The 26th Year

Ah, another year, another number.  When I got up this morning I decided this years birthday theme would be hoedown, which may have been influenced by the WAY cute wild west cowboy party my friend had for her son's first birthday.  It also happened to work out well since I had requested barbeque for my birthday dinner :).  So naturally, I wore my cowgirl shirt to work to celebrate and then partied hoedown style with my family.  I love my family...they're great at rolling with the punches! (because by the way, I informed them of the theme of my birthday dinner an hour before it...whoops).  Oh, and sadly I forgot to take pictures...I was having too much fun or sick from too much cookie cake and bbq.

On a totally different topic, I love these colors!  I think this is my new favorite color pallet.

Here's the back story on how I found this arrangement (because I know everyone was wondering): On the way home from my parents, I bought myself flowers as a birthday gift and to have something pretty to look at all night as I typed my last paper for classes this semester (wahoo!).  So I get home, put the roses in a vase, make them look pretty, and set them next to my computer.  Next thing I know I have a cat zooming across the table and devouring the beautiful arrangement.  Luckily, he responds really well to "NO" and not much damage was done.  One thing led to another and as I researching whether roses were poisonous for cats, I found a website (ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center) that created a pet-friendly collection of flower arrangements through one of those big flower companies, with a bonus of 20% of the proceeds going to their organization.  Who knew someone would ever think to create a pet-friendly collection so you could rest easy knowing the flowers you sent won't kill your friends beloved pets?  Crazy world out there.

And now, back to the paper.  :)

The Intruder and Preparing for Baseball Season

First, for my unrelated baseball update, to explain my 3am blogging.  It turns out that someone actually did break into our apartment building...they took a crow bar to the front door.  Awesome.  What made it even more awesome was some work related events that happened over the last two days and during my last visit today (yesterday).  Needless to say I was already a little shaken up when I got home, then the handyman told me to "make sure you lock your deadbolt."  Something everyone wants to hear.  He went on to explain that the person was only looking for quarters (from the washing machines) and that they were having someone come out to replace the door frames.  I had a hard time believing the first part, because first off, he told me this right off after I gave a slightly frustrated response about wanting to come home to a safe environment after being in dangerous situations all day...especially today.  Secondly, who uses a crow bar to steal quarters?

Nonetheless, the combination of events sent me into my all to well patterned post crisis coping mode.  I had already began part of it at the office because of my last visit, which is to take a few hours to do light fun things, like surf the internet, at home I started again and just watched tv (thank you ABC for comedy Wednesdays!), then somewhere after a few hours of light stuff, it starts to hit me how dangerous a situation was, though I still don't fully grasp it at this point (e.g. it's pointless for my boss to attempt to make me process the situation yet).  From this I start wanting to find some resolve for my anxious feelings of potentially getting hurt, so then I go to the internet and begin doing research.  I read as much as I can about how I can protect myself in future situations...so tonight it was What To Do During A Break-In.  Thankfully, one article was enough to satisfy me (still not likely I'll get to sleep for a bit though).  Which, for those who are interested, I do recommend reading the article (the above link) it was some good info.

Naturally, one thing lead to another, which lead me to this:

Which of course led to this AWESOME discovery:

And that my friends is how we get from intruders to baseball...and then to bed.