This weekend Mike and I purchased our tickets to visit my mom in Virginia for Christmas. I will be going a week earlier than Mike. So, I'll be spending a little over 2 weeks at my mom's. I'm so excited! Even though we will be gone, I've started to buy random christmas ornaments. Mainly I'm doing it so we can get reimbursed from insurance. But, man, I love buying christmas decorations. I haven't done it in years since we pretty much had everything we needed. A few things I'll be buying again but mostly it's new stuff. And who doesn't like to buy new stuff? Exactly.

Also in the news, I got a new phone!!! You may not think that is an exceptional event, au contraire mon frère, I have not had a new phone in over 4 years. I had the first color screen phone that Sprint put out. It was a great phone and I never really wanted anything else until this past year. But, Mike being Mike, he wanted to make sure he got a new phone too, even though he had barely had his over a year. Now that was a piece of crap phone. But damn, it took some serious prodding to get Mike on that. But when he finally did, we got a serious deal. I got a completely free phone - the (RED)Razr, and Mike got the Samsung A900 for $80. We also got a great phone plan - 500 text msgs for free. Ok, I thought that was excellent, but then later when Mike called to activate his phone, they were ironing out the plan, and he managed to get us one free year of PCS Vision (web stuff) for both our phones. That's $240 worth of free service by itself. He may frustrate me at times with his research and whatnot, but I can never say he doesn't get the job done.

If you don't know, the (Product)RED campaign is a brilliant idea, IMO. All we as consumers have to do is purchase things, but with a bit of charity in mind. If you have a choice of a couple similar products, purchase a (Product)RED one, and a portion of that money will go towards helping eliminate AIDS in Africa. It's a brain child of Bono, no doubt. There's an iPod, RAZR, Amex, Converse, and a whole line of Gap wear. Some Christmas ideas for me actually - Red Gap Sweatshirt, matching bluetooth headset for my new phone, and I wouldn't say no to some new chuck taylors either.

Oh, and what do you think of my blog's new look? It might be temporary, but I'm definitely in the mood for a change. 

Total randomness - Thanks to my husband, I have discovered Google Reader. It is friggin' awesome. And I'm not just saying that cuz I adore all that is Google, really. I've used Bloglines as an RSS reader for a bit, and that's ok, but Google's is way cooler. When I get busy, the one thing I hate is not keeping up with friends' blogs or whatever. Google Reader makes it so easy. If they are on MySpace or Livejournal or Blogspot or whatever, you can add them super quick with their username, and not have to fumble around looking for their RSS feed (which I was attempting at one point). Very cool. It looks a lot more like a normal email inbox than the previous reader I used. 

Also from the land of Google... they will be putting out a GPS unit from Helio that will use Google Maps and current traffic patterns and whatnot. Technology still trips me out. I love it. I'm also trying to get used to the Docs & Spreadsheets from Google, but it's still a little too limited for me. I'm a font freak, so the fact that you're limited to like 12 fonts or whatever is really annoying. I'll keep my eye on it though, cuz it would be nice to not have to ftp files to my server back and forth so I have the latest versions on both my systems.

Okay, that's my Google love for the day. 

I know it's been forever since I posted, but I was seriously truly crazy busy. I would love to have been posting. I couldn't even keep up with my favorite sites. I didn't even have time for just casual web browsing. It was a travesty!

This weekend I am on primary pager for work. So, that keeps me trapped in the house, pretty much. The last time I was on primary I barely got any sleep. It was insane. So far I've made it through one night page-free. 

Now that work-type busy is kinda over, it's on to more insurance-type busy. Mike and I only have until the end of the year to re-buy anything we lost in the fire. So, this weekend, Mike wants to make a list of everything we must buy. Ugh, I just want all the insurance nonsense donedonedone.

This week I bought some office organizing wall hanging things from Pottery Barn. I wasn't expecting them to be here until Monday, but they got here on Friday. I love nice surprises like that. I also just got a call from the framing store, and our Parapluie vintage ad picture is done. I took it there to get the picture replaced cuz it got wet in the fire and shrunk inside it's frame. So, it looks like we will be doing a lot of hanging this weekend. I have a few other things to hang too. Might as well just do 'em all this weekend, or as close to.

I know I'm just randomly rambling, but what better place to, no? For all you Austin folk, how about this great weather we've been having? I absolutely love that it's been chilly at night and still not hot during the day. I'm even cuddling up on the couch with a huge down blanket. I love it. The only thing that would make it better is to get my fireplace cleaned, so I can have some fires. My cat goes nuts for fires, it's like crack to her. She lays belly up in front of the fire forever. It's so cute to watch. I'll have to get some pics if I actually manage to get a fire.

Ok, rambling done. Over and out good buddy.