Hurry! Go Get Gas!

Is everyone in your life freaking out about gas right now? I had two co-workers, Boss and GrannyP (she's new, I'll have to tell ya all about her later) come up to me and tell me that I "better run get gas, it's going up to $5.00 tonight."


really? really? really? You're telling me that it's going to go up $1.50 in a matter of a few hours?


Oh alright, I'll go get gas. I mean, since I am leaving and driving 6 hours right after work.... I kinda need it anyway.


While I'm at the gas station, Ben calls "You need to fill up. Gas is going up like crazy. Oh, and everytime you see a gas station on the way home, you need to stop and fill up." Seriously babe? EVERY SINGLE GAS STATION? Thanks, but no thanks.

So I'm paying a lovely $3.89 a gallon to fill up my baby and my mom calls "have ya heard is gas is going up?"

SERIOUSLY?!?!?!!? I'M GETTING GAS PEOPLE!!!


My question is this: Why is gas going up so quickly, when the gas company/station has already paid for the gas that is in the pumps at the time? And wait.... has the storm even hit yet? Do we know if the pipelines have been damaged? Oh, and aren't we supposed to have something like 65,000 gallons of gas on reserve for situations like this??? Call me crazy, but someone is making mad money off this. And it really pisses me off.




Hope you're tanks are full of gas, and you have a wonderful weekend. To everyone in Texas and in Ike's path - be careful. I'm saying a prayer for you!

1/2 way to the weekend!

It's noon! That means only 5 more hours till the WEEKEND! I know you are all itching to know what my weekend is going to hold for me, so I'll go ahead and give you a preview.

Friday night: Babysitting. I go through spurts with this. Some months it feels like someone is asking me 2 or 3 times a week, then I go through a month with nothing. I guess it's good that way, if not I'd get completely burned out. I could def use the extra $$$ right now so I was more than happy to do it tonight. Even though I've had to set a 4 hour minimum. The people I babysit for all live out in the 'burbs.... I live close to downtown. That's a good 40 min drive, and about $10.00 in gas. So in order to make it worth my while to go out there, I can't be doing any of these 2-3 hour gigs. That's what local high school kids are for.

Saturday: Painting. We're not done yet! Ben wants to paint his office tomorrow. I'm not going to tell you what color it's going to be just yet. You will have to wait and see the color he has picked out. I will say this though: I am not a fan. (For those of you who know Ben I'm sure you've already guess what color it is.)

Sunday: Church, then.... well I don't know yet! I'm sure the afternoon will involve moving more stuff from Ben's apt to his house. I'm getting ready for this moving process to be over! But if I have some time I may run grab some $1.00 fabric and see what I can create.

I hope you all have a very safe and relaxing weekend! I'll check in with everyone on Monday!

I'm so uncreative at the moment that I can't even come up with a good title! AGH! What is wrong with me! I think I just have so many things going through my head right now that I can't even think straight. Between finishing up my work from my old position and starting work for my new one - I can't seem to figure out how I'm gonna make it all fit. I'm only working 4 days this week since Ben and I are heading off to DC on Thursday night so that doesn't leave a lot of time to get it all done! Oh, did I mention I have to give up my big office to go be in the sales pit... aka a cubicle? I've got to start cleaning everything out from in here and taking it home with me. I will miss the large amount of space that my office provides, but more than that I will miss my door. I don't close it very often but it's comforting knowing that when I want some privacy, I can close it.

side-note: the lady in the office next time mine has downloaded "solider boy" as her ringtone for when her 13 year old son calls her. She doesn't understand the concept of turning down the ring volume, so about every 15-30 mins I get to her "YOUUUUU CRANK THAT SOLIDER BOY..." blaring from her phone. She has some other ringtone for her husband, and something different for her mom - argh



Sunday morning Becky and I got up at the crack of dawn and headed out to Millington. Okay, it was actually 6:00am but on a Sunday, that's the crack of dawn! She and I had volunteered to help out at the Memphis in May triathlon. Since I've done a few marathon/ half marathons before I know what that is all about, but I've never been to a triathlon before so that was new ground to me. I was impressed and intrigued all that the same time. This was an olympic distance event, so the participants swam .93 miles, biked 24.8 miles and ran 6.2 miles. Impressive huh? I couldn't do it.... not right now. I've always been interested in doing a triathlon, but I've gotta get serious about running again before I can commit to something like that. Not to mention the cost that goes into just being able to participate. Do you have any idea how much a decent bike can cost? Anywhere from $1000 and up! Then you've gotta get the right shoes, and tires, and swimming gear! Surely a wetsuit can't be too expensive huh? Anyway - I may never actually get around to doing one of these, but it's fun to think about.

As I've mentioned before, Ben and I are going up to DC this weekend to visit his family. They were very generous and gave us some money to help with the cost of our plane tickets. This was something they just offered to do without us ever asking, and obviously it is very much appreciated. I mentioned to Ben a few weeks ago that I wanted to get them a little gift as a thank you - not only to thank them for the money but also just to thank them for letting me visit and have me in their home for 4 days. If you know Ben at all, you can probably predict what his response was "we're not getting them anything. me being home is a gift enough." I very much disagree with this statement so yesterday afternoon I got him to go downtown with me to find them a gift. I have been thinking that I would make them a Memphis basket with various items from here. Memphis is known for their incredible BBQ, rock - n- roll, the blues,and of course - Elvis - so I thought this would be fun and easy. WRONG! Everything I picked up Ben said "oh they wouldn't like that..... they don't use cookbooks......oh here, let's get them this magnet that says 'i got porked in memphis'..... here, get my mom this snowman(from the 75% off christmas basket) she loves snowmen." So needless to say I was super frustrated by the end of shopping trip. We ended up with a bottle of BBKings BBQ sauce, a magnet that says "Memphis" and a bar of soup with a C on it - it's their last name initial. Yes, I'm aware that the soap makes no sense, but it's the ONLY thing Ben liked that I was semi-ok with. I spent my lunch break today trying to find other items to go in the basket. I ended up with a picture frame in which I will frame a picture of Ben and I (who wouldn't want that), a cookbook about Grilling, and some Rendezvous BBQ rub. It's still all pretty random, but I'll make it work the best I could. I just don't have time to go back downtown and go through the gift shops again. I love him a lot but sometimes I just wanna kick him! Do you think all of those things are completely ridiculous? If so, any suggestions? I've never been to his parents house so I'm really kind of clueless as to what to get!

Music Fest ..... not so festive

I learned a very valuable lesson this weekend: Never go back to Music Festival again!

Let me give you a quick rundown of the weekend. As I mentioned on Friday, my friend Jessie came in town this weekend. I LOVE being with her. When she walks in the door, we pick right back up where we left off. It's always been this way with her, and I know it always will be. There are so few people that it's like that with so I cherish our friendship so much. Anyway - didn't mean to get off on that tangent. Jessie got in town about 1:30am Saturday morning. The weather was horrendous so it took her a good bit longer than it should have. Saturday we got up and went for a walk - I showed her around my neighborhood and we just spend the morning catching up and of course, laughing. Later that day everyone met at Ben's around 3:00 to head down to Music Fest. We rode the Trolley down, which was a lot of fun, then met up with some friends at Silky O'Sullivan's for a little while before FINALLY heading down to the river. After everyone got their tickets and we waited in line to get in - we finally got into the park around 6:00pm. We left the park at 8:00pm if that gives you any indication of how bad it was. We spent those 2 hours trying to decide what everyone wanted to do (a group of 13-15 is just waaaay to many for a crowd that size), standing in line for the bathroom, standing in line for food, and looking for people that had wandered off for various reasons and couldn't find our group again. There were more drunk/completely wasted high school kids than I have ever seen in my life, lots of people smoking pot, and mud, mud, mud! Gross! The straw that finally broke the camels back for me was when a group of (wasted) 16 year olds got on top of these guys shoulders, with their butts RIGHT IN MY FACE, and started bouncing up and down. Hitting us in the head with their rear-ends that were hanging out of their shorts and dresses. They were flashing their boobs, and this kid came shoving past us saying "Let me thru!! I wanna smack their ass!!". It was at that point that I was like "nope. can't take it" and fortunately most of our group felt the same way. I guess I've outgrown that kind of thing.

Here are a few pics, as promised

Ben, me, Jessie, and Sam on the trolley



Ben and I - I love this picture



Jessie, Becky, me, and Jenny at Silky's



Jenny, me, and Jessie
We bought these "awesome" (ha!) sweatshirts cause we were soo cold!

May Already?!

Wow, where is this year going? I cannot believe it is already May! I guess it's true when they say that the older you get, the faster time flys. 1 more month and we're halfway to Christmas! But you know what's great about May this year? Tax Rebate/Stimulus! I got mine today - all $600.00. I know we're supposed to go out and spend the money - putting in back into the economy, but I paid off my credit-card with it. That just seemed like the more responsible thing to do. What are you planning on spending yours on? I hope it's something more fun than a credit card! But hey - no debt is a great thing (well it sounds nice. I have no idea what it actually feels like. Student loans anyone?).

Thank goodness it's FINALLY FRIDAY! Memphis in May is upon us and of course -it's gonna rain. I guess that's why Music Fest is also known as "mud fest". Blah. But the good great news is that my best girlfriend from home, Jessie, is coming to town! She won't be getting in until late tonight, but that leaves us with a few days to hangout and be crazy together. I'm so excited I can barely stand it! I haven't seen her since September, and that's just too long! There are a few good bands playing this year, but nothing that I'm ecstatic about! Here's the line up for this year.

I'll do my best to post some pictures when the weekend is over.

The bridesmaid dress saga is still continuing. I've called the shop where the dress is from to speak with the owner/manager about the problem. She wasn't there, but called me back later. Of course when she called me back I wasn't around. I've since called and left several messages but haven't received a phone call. I'm debating whether or not I should just go up there w/ the dress and try it on for them and say "look. this is what you ordered me. Now fix it."

Oh - one more thing. I FINALLY reached my mini-goal of 25lbs! The first 22 came off relatively easy, but man-oh-man have I had to work for the last 3! Now I've just gotta keep ,y butt in gear and try to get 25 more off!

Finally Friday!

Ohhhhh another week has come and gone - and very slowly at that! Does anyone else feel like this was one of the slowest weeks of their life? Man-oh-man! Maybe it's because I'm waiting on the phone to ring with some, hopefully, good news, but so far I've heard nothing. Ugh, pretty annoying!

Thankfully the weekend will be here in 2 hours - 2 hours people! Now that's something to get excited about. I have a pretty busy weekend planned, which is good cause the DBF (Dear boyfriend. I'm busting out some blog lingo) is out of town for 4 days. My weekend is gonna be pretty girly though. Tonight is sushi w/ a dear friend then we're gonna give her house a scrub down, make a diaper cake, and possibly cook up a few items for a baby shower we are throwing at her house tomorrow. Tomorrow will be spent doing laundry and grocery shopping in the morning, then I'm off to the baby shower for the afternoon/evening. I'm really hoping to get in some pool time w/ some of my girls on Sunday, but the weather is looking like it's not gonna cooperate. I'm gonna say a little prayer that the Lord holds the cool, rainy weather off until Monday though. But in the case that we are blessed (ha!) with rain on Sunday - I think I'm gonna take it easy and spend the afternoon curled up on the couch watching all the girly movies that Ben can't tolerate when he's in town. Woot - happiness!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and I'll see ya back here next week!

Beach Bound, Baby!

I'm heading to the beach today, kiddos.... and let me just say that am E X C I T E D! I've gotta work half a day today, then I'm hitting the road! I'll be back in Memphis last Monday night. So until then.... have a great rest of the week and a great weekend!

Catching up

First things first: Do you like the new look of the page? Yeah, I know much hasn't changed but I did get bored at work the other day and change the banner at the top of the page. The only problem with it is that I don't have photoshop at work so I couldn't actually create a decent banner. So until I get around to fixing it at home, you will just see the HTML code on the title bar at the top of the page. Oh well, it will do for now.

So the weekend has come and gone once again. *sigh* Why do they always seem to fly by so quickly? Two days at work seems like an eternity while two days away from work are here and gone before you know it. At lease I had a fun and productive weekend. Friday night a group of us went to the opening game for the Redbirds. We had a good time despite the fact that it was freezing! Baseball isn't supposed to be cold - neither is April! This weather is driving me nuts. Anyway, after the game we went to EP's to hear a friend of a friend's girlfriend sing. ( did you get that?) She is in an 80's cover band and they weren't half bad. Saturday was spent getting a leak in my windshield fixed, taking a shopping trip to Easy Way for some fresh fruits and veggies, then meeting up with Ben to go make an offer on a house! Yep, that's right.... he's finally decided on a house. A few weeks ago he decided which model he wanted, he was just waiting on a corner lot to become available. As soon as one popped up, he made an offer. They have of course counter offered w/ a much higher price then he put in, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that they will be able to meet Ben in the middle.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful, but relaxing. Church, naps, a little cooking and cleaning, then it was back to the grind at work today. At least this week will be a short week for me. I'm leaving on Thursday to go to Destin, FL for a few days with some girlfriends from college. I'm super excited! So I think I can handle only 3.5 days here at the office. Speaking of which, I better get back to work.

Happy Monday Ya'll!

A little happy dance

The weekend at the parents went great! Ben and I got into town around 10:30 last Thursday night, spent some time talking to my mom then headed off to bed. Friday was jam packed with activities. If you know my family, you know we do not sit down. There is no such thing as "lay around and watch tv together." Abby, Kelli (my little sisters) and I took Ben on a golf ride around the farm, then we hopped in the car and toured Jackson..... 15 mins later we were done. :) I'm just kidding. I got to show him the house I grew up in and the neighborhood that has so many awesome memories, then we went down to "the big pool" and played on the playground. The pool didn't have any water in it so we just looked at the rocks on the bottom. haha . We enjoyed lunch at Ed's (or The Drive-In) - gotta get that cherry coke in! - then went on a shopping extravaganza to Dirt Cheap! We watched the little girls play in their softball tournament and went and hung out with Ashley and Misty. Saturday we were up bright and early to do some fishing, then spent the rest of the afternoon watching more softball. Easter morning was a bit chaotic, but what day isn't at the Crosby house? Dad had us up for a walk at 9:00am, then we all rushed and got dressed for church. In typical Crosby fashion, we were late... and late is the one thing you do not want to be on Easter Sunday! We were looking for a place to sit and the usher said "Um, I think the 3rd row up front in the very middle is empty." so we all (6) marched up right in the middle of church and took our seats as everyone looked at us and smiled/laughed. After Easter lunch we took the little girls easter eggs that they had dyed and played "egg schmear." Rather than hiding the eggs and looking for them, we hit them with a baseball bat. We ended the day/trip with a rousing game of family softball. With only 3 gloves and 7 people, it wasn't quite the exciting/action packed game that you might think it was, but we had a great time non-the less. So overall I give the trip an A+!

As far as other areas of my life.... thinks are looking great! I have an awesome opportunity that could be happening for me in the next few weeks. I can't say much about it right now, but I will be keeping you posted. I am however, very excited about it!

Ciao!

heading down south

We're coming up on Easter weekend. You know what that means? LONG WEEKEND! Hallelujah. I get Good Friday off from work so Ben and I are going down to my parent's house in Jackson, Al. I haven't been home since Christmas so I'm excited about seeing everyone. Ben has never had the pleasure of going to the awesomeness that is Jackson - but he is so excited he can't wait! We have quite the little busy schedule. Between all the site seeing that is to be done and world renowned shopping.... we're gonna be busy.

Places to see/Things to do:
1. eat at Ed's (or "The Drive-in")
2. Dirt Cheap - enough said
3. go see "the big pool". We won't get to swim because it obviously isn't warm enough, but we can still look.
4. watch my little sisters play in their softball tournament
5. go fishing at dad's lake and have a fish fry
6. visit friends
7. did I mention Dirt Cheap?
8. take a golf cart ride around the Farm
9. ride horses (if there is time)
10. church on Easter morning


That may be all we have time for, but ya never know! I will tell you all about our trip when I get back. Hopefully we will have a very uneventful trip down there, but if you know my driving record.... one can never be sure!

Happy Easter!

on the hunt for a house....

I am LOVING house hunting! For those of you that don't know, Ben and I have been looking at houses the last few weeks. I guess technically I should say BEN has been looking at houses, but he is letting me put in my two cents about which house I like, etc. I think it's pretty swell of him to let me help decide even though I won't be living there for quite sometime. (Maybe it's just cause he knows my taste is better than his. hehe)

We've been meeting with the Realtor the past few weekends and perusing through different homes. The first weekend we looked at houses on Mud Island. These homes are all newer homes (most built btwn 2000 - 2005), with big bathrooms, big closets, garages.... but no yard. At all. The floor plans are spacious, open, and inviting. It's also one of those neighborhoods where there are about 7 different styles of homes, and they just keep repeating. You don't noticed that the houses are pretty much the same though, because they are all different colors, and various architectural details are different from home to home. But for the most part it's a lot of the same house. A plus to living down on the Island is that it's on the river with a great river front park close by, it's convenient to downtown but you don't feel like you're living in a city.

The second weekend (this past weekend) we went and looked at the High Point Area. This is an older part of town in East Memphis. These houses were built anywhere from the 20's - 60's. They have a lot of character, and just about all of them have been remodeled and upgraded. The thing with this neighborhood is that the houses are smaller, there isn't much closet or bathroom space at all, and none of them have garages. BUT! They have huge yards.... and the neighborhood is just so nice and cute. We did find one house that we both really liked. It's actually two doors down from where our friends Jenny and Haden live. The only thing that Ben isn't 100% sold on is the fact that there is no garage.

We will be going out on Saturday for our third and hopefully final house hunt. The area we are looking in is Mid-town. The houses we've picked out to look at look really cute online but we've seen these past few weeks that just because it's cute online, does not mean it's cute in person!

Ben's lease is up on his apt. the first of July. So he's not in a huge huge hurry, but time is getting closer and closer for him to make a final decision. Hopefully after this weekend we will be able to narrow it down to 2 or 3 houses and then weigh the pro's and con's of each house. I'm praying the the Lord will lead us to the right house. A house that Ben feels comfortable buying and can afford. Even though it isn't my house - I can't help but be excited about it!

Snow? Maybe? Probably not

Oh oh! It might snow! I'm sitting here at work, checking the weather.com radar and hour-by-hour updates to see when it might get here..... The weather man is such a tease and got my hopes up last night that today might be a short day at work. "SNOW BY 11:00" he said. Not true. Well, there were a few flurries but nothing good enough to send us home early. My prediction is that it will be snowing a good, steady snow by 4:00. I haven't decided whether or not I think it's gonna stick. But I'm being skeptical and saying no.

The weather has been NUTS this week! This past weekend I was wearing short-sleeves and loving being outdoors. Tuesday we had snow flurries, Wednesday and Thursday it was back into the 60's... and now they are calling for snow again! Crazy!

Well, they are letting us leave early today "just to be on the safe side." I'm crossing my fingers for snow!

Have a great weekend!

Um, yeah

I'm back! I had great intentions of posting sooner than today but obviously that didn't happen! I'm sure you are just dying to know every little detail that has been going on in my life in the past 10 days or so, well let me fill you in!

The weekend of the Memphis/UT game turned out to be a lot of fun. Ben and I went down to Tunica Friday night and met up with a group of friends. I'm not much of a gambler, but I was up $1.50 on the penny machines at one time...I ended up losing it all in the end. I knew I should have cashed in while I was ahead! ;-) Saturday everyone met up at Ben's apartment before heading downtown. I had purchased the most amazing shirt to wear, and I knew it was gonna be a big hit. (HA!) Everyone decided that buying tickets was a no-go so we went to Jillian's Sports Bar and hung out/watched the game at the UT Alumni Party. It was a SEA of orange. Gross. My friend Becky came down and hung out with me so I wouldn't have to be the lone Tiger fan in the mass of UT fans. Bruce Pearl, the UT coach came and gave a little pep-talk/speech. You would have thought God entered the room the way these ppl just went nuts! Becky and I were looking at each other like "are you serious?" The game was very exciting, non-stop action and scoring the whole game. But with the ref's on the Vols side, and them playing a little better than the Tigers, UT pulled out a victory. The score was 66-62. very close game.

My Awesome T-Shirt!

I'm trying to think of what else has been going on...this past weekend Ben and I went to Lebanon, TN to visit his grandparents. His uncle was in town from DC so it was a lot of fun getting to meet him. The weekend was very relaxing. We napped, ate, and enjoyed the beautiful weather.... it was great! Other than that life has been pretty much the same ole' same ole' - work, hanging out with friends, etc. I'll be keeping you posted!

anticipating

I've been looking forward to this weekend for a few weeks now. Tomorrow is the big Memphis vs. Tennessee basketball game. Memphis is #1 and UT is #2. If that weren't reason enough for this to be a big game, it's huge here in Memphis because U of M considers UT to be a huge rival. Whether UT feels that way or not, I do not know - but I have a hunch they don't really care. I'm not really looking forward to the game per-say because we don't have tickets and I really just don't care about basketball. But my bf is a HUGE (and when I say HUGE, I mean HUGE) UT fan. He has a group of friends coming in town for the game. None of them have tickets - and since the going price is an average of $1000 (some WAY more than that) I don't think any of the guys are actually going to be AT the game. But we will be downtown all day enjoying the festivities and then finding a nice cozy (probably loud) place to watch the game. I will be proudly sporting my Tiger Blue while the rest of the crew will be in their obnoxious orange. You tell me who will be the more fashionable of the group?
Tonight we're heading down to Tunica. I will be playing it safe at the penny and nickel slots. If I get really adventurous I might moozy over to the quarter slots, but that's about as wild as I get! I'm sure this weekend will be fun and exhausting weekend! I'll let ya know how it all went, on Monday!

Have a great weekend kiddos!

Great friends, good times

This past weekend the bf and I headed down to Jackson, Miss. My best friend from college and her husband (L &L) live down there and I hadn't seen them since back in September. We left Saturday morning and got to my friends house around lunch. It only takes about 3 hours to get there, and it's straight down the interstate so it isn't a bad drive. We had lunch (taco soup, my favorite!) then went shopping in Madison at one my all time favorite stores. My friend's husband coaches baseball for one of the local high schools so we went and watched one of his games. I haven't been to a high school baseball game in probably 8 years - gosh, I remember thinking the guys out there were so old, mature, and just great athletes. Funny how your perception changes as you get older. Anyway, that night we just relaxed, had dinner, and enjoyed visiting. It was such a treat to get to spend some quality time with them.

Sunday after church we all had lunch with my Aunt and Uncle - they go to the same church as my friends. I love them so much and miss not getting to see them more - but at least L & L get to see them a good bit! But it was after church when the bf was in for a special treat! haha... I took him to Clinton so he could see Mississippi College. I went there for a few years before moving to Memphis so he's heard me talk about it from time to time..... and he has a good friend that is originally from Clinton and always mentions the "golden boob." He is referring to the coliseum which looks more like Epcot to me, but whatever. The tour lasted all of 10 mins, but I'm sure he loved it.... maybe.

The trip was short, but oh so sweet. It's easy to forget how much someone means to you when you don't seem them on a regular basis - but that girl means the world to me!