Happy Old Year!

Like last year, I have no New Years Resolutions for 2012. At the end of the upcoming 366 days, I would rather reflect on the past year with happiness, than remember where I failed in my resolutions.

2011 started off with January, as all years do. That was a long time ago, and if something exciting happened then, I have quite forgotten.

February passed. Quickly. It’s always such a short month. I think the 31st of every 31-day-having month should be dedicated to the memory of February since it is so short and speedily gone. Smack in the middle of February, I was privileged to attend an Anti-Valentine’s Day party with some single girl friends. We’re not anti-love. We’re just anti-make-a-big-stink-out-of-love-with-roses-and-chocolate. But do give me the chocolate, please.

The last day of February took me to Wisconsin, where I visited Sarah for a week during a special Bible Conference. It was nice to meet all the people she’d been telling me about! I arrived home at the end of the first week of March, with the measurements of a half-dozen girls in hand. Off to JoAnn Fabrics to buy skirt and jumper fabric I went!!

Skipping on down to summer, I did alterations for two weddings. One was bridesmaid alterations, one was a wedding gown alteration. It was definitely a good experience for me!

For the August wedding, some dear friends came up from Tennessee and stayed in my sewing room for a little less than a week. No get-together with them is complete without a night of energy drinks, ice cream, coffee, and walking in the middle of a deserted street with fuzzy blankets.

At the end of August, SURPRISE! My sister came in for a week to shock the socks off the rest of the family. I knew all along. *smug grin* What none of us knew was that on the day of her arrival, the entire east coast would have a mild earthquake. Furthermore, on the day before Sarah’s departure, Hurricane Irene lended her hand in a refinishing/redecorating project for our entire basement.

After August, the year whooshed by.

  I participated in my first fashion show on October 15. A mere 2 weeks before the big day is when I was invited to put a garment in the show, so there was all manner of patternmaking and fitting, trial and error, staying up all night and all day to get the jacket-skirt set done. But it done got done!

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In December, my dear childhood friend, Hannah, was visiting from WV and I met her then-boyfriend, Todd. He is her now-fiance as of merry Christmas, and what a cute couple they make! I’m so excited for her!!

2011 brought a lot of new things into my life:
- New phones! I went through two since February, and made the joyous switch from T-Mobile to MetroPCS. And yes, my newest phone is a smarty-pants phone.
- New friends! Met some awesome people at the hotel, and am privileged enough to count them as friends now – both coworkers and guests! I even made friends with some non-hotel people! And thanks to one of those new friends, I have a….
- …New haircut! I went from having sorta long-ish hair to a shorter ‘do, which I’m loving! (compare the Anti-V-day pic to the bridesmaid alteration pic!)
- New infatuation! Do you all know about Pinterest? You should. I talk about it a lot (with my mouth, not really so much on my blog). And it’s awesome. If you need an invite, let me know. Start your new year right with a new Pinterest account!
- New coffee! I was introduced to Turkish coffee recently! There was a moment of awkwardness at the beginning of our relationship, but all has been ironed out and we are grand friends indeed.

Why make wild endeavors for the new year when my old year turned out just fine by winging it?

Tags: coffee, family, fashion, friends, good times, hotel, memories, sewing, sisters, travels

Undergoing

Remember when our basement “went under” with Hurricane Irene? Still hard to believe how much drowned in those six inches of water. Well, since then, every aspect of my life has been undergoing change of some sort.

I moved into Sarah’s bedroom after the flood, and almost two months later, I’m still there. It’s terribly convenient. Terribly. I can sew and sleep within the same four walls. But for a moment, please imagine the chaos that would/did exist in those same four walls when they hold the contents of two rooms – my bedroom and my sewing room. Yup, chaos. Introduce plastic bins from Walmart. Add random cleaning spurts. Sprinkle generously with coffee breaks. And the result (so far) is visibility of carpet. In fact, enough carpet can be seen that I’m considering vacuuming just because I can. By tomorrow, I’m hoping for moderate-to-complete organization of fabric. It’s a long shot, but that’s why the coffee pot is on. Oh and I got a new floor lamp for the sewing corner too. Sorta pretty much really excited about that.

The room in the basement where I used to sleep (and one day will sleep in again) has not gone forgotten. I have big plans for that room! Some changes have occurred, some are still ongoing. Already done: new “genteel lavender” paint job with “polar bear” trim, tile floors instead of carpet, white sheer curtains instead of closet doors, new black dresser, new black bookshelf, new dark wood night stand, new set of drawers at the end of my bed, ALL-plastic waterproof storage, big framed horse print for my horse-crazy lil sis, new black and white lamp. To be done: new curtains for my window, new wall art to cover the electrical box that my bedroom has been blessed with, photos and drawings and other forms of art to frame and hang, new rugs to make out of super-awesome fabric, new slippers so I can actually walk on the tile floors.

I do not currently have pictures of any of these works in progress. I don’t even think I have “before” pictures. But sometime I hope to get some “after” pictures posted here. A reminder from readers would not be deemed unnecessary…jus’ sayin’.

Even at work at the hotel, things are changing! Busy summer season with a bunch of families and unruly children running the hotel halls is OVER! It’s “just” a bunch of business people, construction people, “lifers” (aka long-term guests), other miscellaneous people…. generally people who know the hotel biz and don’t ask a million questions or demand extra pillows or complain about credit card authorizations. It’s nice, I will admit. In fact, this month marks a year that I’ve been working at the hotel! Very exciting! I still love working there! I can’t remember a single day I’ve dreaded going to work there!

Everyone at some point will undergo changes in their life. Adapt. Don’t go under and drown. Even if it is only six inches of water.

Tags: cleaning, deep thoughts, family, hotel, life goes on, organizing, projects, sewing, tonight

Add water. And sugar.

Life gave me several lemons lately. Irene gave us water. God provided the sugary-sweet blessings! Here’s a recap of the resulting lemonade. May it be the only batch we make!

Lemons: Lost power on Sunday; basement flooded on Sunday; many personal possessions were destroyed beyond salvage-ability by the water; all 6 of us Angers are living in a one-floor/five-room arrangement; this night owl has to share her night perch with 5 sleeping/sleep-talking/snoring morning people.

Water: Hurricane Irene filled our finished basement (aka all of our bedrooms) with 6″+ of water. Do I really need to expound on that more?

Sugar: We got to spend lots of family time together! In fact, I think my best memory of Sarah Jeanie’s week-long visit from Wisconsin was the laughter-filled breakfast we had as a family on Sunday morning while water poured into our basement. God used neighbors and people from church to provide us with generators, shop vacs, storage bins, trailer for storage, man-power for removing furniture and carpet, and girl-power for helping me clean my room (which I’ve been putting off since “spring cleaning”). The electric power returned on Sunday afternoon instead of Thursday like many people are being told to wait for. The hot water heater was fixed on Monday morning, and hot showers have ensued since!

Every time I try to complain about the “flood” that we experienced on Sunday, I end up listing things I am thankful for instead. It truly could have been so much worse, but it wasn’t. Thank God for His care for us and for good friends who gave up their Sundays to help us!!

Tags: deep thoughts, family, friends, good times, life goes on, sisters

Memoriable Days

See what I did there? Took 3 syllables away from “Memorable Memorial Day,” added a few more days, and felt pretty clever doing it!

Such memories all started off with coupons a-blazin’ on the Friday before Memorial Day when I got the chance to hit up JoAnns and all their fabulous fabric sales. 50% off clearance fabric?! Can’t beat that with a Twizzler!

Moving right along, Saturday was positively insane at work, and most of the insanity is already blocked from my mind. Just random flashbacks of . . . a table disappearing from the pool area? Not being able to check anyone in due to a credit card malfunction on a nationwide thingy? Not getting through to tech support for over three hours? Some other fuzzy memory of an hour on hold for some other techy issue? What kind of insanity is this? Oh yeah, the insanity that isn’t successfully blocked yet.

The true fun continued on Sunday with special services to honor our veterans, a church picnic, over four hours of volleyball, and a cookout with friends. Oooooh, I want to say that one part again. I played volleyball for over four hours. Yes, I did! I truly lost track of time, and ran out of water twice. I not only learned how to play speed volleyball, but also fell in love with it. And I only regret two things about Sunday: being so out of shape and realizing too late in the game that the sun was shining.

Such regrets made the Monday version of me look like a limping sprout of cauliflower that had dived face first into tomato soup. And my joints spent the day pretending they had aged 400 years in the 4 hours of volleyball. Nonetheless, Sarah and I went to Kohls to get our free $5-worth of stuff each before rendezvousing with the brothers at Lake Nockamixon. Ben has his own kayak, but the other three of us rented kayaks for 2 hours. Thus I continued to proverbially dive into tomato soup with my cauliflower limbs.

(See? Cauliflower skin, dipped in ‘mater sauce.)

Afterwards I crashed at the grandparents and even managed to slip in a lil nappy time in their spare bedroom. Memoriable days, to be sure.

Tags: family, friends, good times, hotel, shopping, work

A Tale of Windows and Speedometers

Have I ever formally introduced you to my car? No?! I apologize. Gender and name are still yet to be determined, but hey, don’t most parents have 9 months to decide on the name? Last Friday (the infamous 13th) marked my car’s 5-month anniversary with me. No, we didn’t go out for celebratory ice cream then, but we did have a little fun on Saturday! That story to follow…

First, a grand introduction! My sunshine/bumblebee car is a speedy lil 5-speed 1996 Mitsubishi Eclipse with a custom paint job, cold air intake system (that’s what he said!), a trunk that only stays open when it wants to, and a rather loud exhaust system. Tis grand indeed!

Tada!

I recently had to take my car in for a mechanic to “check clunk in rear.” Said clunk had begun clunking rather suddenly, which caused me due concern. Turned out to be a broken rear strut mount….whatever that is. It is now fixed, that’s what it is.

I also had the brilliant idea to have him check on my passenger-side window. It was spastic. Obstinate. Moody. Sometimes it would go down, sometimes it wouldn’t, and of course it was all the absolutely gorgeous days when that window would decide to stay up!

I was undeniably frustrated since the guy I bought the car from had specifically told me that he had fixed the passenger-side window. “Very fixed, hmph. Won’t even go down!” thought I.

“Window lock was on…” said the invoice from the mechanic who was kind enough not to charge me for “fixing” the window. Hey now, in my defense, all the other cars I’ve driven have window cranks, which can only be locked by maiming, paralyzing, handcuffing, dismembering, or otherwise impairing the hands that would crank the window. How was I to know my new car had a window lock?!

On to Saturday’s fun! I’ll give you a hint: it goes “WEEEEooo WEEEEEooooo!”

Time: an hour(ish) before my 3-11pm shift ended at the hotel.

Setting: torrential downpour.

(time lapse)

Time: 11:10pm(ish)

Setting: slow black sports car in right lane, followed by equally slow black Charger, being passed by a yellow and black car, in still-rainy conditions.

Introduction of characters:

–Unidentified Driving Individual – slowpoke in black sports car, undoubtedly updating his facebook status to reflect the following sentiment: “Just got passed by some woman in a yellow car, then passed her sitting on the side of the road…must’ve been one expensive ticket, the way she was flying!” (likely minus the correct spelling and grammar)

–Officer M – follower of said black sports car, driver of aforementioned black Charger

–Amanda – driver of speedy yellow and black car, recipient of the following warning: “Don’t drive so fast when the roads are wet.”

Conclusion: No ticket. Reduction of speed (for now). Knowledge of what a vehicle registration card looks like.

Tags: life goes on, vehicular troubles, work