two dolla

how to propose to your ladyfriend in vegas

I always figure it’s the lady’s place to tell this story first, so it makes it confusing when there’s two ladies involved – me, the asker, and The General, the askee.

This whole proposal thing had been planned for months. I’m sure The General knew it was going to happen. We had a jeweler named Chuck, who’d sent us a ring-sizer and all that jazz. We’d talked about it and knew we’d eventually do something more permanent, but we hadn’t really talked about when.

I’d had this planned for several months. And I’m not a planner.

The plan: go to the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign and propose in some fashion.

On Sunday, our last day in Vegas, the six of us drove Larry our Dodge Caravan down the strip to the sign. The parking lot was packed, but we eventually found a spot. Everyone was in on this little plan except for, of course, She Who Would Be Proposed To.

Step 1: Have our friends take our picture in front of the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Sign:

Step 2: Say “I was making a dumb face” and get another picture taken, but instead do this:

Step 3: Hear the word yes.

Step 4: Celebrate with friends.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to my homies that were there to make sure it went off without a hitch, photographing it, and doing whatever it took to make sure it happened. I love you guys a lot and I’m so glad you were all there.

i made it a whole week without any caffeine

And I can’t explain why, but I haven’t even been craving it. I’m not drinking as much water as I technically should, but I’m working on that and figure that’ll come in its own time.

My two biggest helpful tools have been cans of lime LaCroix Sparkling Water (at home) and the 32 ounce bottles of Strawberry Lemonade flavored water that Target sells (at work). I’ve discovered it’s the bubbles that I miss the most, not the caffeine. Sure, the first day without resulted in me slumped in my chair for the most part of my day and a throbbing headache, but after I got through that, it’s been way smooth sailing.

I decided to give it up for a few reasons, all equally as important. It’s not good for you anyway. Soda is empty, empty calories and I can’t even force myself to drink diet soda. Water is cheaper! The General’s kicking her coffee habit, too.

All of this will promptly be wrecked by a weekend in Vegas, but you know the only rule of Vegas, right? (Except STDs, anything that would get me arrested and show up on my record forever, and unplanned pregnancies.) And, yes, I did watch Las Vegas Jailhouse this weekend. Multiple episodes.

c’mon, espn. jeremy lin deserves correct grammar.

Ol’ boy is scoring points, winning games, and making the Knicks entertaining again and ESPN can’t even grammar check their articles.

(Yep, I’m totally on the Jeremy Lin train. Everybody likes a good underdog story, no?)

don’t vote for rick santorum and here’s why

The sweater vests.

It’s not that I hate sweater vests. That’s not the case at all. I LOVE them. A lot. I asked for them for Christmas and I have enough to wear nothing but sweater vests for probably two weeks. I’d even wear them in the summer without a shirt underneath. Trust me. I’ve done it.

If Santorum is elected, I’m afraid I’m going to have to get rid of my sweater vest collection, because I don’t want people thinking I support him based on what I wear, because I don’t agree with a single thing he’s for. See how that’s completely logical?

Vote no for Santorum. Help me save my wardrobe.

how kevin love came to live on my desk (or the perks of a small company)

This was on my desk when I came in this morning! No clue who left it there!, originally uploaded by twodolla.

One day, at least two years ago, I was sitting in my CEO’s office chatting away, sharing concerns, developing some strategy, getting re-motivated – all those normal things you do when you talk to your CEO behind closed doors. (Just kidding. I don’t know what’s normal with your CEO, but I would imagine not the interactions I have with mine.) As I was leaving, I noticed she had an autographed basketball, so I picked it up and looked at it. Kevin Love had scribbled on it. I think the only thing I said was, “Wow, that’s cool!” and she told me to take it. I argued I didn’t want to take it, she argued back and since her name is on the building, I gave up. So, I took it and it’s been sitting on my desk ever since. And that was the last conversation she and I ever had about Kevin Love.

Flash forward to this morning, when I noticed, after being at my desk for 30 minutes, that there’s an 11×14 autographed picture of Kevin Love sitting on top of my pen holder. I asked my first co-worker that came in this morning. She said she didn’t know anything about it, but then instant messaged me to say my new supervisor had given it to me. I asked him about it. He said my CEO had it in her office and told him that I really liked Kevin Love.

Little things like that make working for a small company – this small company – the greatest thing ever. Managers, supervisors, leads, whatever, take note: If you want your employee to truthfully feel awesome about working for you, convince them that you care about them as an individual. Yes, awesome insurance or five thousand weeks of vacation are great, but I forget about all of that when I see that the owner of my company has remembered something so trivial after years have gone by.

list of excitement for our new house

We’re down to single digits when it comes to how many days until we get the keys to our new house. The new landlord is giving us the keys on the 15th (!!) and you can be damn sure we’re not hesitating when it comes to unpacking. Considering it’s only 0.7 miles from our current house, there’s no reason not to haul a load or two every night. We’re really hoping to get all of the boxes and smallish furniture that we can live without on over there, so when we beg/plead/grovel to our friends to help us out on the first weekend of March, it won’t be that big of a deal. It’ll just be, well, the heavy furniture. Two pieces of good news about moving/the new place: the 300+ pound TV is no longer here and a 14 year old can lift the equivalent of a full grown man.

Here’s my list of OMG-This-Stuff-Is-Motivating-Me-To-Pack-And-Clean:

• Working oven at the new place.
• Our bedroom is upstairs; The Kid’s is in the basement. The times I have to say “Can you please turn that down?” will likely come few and far between.
• Room for my puzzle table!!!!!! (As long as The Damn Cat leaves it along…)
• Backyard with grass!
• Big garage with room for building things, which The Kid and I already have plans to do.
• PAID HEAT.

I need to quit wasting time here. I have some emails from Craigslist to return from people that want to pay legit cash money for my two boxes of Beanie Babies, because I’M NOT MOVING THEM THIS TIME.

remember when bloggers were super cool and unique?

I have a feeling that Facebook/Twitter and my blog would never be friends.

Facebook/Twitter (which I totally want to call Face-itter – yeah, go ahead and say that one out loud) are like the head cheerleader and the football captain and the student body president. It’s so super cool and everybody loves it in small doses, until the next year when someone else is the new latest and greatest. two dolla’s like that kid in school that has decent grades, plays JV basketball, works at Taco Bell, and plays the baritone in marching band. (Things just got real here.) It’s consistent. You know it’s always there. You’ve been friends with it forever. Those other folks are just flashes in the pan. See my analogy there?

I don’t know how many times I open up WordPress only to realize that my blog post might be about 200 characters, which I could totally shorten down to 140 if I tried hard enough. And if I can’t shorten it down 140 characters, then I can definitely squeeze it into a Facebook status and my great aunts (one who lives in Colorado and one who lives in Missouri) will totally “like” it. And if I’m lucky and it’s a really good status update, so will my high school guidance counselor and my 5th grade Sunday School teacher.

In other words, social media is ruining my blog and it’s starting to make me a little sad. But social media is also ruining my desire to read blogs, too. I’ve been able to deplete my RSS reader to so few blogs I read that it’s often empty. I figure if you have something important to say, you’ll do it somewhere else. I miss when blogging was the cool thing to do!

a membership that makes everyone happy about medication

at this point i’m done with susan g komen

It’s taken me a couple of days to feel like I have my arms around the situation enough to actually say anything about it. More than anything, it’s made me feel unbelievably sad because I’ve devoted seven years to raising money and awareness for the Susan G Komen and it hurts to walk away from something I’ve given so much – physically, mentally and financially – to over most of my adult life. But unless things take a drastic change, I’m washing my hands of the organization as a whole and will find another way to help fight for a cure for cancer.

I know you’re going to ask why, so here you go:

1. SGK pulled their grants from Planned Parenthood stating the reason they’re doing it is because Planned Parenthood is under federal investigation. I understand that and wasn’t ready to walk away just yet. And then I read today that they’re funding a cancer research center at Penn State to the tune of $7.5 million. Penn State is currently under federal investigation. See how that doesn’t match up?

2. They pulled funding for stem cell research, another move that screams pro-life, pro-political and forgets everything about it being a non-profit aimed at helping find a cure for cancer.

3. The new Vice President of Public Policy, Karen Handel, tried to run for Governor for Georgia on a gigantic platform of taking all of the funding away from Planned Parenthood. She’s never made her agenda a secret and, while a lot of the things posted about her may seem libelous, they also hold true to exactly what’s going on. And then I have to see stuff like this:

It all boils down to money. We know that. My money and my time and my heart will no longer go towards Komen. There are plenty of other organizations out there that can help us find a cure. Until they manage to straighten out this political nonsense, I don’t want to be involve. My favorite thing that The 3 Day brought to me was passion. I’ve been so passionate about finding a cure, knowing that surely it’s right around the corner. And now, the organization as a whole just doesn’t seem to have that passion anymore.

If things change, and I sure hope they do, you’ll find me right back on The 3 Day train, but until then, I’m taking a step or two back. It’s not me, Komen folks, it’s definitely you.

why this gay is tired of the glitter bombing

Mitt Romney was in Minnesota today and what happens? He gets glitter bombed. We made that prediction this morning before he even got to town.

I’m so over throwing glitter at politicians. Okay, it hilarious when the glitter came out of a cheez it box at Newt Gingrich. We all got our chuckle when anyone with the name Bachmann gets a pile of glitter thrown at them. Although, wouldn’t a bag of wrenches be even more hilarious?

Gay, listen. Can we try something else? The glitter bombing is tired. Do something really annoying. But one stupid piece of glitter on someone’s cheek, so they spend the whole day with it on there and don’t notice it until the end of the day. That right there is embarassing.

I mean, if we’re going to make a stand or prove a point, can we try doing it with something really crazy, like words? Or even signs? I mean, YAY, you dumped your kid’s art project leftovers on Republican candidates for president. But who does that prove a point to? If you’re trying to win over the supporters of those candidates, you’re failing. It’s not funny to them and it just makes gays look like a bunch of immature brats. That’s not going to get us what we want, you know?

Think about it. I’d like a raise at work. I’m not going to bust into my boss’s office throwing confetti in her general direction while there are hundreds of people standing around. That’s not how things get done. Can we try harder, please?