Archives for July 2008

In my 22nd year, I began working in the real world. I had graduated from college with a degree in Computer Science and thanks to my dad’s old work connections, I landed a job as a consultant with his old consulting company.  I worked 6 months at a shipping company and then got on with the bank that I work for now.  The spring after I started working, our offices got moved downtown Charlotte and I had made my work goal…work downtown for a bank in Charlotte.  Charlotte is a banking capital and with my dad working in Charlotte as a programmer, I just always saw that as something I wanted to do.

I had a great time working there.  We got to go out for lunch at nice restaurants all the time.  Sometimes we went out for breakfast and of course coffee in the afternoon.  I was working on great projects at the time.  During this year, we finally had some decent money coming in.  The first two years we were married I was in school so I was making like $10/hr only working 15 hours a week so you can see that doesn’t add up to much.  Looking back, I’m not really sure how we easily paid all of our bills.  I know dinners at our parents really helped!

But that year, I finally was able to get some new clothes and quit wearing all the granny clothes, at Scott liked to call them, that were left over from the 90s.  We were in a new century and I was ready to start dressing the part of my new downtown job I had!  The final moment for me becoming an adult and embracing this new time was when I got about 12 inches cut off my hair and I got this cute, new spiky hair cut.

The picture above was taken by Heather on the way home from the salon (I think…again, my old brain doesn’t remember).  I just remember being so proud of my new hair cut.  I felt so…in.  And in my life as a teenager and college student, that really hadn’t happened.  So while a hair cut really isn’t a special event from that 22nd year, it does represent a shift in who I was becoming in the coming years.  I was saying good bye to the shy (ok not totally the shy part) little girl and saying hello to the woman I was becoming.

Today turned out to be a pretty busy day and tomorrow isn’t slowing down.  Our water softener got almost all the way in but then the guy had a family emergency and he’s planning to come back tomorrow.  So maybe I’ll get my first good shower on Friday.

I went to lunch today with my friend D. It was a quick one but we had a great time as normal!  I don’t get to see her enough!

Work was busy all day.  I spent most of it on conference calls and actually am going in tomorrow because I have another full day of meetings.

This evening was spent with Darian to get my gift and watching an episode before she left and then church of course.

I got some cool news this evening that a church friend is going to print us up One Tree Hill t-shirts for a really good deal that I designed.  Heather and I are planning to wear them in Wilmington during our set tour next weekend.  Mom’s comment?  Do we all have to wear them?  Scott’s comment?  Are you 13 or 30?  So yes, I get it it’s a little dumb but they’re so cute!  I’m hoping to make them available on my web site and see if anyone is interested in them.  Who knows but it doesn’t hurt to ask.  By the way, traffic on the site is going great for July but the ads are not very good at all so we’re definitely not looking at a record month.

I’m going to try to get to bed a little early tonight since I have a busy day tomorrow with work…so I’m off.  BTW, I have my 22nd year post scheduled for tonight so you’ll have that to enjoy tomorrow..have a great Thursday!

I got my first birthday present today!  One of our youth members I’ve written about several times, Darian, said she had a present for me and dropped it off at the house today.  I kept telling her not to get me anything and if she insisted, to go buy me a candy bar and I’d be more than happy.  The girl wouldn’t listen (will you ever listen to my advice, D??? JK)  and bought me the first 3 seasons of One Tree Hill AND two candy bars!  I was beyond happy.  Chocolate and OTH!  She’s my favorite person right now!

The year I was 21 in 2000, right before I turned 22, I graduated college.  Yippee!  But my graduation isn’t my favorite moment from my 21st year, the week after is.  Mom, Dad, Scott and I went on a seven day cruise out of Florida, to the Cayman Islands, Mexico and New Orleans.  College was a lot of work for me.  I got good grades but that’s because I worked for them.  I worked part-time throughout the whole four years and as I mentioned before, we got married halfway through.  Just for the record though my grades improved after getting married and it was SO much easier.  Still..a lot of work.  So that week I felt freedom!  We got to experience new things and places and it was just so relaxing, non stressful and the perfect celebration to my graduation.

I have a few, bad pictures from that time.  These were taken off our digital camcorder.

Alrighty, folks.  In 10 little days, I’ll be done with my twenties and it’s the big ‘ol 30th birthday.  Ten days left to say goodbye to my twenties.  So I’m going to take a look back and for each of the last ten days, post on a favorite memory for each of the last ten years.

A lot has happened since 10 years ago today when I was 20 and that’s where we’ll start.  I was in between sophomore and junior year in college and about 3 weeks away from our wedding.  Only 19.  I really didn’t realize how young I was.  I still remember someone saying, “You’re very young..you understand this is forever?”  Of course! I said thinking she was mighty crazy and I knew what I was doing.  Plus I was going to be 20 when I got married for goodness sakes.  That day 10 years ago seems like forever ago.  I’ll have to post more on that on our anniversary coming up but for now I’ll say the day was great.

I woke up in my little twin bed in my room for the last time.  I remember being so relaxed as I knew people were busy preparing for the day.  The wedding was pretty big.  We had seven bridesmaids, seven ushers, a flower girl, roses, candlebras, a horse and carriage, bubbles, about 200 guests (I think..my old mind can’t remember)..everything that made up my dream wedding.  It went off without a hitch unless you count Scott saying “all my wordly needs I thee endow” instead of “all my worldly goods I thee endow.” I still think I’m paying for that one.

We had a nice reception in our FLC at church and then headed off for a week in Florida, stopping at a bed and breakfast for our first night together.  And let’s just emphasize again here how young, clueless and inexperienced I was.  So yeah, moving on.  I guess it’s pretty typical to pick the wedding as my favorite moment of the year but really, it was the quintessential moment of my twenties.

And I couldn’t do a post like this without pictures (and sorry this is before the big digital photo thing so I had to take snapshots from our album)…

So Mr. Balance Board of my Wii Fit world and I continue a rocky relationship.

Yesterday I did not work out and his first words to me today were, “Too busy to work out yesterday, eh?”  No, but what’s it to ya??

THEN, he says, “Scott’s birthday is coming up.  Have you bought him a present yet, maybe planned a suprise party?”  Note to self…get Scott a birthday present.

And to cap it off, after he measured my weight and congratulated me for losing a 1lb, he proceeded to say, “Well, just so you know, your last weigh-in was at 9:36 pm and a person tends to fluctuate about 2 lbs every day.”  Well, thanks for nothing, then.

Yeah, Mr. Balance Board and I are still trying to work this thing out.  So far it’s not looking good.