The Office Part Deux

We bought the desks, shelves, & bookcase from Ikea & the black storage boxes from Office Depot. There are two boxes I just spray painted black. The paint on the walls turned out a little lot darker than I was hoping for, but it definitely grew on me. I think it makes a nice contrast to the white desks.

I really love our new office & spend more time in here than the rest of the house now. (Callie likes it too.) :o)

Here are the after pics:

P.S. I don't know what those brown bars are in this post. When I go to edit the post they're not there. Annoying, but oh well.

The Office

Ours. Not the tv show.

We decided we needed a total overhaul & boy was it worth it!

Before (After coming soon!):

Baby it's cold outside

C finally divulged where we'll be going on our honeymoon: Banff, Canada

I'm a little confused because it looks like there's three different ski areas nearby. I guess it makes sense...I'm just used to there usually being just one.

And check out this weather forecast for Banff...guess I'll be packing heavily:

Extended Forecast Dated: 1600 MST SUN JAN 24 2010

TONIGHT	MONDAY	MONDAY NIGHT	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY
Flurries	Snow	Flurries	Sunny	Sunny
Lo: -15°C	Hi: -10°C	Lo: -14°C	Hi: -8°C	Hi: -4°C Lo: -15°C
Pop: 30%		Pop: 40%

Woman to woman (or man, I don't discriminate)

I love blogs. They keep me up to date on everything from friends, books, deals and savings, politics, and even provide a good laugh once in a while (to name a few).

I have to pass on some info about a site I just learned about from Fantabulously Frugal (which I learned about from My Cup Runneth Over).

It's Alice.com and I just ordered some items a few minutes ago. The idea behind it is that instead of making a trip out to the store just to get a few household items, you can sit in the privacy of your home (without changing from your pj's) and order them online at Alice.com. The website automatically adds coupons to your items (if there's any associated with them at the time) and notifies you when it's time to reorder the product.

Pros:

1. Shipping is always free!

2. The products I ordered should arrive in 2-3 business days (that's pretty good imo).

3. They have major brands as well as the under dogs (at least that's what the website says).

4. Coupons automatically added...no clipping!

5. Really cool "Budgeting" tab that keeps track of spending history with nice pretty graphs.

6. Free to join!

Cons:

1. Must have at least 6 items in your cart to check out. Seems counter to their point that if you only need a few items, rather than drive to a store, buy from them. A few items to me would be 2 or 3. It makes sense though if they're going to keep shipping free.

2. When you order a product, you can specify when you think you might need to reorder...2 weeks, 6 weeks, etc.

a. This doesn't work for me because I have no idea when I might run out of something &

b. I don't like buying the same thing over and over. I buy whatever's the best deal at that particular moment. I guess it'll be alright though, if I get a notification (& I really am running low) I'll just do another search for 'toothpaste' or whatever and buy the cheapest.

I went to the grocery store as well today. This website is obviously not one-stop shopping. But that's part of it's appeal to me. I'm trying to wean myself off of the big W and with this website, I just might be able to do that. Except for my medication...$9 at W or $33 at another major pharmacy? I think I'll go with $9. But I digress. As I was saying, I went to the grocery store and while I was there I compared the products I intended on purchasing on Alice.com to the products in the store. The ones I was able to find were a tad more expensive if the item was on sale. Translation: I'll be buying my household items from Alice.com from now on. (assuming shipment & everything goes okay) It will definitely make shopping at the grocery store quicker and less of a hassle.

My Alice.com order summary:

Band-aids $2.15

Charmin toilet paper $4.13

One-a-day multivitamin $4.47

Suave body wash $1.97

Crest toothpaste $1.76

Alpo dog treats $1.88

Resolve carpet cleaner $8.91

The only thing I'm a little upset about, *a little--nothing to go to war over* is that I found additional coupons for two of the items I purchased after I paid. So take my advice if you decide to join up: check "My coupons" under the "My products" tab before you checkout. :o)

PhD?

I met with my advisor's husband yesterday to work on the rest of the GIS portion of my research. My advisor kept visiting us every now and then to see our progress and she brought up that my research can lead to several potential undergraduate projects (a good thing). And then her husband says, "Yeah, this could very easily lead to a PhD project."

1 second after statement I think, "Hm. Maybe I could earn a PhD."

2 seconds after statement I think, "NAAAAAH!!"

As I was driving home I thought to myself, "Now why in the world would you even consider doing a PhD?! He said it could easily lead to a PhD project...not that a PhD project would be easy!!"

Another note on my project: We've created a GIS model that takes parameters we specify as being prime squirrel habitat and finds those elements in the landscape surrounding my sites. There's an area to the north of my sites called Stratton Bald that shows up as being potential Glaucomys sabrinus coloratus habitat. I was floored with this discovery and assuming the NCWRC hasn't already trapped there, I'm betting they'll want to soon (& I'm betting they'll be granted the money to do so).

It's just great finally seeing the fruits of my efforts.

Feeling charitable?

My brother is doing the Maryland Polar Bear Plunge this year and his team is almost to their fundraising goal of $2000! Please help them reach that goal by donating - no amount is too small! Donations will benefit the Special Olympics of MD.

It's the little things

--found out my laptop's cd drive actually does work. I was able to then uninstall a program I've been trying to uninstall for months now. I have much more space now! I previously didn't even have enough space to run disk defrag!

--found out epilators around raised moles can be dangerous. Had to wear an armpit bandaid today. Can't say I've ever had to do that before.

Bigger problems in the world

I realize that there are worse things than what I'm about to talk about. I also realize there are more interesting things to talk about.

I'm a light sleeper--example: my brother woke me up around 1 or 2 in the morning over the Christmas break from talking to his gamer friends online (his room was the one above mine).

It seems like such a weird thing to be thankful for, but I was so excited to learn my husband doesn't snore. My DOG, however, has decided she's going to snore every night. It started right before break and has continued. I had to start wearing my pink ear plugs to sleep at night. Those started to hurt like heck (and wake me up), so I reverted to my dad's Nascar earplugs with a string that keeps the two plugs connected (I didn't choose them first because I was afraid they would choke me at night--that didn't happen). I also thought they would hurt more since that weren't as soft as the others, but that wasn't the case--quite the opposite. But last night the right one started to hurt and I think I've determined that my right ear is smaller than the left. I also know Athena's still snoring because sometimes she'll wake me up even with the ear plugs, and sometimes one will fall out during the night.

Long story short, I need to invest in some good ear plugs. I'd like to be able to sleep through the night. Either that or send Athena to a shelter. *JOKING!*

This is what I'm talking about

I counted 23 coozies. Why do we have 23 coozies? Do we need 23 coozies? Definitely not. And my guess is we probably have more than that in boxes etc.

Ever have one of those days?

The only thing that seemed to work out today was lunch with one of our friends. Quite refreshing.

But then I managed to cut the beautiful dogwood print ($12) to fit the frame...crooked. I'll now have to buy a mat to make it look okay.

C tried to hang a shelving unit on the wall; got one end secured (or so we thought) and when he went to work on the other end, the first end came loose, fell, and put a big hole in one wall & scuff marks on the other. The newly painted walls. Strangely, I felt nothing. I just said, "Want to work on this tomorrow?"

C also has been trying to piece together a working PC for me from my dead computer & his old one. We got one running but it turned out to be too slow to let me play The Sims. I know, I don't need to be playing it anyway. So he was trying to use faster parts from my old computer & his hard drive. First the monitor wasn't working (it had been previously), then the mouse wasn't working (it had before), and now, it keeps freezing up when trying to reformat. I had high hopes of playing The Sims tonight. Somehow I don't think that will happen...considering it's been on 5% for 10 minutes now.

But I suppose that's okay. I need to submit an abstract for ASB tonight anyway. Can you hear the saturation of enthusiasm?