My Mom and Her Emails

My mom forwarded this email this morning to just about eveeryone we know:

This e-mail is the exception that proves the rule!

Advice from Snopes.com

1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to '10' of your friends, sign this petition, or you'll get bad luck, good luck, or whatever, it almost always has an E-Mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and E-Mails of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' E-Mails to use in SPAM E-Mails, or sell to other spammers.

2) Almost all E-Mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass l etter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of E-Mail is, is a way to get names and 'cookie ' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers - - to validate active E-Mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.

You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor by sending this information to them; you will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!

If you have been sending out (FORWARDING) the above kinds of E-Mail, now you know why you get so much SPAM!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound!

You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT in the long run. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let's don't make it easy for them!

Also: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.

Read the full story here: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.asp

Oh, the irony. (I think it's irony in this case.)

Only my mom would forward the email that specifically says "Don't forward this type of email." To make it even better I went to snopes.com and they say they did not create this email.

Hehe! Oh, Mom :)

More Than A (Army) Wife

I just realized that my blog title should be, "More Than A (Army) Wife" since technically, the "A" belongs to "Wife" and not "Army." Hm.

My OCD: Paying the Bills

So, I have a problem. I'm a billaholic (yeah, I made it a word). My problem comes to spending money on bills. Not not paying bills, but paying too much on our bills.

Okay, I know that sounds strange because we all need to pay our bills and whatnot, but bill paying is like this weird obsession for me. First of all, I love bill paying time. I find it very relaxing. Now there are the times when we're a bit short on money and I have to stretch here and there to make sure all of our bills are covered, but for the most part the 1st and 15th of each month is not high blood pressure time for me.

The OCD part is that I am incapable of paying minimum amounts only. I know this can be good, but I think its a little odd. We both have pre-marriage credit cards and other loans that we're still paying off. I can say that aside from the mortgage, a majority of our bill budget goes to credit cards. We were young and stupid once and we're cleaning up the mess now. But, hey, that's the way it goes sometimes. So I've looked into ways to help us pay off our credit cards more quickly while accruing the least amount of interest. My favorite option that I found is called "Snowballing" or something like. Basically, if you have 3 credit cards and they each have a different interest rate and you have $500 per month to pay off your cards, you only pay minimum amount on the two cards with the lower rates and you use the rest of the $500 to pay the card with the highest rate. Once that card is paid off you move onto the second card and so on and so forth. You accrue less interest in the long run and pay off your cards at a slightly faster rate. Good deal.

I can't do it. Every month I sit down and say only minimum amount on these cards and big amount on this card, but every month I pay more than I should. If the minimum amount is $20.00, I pay $50.00. Now I justify this by saying I need to round up and really if I wasn't doing the snowball thing I would be paying $150, so that extra $100 is going towards the high interest rate card instead. I know it should be $130 to fully entail the snowball concept, but every month I find myself paying more than I should on the lower interest cards.

This month was worse. I also have a habit of paying ahead on bills. If we have leftover money, we don't save it, instead I put it towards our car payments or Stonewall's student loans. So we're a few months ahead on some of our more expensive bills. Great. We're going on vacation next week. Stonewall and I discussed it and decided that the bills we were ahead on, we would skip paying this month so we had some extra spending cash. (This is our last vacation before the deployment, so we want to make it good.) Could I do it though? Nope. I couldn't do it. I couldn't not pay bills. Now granted, I only paid half of what a normal month would be, but still, I just couldn't say no completely. It wouldn't have hurt us. It wouldn't have put us behind on payments. It wouldn't have had any negative effect at all, but I still could not refrain from paying. So our vacation budget is a little smaller now than what it should have been.

Okay, I know, technically, I'm being responsible. I'm setting us up to have a secure future (well, except for the not saving part. We do save each month, but nothing extra.), but I still feel sometimes as if I'm OCD about it. Like I'm in danger of becoming a miser. "No! You cannot have extra money for your vacation otherwise you'll only be 2 months ahead in payments instead of 3!" How friggin' weird!

Credit cards would be paid off faster and our vacation would be slightly more extravagant if I could just say no to paying the bills.



*Okay, so after re-reading I know I sound like a complete idiot. Which I think was my point in writing this. I'm just going to keep telling myself that someone reading this has an even weirder obsession than me and I'm not the only moron out there. Please don't destroy my fantasy by telling me otherwise. I'm still coming to terms with my bill paying OCD. Anything more and I might crack.*

Meet the Stonewalls

So, I'm pretty tired of the whole anonymous thing. I mean, really, what's the point? I don't write about sensitive issues or highly controversial issues. In fact, I write about pretty boring average every day stuff. Plus, there are tons of pics I'd like to post, but don't. So, I'm outing Stonewall and myself. You've seen my dogs, you've seen my soon-to-be kid, you might as well see us now. So meet Stonewall and me...well, the fairy tale version anyway (which also happens to be my baby shower invitation, but it sums it up pretty well).

Once Upon A Time...

Friday - Funday

Lindsay over at And We'll Just Laugh Along the Way came up with a great new Friday post idea. Basically, you search for certain things on Flickr and then you create a mosaic out of the pics. Here's mine:

1. Where are you from?
2. What is your name?
3. Your favorite food?
4. Your biggest fear?
5. What do you do every day? e.i. SAHM, career, student, etc.
6. What is your favorite Olympic sport?
7. What about your favorite leisure activity?
8. What is an object you see everyday?
9. How you feel today?




1. Shoe House, 2. What an ass..., 3. vintage tea set with cupcake, 4. song to the siren, 5. Human Resources, 6. Untitled, 7. llibreria - bookstore - Amsterdam - HDR, 8. Pomeranian!, 9. Meeting the pregnant princess of the forest

Dinner Parties and Olympics

So, I've been MIA for a few days. The FRG for Stonewall's unit is hosting dinner party for the unit in a couple of weeks and I'm in charge of the event. We're a pretty small FRG, so I don't have a big committee to help me out. On the day of set-up I'll have two or three people with me, but up until then it's mainly me getting things ready, so needless to say I've been busy.

I'm really excited though. I know it's going to be an awesome event. We're having it at a local VFW and they are being super generous. An improv troupe is going to be performing and we're giving out lots of cool door prizes in a "Deal or No Deal" type of game. One of the best things we're giving all the troops and their guests are clocks. Each soldier gets two clocks. One is engraved with "Iraq" and is set to Iraq time and the other is engraved with "Pennsylvania" and is set to PA time. Both clocks are also engraved with "Missing someone gets easier every day because even though it's one day further from the last time you saw each other, it's one day closer to the next time you will." The idea is that families will keep the Iraq clock and the soldiers will take the PA clocks with them so each always knows what time it is where their loved ones are. I'm so excited!!

Anyway, so this past week I've been busy trying to finalize everything. Like I said though, going to be so much fun that it's worth all the work.

Right now I'm watching the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics. Every opening ceremony is more amazing than the last. They always do things you never thought could be done without special effects editing for movies.

So many people look forward to the Olympics (including myself), but I've been very disappointed with the response to this year's Games. So many people have boycotted the Olympics this year and I really think that shows poor taste. I realize that many people do not agree with the politics in China, but the Olympics isn't about politics. The whole purpose of the Olympics is to bring the world together despite all the politics and wars between different countries. The Olympics are supposed to be the one time all countries forget about disagreeing for a few weeks and compete in athletics, in a non-violent way rather than with words and weapons. I find it sad that so many people have forgotten the purpose of the Olympics because of their political beliefs. Supporting the Olympics does not mean you support politics you don't like. Same as supporting the troops doesn't necessarily mean you support the war.

I'm glad our President is their to support our athletes. I'm glad our President was smart enough to realize that by going to the opening Olympics in China he was keeping the way open to better the future for China. More importantly though, he realizes that the Olympics is meant to support hundreds of athletes, including American athletes, not to speak for or against a country and its politics.

New York City and South Pacific

We went to New York City this past Saturday to celebrate my grandma's birthday. We do this every year since its the one trip we can take and my grandma won't complain about having to travel. It really is a great time though. We take the train up to New York, have lunch, then go see a play/musical. I love these trips! I look forward to them every year. Trying out the different New York restaurants and getting to see a different play...so much fun!

This year we ate at a Brazilian place. They have a huge salad bar that has so many different types of salad. They all looked so good, but since I couldn't know for sure that they were made with pasteurized cheeses I had to pass on about half of them. For the main course, they serve all the side dishes family style and they bring out different meats through out the entire meal and they cut them for you at the table. I had chicken, lamb, sausage, about 5 different cuts of steaks, ribs, pork...the list goes on. And for dessert...creme brule!! My taste buds were in heaven.

Unfortunately, that's where the good stuff ended. We went to see South Pacific. I had never seen the movie or the play before and I had no idea what it was about either. Save yourself the money. It was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boring. They sang "Enchanted Evening" or "Wonderful Evening" about 18 times throughout the entire play. Friggin' write a new song Rodgers and Hammerstein!! The acting was horrible. The lead actress thought her character was four years old and half of the time I couldn't understand a single thing anyone was saying.

Plus, I just had a problem with the story line. Okay, so maybe when this was written back in the 40s the story line made sense and people had a warped sense of right and wrong, but I didn't like it. So the lead dude tell the lead actress (love interest) he ran away from his home country because he killed someone. She's like, "Oh my! But I still love you. You wouldn't have killed him if it wasn't the right thing to do." So after a lot of boring songs and crappy dancing they get engaged. Then she finds out he has two black children to a black woman (who died)(btw, the characters are both white) and she goes off the handle crying and not loving him anymore and finally running off the stage fake crying. Ummm...so on one hand we have he killed someone and she loves him and on the other hand we have he has 2 black children and she throws that tantrum. Okay, 1940s and all, I get it, he shouldn't have been with a black woman, huge no-no back in the day. But hello! Even back then I would think killing someone would be a worse crime.

Then on another island we have a native woman who sells her only daughter to an American soldier and is all, "You like?" WTF?! So the soldier is all, "Are you scared of me?" to the daughter and the daughter is all, "Yes. No. Yes." And then throws open her shirt with a final, "No." and they do it (well, you knew after the blackout that's what was supposed to have happened) I was all like, what?! Yes, no, yes, no, do me soldier. Oh geez. Of course, they fall in love, the mother wants her daughter to marry someone else after she threw her child-like daughter at him and kept saying, "You like?" and so he dies.

Wow. I'm getting bored right now just thinking about it. Anyway, don't waste your money on that one.

Pregnancy and Boobies

Before I was pregnant my boobies looked like this:



But now, they look like this:


I could float the Titanic with these puppies.