It is absolutely no secret that I am extremely picky about what I read. I prefer a biography about someone I find interesting or a good fiction or even science fiction book that has a very original plot or a twist on something that may have been done differently in the past.

I am much more likely to watch the movie rather than read the book. I am much more visually inclined. There are two books I am currently reading and have been reading for a very long time now and just haven’t finished. ‘Just A Geek’ by Wil Wheaton and ‘World War Z’ by Max Brooks. It’s not that they’re not good books, they are, but I either forget I have them to read, I don’t feel like reading them or, my most used excuse, I don’t have the time.

However, on the other hand, I absolutely love to read magazines. The types of magazines I enjoy reading and looking through make me feel so old but I enjoy them. The ones I read the most are Parents, Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Garden. Yeah, I’m not your typical Martha Stewart type but I enjoy having a nice home with beautiful decor and seeing how others decorate as well. This months issue of Better Homes is all about organization which is my forte. I am an organization FREAK! There are plastic bins under the sink in the bathroom to organize everything and save space, baskets to hold and separate, bins in Sean’s room to separate his things, large bins for clothes Sean can’t wear anymore neatly packed away, etc. Even my Christmas wreath has a wreath shaped bin that it goes into in the off-season. It’s quite an addiction, actually.

I also like to read about what other parents do with their children — how they disipline, praise, entertain, etc. Also, Parents magazine usually has some really great must have items to make motherhood a breeze and enjoyable at the same time. Reading some of the horror stories from other mothers can be a relief sometimes too. Simple tricks to always be prepared are great as well. Strangely enough, I look through this magazine for things to improve myself as a mother and Sean’s childhood, but really, half the time, they’re things I already know or wouldn’t even apply in our everyday lives. I am still drawn to it though like white on rice.

You should see the stack of magazines on the shelf at my desk at work!

So, if you are what you read, then it’s true that I am a parent, I do good housekeeping and I have a better home, but no garden. Oops! Maybe when we buy a new house I’ll actually take the time to have a garden… maybe not.

As if the crazy Internet Explorer vulnerabilities weren’t enough, I had gotten lots of malware on my computer because of it and went into a frenzy trying to back up all my important files on my SimpleTech 320gb external hard drive (as seen above), including but not limited to: photos of my son from birth to present, videos of his first laughs, first steps, my wedding photos, family photos, a backup of my website, etc.

Upon trying to do so, I was unable to. After spending money on an external power adapter, driving myself nuts and thinking it was something unrelated to my drive, I found out after sitting on hold for SimpleTech’s technical support for 25 minutes only to have a rude tech answer the phone, tell me I broke the drive, which took all of 2 minutes.

Well, I didn’t break the drive. The drive is a piece of crap. It worked just fine on my old Dell laptop, then I got my new Alienware laptop and it didn’t work. I then used my BlackBerry cord instead thinking that it could be a problem with the cord itself, but it still didn’t work. I then borrowed a co-worker’s digital camera cord and VOILA! it worked! Not sure of the difference but I was happy.

I then tried again to use the drive and nothing. I was using the ‘y’ USB cord that came with it since it may need extra power to the drive. The red light came on but the blue ‘backup’ light never did. I then thought that maybe it still isn’t getting enough power, so I go to Radio Shack and buy an AC adapter with 12v and 1.5amps and still it won’t work.

I tried my drive on my old laptop which is now my husband’s that it formerly worked on and nothing! Used different cables, etc. Out of curiosity, I decided to Google the drive and found nothing but bad things to say about it and how it stops working almost immediately. I wish I had known this when I bought it, but I didn’t!

This is where I decide to go to SimpleTech’s website and do a little research on the warranty. Thankfully it has a 3 year warranty! I then create and submit a RMA and then call their tech support in which the rude douche bag answers, tells me I broke it and then tells me to do a RMA, which I already did. So, pretty much, I sat on hold for 25 minutes for absolutely no reason, but hey, I should be receiving a new hard drive… and you know what? I am going to sell the brand new one and use the money to put towards a GOOD hard drive.

Moral of the story, DO NOT BUY A SIMPLETECH EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE!

17 Days Until Christmas!

It’s snowed a few times already this year but all have amounted to nothing, but then Friday night it snowed again and this time it meant business. It was sticking! I love the snow! I’ve also been eager to test out my new car’s all wheel drive in the snow and I must say, like a dream! Absolutely wonderful!

Bring on the snow betches!

It didn’t seem like anything was going right yesterday. As I woke up, everything was normal. I got dressed and headed to work and was going to be about 30 minutes early which was great because it gives me time to get situated and have a little breakfast.

I was on my way and traffic for once wasn’t as bad as normal, probably because it was election day and everyone was elsewhere voting which was working out great for me until it happened.

About 2 miles from the exit on the highway I use to go to work a semi truck in front of me (there was a car between me and the truck) had a tire blow off and shred all over the highway. The car in front of me was swerving all over to avoid it and they seemed to, but because they were able to avoid it, the shredded tire was heading in my direction. That’s when I let out a huge, “FUCK!” and swerve to my left to miss it, thus hitting another car and letting out a loud, “SHIT!”. The truck never stopped or even thought to slow down.

We pulled over and given what happened the other driver was pretty cool about it and I seemed calm. I was mainly in shock and pissed off more than anything. My brand new card was no longer as pretty was it was just a few minutes earlier.

The worst part of it all, besides damaging my baby was actually seeing a part of my fog light bounce up in front of my windshield and be lost forever. It seemed to go in slow motion.

The police came, asked some questions like how fast we were going and what lanes we were in. The cop was pretty cool, so cool in fact that he didn’t give me a ticket for hitting the other driver. I mean, my car being involved in an accident and having to pay a $500.00 deductible to get it fixed was enough of a punishment to me.

After I had calmed down it became clear to me, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, that I swerved left because I knew there were a lot more cars to my right that I would hit rather than just the one to my left. I also realized that I swerved the way I did because the tire was coming at my damn windshield. I’m not sure about you, but something that big and heavy flying right at my face is something I’m not too keen on, especially if it could cost me my life in doing so.

As angry as I am about my car, I am extremely happy that it wasn’t more serious and given what happened my car isn’t as damaged as it probably should have been in that scenario. But, the other woman’s car was quite bad.

So that’s how my yesterday started out. How was your day!? :-\

Behold! Dents, scrapes, missing paint and missing pieces from my fog light. [Can't really tell much from the picture]

Sunday was Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky’s annual Riverfest which is pretty much a huge gathering of belligerent, rude, disrespectful people who eat, drink and act like fools all day before a 30 minute fireworks displays follows.

I have gone to Riverfest many, many times but I don’t think I’ve ever been on the Kentucky side like we were the other night. On the Kentucky side of the river people can drink, however, people on the Ohio side cannot. This could be due to why there were so many a-holes and jerks.

We won’t completely go into details but I will let you see the good side of Riverfest by letting you view the video and some photos I took.

When my husband, son and I lived in North Carolina we lived in a house and enjoyed our freedom to pretty much do whatever we liked. We especially enjoyed the privilege of not having to deal with the sounds of rude neighbors, accusations of breaking doors, etc.

We knew that when we moved and sold our house, since it was going to be such a long distance we would have to move into an apartment and sign a 1 year lease since we were unable to house shop productively from 700 miles away. That was fine with me. I mean, we live in a very nice apartment with in a great subdivision in a very nice area. We’ve made this our home until we buy another house.

The cons — last night between 10:30 pm and 11:00 my husband and I were in bed attempting to sleep. Yes, I know! Who goes to bed at 10:30? Well, I do and on occasion so does my husband. I am a tired person and I value my sleep and I am not a party animal when I know that I have to work the next day. Sorry to be a responsible adult. So, getting back to it, as we were lying in bed trying to sleep and getting nearly close; for some reason, the chick that lives above us decides to re-decorate her bedroom or something really late at night. That’s when we start hearing banging. And not the “that’s what she said” type of banging. A banging that occurs when someone is either nailing into a wall or hammering furniture together. Regardless, it was loud and it got on my nerves. The first session lasted about 20 seconds and was about 20 seconds too long. I just let it go and figured it was a one time thing. A few moments later, here she goes again. At this point I run to our laundry room and grab the broom with complete intentions on banging on the ceiling. By the time I got back to our room it had stopped. Since I do have a conscience, I didn’t bang on the ceiling. I stood there and waiting for it to happen again but it didn’t. I then put the broom back and got comfortable in our bed with my comfy down comforter and “banket”. No more than five minutes later, *bang*, *bang*, *bang*. Grr! I ran and grabbed the broom again and this time I was going to make it known I didn’t want to hear it anymore. I hit the ceiling in as many places I could and as hard as I could lasting about 10 seconds. I put the broom back and went back to bed… again. It happened again, but this time I just lied there knowing that I know they heard my response and thought they were just being spitefull. That was the last time.

This seems like an incredibly old woman thing to do, but I wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t started banging on the floor when my husband and I had just moved in and were putting furniture together in the living room around 8 o’clock at night. We realized they didn’t like the sound of our hammers putting together our newly purchased IKEA furniture. So, we got a towel and put it between the hammer and the furniture, muffling the noise, thus not being able to hear it anymore. Genius!

Not only that, but when we moved in we were also accused of breaking the security door. It was brought to our attention that the “witnesses” stated, “They were propping the door open and that’s what broke it”. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t doors meant to be opened? Even if for an extended period of time? Not only that, but the door was broken before we got there.

The butchy woman that lives across the hall from us has made some extremely rude comments along the lines of, “*Strong sigh* They broke the door again!”. Dude! Nope, sorry.

We’ve even been harassed by one of the managers of the complex accusing us of breaking the door and had a very nasty tone on the phone when I spoke to her after she left a voicemail on my BlackBerry. I let her know I didn’t appreciate the accusations and the tone. Ironically, her name is Carla too. *facepalm*

All in all, I can’t wait to buy another house. I will not miss the drama associated with close quarters living.

Moral of the story, keep to yourself as much as possible because everyone else will manage to make themselves look like fools. This applies with most things in life.

As of this exact moment, I have a terrible headache. Luckily, it’s Saturday and I’m not at work. There isn’t/wasn’t much on my agenda for today and I enjoy it like that as much as possible.

So far, the only productive thing I’ve done is take my car to get it washed. I love free car washes for life. The stupid thing is that the car wash I have to go to is great and all, but as soon as you pull out of the car wash, you have to drive through dirt. A little bass ackwards, you think? For the most part it’s a good wash, with the exception that almost the entire rear of my car was pretty much ignored. Can’t really complain though. It was a free car wash.

I had intended to clean out the inside of my car while Sean was taking his daily nap, but I got sidetrack with editing a video and pretty much just procrastinating and screwing off.

Currently, I’m blogging [obviously] and watching Bubble Boy on Comedy Central while Sean plays in his play pen. I should probably be cleaning and doing wifely things since we’re supposed to have people over tonight for the weekly game night.

Not to toot my own horn, but here’s a picture of the TV after I kicked some major ass in movie trivia playing Scene It on XBox 360.

Oh and as an extra treat, I thought I’d share that mine and my husband’s cell phone account is 1337!

When my husband and I walk into our bedroom, we are bombarded with two laundry baskets full of clothing. Today, making a video of it motivated me to put [some of] it away.

My husband will be glad, I’m sure. For your viewing pleasure, here’s a short video.

With my new found fascination with making short videos and editing them, I have another one for you. This video is what it’s like to drive in Cincinnati, OH. For safety reasons, the voyage does not document any personal routes to or from my house or the houses of friends or family. I was simply running some errands and decided to capture it on video to share.

I think I am running out of ideas already. Oh well.

I’m starting to see a pattern here. I’ve discovered that I like to make videos of my daily activities.

Today, I decided to wash my car because it needed it pretty badly. I had been wanting to do it for a while now, but it’s been raining a lot lately, and I’m sure, now that I’ve gotten it washed, it will probably rain tonight or tomorrow, but that’s ok. She needed to get the bugs out of her teeth anyways.

When I bought my car last month, we also got the privilege to get a lifetime of free car washes. I have tried to go a few times, but apparently it has been closed for remodeling. Figures, right? Well, a few days ago, I get this letter in the mail from the dealership with information on how to use the car wash, get my free washes, etc. It also mentioned that it is supposed to re-open the week of July 14th. Mind you, today is July 23rd. Naturally, you would think it is more than safe to say that it should be open.

I gather my son, drop him off with my sister because he started crawling today and she wanted to see it, so I left him with her and took two of my nieces with me to get the car washed, in which I paid $7.00 for.

Here’s a video of the adventure. You can randomly hear Alli and Kyla in the background.