Domestic Geek

OK, I can understand someone's enthusiasm about the upcoming Christmas holiday, but seriously...who the hell puts their outdoor decorations up the day before Halloween? My neighbor, that's who. Snowmen, reindeer and fake trees is what greeted me when I turned off the main street into our park today. Not cool, people.

I did go to the U-Pick-Um pumpkin farm yesterday after work at Rock Creek Farm. It's up at Hwy 287 and the Northwest Parkway up in Brighton. It was quite the drive up there during rush hour, but I really enjoyed the drive to the field once on the property and roaming through the fields. I took Northwest Parkway/E-470 home, so it actually wasn't too bad on the trek home. There is another one close to that same spot that I'd like to check out next year called Pumpkins and More Farms. Marcus promised me that next year we could go through a corn maze or something. I've always wanted to do that. In addition to some pumpkins that I got to make Jack-o-lanterns out of, I got three small pie pumpkins to make fresh pies for Thanksgiving. They even threw in a spice pack and a recipe.

For future reference, there is a great site I came across called Pumpkin Patches and More! that listed pumpkin patches, corn mazes and other Halloween-related activities by state. There is also information about finding produce, Christmas trees and all sorts of stuff. That's a great resource (it's where I found the two places I mentioned above, plus a tutorial on making fresh pumpkin pies)! Wish I had thought if it.

OK, I'm off the make some pumpkin cookies to take to work tomorrow. I found the recipe online and if they come out yummy, I'll post a link to it. Otherwise, I'm going to forget they exist! I also am going to clean out my pumpkins so they'll be ready to carve after work tomorrow and get the seeds soaking so I can roast them. Roasted pumpkin seeds is my most favorite fall food. Mmmmm...yummy!

Even though Marcus and I are not "officially" married, we celebrate the anniversary of when we became a committed couple every 28th of October.

Today marked 15 years of togetherness.

I can honestly say I love him more today that I did 15 years ago. I'm the most blessed person in the entire world that I found him. I truly believe we are soul mates.

We celebrated this evening by consuming our traditional meal of Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster (the promotion always seems to be going on at the end of October). The cool thing about this year is we paid via gift cards that I got at work. I was just doing something that I felt was part of my job, but the CSR really appreciated my work and felt that I went above and beyond, so he requested to the powers that be that I was given this extra compensation. Yay!!! Works for me and the timing couldn't have been better.

There was a cute elderly couple sitting across the aisle from us. I was "enamored" with them (as Marcus called it). I so want to be like that couple when we're old. You could just tell that they enjoyed each other's company.

Anyway...

Today I got my last $5 payment from paid blogging that I had pending. I have found nothing on any of the paid blogging services that I wanted to write about in the last 30 days. With Christmas coming, the timing of this couldn't be worse. I've tried not to care about PR and all of that other stuff, but this blog dropped from a 4 to a 2 this time and I was a little surprised that it made me a little sad. I joined that one paid blogging service briefly where you fit contextual links into your posts and I just couldn't do it. I can't write about subjects I have no interest in or can't support just for the $. Since their service is an all or nothing deal, I had to pass. Oh, well.

Marcus asked me today when I told him that my last payment had come if that meant I was done for good. No, I'll still do it if I can find acceptable topics at a worthwhile price, but that doesn't seem to be the case for now. I AM going to have to find another income source, though. My raise has helped a tiny bit, but the OT that everyone kept saying was coming has yet to materialize. If I want out of this mobile home park and back on the road to financial security, I need to make more money.

On the positive side, not writing paid posts has been a bit of a relief. In fact, staying off the Internet as much as possible has been a good thing. My kitchen is getting cleaner. I've watched a lot of movies that I got through Netflix. I've been getting more sleep (I wonder if the information overload from constant surfing or the searching for acceptable paid blogging topics was causing my insomnia). I'll admit that I feel a bit lost without the constant online stimuli. I have to retrain myself to be happy with a book or a walk. It is kind of frightening how addicting it is and how much time I've wasted mindlessly being online.

I'm sad but also relieved that the Vegas trip fell through. It was for a blogging conference and I haven't been into blogging much lately. I would've loved to have met some of the people going, but I'll meet them all one day if I'm meant to. The fact is that the timing of it was bad and I really don't have that kind of money to spend right now. When I do go to Vegas, I want to really enjoy the experience, not feeling guilty that I went and not having the funds to do the things I really want to do there.

I've gotten myself hooked on Chai Lattes instead of coffee beverages. I found a good article on "What is Chai Tea and how to make a Chai Latte." It doesn't appear to be very difficult. I think I'll stock in those supplies and make them from scratch. Marcus and I have been trying to make changes in our eating habits to include less processed and premade stuff.

Of course, since Chai is actually the word for tea in many languages, saying Chai Tea is redundant. Those kinds of things drive Marcus batty.

After coming back from a 3–1 deficit in their series with the Cleveland Indians, the Boston Red Sox won the ALCS tonight to become the Rockie's opponent in this year's World Series. Fortunately the series is being shown on FOX, so I can actually watch it instead of having to listen to the radio or watch virtually through MLB.com's Gameday feature. GO ROCKIES!!!!


Wednesday at work we are having a Rockies Appreciation Day or some such thing. We're supposed to wear Rockies shirts if we have them and the company is buying pizza and sodas for the employees. I don't own any thing Rockies or purple for that matter. I looked at Target today to see if they had a purple polo or something, but no dice.

In other sports news, the Broncos had to have Jason Elam save their butt in the last seconds of the game once again to win against the Pittsburgh Steelers tonight. They blew a good lead to have the game tied right at the end. This is a habit this season that I wish they'd break. Winning is still better than the beating they took two weeks ago, but still...