Friday Highlights

A brief review of my night away, before I head out for a dinner at our church. The Sweetheart's Dinner. For adults, without their kids. Do you see a theme this weekend? We were actually supposed to still be away on our casino adventure, but came home this afternoon, so we'll sneak into the Sweetheart's dinner without RSVP'ing and hope no one will care since it is, well, church and all.

Styx was actually a lot of fun. But Tommy Shaw is the only original member, which led me to call them Styk all night, which cracked me up, because I amuse myself that way.

These two photos are from the Styx web site, but these are the guys that we saw, and this appears to be a current pic of Tommy Shaw because this is exactly how he looked last night. And no, HB, he does not appear to have had any work done. He looked good, looked his age of 46 years in a good way. And is still quite petite.

After the concert we played video poker and slots again. I kicked ass at video poker and walked away with $40 after starting with $5. Overall, I left the casino with $0 after starting with $40. Yes, I am totally high stakes like that. I will say that I did have $40 worth of fun gambling, so it's not a loss but an investment, right? And we started the whole deal out with a $100 voucher for the casino, never did add any of our own money. So it was all free! And, Lee, we kept it cheap because we did NOT buy Tim a shirt at the gift shop. He had to wear his sweatshirt and keep his holey tee shirt under wraps. Natural consequences.

He did, however, get a toothbrush from the front desk after being informed that, no, he couldn't just use mine.

Romantic highlight of the night away: have you ever been making out with someone, and your stomach makes some really loud and obnoxious sounds, so loud that the someone says, "What in the hell is that?" and you're all, like, it's just my stomach. And then you kind of pass out? Yeah, romance at its finest.

But there's a reason that my stomach was out of sorts. And that reason? We had $100 voucher to spend at the casino restaurant. And casino food? Is cheap. And no cash back. So we ate. A lot. And as I have mentioned, oh, I don't know, about 100,000,000,000 times, I lost 45 lbs last year. And the way I did that, besides running? Is I don't eat. Seriously. I pick. I nibble. I consume food and live a happy life. But I don't EAT the way we ATE Friday night. I'm talking crab stuffed mushrooms, crab and spinach dip, shrimp cocktail, a salad, a freaking lobster tail and then creme broule for dessert at the restaurant. And a lava cake to go, for later. Seriously. Is it any wonder my stomach had something to say about it later that night?

So my mission for the next week is to get back on a clean eating regiment and be able to button my jeans for my trip to New Orleans on 2/18. I also want to complete a nine mile run before I leave town on 2/18. Hey, shut up. I can dream.

Leaving now to eat more food! It is possible that this lifestyle is why the rest of the world hates America. Just saying.

yes-huh

Tommy Shaw is alive ya'll!

big winner

dinnertime

High Rollers

WTF? I swear, I do not have a black eye.

We've arrived. We are at the Spirit Mountain Casino for our overnight getaway. How does one go from being broke to being on vacation, you might ask. We have a free room for the night, $100 gift card for the restaurant and $100 voucher for the casino. We did have to fill the tank for the drive down and Tim bought the Styx concert tickets for tonight. But all in all, a pretty free vacation.

And do you like how I am kicking it off? Within 13 minutes of being checked into our room, Tim had already ditched me to go play blackjack. I hung back to freshen up, which is code for poop, and five minutes later, oops, I was on Facebook. And then my blog. We agreed to meet at the blackjack table in half an hour, so I can spend that half hour however I want to, right?

The camera on my broken phone had been acting up, but now with my new free phone I am able to mobile blog again. And from what I have seen so far, there should be some pretty interesting people to snap a few good shots of (is that illegal?). But how bad would I feel if I took a picture of some gnarley casino regular getting his/her game on, and posted it with a snarky comment and then found out it was, like, your uncle's wife? That would suck. I'll make sure the innocent are protected (meaning me).

On the oh crap front, I feel a sinus infection coming on. Which may explain somewhat my three week long headache. Because my headache? Has now become a face ache. And I am flying across the country in less than two weeks. Can anyone score me a free Z-pack?

Last thing. I forgot to mail the give-away prizes before I left town (sorry!). So assuming my 20 year old staying home alone son doesn't consume all of the alcohol in the house, I'll mail them out Monday!

Time to hit the casino. Let the mobile blogging begin. I mean gaming. I mean romantic weekend. Either/Or.

UPDATE: Tim just came back to the room to change out of his sweatshirt because it's warm in the casino. And looks at me, like, where are my clothes. Dude, I did not pack your freaking clothes, you are a grown man. And under the sweatshirt? A tee shirt. With a hole. And he has brought NOTHING with him. No other clothes. NOTHING but his laptop. WTF?

Free phone... and free is good when you're broke

Shiny!

After giving up two hours of my life visiting three different Verizon stores and then waiting and waiting and waiting at the tech support center, I have a new Blackberry. Yay! It's just like my old phone. Except silver! And shiny! and functioning! Yay again! Oh, and FREE! Did I mention free? Free is good. 

No one was going to tell me that I was entitled to a new free phone when my phone was dying. But with a little legwork I found my old phone paperwork and, yay, because that sucker was 10 months old with a one-year warranty. Score Shana-1 Verizon-0. Uh-huh.

And good thing. Because money? I have none. But bills? I've got some of those. The time off for weather and holidays and being sick as a dog in November are all catching up with me now, and the paychecks trickling in from the last few months are skimpy. Freelance self employment is oh so glamorous. Seriously.

And also? I think my car is on the verge of exploding. It made a REALLY LOUD scary bad sound this morning. Twice. But when I got home and drove Tim around in it, of course I could not recreate the sound and it was just fine. I have a job about 15 miles away from home this afternoon, so Tim took my car and I'm driving his. And just hoping for no explosions in either vehicle. Because my car repair/new car budget? Hahahahahahahahaha. Good one.

All of this two weeks before I am flying to New Orleans for a week. Thank God the plane tickets are paid for, we have a free place to stay (my dad) and don't need a rental car (my sister will be driving in from Little Rock). And Mardi Gras parades are free. Otherwise? We'd be not going out of town in two weeks because, seriously, who travels across the country with no cash? 

I really hate the ebb/flow of freelance work. But I really love the freedom of being self employed. I can't imagine going back to work for anyone else on a regular daily grind basis. But I long for the good old days of having a scheduled payday on which I knew I would without a doubt receive a paycheck. Also? We are cutting back our health insurance policy to an even crappier one because our monthly premium went up $100 effective Jan. 1 and our coverage is still crap. I'm thinking about switching to a medical savings plan and going cash only for all of our medical needs, maybe carrying a policy for catastrophic illness or something like that. Does anyone have experience with anything like this?

We had to completely give up our dental insurance and Carlie and I are both due for cleanings this month. I actually clipped a coupon yesterday for a $85 first time visit with a pediatric dentist for cleaning and x-ray. How ghetto is that? Coupon clipping for medical care for my child. My life has hit a new ghetto low.

This is not the first month that this is happened, and it won't be the last. I am in such a cyclic business and I am so bad at budgeting and keeping something in reserve for months like this. So basically, I create all of this money-related stress for myself. Though the insurance stuff? I won't take responsibility for that, because our health care system sucks it, big time. And with both Tim and I being self-employed, we are just screwed.

I was planning on a quick trip to the gym this morning, but the sounds like it's going to explode car thing sent me home instead, and I completely lost my motivation to go now. But I did not lose my motivation to eat M&Ms. If I could channel my M&M eating mojo into working out mojo, I'd be a freaking gym goddess by now.

Random things that I've neglected to keep you informed of... and contest winners!

My hair, after removing the updo.

Because I know that the minutia of my life is fascinating... NOT.

Carlie is in her second week of a fake ankle injury. She's being hopping around with her foot wrapped in an Ace bandage. How do I know it is fake? Because it only bothers her during PE and basketball practice, but not during spastically running around the house and choreographing her wicked dance moves for that show she is constantly putting on in her head. Also? Many ice packs have been involved.

Tim is having problems collecting money from insurance companies for clients that he sees (mental health industry) and has appointed me his enforcer, I mean collector. Can I tell you how much I love this job? Writing snarky letters and making threatening phone calls is right up my alley. And in case you didn't know: INSURANCE INDUSTRY IS A HUGE CLUSTERFUCK. I think half the rejections are total game-playing tactics to delay payment. I've also gotten to call on a few cash paying clients who didn't, um, pay their cash. Good times, people, good times. Thanks, GW, for the economy! Mu-wah!

Big date this weekend. Tim and I are driving out to the coast and spending the day Friday touring a cheese factory then Friday night going to a Styx concert. I am totally not making this up. That's our big date weekend. Cheese and 80s music. There will also be dinner and gambling at an Indian res. casino. And here's a shocker: Styx is playing at an Indian res. casino. Go figure. Domo Arigato, dude.

On the OH MY GOD NOOOOOOO front, my Blackberry is dying a slow death. The stupid little ball thing is working sometimes, not working sometimes. And it's not like a mouse on your PC, where if it doesn't work you can maneuver with arrows or whatever. When the Blackberry ball dies, you are screwed. So, I am screwed. I managed to bring it back to life last night, but it's acting up again today. So I am heading off to a Verizon store on the other side of town to score an open box but new blackberry for $20. There is a freaking Verizon store on every corner between here and there, but that's the only store with a $20 blackberry instead of a $120 blackberry, so here I come.

Also? Every Denny's near me has shut down, so I shall now be partaking of the free breakfast today. WHICH SUCKS IT. I know, it's Denny's. And Denny's? Ew. But still. FREE! But no Grand Slam for me. If you make it to Denny's for your free grand slam, let me know! Send a photo!

I don't think I mentioned that Tim and I have donated a Casino Night party as an auction item, and it sold out. So I now have 30 people heading to my house on April 25 to gamble and par-tay. We're cohosting with other friends, but it's at my house. Which means my house needs to get cleaned. We did this last year, and it was a lot of fun. Details to come soon.

What else? Oh, I ran 8.5 miles yesterday. And am not dead! At least mostly not dead. I actually ran eight then walked a half mile to cool down, but that half mile totally counts in the grand mileage scheme of things, so 8.5 it is. I need to be at 13.1 by the end of March for a half-marathon the first weekend in April. Oy vey.

And now for the contest winners. I said noon, but I have shit to do and won't be here at noon, so we're doing it on. We'll call it East Coast time, in which case I'm actually late! Sorry! I have three goody bags so I'm going to go with three winners. The number of bobby pins it took to hold the effing up do up? It was 26! And 26 was a popular guess! You guys obviously know a lot more about updos than I do, because I was guessing there were maybe a dozen of those suckers in there. But they just kept coming and coming and coming out, like clowns in a little car.

So my real life friend Kathy @ Karismar disqualified herself because she totally already knew how many bobby pins were in my hair. So the prizes are going to go to Holly @ Traveling Through Space and Time, who only guessed 20, but said she wanted to guess 26 before Kathy took that one! And to Anna See@ An Inch of Gray, who also wanted to say 26 but guessed 27, and to Becky @ Miss Priss, being the one true winner if there were only one prize with her guess of 25.

Also, the prize includes a beverage of an alcoholic nature, so if that is not your thing, tell me now and I'll swap it out with something else.

So I need a mailing address for Becky and for Anna. Please send to me at ShanaOB @ msn.com. Holly will just have to endure me in person (yay!) and I'll give Kathy a big runner-up smooch when I see her, probably today : ) Thanks for playing! This was fun. Now I'm obsessed with coming up with new games, something with as cool a name as "Guess What's In Sal's Pouch". Does anyone here listen to Howard Stern? If not, you won't know why that is funny. 

All righty, then. That's all I've got. Time to head to Verizon for my $20 phone. Ciao!

Auction Night: A Restrospective

First of all, before my recap, I have to say: I step away from the Internet for one weekend and all hell breaks loose? WTF? Michael Phelps taking bong hits? Also, apparently there was some kind of football thing today with Jennifer Hudson on it. Cool!

Also, saw Slumdog Millionaire today. And? OMG. There are not words. If you haven't seen it. Go. Now.

Now on to my Saturday auction event recap. To say it was a long day would be an understatement. We started schlepping the auction items from the school to the Hilton at 8 a.m. Because my husband is a SLOW MO FO, we got to the school a little late, more like 8:30, and all of the baskets had been packed up to transport, so I didn't get a picture of that, which I wanted to do. I did, however, get a couple of pictures of the finished bar project. Here's the tiled top.

And here's the bar with stools from the front. The back has a tricked out hanging glass rack that one of the class dad's customized for us. Way cool. I was very disappointed that this only brought in $450. Fucking recession.
Here's a crappy shot of some of the basket items. This is about 2/3 of the basket items in the silent auction. I couldn't get a decent shot of this whole side of the room, and didn't get one at all of the other side of the room. This is before the par-tay and the lighting and lack of decorations do not do justice to how beautiful everything looked for the event. But I wanted to give you an idea of the magnitude of the basket making project. Because when I said it was A LOT? So not overstating.
So, schlepped items to the Hilton and started setting up. And the setting up? It was, like, never-ending. At 3:00 p.m. I left the ballroom and went up to the suite to get my hair did. More on that in the next post down, so keep on reading. I also got "glamour length" eyelashes and a whore's worth of makeup. Which I then removed 70% of. And still? Over madeup. Oh well.
After hair and make up, I put my dress on, and didn't get a picture taken. This is a picture after we got home, at midnight, after shaking our groove thangs and working up a sweat and kind of wilting my dress and the belt being all floppy and shit. Oh well. And for future reference? Shiny dresses do not photograph well. Because? Reflection. Yes, it was that shiny, shiny enough to reflect a flash.
So the day started with leaving the house at 8 a.m. and getting back to the house after midnight. LONG ASS DAY. But an awesome party that raised over $125,000 for Carlie's school. I think final ticket number was 370, which is a great turnout. And item count was something like 260 "packages" (which can be multiple items in a basket) in the silent auction, 70 higher end packages in the "super silent" and about 60 top shelf items in the live auction.

Following dinner, there was a DJ and dancing and a photo booth. Uh-huh. Someone was showing herself a little too much live in the photo booth. Keep on reading, it's in the next post. That, and a picture of my hair and my first give-away! And it's hair related! But includes chocolate and booze! You know you don't want to miss that.

Auction Night: A Give Away!

Here's the deal: Guess how many bobbypins it took to hold this up do in place and win a prize! Closest guess without going over gets a grown-up goody bag : ) Post your guess in the comments, winner picked Tuesday at noon! My first contest and it even has a prize, and the prize is yummy.

Here's Tim and I, doing the Photo Booth thing. It was just like going to prom, only you got to go home and sleep in your own bed afterwards. And no sex in the backseat. At least for most people.
And more photo booth. Because? Who loves her self? Yes-huh. Not quite sure what I was doing here. Sadly, there are quite a few photo booth photos of me, and this would be considered one of the "good" ones. Scared? You should be.
Enter the give away! Go! Comment! Now!