Yay for me??

I have somewhat-happy news to share. I got a promotion at work! Yes, it is part of my program to get promoted three times within the two years, but I still had to earn it. The extra money in my paycheck is VERY nice and should help to pay down credit cards.

However, currently CP and I have to put the money in our savings account.

You see, with such a big company, promotions like this have to get signed off by a lot of people. Unfortunately, one person in the chain didn’t sign off on the promotion. In fact, she held it up and asked for more information from me. I gave the extra information to her January 4th and she has yet to look at it (yes, that is ridonkulous).

Anyway, my manager down in DC doesn’t know if she has the power to take away the promotion. So my brilliant manager decides that we are just not going to tell her that the promotion went through without her signature and hopefully she never finds out. (I hope that you can tell that my use of the word brilliant is dripping with sarcasm)

So, until this woman looks at the extra information I sent her and lets me know that I am entitled to the raise, I have to put the extra money into our savings account just in case the decision gets reversed and I have to pay the company back.

Despite the fact that other people had to sign off on the promotion.

Despite the fact that I deserve it.

Despite the fact that my boss here thinks that I deserve it.

*sigh*

Ummm yay for me?

Superbowl recap

My thoughts on the Superbowl:

*The Who was slow and old

*During halftime, I changed the channel to Animal Planet and was excited to watch Puppybowl VI. But then....saw kittens? WTF? The kittens looked overstimulated and in general were boring. Bring back the puppies at halftime Animal Planet! Oh....and for those that watched the Puppybowl...didn't you want to adopt all of the puppies? I didn't realize that all of the puppies are rescue dogs.

*The on-side kick to start the third quarter was a ballsy call by Sean Payton. Nice!

*I loved the coke commercial in Africa with the sleepwalking guy and the animals. Those are all of the animals that CP and I saw on our honeymoon! We didn't get to pet a hyena though...

*Early on I was a bit disturbed with the two commercials almost back to back that featured women getting tackled by younger men. One was the Betty White/ Snickers commercial (which at least they tackled the old guy too) and the other one was the Focus on the Family commercial (Mrs. Tebow getting tackled by Tim Tebow). Women are 40% of the Superbowl viewing audience yet the commercials featured violence against women for laughs, or commercials like the GoDaddy.com ads with women as sex objects. Disappointing.

*I got shivers when the Saints were presented the Lombardi Trophy. I love when the underdog wins and also know how much the city needed this. At the airport last weekend, CP and I spoke to a baggage handler that saves up his money EVERY YEAR just in case the Saints make it to the Superbowl. Usually he says that ends up spending the money on clothes, bills, etc. but this year he was so excited to actually spend the money on flying out to Miami and going to the game. I can't imagine that a baggage handler makes that much money, so for him to put aside money every year....well, I'm glad that his money was well spent this year!

*Ultimately, I was really happy that the decision to not go for the undefeated season blew up in the Colts face. :-)

What was your favorite commercial and/or Superbowl occurrence?

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Side note to the Anonymous commenter on this post:

No reason to comment anonymously as your comment wasn’t harsh. I can assure you that CP and I both know how much our lives will change once we have a kid. He knows about the loss of sleep, the loss of a social life, and everything else that comes with kids. Not only does he have a niece and nephew, but we have tons of friends that have kids. I probably didn’t explain it too well.

Superbowl weekend!

I forgot to tell you guys about the best line I heard last weekend in New Orleans….five of us were walking down the street (3 guys, two girls) and one of the men trying to get people to come into the strip club says to us, “Come on in! The girls in here are wetter than the streets post-Katrina!”

I burst out laughing. I mean, what are you supposed to say to that? That certainly doesn’t sound enticing….

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So what will you be doing for the Superbowl? Unfortunately, I will be at home all by myself, unable to eat unhealthy food and watch the game with CP. He is heading off to OH Sunday morning for work and won’t be back until Thursday. He tried to push off leaving until Monday, but has a morning meeting. Boooo. We did get invited to a friend’s house which I could go to….but they live an hour and a half away and I will never get home at a decent hour if I stay for the entire game.

So, I will watch by myself, probably eat unhealthy food anyway because Sunday IS a holiday (at least in our household), and hang out with Fuzzy Britches. CP and I are hoping that the Saints win because the whole city was so pumped for the game this past weekend. Plus, Peyton Manning is boring.*

Tell me all about your grand plans for Sunday (or the rest of the weekend).


*I do miss his Mastercard commercials (“cut that meat!”) though.

New Orleans made me tired

Quick synopsis of the weekend:

Thursday: First off, Air Tran has the MOST uncomfortable plane seats in the entire world. I will do my best to NEVER fly with them again. As soon as CP, two of our guy friends and I landed in NO, we dropped our bags in our hotel room. Or should I say the General Manager Suite!! CP has a ton of Marriott points and this weekend, they decided to upgrade us to a phatty phat room with two bedrooms (each with a king bed), dining room, kitchen, 2 full bathrooms, 1 half bath, views, living room, and a pull out couch. So, our friends promptly cancelled their hotel room and stayed with us!

We then ran out to start drinking. Beer during our light lunch, hurricanes at Pat O’Briens, and then drinking- A LOT- the rest of the night. We forgot to eat dinner, which is probably why I don’t remember most of the night.

Friday: We all felt pretty crappy.... it started absolutely pouring so our walk around the Garden District was cut short. My nap before the out of town guest dinner that night was pretty necessary.

Saturday: It was FREEZING so we went to a delicious brunch at Elizabeth’s , walked around the French Market and then went back to the suite because it was simply too cold. Wedding ceremony was short- as was the whole reception (only from 7-10). Food was delicious (not a sit down dinner) and the band they had was a lot of fun.

The only weird thing was the disparity in guests- SO MANY friends for the groom's side and not as many people for the bride. So there were a ton of people that gave speeches for the groom and lots of cheering/yelling for him....not as much on the bride's side. She is super accomplished (Stanford undergrad, Yale Law school, is already teaching law classes despite the fact that she is mid-30s) and although I have only had short conversations with her, she seems nice, although not as outgoing as the groom. I think that it's just weird when people cheer for only one side at a wedding as the event is the two of them forming a partnership.

After the wedding we invited everyone (and I mean everyone) back to the suite to party. We probably had at least 40+ people in our suite. Three noise complaints later, security finally told everyone that they had to leave. Everybody was pretty cool about our suite (not trashing things, etc) except two people: a sluttily-dressed girl that went to law school with the groom and then a guy that is also friends with the groom. They basically tried to sneak into the room that CP and I were staying in (it had a door separating it from the rest of the place) to have relations. Uhhh not cool. I had to break that up quickly. Later, they tried to sneak into the bathroom to do the same thing. I wouldn't have cared as much about if they did that in the 3rd bathroom since I didn't have to use it, but they went in as soon as we were getting kicked out, so I had to bust them up again because I wasn't about to have them stay in our suite when we left for the bar. It was just weird- it's not like we are in college and both of them had their own hotel suites. Why are you going to dirty our suite with your possible STIs???

Sunday: It was just me and CP. We did a crappy horse drawn carriage tour of the French Quarter (our guide sucked), had lunch at Emeril's NOLA restaurant (so yummy!), had beignets from Café Du Monde and then headed to the airport. We didn’t get home until 1am Monday morning so that day at work? Sucked.

Drunken rAmblings

Alright, enough talk about babies around here. Here is an example of why I might not quite be ready for kids just yet. This is a text message conversation that I had with a friend from law school after two beers, two large hurricanes from Pat O’Briens and no dinner on Thursday while down in New Orleans:

NSC: Two beers and two hurricanes today = NSC is drunk!

JH: Nice! Sounds way better than an 11 hour workday then 2 hours of tennis! Have fun!

NSC: No not good pics

JH: I am confused, what were you talking about?! Have another hurricane! I am going to bed since I am an old fart!

NSC: Oh no I am drunk as a skunk!! Don’t worry about my drunk ramblings. Sh*t I am. Suoper drunk and this is not good. Ok don”t worry about me and my drunken rAmblings. (not edited)

I saw this exchange in the morning while completely hungover and feeling like crap and died laughing. I have no idea why I am suddenly talking about pictures and my misspelling of super, my usage of “ instead of ‘ is just silly, and why would I put a capitalized A in the last word?

Oh, and this same drunken afternoon/ night I had a text messaging conversation with my sister which consisted of me trying to get her and her boyfriend to fly down to NOLA and hang out with us all weekend because we had a big suite and because NOLA is so much fun. Then I tried to plan a trip for next fall, she suggested Jazz Fest next year and then I went into a whole conversation about how I will probably be pregnant in the spring of 2011 so that probably wouldn’t work out. Whoops.

More on our fun weekend tomorrow….

Deep discussions

The night after my doctor’s appointment, CP and I went out to dinner. I told him about everything that I had discussed with doctor. We then had a tentative discussion about when we thought we might start trying to conceive.

It would obviously have to be after we moved to Denver.

It would obviously have to be when we thought we would be in a better financial position (I know, I know, you are never truly ready money-wise for a baby…..but still- I would like to be at least somewhat out of debt!).

So our tentative plans are to start trying in a year. That is....if CP doesn’t get cold feet. The conversation was actually pretty funny. We discussed the fact that we definitely will eventually have children. And I brought up that if we know that we are definitely going to try to have kids, why not have them sooner rather than later and hopefully bypass the possible complications and risks that come from having a baby at a later age?

I asked him if he was worried because he thought that he might not be a good father. His cocky answer? “Oh no I’ll be a great father.” LOL. Yes, and a very modest one at that. ;-)

CP is simply a bit worried about a loss of freedom. He obviously knows that having a baby= no freedom for 18+ years. He meant it more as, there are certain things that you can’t do anymore if you have kids. Except when I asked him to elaborate- what exactly would he be missing out on that he is currently doing now? He couldn’t think of anything.

It was kind of funny to be the one wanting to talk about kids and having CP be the one that was holding back. About six months into our relationship, CP suddenly brought up my match.com profile and the fact that I put “willing to talk about” or something similar under the “kids” section. I think that he was worried that I would never want kids and whether we should continue to date if that was the case.

So, the plan is a year. Although after some of the stuff that my friend talked about at the baby shower two weekends ago?? I've got to be honest that pregnancy and the “miracle of birth” scares the living crap out of me.

Thinking of the future

I went to have my annual “it sucks to be a woman” appointment recently. My doctor was actually pretty good and had me in and out fairly quickly. Towards the end of the exam, I felt it was necessary to ask about babies. I figured that I don’t know when CP and I going to start trying and I won’t be back for another year, so I might as well find out what I need to do before we do start trying (since currently-pregnant friends talked about taking folic acid, etc.).

My doctor was so excited when I brought up the question. Really? I’ve only seen you twice. You don’t really know much about me, except for the fact that I just got married less than 4 months ago. Anyway, she said that I am close, if not now at a healthy weight to carry a baby. That was good to hear, but when I told her that I would love to lose about 25 more pounds, she looked at me and said, “that is going to be hard.” Like she didn’t think that I could do it. I certainly didn’t take that as a compliment as when I step on the Wii Fit board, it still tells me that for my height I am at the high end of the “overweight” category for my BMI. So it’s not like I am skinny or thin and don’t have pounds that could still be shed. So thanks for not believing in me lady!

We talked a bit about the tests CP and I could have done prior to trying to conceive….something that I imagine we will do.

And then I asked about the risks of getting pregnant for women over 35. I have less than four years until I hit that magical age and wanted to know if all of the talk about more complications was true or not. According to my doctor, the studies haven’t been updated recently, but the rumors are true. Risks of complications increase once you hit age 35 and it doesn’t matter if you are on your first baby or your tenth. Each pregnancy is separate and distinct.

Hearing that made me think….so I went home to have a talk with CP. More on that tomorrow.