Happy Halloween

Just wanted to wish all you ghouls and goblins a very Happy Halloween!

Be safe trick or treating, do not eat too much candy, and do not get too scared of all the spooks in the night.

Enjoy Halloween Bob, I know we will not be together to hand out candy but nothing will ever be as fun as two years ago when you lived on Laurel in St. Paul and we rigged a pulley system from the 2nd floor to hand candy out. Dang that was cold, but lots of fun.

Enjoy this scary picture...

Rant and Rave

So I pretty much have nothing to do at work so I might as well make a blog post. Here is a little session dedicated to short tidbits about anything and everything on my mind.

• Nebraska's Safe Haven Law. How great is this state? I mean they are so open to letting anyone and everyone just drop their unwanted children off and they just offer to pay for them. I'm glad that now being a resident of the State of Nebraska I am now the parent of 24 Safe Haven Children, most just 10 years younger than myself. They have decided to hold a special session on November 14th to change the law. This probably means an entire bus load of children will be dropped off on November 13th. Great!
• Obama. ok I just have to say it. He is gorgeous and eloquent and I am excited for him to be President of the United States. Did anyone see his propaganda 1/2 hour special last night?
• Baseball season has come to a close. It was sad that an NL team won, but it was funny watching them pig pile on top of each other-ouch.
• Daylight Savings Time Ends this weekend. I always hate it when it gets so dark at night. Especially now that I will be driving home from work in the dark. There have been lots of deer when I have come in in the mornings so I am getting a little nervous now with the months to come. Just have to say it, hopefully I can find a job in Omaha before winter hits hard.
• Fall I love the changing of leaves and the semi cool weather. I'm so glad that I am able to look out across the hallway and see beautiful colors of trees changing. I hope each of you have been able to take a minute to enjoy the changes and remember we are lucky to experience things like this.
• Breast Cancer Month is coming to an end. My immediate family has been so lucky that we have not had this effect us, but we all know someone who has been struck with this horrible disease. Remember to give yourself an exam every month. I have learned that healthy breast tissue is lumpy, but if it is hard and does not move you need to get it checked out.
• Heart, Bob is currently studying Cardiovascular in school right now and boy I have loved the puns that it includes. I continue to tell him that if he puts his heart into it he will do just fine. Oh man I crack myself up!
• Bass Guitar, my brother recently blogged about some great bass guitar players, it really made me think that I should pull out my bass and start playing again. I miss it.

Okay so I think I have filled you all up with a little something to think about. Maybe tomorrow will be another blog post of random junk.

Out Sick

After a nice relaxing weekend, I went to bed last night ready to start another week of work. It didn't seem like it was going to be all that bad b/c I didn't have long days to work and at the end of the week I would get to see my Nephew and Nieces, Cole, Merrick, & Macy for Merrick's birthday and get to go to the Vikings game.

At about 12:30 I woke up with extreme pain in my stomach and it kept turning, I was getting motion sickness and I felt like the room was spinning. I continued to wake up in the night getting sick and then trying to get some rest before my next bout about every hour. At 4:30 I decided I wasn't making it to the gym and at 6:00 I was not going to make it to work. As soon as Bob woke up he assured me it would be okay to call in sick and so I did. I spent all day on my couch continuing to get sick and drinking lots of fluids as well as watching tv. The time goes by so fast when you are watching tv as I know my day would have just drudged on if I had been at work.

I am feeling a little better and will get back to work in the morning. Although I am not looking forward to it. Hopefully my day of rest will help the week go by a little faster so I can see Merrick on her birthday. I hope she feels better too as she got sick today at her babysitters.

Thanks Bob for the fun day on Saturday and for taking care of me today.

My Blog

OK bear with me. I was bored at work this week so I started messing around with my layout and format. Then my work computer decided to stop letting me work on it. So here I am with a blog lay out that is not very pretty, I can't add pictures and I have not had time to work on it at home. I am hoping to change it soon. I just don't want to be judged by my layout okay?

Anyway.
I received an email from Bob that made me laugh this morning. It told me what my sister's facebook status said, "Becky Gacke is excited that it is cold and rainy-good sleeping weather!" Then Bob proceeds to say that my sister and I are the same person, because I have been saying this all week. I love cold rainy weather b/c I get the best sleep during that time. I just love it! So glad my sister likes it too. And you know what, I don't think it is all that bad to be the same as my sister. She is great!

Happy Wednesday everyone and enjoy the rainy sleeping weather, and ignore my ugly blog.

Odd place of employment

I know I know I complain about work all the time. At least you don't live with me. Ask Bob how I am when I get home from Loony Land Lincoln. I really just need to tell you about the happenings this week.

Where I work just celebrated their 40th Anniversary so they had a series of events, an employee dinner, a donor event, and a blood drive coordinator appreciation breakfast. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. It was all back to back because they had a speaker come from Boulder, CO to talk. I have included her link because she is amazing! http://www.americasblood.org/go.cfm?do=Page.View&pid=109

So Monday evening I was forced without pay to attend a social hour at 6:30 and dinner/program at 7:00. (Mind you I was working at 7:00 that morning) We were invited to bring guests but there was no way I was going to put Bob through that or make him drive an hour to come to Lincoln. It started off fine, the MC was a radio DJ who I have worked with before, then the speaker who really makes me look at what I do and believe that the blood banking industry does have some good to it. (oh the food was horrible though) Then a woman gets on stage with a mic and music stand and starts talking about songs from 1968 (the year the blood bank started). Then she started singing, her first track was Do you know the way to San Jose and she asked everyone to join in during that la la la la parts. Next she walked around and put her head on people's shoulders to, you guessed it, Put your head on my shoulder. At that point I didn't know whether I was dreaming this, what this had to do with blood banking, or why I was there in the first place so I grabbed my phone to record a little of what was happening. Next she decided to throw some history in about a Cross Over hit from Country music. She sang the song the Harper Valley PTA. This was just bad karaoke and I was completely annoyed. It was already 8:45 at this point and I was told that it would be over with by 8:30. Then she pulls out lyrics sheets and passed them around to everyone to join in and sing Hey Jude. She passed around the microphone and even a tambourine -no lie. Lastly she said, can I sing just one more, she started and was off key so she stopped and wanted to start the music over again, she stopped again in the middle of the song. Then they couldn't get the cd to work so we waited for 5 minutes to have them fix it so she could sing a song about having friends. I have no friends at the blood bank and this lady had pissed me off so much that I wouldn't consider being her friend. Then the program was not even over. We had to go through all of these awards and they were not even nice about it. They awarded a woman who has worked at the blood bank since the day they opened and still works here every day and they didn't even thank her. By the end of the night I wanted to shoot myself or at least the smoke alarm so I could leave. I didn't get home until 10:45 that night and I was so pissed.

Needless to say I skipped the event on Tuesday and it has not been brought up that I wasn't there.

Wednesday mornings breakfast continued with bad food (ice cold french toast sticks) and once again they didn't even thank the people for coming.

These people are nuts. And I didn't even go into details if you were there you would have been appalled too. Congrats on the 40 years, great speaker, crappy events.

Anniversary Day

Today is not only Bob and my 2 month anniversary of being engaged, but it also marks our 5 years of being together. Bob and I dated for about a month and a half before we officially became boyfriend/girlfriend on October 11, 2003. So in dedication to my new fiance I am going to blog the story of the beginning of us, if you didn't know already.

On one of the first nights back at college of our Sophomore year, I went over to see my roommate's (Mesa's) boyfriend (Tony) in his dorm room. As school had not started yet there were lots of things going on and of course lots of fun to be had. Some of Tony's new floor mates stopped by his room and we all began to chat and get to know each other. I was introduced to Rob Hess and Bob Azar, Rob and Bob. That night we played a card game and got to know each other telling about ourselves. Bob says he was interested in me because I was wearing a Twins shirt. I was just happy to be with some guys hanging out. We all soon became friends, my roommates, Tony, and Rob and Bob. We exchanged AOL Instant Messenger names-long before Facebook. Bob and I soon became chat buddies where we would talk on-line all the time. One evening at St. Thomas they had a casino night. All of the friends were playing games and I happened to win 2 free Burritos to Chipotle. As I won Bob walked by and said, "Hey, you should take me." And my response was, "Ok." So we had it all set up for the two of us go to Chipotle. The day of the Chipotle date all of the friends decided they would go to. So we loaded up in our friend's minivan and headed down the road. Honestly I was a little upset that all of them joined in as I knew this date was not going to allow us to get to know each other. After returning from dinner Mesa, Tony, Bob and I decided to watch a movie. So we went back to Bob's dorm room to watch Super Troopers together. After the movie was over Mesa and Tony decided they wanted to spend some alone time so Bob and I thought the evening was too early to end so we watched another movie. We put in Star Wars Episode 2. I had never seen it but loved the old movies and had seen Episode 1 in the theater. Needless to say, still really haven't seen the whole movie (I am intentionally leaving the rest out for your little minds to wander & wonder). So that was our first date.

Bob and I continued to talk and get to know each other. About a month later (October 11th 2003) it was St. Thomas' homecoming. Our group of friends had decided to all go to the Homecoming dance and all of the dances at UST were pretty much an opportunity for everyone to drink. Apparently my roommates had decided to do this as well. Hence why my face is red in the picture. It was a Hawaiian themed dance and the boys wore Hawaiian shirts and us girls wore flowers in our hair. I do not remember much of the dance, give me a break it was 5 years ago. But I do remember coming back to our dorm room and possibly having a few more drinks, then as the boys decided to head back to their dorm for the night I didn't want Bob to leave so I got down on one knee and asked him to marry me-he just walked away. We later decided that was our first night as boyfriend and girlfriend, but I knew that someday he would be my husband!

So like I said today Bob and I our celebrating our lives together. I love him more and more each day. Happy Anniversary Bob.

SKOAL

So I know I will hate myself for doing this later on in the year, but way to go Vikings! It was fun not only to watch them, but to watch them win. Skoal Vikings.

Stuck in a Rut

Although I enjoy my weekends I feel like everyone is beginning to be the same. And this weekend was no exception, but I think it may have been worse as I did not have a single game to watch. With the Twins being done for the year and the Vikings playing Monday night football I was all out of sorts yesterday. Bob had been pulling one of those crazy weekends at school studying for his final today. I just got in one of those moods and I absolutely dreaded coming back to Lincoln, NE to work.

However I shouldn't be all negative. Bob and I had a successful evening on Friday night finding him a great deal on a new winter coat, next we had one of "our" dates to Target. I used to make fun of these dates, now I love them even more. I don't know why I just do. Saturday morning while Bob had his nose in the books, I went to water aerobics, the farmers market and lunch with Jamie and Angela. I cleaned the house in the afternoon and made dinner for Bob on Saturday evening, I also was in the mood for a cake so I made a box cake for my sweet day. I was packing up some cake for Bob to take back to school when wham, there went the cake frosting side down on to the floor. What a mess and half of my cake was gone :(. That evening Jamie and Angela came over to watch Sex & the City the Movie. I have to say I just love that movie I really want Bob to watch it some time but he absolutely hates the show. Funny- how I watch his shows...
We may have worked out a deal for this weekend, but I am not going to get my hopes up.

I am working my 10 hour days again to have Friday off. Last week was such a killer week of work, granite it was a great week for blood collection but a tough mental and physical week for Ashley. I'm really not looking forward to work at all lately. I really would like to find a new job. One that is more challenging for me. I'm not growing at this current job and driving 2 hours every day is something I would like to put a cease to. I'm hoping that something will come up soon-real soon and maybe that would get me out of this rut.

I guess I can look forward to going over to friends tonight to celebrate the end of the Hematology/Oncology unit and to watch a little bit of the Vikings game. Come on Vikes!