Proud.

One thing I regret, that I talked a little bit about in a
previous post, is not asking my grandfather stories about his time in the Navy. As I get older, I have more of those regrets - not listening to older relatives' stories of "when I was your age...". I don't want my children (whenever they come along) to grow up having the same regrets...

So, what's the point? Right?
Well, today I received an email from my Aunt:
"Hey,
The Belleville News Democrat did a story on Uncle Walt, and it was in the Sunday paper. []..type in Walt Berry story and it will open to the head line; click on that and there is a video of Uncle Walt talking about the war, it is so sad. Poor Uncle Walt, made me cry..."

Of course, I immediately opened another search tab and searched for the story on www.bnd.com.

And there it was. This is my great Uncle Walt, my grandfather's brother-in-law. Along with the PTSD he's suffered with all of his life, he also has pretty severe COPD. Some of the things in this story, I never knew until I read the article / watched the video. It made me cry, to be perfectly honest. It made me cry knowing he's suffered quietly (I never had any idea of the PTSD) all these years. And it made me cry knowing the situations and surroundings he was in all those years ago in the war. And it made me cry, knowing that until now, I had NEVER asked him about his childhood / young adult hood.

Thank you, Uncle Walt, for sharing your story with thousands.

A Week in Review...

4/21 - Set painting at DB for the highschool kids' production of "Honk!", which ran April 24-27. Finished cattails, started & completed nest.

4/22 - More set painting at DB. Started & completed barn.

4/23 - Banking on the way home from work.
And then, a night in. *sigh*

4/24 - Pedi / eyebrow wax / Chinese food night w/ Mindy & Teri. We'd been working hard on sets and had an upcoming event. We deserved the girls' night, damnit! :-)
Comic Shop to help J out. Always nice to chat and catch up. And go through comics, of course. I'm such a nerd.
To the 24 hour lobby post office to mail some items / bills.

4/25 - DB Guild production of "Honk!". As per usual, show MUCH different from dress rehearsal nights I'd caught snippets of. Kids all did a great job; I really enjoyed the show! (The sets looked pretty good, too. ;-) What can I say? I'm proud!) Managed to drop and break my phone, also. Grr.
Dinner at Denny's (at 10:30 at night - how healthy.) w/ Jeremy. Damn near blew out a tire hitting a pothole neither of us saw. That would have been good, huh?

4/26 - Up at 9 to go to Cingular - who were NO HELP! "Call this 800 number - they handle all the repair / replace requests." A store FULL OF PHONES and you can't take my info, charge me a quick $50 or whatever, and give me a new phone?? It is being held together by a HAIR RUBBERBAND!!! Nice they didn't tell me the 800 number place is CLOSED on Saturdays. Ghetto-rigged phone until sometime next week, it seems...
Other errands - purchase gift wrap, cards, etc.
Hair cut. Too short. 3-4 inches does NOT equal "just the dead ends". Unless maybe it had been THAT LONG since a haircut...hmm...
Molly & Andy's wedding = LOVELY. Beautiful. Reception was a lot of fun. Danced a lot. Drank a lot. Loved my friends even more than I already do. (That tends to happen when alcohol and love are in the air...) I even "Bootscootin' Boogie"-d. Yes. I just said that. It had been a while, and the Country Gal at Heart had to come out...
Ditched Jeremy's bar idea to instead go home and SLEEP. (Sorry, dear!)

4/27 - Up too early bc of hangover. And neighbors NOISILY moving out. Owie. No respect for the hungover Stacey, apparently.
Cleaned.
Organized photos on computer (and disks, etc.) and moved to flash drive. Uploaded and emailed photos from the wedding.
Grocery shopped.
Spent the rest of the evening having a lovely evening w/ the hubby. Quick dinner, and a "House" marathon, then to bed entirely too late for a work night.

This coming week is NOT going to be any lighter of a load, either. So if I've been short or out of touch, please understand why! :-)

"News of the Day"

I'm sure St. Louis and surrounding area blogs will be swamped with this story today, so I had to jump on the bandwagon.

5.2 earthquake this morning took place in nearby IL around 4-something this morning. Many people in the office are talking about how it "woke me from a dead sleep!"...I felt nothing.

Dustin got this new fangled alarm clock for his birthday. It docks an iPod, and projects the time on the ceiling - how cool is that?? Anyway. For some reason or another, I woke up at 4:35 this morning. I looked up at the ceiling, thought, "WTF? I don't have to be awake yet..." and went right back to sleep. Am I the ONLY one who was not completely shaken (no pun intended) out of bed this morning???

* Note: As I sit here at work writing this, we apparently just had an aftershock. (4.5, according to the news) The floor and walls vibrated, and the ceiling tiles creaked. Stuff on my desk rattled a bit also. Gotta admit, it kinda scared the hell outta me, too... But I can now say I've (kind of?) experienced an earthquake. *

Gray / Grey ?

I'm behind, as per usual. And again, swamped. So no creativity for you! Just a cool Gray / Grey picture I found when I googled the color:

Painting by Peiter Cornelis Mondrian (1872-1944)
I skimmed the article on this painter, and it seems he did a lot of abstract work.
This link has a few more examples of his work (I personally like the Broadway Boogie Woogie ;-)), and here are a few more examples. Check out the one titled "L'arbre, 1908" (5 rows down) - beautiful. And compared to some of the other prices, $31.99 isn't too shabby!

Mission: Accomplished!

Thursday night, while I was attending to banking and tax issues on the computer, Dustin made the mistake of mentioning, “This place (our apartment) needs a deep cleansing…” I asked if he meant just a thorough job of vacuuming, scrubbing, dusting, and Febrezing everything in sight. And he replied, “No. We have too much shit. There’s so much clutter…”

And so it began. I was, all of the sudden, a woman on a mission. We decided to take it a room / step at a time. This weekend would be the back bedroom, where most of the aforementioned “too much shit” has collected. We sat down together and made a list of what we wanted to accomplish over the weekend. (Actually, I kind of forced him to sit down and do that with me – I’m big on “to-do” lists, while he thinks they’re “too restricting”. Insert eye roll here, please.)

Included on the agenda:
- Organize computer desk
- Check contents of Rubbermaid containers in closet & purge, if possible
- Vacuum
- Dust everything in sight!
- Put books on bookshelf
- GET RID OF OLD, CRAPPY TV STAND THAT HAS SERVED NO OTHER PURPOSE OTHER THAN TO BE A PILING PLACE FOR JUNK WE NEVER USE

We started Friday night after dinner, and worked from 7 until 11 p.m. Saturday I was gone most of the day, then we went to an early dinner with Jeremy and ran some errands afterward. Sunday while he was at work, I bounced between the back bedroom, our room / my closet, and laundry. By the time he got home, I had finished (for the most part) my closet / our room. We dragged the TV stand in the back bedroom away from the wall and into the center of the room, then re-arranged a few other items, and it was done. (Except for the TV stand which still sits in the middle of the room, even as I write this.) Hopefully someday this week, that will go out to the dumpster, and this coming weekend I can finish the remainder of the apartment.

Next up are the hall and living room closets…and the kitchen, if I feel froggy enough. ;-)

Turquoise

So I know nobody will hold it against me if I would elect to opt out of the weekly colorblogging. Well, that is, except for myself. I would hold it against me. Mostly because I'm one of those stubborn people who, even if I'm late or it takes me forever, I WILL and MUST complete projects.

Lots of things have been going on outside of blog world, from a busy work schedule, to rehearsals, and on and on and on. I've been doing a lot of soul searching and thinking lately, as well. (More on those topics later.) So until I once again fall back into the fine art of juggling mountains of projects and "to-do's", you have to deal with some unimaginative (bordering on crappy and thoughtless???) posts.

But thanks for being understanding. :-)

Actually, on the note of being stressed, busy, thinking, etc...
This could work...

I want to be HERE (wherever HERE may be...), and do my thinking on the calm, beautiful, TURQUOISE waters while sipping a Margarita...or seven...

Cards, Headlines, etc.

Cardinals game last night was FAN-tab-u-lous. We brought home a win, 8-3. Thanks to B for the kickass (section 147, row 13) tickets! Katie, Laura, Dustin, & I had a great time - although I'm sure we're all a little worse for wear this morning after the mass quantity of BEER that was consumed last night...

Sent off for my "DuBourg Night at the Ballpark" tickets yesterday. You just can't beat $15 seats for a Cards v. Cubs matchup - even if the seats ARE the last row in the stadium!

I've been saying this for quite some time now, and I'm sorry, but KSDK.com REALLY needs new writers for their website. Misspellings, grammatical errors, etc. I know I make some mistakes on my blog, but I'm not putting up the freakin' news for all of the world wide web travellers to read!! Case in point: Can you catch it?

Just a funny little thing, to cap it all off. I actually found this website (icanhascheezburger.com) off of Joan's friend's blog (I can't remember who, I'm sorry!!) and have been addicted ever since. Thank you. I agree that the oddly spelled phrases are kind of annoying, but there's something I find absolutely hysterical about cats doing odd things. Look at these. You WILL laugh...

Magenta

This is completely not original or creative in any way. Nor did it take me a lot of time, which I'm sure is more than apparent.
My color blog post is late again and I'm swamped. So you get the "I was too lazy to put a whole lot of thought into it" blog. Sorry folks.

Rocky Horror Picture Show. Her character name is Magenta. Woot.