my Christmas travel, but the fares are outrageous and are for non-direct flights to boot.  Sigh.  This is THE week to book, so I need to get it done, but it's just hard to reconcile $600 dollars or more for a non-direct flight to NEBRASKA IN THE WINTER. It's such a racket!  Luckily my grandfather is going to buy the ticket using his miles and that should bring my cost down to a more reasonable $300 or so.  I do wish I could spend Christmas with BF sometime, but I can barely rationalize a ticket to Omaha, so asking him to get two for himself and J is out of the question.  I've always gone home for Christmas, and with my grandfather's health not being so awesome anymore, I'll likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future.  Oh well.  At least BF has J for Christmas this year so I don't have to feel extra bad about leaving him totally solo for the day!

It's almost time for my fall salon visit for a sprucing.  I'm due for my seasonal highlights/lowlights combo and a cut, and I've scheduled that for a week from Friday.  Love those days!  Beyond that, I'm currently looking forward to a concert I'm going to on Sunday night this weekend with my friend, A. We saw Andrew Belle for the first time a couple years ago and he's finally back in town, so we're going again.  He puts on a great live show and I LOVE his album.  Should be a fun night, even if it does mean having to watch the season premiere of "The Walking Dead" on DVR Monday night instead of Sunday.  ;-)

Time to wrap this up and get focused on my workload for the day.  Happy Wednesday!