I thought I'd start this up again.  And yes, I am most definitely going out of order and skipping things, but, eh... I feel like it. 

There are two supercool animals I would love to have as pets.  They are:

1) The miniature giraffe from the DirecTV commercial

2) A really sweet, really expensive ($35,950) cat, called the Ashera

It's hypoallergenic

But seriously, the pet I most want, and have always wanted, is a dog.  I want to rescue one and give it a good home.  I think I could be a really good dog owner.  I would be really motivated to go out hiking if I had a dog.  I wish I could have one now, but with my schedule it just wouldn't work.  Someday, though...

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how to manage my finances and invest my money in a beneficial and meaningful way.  While I was going through my mail this morning, I found that I had received a few things that made me begin to consider these options a little more.  First of all, I got my income tax forms.  Exciting.  It's interesting to see the difference between how much money I "made" and how much I actually got to keep.    Next, I got two letters from two wildlife foundations asking me for money.  One is the National Wildlife Foundation, which I have given to in the past, and the other was the World Wildlife Foundation.  I'm considering giving to one of them, since I do like animals a lot (I mean, who doesn't?) and I got really upset the other night watching a show about two moose babies whose mother got shot and there was no place to put them so they had to be killed.  Matt turned it off before they got to that part though.  He's nice like that.  And also?  Donations = tax deductible.  I don't know how much it really amounts to in the end, but it would be an interesting experiment.  I should just ask my dad.

Ok, so far, I've gotten stuff telling me how much money I make and how much I give to the government and some places asking me to give them money.  Wouldn't it be nice if someone gave me some money in the mail?  Well, the stars must have been aligned correctly today, because this was the next thing I opened.

yup.

Now, let's backtrack a little bit to last summer, when I received a mysterious survey in the mail with two crisp dollar bills inside.  The letter attached said, "Here, have $2, and if you fill out this survey you will get $10."  At first I thought, yeah, right.  I didn't even think the money was real at first, so I asked Matt to check.  After it was confirmed that the money was, in fact, real, I decided, what the heck?  I'll give it a shot.  They said it would be about 6 months, so of course I had forgotten all about it until just now.  But they kept their promise and I now have $10.  Woo-hoo!

So now that I am super rich (haha) I really do want to give back.  I'm thinking I'll go with one wildlife foundation and one nature-type foundation.  So who should I give to?  The Nation or the World?  The world is a big place and can use help from everyone, for sure, but there's a lot going on right here at home too.  I'm also seriously considering donating a case of food to our local food bank, maybe a couple times a year.  It's a better alternative to giving those bums at the intersection a dollar toward their beer/drug fund.  These are things I need to consider, along with some other investments I need to make (again, need to ask my dad) and just keeping better track of my day to day spending, which I will start doing once my computer gets fixed and I can make myself a little spreadsheet.  This year will be the year I stop just spending money, and actually figure out what I do with it. 

Oh yeah, and I'm participating in Saturday Steals.  You should too!

Hello there.  I'm back.  Did you miss me?  I've been having issues with my computer and haven't been able to go online or open any files or do anything, really. It's very sad.  The worst part about it is my computer isn't even that old.  I got it a year ago for Christmas and the warranty just expired.  Actually, that is the saddest part.  Stupid one year warranty.  Right now I'm at Matt's house and we're running diagnostics on it to give some info to HP, and even that is causing some trouble.  That has been our project for this weekend so far.

Last weekend, I arrived back in Albuquerque and began to deal with my other problem.  The day before I left for Michigan, my car battery died.  I didn't have time to do much about it at that point, so I put it off until I got back.  There was a lot of corrosion so at first we thought that might be the problem.  We took out the battery and cleaned the terminals with water, baking soda and a toothbrush.  I was the flashlight holder. We also took the battery in to be tested, and the voltage looked good.  So we put the battery in and it still didn't start, so it was back to AutoZone.  They are super helpful there.  I've been there for other problems and they are honest and never try to scam you into buying things you don't need.  We tested the battery again, and in this case, decided that I did need a new battery because the charge was low.  We installed the new battery and the car started up right away.  Yay!  The entire process took about 4 hours.

So far, 2011 has been the year of technical difficulties.

On a happier note, today was a really nice day so we decided to take Matt's dogs for a walk in the foothills.  They loved it!  Star was super excited, as you can see here.

At first, they had lots of energy and took off ahead of us up the trail, chasing rabbits and bicyclists and rolling around in the little patches of snow.


Toby mostly just wanted to eat the snow.

After a while, though, they began to get tired out so we finished our loop around the trail and headed home where both dogs proceeded to pass out on their "beds."  They had a fun day!

Well, I've had a lovely afternoon.  I finally went to see Harry Potter, and it was amazing.  I've heard people complain that "they're in the woods the whole time!  It's so boring!"  First of all, they're in the woods the whole time in the book, so it's not like they can change that.  Secondly, they didn't exactly spend a whole bunch of time just sitting around in the woods.  There was lots of other stuff going on.  The scenery was beautiful, the story moved along at a nice pace, and it was just awesome.  I really liked how they did the story of the three brothers.  Very simple and tasteful.  And of course, I could not ignore the geology.  In one scene they were sitting on some limestone cliffs, but the tops of them sort of looked like stromatolites.  I thought that was cool.

Anyhoo...I haven't written about Christmas yet.  We usually have it at our house but my grandpa wanted to have it at his house this year, so I wasn't sure what it would be like.  But it actually turned out really well.  My mom brought along our usual games that we play, and we had lots of fun with that.

The Cheerios were for the dog

Since I haven't had much time to post since I've been back in Michigan, here's Jazmine playing catch with her mice. 

And what the heck, here's a picture of my sister and I with the same exact presents.  Vera Bradley wallets from each other and Kohl's gift cards from my brother.




Merry Christmas!

This is probably supposed to be about food/drink, so I will say that I crave one thing in particular and that is this:

Mountain Dew.  (Or soda in general) I was first introduced to this carbonated wonder back in grad school.  A few days out of the week, my friends Nate and TT and I would each get a bottle for some socialization time and an afternoon pick-me-up.  If one person was not there, we would spill out a little bit for them, kind of like with a 40.  (Actually, now that I think about it, I probably should have done that with the 40 I drank.  Might have lessened the effects...Ahh, never again.  Anyway!) It has been very difficult for me to kick this afternoon habit, especially since we have like 3 soda machines downstairs.  Very, very difficult.

I honestly cannot think of a particular food that I crave. I like everything.  I asked Matt and he said, "Uhhhh... Mexican?  I don't know."  Mexican is actually what I was thinking of but I want to put that in a different post.

A couple times a year, what I really crave is to get on an airplane and get out of here.  Lucky for me, this is happening next week!  Dear snowy Michigan, I will see you soon!

This weekend, I went to Las Cruces for Matt's sister's graduation.  The first thing I noticed about Las Cruces was that it was WARM.  Probably about 70 degrees.  Oh, it was so nice!  I mean, even these guys can grow there.

I want to travel to lots of different places around the world, learn French, have a house with lots of windows, a big kitchen and a backyard, throw a really great party, lose 20lbs., go dancing, make my favorite chocolate chip cupcakes, do the laundry.

See?  I told you I'd get back to it.  I didn't do this one the other day because I was at Matt's house and didn't have access to my music.  I'm going to start off by admitting I'm not terribly familiar with all of my music, because Matt gave me a whole bunch fairly recently, which I just put on shuffle when I drove down to the Gila without really looking at the titles or anything.  So, let's see, first ten songs...


Gator Bay - Monte la Rue, from The End of the Rainbow Album.  I don't think I've listened to this one before.  It's super chill and laid back. 

Jade (Original Mix) - Jens Buchert, from Time Beyond.  This one has a cool, trippy outer space-like sound.  I like Jens Buchert a lot.  He's right on par with Charles Afton.

Audiobox (Original) - Jens Buchert, from Trilobyte EP.  Hey, another one by Jens Buchert!  Apparently I have a lot of his music.  But anyway... I like that the album is called Trilobyte, nice play on words there.

Bee (Sunflower Mix) - Lemongrass, from Fleur Solaire.  This one is nice and peppy and has a girl singing about honey.

In The Mirror (Original Mix) - Jens Buchert, from Cafe Solaire.  Wow, another Jens Buchert.  Who would have guessed?  My iTunes likes him today, apparently.  It's kinda dub-steppy, I think.  Or is it drum & bass?

Drink More Tea (Herbal Mix) - Slack Baba, from Psymeditation 2.  Haha, clever title!  See, I really don't know any of the names for these songs.

Peaceful Life - Clelia Felix, from Cafe Brazillia: The Cream of Latino Lounge.  Fancy!

Kinda Going Crazy - Groove Matter, from Jazzelicious Presents.  Oh, I have actually heard this song before several times.  I like it.  It has a cool jazz feel with a chick saying she's "kinda going crazy" in a sexy voice.

Inbetween Your Choice (Original Mix) - 16B, How to Live For 100 Years.  This is one of my favorite types of this kind of music.  Because it starts out with a simple pattern and then keeps layering in more and more parts to add to the whole.

Bossa Del Nueva (Original Mix) - Jens Buchert, Fruit Machine.  Ok, Ok, another Jens Buchert.  But this is probably my favorite of his albums.  Or at least the one I listen to the most.

Organic Walk - Greg Long, from South Beach: Lincoln Road.  I really like this one.  It has a nice, sunny feel to it.  Like walking on a beach.  Good job with matching the title to the music, Greg Long!


I honestly do have other music besides this electronic stuff, but my iTunes just didn't want to play it today.  Also, this genre greatly outnumbers the rest because I haven't transferred all my other music onto this computer yet.  I know, I've had a year, right!?