Keep Us in Your Prayers

Mark here. Olivia and me are both having issues with work (mine are particularly frustrating) and they don't appear to be getting better anytime soon.

Thanks to all of you for helping during this time:

Stephen for giving me a computer to use for OBS since mine is dead.

Paul for simply asking how I am doing and encouraging me to keep moving forward. 

My core staff at work (primarily Brittany, Amy, and Flexer) for being so great.

Olivia's parents for buying us a new garbage can

For my activist peers around the nation who are helping me prepare to transition OBS into an official non-profit.

Anna for giving us a cable plug.

Our cats for being quieter at night (even if we've forced them to be)

Olivia for being perfect :)

Love you guys. By the way, if anyone feels like donating me a $1,000 Macbook Pro for OBS that'd be wonderful. If you want to throw a few bucks towards it I'll give you a hug. 

New birthday update

As of recently Mark and I haven't been having the best of luck, especially with work. Although I'm not going to go into details, work has been a series of stressful situations one after the other. The last event, however, has changed my birthday donation to charity: water idea unfortunately. Yesterday there was an accident at work involving spilt water on Mark's laptop. Thankfully his hard drive was saved, but his computer was not. :(

We're trying to find the most economic and affordable means of alleviating the problem.  Although we would both love for Mark to be able to purchase a new laptop, that would be too much money.  As of now he is using his brother's old Mac Mini desktop computer, but it's only temporary. The only alternative that we can think of right now is to purchase a Mac Mini desktop that has been refurbished and let him use my laptop for the majority of the time (though it's not in the best of shape it will work). Because of our unfortunate luck, it doesn't make much sense to take donations to charity: water when he can't even do any work for them without a computer.  Getting to my point, for my birthday any money would be so gratefully accepted towards purchasing our desktop computer. 

Here's to hoping that our luck improves and things start looking up. 

My birthday is next Thursday!

The weather has finally cooled off thanks to a mid-afternoon thunderstorm that was much needed.  It decided to start thundering as soon as I was taking up the groceries from my car, but thankfully nobody was electrocuted and the bag with the eggs did not drop.  We have finally developed and put our wedding pictures in albums and frames! The wedding seemed like so long ago!

We spent the last two days celebrating a late Father's Day with my dad and his dad.  Unfortunately we weren't able to make it to either family function on Father's Day (you can thank Starbucks for that). After a wonderful marathon of working 9 days in a row, today is my first day off in what seems like forever.  What your parents fail to tell you when you're growing up is that when you get older and marry, summers don't include sitting around watching tv or reading all day.  Oh the past days of no responsibility when all that mattered in the summer was knowing what time the good tv shows came on. Now as an adult (well, hardly an adult really), summers now mean that work still takes up the majority of your time.  Then when your long awaited day off comes, you realize that you don't even have cable and a multitude of cleaning, laundry, and errands await you. 

All these things aren't bad of course, it's just part of the process of growing up I suppose.  I think you know that you are getting older when you have price tag shock with anything above $20 and no longer even look at the clothes section in stores anymore.  If I go into a store other than a grocery store, it's on a mission to get one item and  I'm headed to the sale/clearance area first--something my mother thankfully taught me. 

Now that it's been a good month coming from the honeymoon, I can finally say that I think (think...not positive yet) that our apartment is decorated how I like it.  Before I got married, decorating was just not an interest whatsoever.  It's funny how fast your tastes can change when it's your own place.  I'm still trying to get a feel for what specific style Mark and I have; right now I would say it's more of a modern/contemporary feel maybe?

My birthday is next Thursday and for anyone who loves me enough to get me a present, this year I'm donating my birthday to charity:water. You can donate $22 for my 22 birthday by clicking here!
 :)

I figured it would be kind of nice for a few people to have a chance to drink some water you know? I just know that not every person in the world gets presents on their birthday, but not even being able to have something to drink on your birthday makes me really sad. So yes, that's that. I am, however, slightly selfish and only want one thing for my birthday--a mountain bike! I want to be able to ride a bike on the trails at Shelby Farms. Now I know that nobody is going to get me a bike and that's perfectly fine, but sometime in the future I'm going to buy a mountain bike. People without water though are just more important this year. :)

20 Things

I promised myself that I would update this blog much more regularly than I used to now that the busyness of the engagement and wedding has finally died down.  I thought that instead of writing a typical blog tonight, I would write a little list of a few things I've learned about being a wife during the first month of marriage. :)

#1. I like to sleep in the middle of the bed. Despite Mark being a whole foot taller than I am, all 5'2 of myself likes to claim the middle.

#2. I have inherited my mother's genes for cleanliness, but unfortunately it has multiplied to a state of neurosis almost. I'm trying to teach myself not to care about having a clean apartment...not working yet.

#3. Clothes will always magically appear in my dirty clothes hamper no matter how often I do laundry. 

#4. Boys eat a lot of food and drink a lot of milk.

#5. Me and power tools do not need to be near one another. Mark had a nice little non-bloody stab in his foot from when I tried to unplug the power drill. 

#6. No matter how hard I try, I'm not very good at hanging up pictures straight.

#7. When your husband is 6'3, everything he hangs up is really high on the wall (as my mother pointed out to me).

#8. Having two cats requires a lot of attention...especially concerning the whole litter box situation.

#9. Every time after I vacuum, my cats both roll on the backs on the floor like its the best carpet they've ever felt.

#10. Boys like to leave stuff out and not put it back in its place (Mark has improved though) :-)

#11. I have a wonderful husband who still is pursuing me and taking me to nice restaurants spontaneously.

#12. Mark loves our kitties more than I do sometimes, though he'll never admit it. :)

#13. I break around 2 glass objects per week.

#14.  It's so much better having a husband to help you bring in the groceries. 

#15. I require more naps than Mark does as he pointed out to me. I also am cranky right when I get up from a nap.

#16. As much as I hate it, Mark can cook asparagus much better than I can.

#17. I love having a husband to run errands with.

#18. Kitties like to take turns sleeping in empty boxes.

#19. Mark and I are both procrastinators about practical things.

#20. Mark reads historical and political literature whereas I read fiction. 

A few wedding pictures

Hi!

Hello to everyone who has faithfully followed our previous wedding blog. Unfortunately, the blog got hacked and messed up. Boo :(. But now it's back and running again which makes me really happy because I wasn't digging that temporary new website we were using at all.

To update everyone, our honeymoon to New York was absolutely wonderful. The most commonly asked question we got was: "What tourists spots did you go to?" My answer is , not many. We only went to Times Square (kind of a let down) and Central Park (awesome!), and Chelsea Market. We stayed in Soho which is the newest part of New York. We were right by Little Italy, China Town, and Greenwich Village (or "the Village" in NewYorkian talk. :) The two times we had pizza were two extreme experiences. The first pizza was incredible! Best pizza I ever had. The second time we ate at this place called Lombardi's that's supposed to be the first pizza place in New York. It wasn't that great...especially when I got sick from it a few hours later and was in bed the rest of the afternoon. Everyone in New York didn't walk as fast as I thought, we only got lost once (thanks GPS on the Iphone), everyone wears black and leggings, and everyone is really tall and skinny. I felt the urge to wear leggings with my shorts just to fit in with everyone else who towered inches above me.

Life came to a reality crash when we got home from our honeymoon to discover the our air conditioning was broken. It was 90 degrees outside. Ugh. It got fixed though, and has also broken three more times after that too. :) We have a new adopted kitty in our home now. There was a little white and orange tabby that was hanging around in front of our apartment building. It being really skinny, I of course went and bought it some food. A few days later I learned from our neighbors that a family who moved out a few months ago had left their cat outside...declawed. Yes, their inside cat who had no front claws or any idea of how to survive in the outside world was left alone. I couldn't take this so after talking to Mark, we decided to adopt it. Hence welcome to our new home Nutmeg!!

Cinnamon wasn't too keen on Nutmeg for about 2 days, but now they're BFFs. :)


As for me and Mark, I have just been promoted to shift supervisor at work. Basically, I now handle the money stuff and designate where people go and when they get breaks. Best part about my new job is that when customers complain and need to talk to the person in charge, guess who gets that honor? Mark is increasingly becoming anxious about doing his nonprofit work with OBS full time. He's not too excited about starting school in the fall, but there's still time. :) Currently I'm reading The Life of Pi which I had heard so much talk about...and now I know why. It's an incredible book so far. Go buy it! Also, within the next few days I'm going to put some of our wedding pictures on here. :) Yay!