Photos - Spring 2012

Here's a link to an ongoing Spring 2012 photo album I have going on facebook.

Weight Loss Progress-Pictures (2010 vs 2011)

This is me. Last year (2010) I was at my heaviest weight EVER and hated the way I looked. This year (2011), I am happy to say that I am around 40 pounds lighter and still working to lose more weight. These pictures show about a 20-30 pound difference. They were taken at different times during the year so it varies a little bit. I am going to track my food intake everyday (hopefully), to track my exercise, and to track my weight LOSS on this blog and on my tumblr! I am 15 pounds away from my goal weight and I can’t wait to reach it!!

I will be posting my daily calorie intake in one batch post once a week. I am updating my tumblr daily and keep track at myfitnesspal.com.

Olbrich Botanical Gardens Madison, WI - 10.5.11

Purses for sale at my etsy shop!

Check it out!

http://etsy.com/shop/catcraftorium

Family Vacation in Galena, IL

All of my cousins on my Dad's side of the family except for 3.

I just got home today from a family gathering in Galena, IL. It was so much fun! I love getting together with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. My family has always been pretty tight-knit and I love it. During the day, we went our separate ways a bit and looked at some of the shops. In the evening/at night we were able to use the hotel's meeting room and spent our time visiting and looking through old family photo albums. I love looking at that stuff. I especially love when my grandparents are there to narrate the pictures. I really need to video record this one day. Anyways, I have a few of the pictures loaded on to my computer and will someday soon be making a post about some of these photographs. Now I need to get some photos from my mom's side of the family. Like I said, I am really fascinated by family history. My dad and I are going to put together a family tree chart. I am really excited about that.

2008 Chevy Impala

Something else happened this weekend: I got a new (used) car. I traded my old car to my dad for this one that he just got. It is really nice! I haven't driven it much yet, but will be venturing back to Madison on Tuesday. I have to hit the DMV as soon as I get home and get some plates. Also on Tuesday I will be voting and running a couple more errands. This week I am going to start inquiring about going back to school. I am going back for certain, but not sure if I am just going to try to get into the dislocated worker program or if I will actually try for a more long term certificate. There are pros and cons with both. I just want to talk to someone about it before I make my decision. Regardless, I will need to take a compass test and should get that done and over with in the next couple of weeks. I'm afraid of algebra and hope that it all comes back to me. :/

Mackenzie Center

Today, Ian and I visited The Mackenzie Center, which is an environmental center which has a lot of trails and is home to a lot of wild, local animals who have been injured and are recovering at this facility. I took a few pictures with my phone, so please forgive the not-so-great quality (forgot my real camera). And I wasn't able to get a good picture of some of the coolest animals-the wolf and the coyotes! They were moving too fast.

A skunk.

A wild deer on the same side of the fence as us.

A porcupine eating some stinky broccoli.

A very strange badger.

An angry-looking bald eagle.

Bobcats.

A mountain lion-the scariest cat I've ever seen!

Very cute fox.

A squirrel nibbling on a nut in a tree.

Mean-looking owl.

Cough Cough Sneeze Sneeze

I am definitely feeling my first cold of the season. Head hurts, nose hurts, throat hurts, ears hurt. Yuck. Bring on the nyquil and humidifiers.

Not too much is new with me. 

My cats are still cute.

It snowed. And, actually, it has snowed quite a lot more since this picture was taken.

I visited my friend, Janice, over Thanksgiving weekend and met her brother's hedgehog. CUTE!

We saw a screening of Bruce Campbell's movie "My Name Is Bruce" and attended a Q&A with him afterwards.

Christmas tree, lights, and decorations are up. I love this holiday. :)

Hand in hand is the only way to land.

Things are going well. Last Tuesday, for the first time, I voted for president. And I actually voted for who I thought was the best candidate which made me feel spectacular. I really wish Ralph Nader would have won, but I feel good that I got to support him with my vote. I guess things could be a lot worse.....such as if McCain won....but I don't know, Obama has to be better than Bush. I am not certain about what these next four years will bring, but I'm hopeful.

Last weekend, we had a big family shopping outting. 11 of my aunts and cousins and my grandma and myself roamed around Madison, shopping to our hearts' desires. I had lots of fun and wish I could do things like that more often! 

Magick is doing very well. She fits right in. Her and Spirit have become good friends. They cuddle and clean each other and play and have fun. I love them both very much and they are so darn cute. 

Work isn't even too bad lately. Not that it's become less busy, but I've been more relaxed for some reason. I've been working really hard while I'm there, and then leaving everything there instead of bringing stress and anxiety home with me. I don't know how long this will last, but it's nice right now. I also have several vacation days coming up in December. And did I mention holidays? That's right...I'm excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

Somehow, Ian and I managed to get our hands on Packers tickets for this weekend against the Bears. His aunt had them and couldn't go, so she sold them to us for a very reasonable price. I'm looking forward to that day! Actually, I'm looking forward to that whole weekend. Friday=relax, Saturday=relax, Sunday=Packers game. Can't wait.

Okay, I am rambling on because it's late and I need sleep. My cats are slowly making their way towards bed so hopefully we can all three go to sleep at the same time tonight. :)

Magick.

This past weekend was pretty eventful!

Friday was Halloween! Work was great that day! First of all, it was treat day. We also ate lunch at a sushi place! It was AMAZING. There were five of us and it really was a fun time. That afternoon, the power went out at about 3:30. We all left at 4:00 because it wouldn't come back on. It was a nice Halloween surprise. :) That evening, we got ready and headed to Portage to go trick-or-treating with Ian's nephews.

Kaeden was a little cow!

And Kail was Superman! We met up at Ian's aunt & uncle's house. We walked around for awhile as a group, and then Ian's sisters, brother-in-law, and baby nephew went back to the house. Kail and Ian were SPRINTING from house to house trying to get as much candy as possible in the last 45 minutes of trick-or-treating. If you scroll back up to the top picture in this post, you can see that I was not wearing appropriate shoes to be sprinting around town. Next year I will have to consider this. Ian wants to dress up as Hunter S. Thompson next year for Halloween and go trick-or-treating again. I don't know what I will dress up as. After trick-or-treating, we drove to Ian's mom's house and watched Sweeney Todd and ate pizza. It was definately a fun night.

On Saturday, we woke up and drove back to Portage to the animal shelter. We adopted the first kitten we saw because she was so darling and sweet. She crawled under my chin and started purring really loudly and I knew she was the one. We named her Magick because she's black and orange and mysterious. She spent most of her first day here hiding under things and behind the couch and under the bed. Slowly, she has begun the process of "opening up". Spirit was very mad at us when we brought Magick home. She's been reluctantly forgiving us, though. Today, they have been playing with each other (only when we are "not looking" of course) and the kitten is not hiding as much. She's running around the apartment and actually being a little naughty. I don't blame her though because she IS a kitten and seems to be adjusting to her body and claws (I am assuming she just recently had a growth spurt). She's only six months old and we are not really sure of her background. She apparently likes to eat houseplants, claw the furniture, and leap onto lamps causing them to crash to the ground. I don't want to discipline her too much because she is just getting settled in, but I am going to have to soon otherwise the apartment will be totally destroyed.

The two cats are like my children. I just want to sit at home and play with them every second. Too bad it's only Monday and I have a very busy week ahead of me. :(

Mini Vacation :)

I had a great weekend. We left Saturday morning and headed straight to the Milwaukee Museum. We wandered for most of the day, and hit the planetarium before we left for a showing of "Spooky Skies". We didn't know what it was going to be, and it ended up being a show meant for little kids. Very hilarious. I kind of wish we would have gone to Titanic at the imax instead, but oh well. Then we headed to Waukesha to check into our hotel room. The outside of the hotel was being...how shall I say this...refurbished? Sure. The hotel was really crappy because of that, but our room was nice. I treated us to a jacuzzi suite, so needless to say I spent the night soaking. It was great. We ate at some local bar and grill type place. It was good. I think we fell asleep before 9pm. 

Sunday we woke up, ate some breakfast, and got out of there. We hit a few stores before we left town and I bought a couple of things. We drove to Elgin and checked into our hotel there at about 3pm. It was VERY nice! It was a brand new hotel surrounded by restaurants. We ate at this place called "Sammie's" and it basically sold ballpark food and so much more. But it was really good. We took our time getting ready and Ian's friend, Adam, and his girlfriend picked us up at around 6:45 and we headed towards Chicago. Unfortunately, there was a lot of traffic and we made it to the show JUST as David Byrne and co. were getting on stage. Good thing it was at an opera house and we had assigned seating! What a show!! From what I could tell, there were not many young people there. Most of the audience was middle aged. However, most of the songs caused a majority of the audience to jump to their feet and dance. People were literally running up and down the aisles fist pumping and jumping around. It was crazy. It even seemed like a requirement that if you were to get up to go out to the lobby, you had to fist pump your way to the back of the place? I laughed a lot. David Byrne has still got it. He has a ton of energy and his voice is undeniably still very strong. I had a good time and I think we got four encores? One of which was "Burning Down the House" in which the house lights were on so I could see all of the middle-aged to old people dancing in all of their glory. After they burned down the house, we even still got a couple of more songs, which clearly seems impossible, but apparently it was not. We got back to the hotel before midnight and were pooped. Went to bed shortly after and woke up, ate breakfast, and left. 

We drove all the way back to Madison, and I stopped at the Halloween store to pick up some costume supplies. I wanted to get something that I could wear to work, but didn't find anything I liked enough. However, I did get a Charlie Chaplin mustache and hat for fun and also picked up a Harry Potter scarf and glasses so that I have something to wear to the theater when the movie comes out next year. (Yes, I am dressing up). Finally, we were home. We think Spirit may have gone on a hunger strike while we were gone. She barely touched her food and water and her litter box was relatively clean. It kind of worried us, but she seemed so happy after we played with her for awhile. Eventually she inhaled some food and water and has been napping all afternoon. She even laid on me while I laid on the couch and napped, which never happens. Guess she really missed me. She didn't even put up much of a fuss when I put her Halloween costume on her. Hehehe.

Well, I am going to fill the dishwasher, shower and go to bed. I'm pretty tired. I am so glad that I took vacation today and tomorrow. In the morning I am going to the DMV to finally get my Wisconsin license. I figure I'd better do that before I try to vote next week. Otherwise, I just want to be lazy. Today was also a very lazy day. I love it. And I think I can handle the three-day work week when Wednesday comes around. I think before I do anything, I'm going to go spoil my cat some more. :) Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Spirit and me before we left on Saturday.

Ian and Spirit

Dinosaurs!

Sampson

An elephant.

Some lions and baby lions.

A REAL mummy.

Its sarcophagus.

A cat sarcophagus (I think).

The prayers written on the outside of the mummy's sarcophagus.

Is that Spirit in a tree?

Shrunken heads.

I want to own this.

Les Paul Parkway

Ian and I before we left for the David Byrne concert.

Tried to get a decent picture of the Chicago skyline at night, but failed.

First snow! (Yay and boo at the same time)

"Get this thing off of me!" Haha