Tidbits

I realize I haven't made a post with substance for a while. And that's sad, so have some tidbits:

- Yesterday was my mama's 50th birthday! I find that so hard to believe for some reason. We're waiting until the weekend to celebrate since Ronnie is in Flint for school during the week. I'm not sure where we're going to eat, or if we're going to cook something for her at home, but her presents are wrapped and patiently waiting in my guest room! It was her birthday but she bought pizza for her office (which I don't work in but I'm her daughter so that doesn't matter!) so my lunch was veggie pizza eaten in her breakroom... It may or may not have been followed by a gigantic piece of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, LOL.

- Friday I went out to eat with the girls for lunch at Latitude 43. It's a newer restaurant in town and it was phenomenal! We ordered the "43 skins" for an appetizer, which they make with waffle fries instead of potato skins. YUM. I decided to get their penne with meatballs and was a little "meh" while waiting for it because in most places, though their menu may say meatballs in the plural form, you get your plate and there's one meatball plopped in the middle of it. I was really happy when the food came and there were 7 or 8 meatballs on my plate! They were spicy and sooo delicious.

- Saturday was our lazy day. We had plans of being so productive, but we got up and decided lounging around sounded better, lol. We got caught up on Big Bang Theory and cleaned a little, but that was about it. Sunday was Andy's mom's birthday and we met up with his family to have lunch at Logan's in Midland. I think it's such a weird coincidence that both of our fathers were born in January, both of our mothers were born in March and both of our siblings were born on the 31st of a month. Freaky, right?!

- My dining room windows are still bare. I ordered the valances for them on 2/28/11 and got an email that I should expect them by 3/4/11. Awesome turn around right?! I logged in to my store account on Monday when I still hadn't seen them to track them down and there was an update that they wouldn't be here until the 15th now. Uhh, whatever, that's fine, but maybe a notification via email would be helpful?! We also have everything cleared out of there to make way for our new dining set that should hopefully be here in the next week and a half to two weeks. We got a call that our chairs are in but they're still waiting on our table. Yeah, kinda need that. :) So, without curtains AND without a dining set, our dining room looks very pathetic. There *is* art on the walls though, so I guess it's better than it could be!

- I am on the hunt for the perfect waist-height table for our kitchen. Our stove is in a corner of the room and there are no cabinets on either side of it, so it's kind of a pain to prep everything at one counter, leave it all there, take what I need to the stove, come back for whatever I need next, etc... We have one empty wall (and it just so happens that it's next to the stove) so I thought a good idea would be to find a tall table that we could leave against the wall most days but pull out to the middle of the kitchen as an "island" when we wanted to cook.

- In a few weeks, I'll be going to pick out bridesmaid dresses with the rest of the girls from Erin's wedding. I can't believe her wedding is only six months away already! Her wedding colors are dark red, ivory and black and we can all get a different dress so long as they're all the same red color. It'll be fun! I'm really, really excited about the wedding present Andy and I decided we're getting for them, but I can't spill the beans just yet. ;)

- I can't remember if I mentioned that one of my friends asked me to shoot her wedding so, just in case -- one of my friends asked me to shoot her wedding. ;) I won't book shoots unless friends or family ask me to and when Anne asked, I couldn't say no! I've got a checklist going for all of the equipment that I'd like to acquire by September and really, there's not as much as I thought! I'd just like to get a nice macro lens and that'd pretty much have me set for my digital camera. But I want to play with my film cameras a little bit, too, and so I'd REALLY like to get a light meter for my Mamiya and Yashica! The always amazing Jonathan Canlas (he shoots 100% film, by the way) has ingrained into my brain the importance of light meters when using film cameras. I've tried to buy Nikon lenses that will work on my F100 and my dSLR so I'm all set there. I want a few "close-up" filters for my Yashica and I'd like to get another lens for my Mamiya since I've only got the 85mm right now. So: a lens for the dSLR, a light meter, a few filters and a lens for the Mamiya. I think I can handle that!

- I'm starting to feel the itch for our annual Chicago trip. Even though the ground is still snow-covered here, it's been warming up and the sun has been showing its face and when that happens? My urge to get the eff outta Bay City kicks it into overdrive! I'm not sure what we'll do there this year, or what hotel we'll book, but I can't wait for the road trip and summer fun.