A Long Time Coming

I've been super unmotivated and unproductive lately--unproductive at work, unproductive at home, unproductive in my workouts, unmotivated to clean, unmotivated to blog, unmotivated to go out with friends, unmotivated to write my Christmas thank-yous. I'm not sure what my problem is. I guess maybe it's just post-holiday, mid-winter depression. Maybe all I need is a vacation to the tropics or something.

Regardless, despite my general laziness and blah mood of late, last night I did something productive. This particular something was not only productive, but it was also a long time coming. It was a project which had been sitting on a shelf in our computer room for about the last 2 years just waiting for me to get motivated enough to finish it. Motivation wasn't the biggest problem with this project though. It was a project of the heart, and my heart apparently just needed a little more healing before the project could be completed.

Last night I finally finished the shadow box I started in memory of our beloved little boy Steeler. I hadn't really worked on it for months, and it was sitting unfinished basically only because I hadn't found exactly the right picture for its completion. Most of the pictures I've taken since we went digital 6 or so years ago have never been printed, so finding that perfect picture meant searching through thousands of images on our hard drive, and I'd just never gotten around to that search. Last night, while searching for something else entirely, I came across an older, printed picture of our sweet boy that fit the collage just perfectly.

So here is my finished shadow box. I realize this many pictures might be a little overkill, but I just wanted to be able to share each piece of memorabilia.

This is a portion of one of the sympathy cards we received. It says
Perhaps they are not the stars
but rather openings in Heaven
where the love of our lost ones
shines down to let us know
they are with us.

The drawing was from a sympathy card from our friend Quillen


The staff at Stone House Animal Hospital made this precious imprint of Steeler's paw just after he died.




My friend Yaslyn painted this amazing tile for the shelter wall, but since it was burned in the kiln they ended up not using it.

We hung the box in our bedroom above the armoire.

We miss our sweet little Steely Man so much and think of him every day. It's nice to finally have his memorial in a place where we will see it each and every day as well.

Issues

I think this video has been around the Internets two or three times already, but it always makes me laugh. Chad and I are always talking about how weird our dear little Hope is, but she doesn't hold a candle to this dog. Wow--this guy (or girl) has issues. Seriously. What exactly is this dog thinking?

Sports Reporter of the Future

Once again I can't take credit for finding this video--I found a link to it on someone else's blog today. This little kid is just so cute I can't resist sharing. He's a terrific reporter who had me cracking up at some of his hard hitting questions. My favorite is the exchange with Michael Beasley at about 3:30 in the video. So hilarious! If you have time, you have to check out this little sports reporter of the future!

Chuck and the Webcam

Chad and I had a pretty lazy, relaxing weekend, which was really nice. Last night we curled up in front of the fireplace and watched episodes of Chuck, which I just recently started watching but have become a big fan of. The characters on that show are just so funny! The Office is the only thing that I currently tivo, but I think I'm going to have to add Chuck to my season pass list!

On Saturday evening I also spent a little time playing with my new webcam, which I bought using some of my Target gift cards from Christmas. I bought it with the intention of signing up for Skype or Google Video Talk so that I could chat with friends and family members far away, but I haven't gotten around to actually using it for chatting yet. So far, all I've done is goof around and take silly pictures of myself. The resolution on the camera is really pretty crappy, but there are a few special effects that are mildly entertaining. It's not nearly as cool or as fun as the iPhoto Booth on a Mac, but here are just a few of the silly pictures I took a couple of weeks ago on the first night that I hooked up the camera.







Hopefully soon I'll actually take the time to figure out how to use it for its intended purpose: catching up with far away friends!

Right Between the Ears

This week has sort of flown by, I guess partially because I had Monday off thanks to MLK's birthday. This week has definitely gotten away from me, as I intended to blog about last weekend much earlier than now!

Regardless, last Friday night we attended the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce annual dinner for about the 4th or 5th year in a row thanks to Westar, Chad's employer. While I rarely turn down free food events, I have to admit that this is one that I'm not a huge fan of. I always enjoy getting to know some of Chad's coworkers better and catching up with a few other Lawrence friends, but overall this is an event I could definitely do without. For one thing, this year it was at the Holiday Inn, where the ambiance is pretty blah and the food is marginal at best. The last couple of years the food has been at the Eldridge, which is lovely and has excellent hors d'oeuvres. Although since the Eldridge doesn't have one room large enough to seat all the people at this event, they've done the first enertainment/awards part of the evening across the street at Liberty Hall.

The awards part of the event is the part that kills me every year. Every year it consists of over an hour of people jabbering on, giving long, drawn out introductions and long, drawn out acceptance speeches. There's always a speech from the incoming chairperson and the outgoing chairperson and it just takes forever and is so ridiculously boring! I am not exaggerating at all when I say that the entertainment started an hour and fifteen minutes late this year because the speeches all ran so long! UGH!

However, the entertainment this year was actually really good. The comedy troupe Right Between the Ears performed, and although I'd heard all about them and maybe caught a minute or two of their show on KPR on occasion, I'd never listened to them for any extended amount of time. If you're not familiar with the group, here's a YouTube video that describes it pretty well. Their show plays on Sirius and XM satellite radio even though they are a Lawrence based group, so that's pretty cool! Although it's a little strange seeing a radio sketch comedy show, they were extremely talented performers and it was really hysterical! I laughed really hard at several of their sketches. Most of the humor was current events based and much of it was very specific to Lawrence, which made it even funnier--although probably not so much for someone who wasn't from Lawrence!

This wasn't a bit they did at the event on Friday, obviously, but here's a funny YouTube video I found that gives you an idea of what their comedy is like. Actually, the stuff last Friday was much funnier! It may have even made the marginal food worthwhile!