So, every year, I participate in the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life event in my town to support the fight against cancer, and once again I'm participating. This is also my second year serving as Event Co-Chair of the event.

This year, I've decided to make things a little more interesting. If I reach my goal of raising $1,000, I promise to cut my hair and donate it to Locks of Love. Meaning, I'll have to cut at least 10 inches. But I may go shorter.

You can make a donation on my behalf online!




The (Cancer) Survivor Lap at the 2009 Relay



The youngest cancer survivor at our event last year. Her dad is holding her and her mom and sister are in the background.



That's me at the podium during the opening ceremony.

my wonderful husband, who should be home in about 22 days and is not currently fighting in a warzone

having a job, even if it's not one I'm sure about, at least I have a job and the luxury to ask myself what I really want to do in life

a family that gets along, made up of people who love and support me no matter what, including a family of in-laws who have been loving and welcoming since the first day they met me

free time to do things I truly enjoy, like play in a concert band and volunteer to help plan the largest local American Cancer Society fundraiser in my community

the fact that everyone in my family is healthy right now

the soon to start "next generation" of the Schwartz family (coming March 2010, thank you Mark and Melissa), and the already started next generation of the Wolff family (Rob's sister's kids)

my wonderful friends, some of whom I have known for 10 or 20 years or more, and we still enjoy each other's company

I still don't have a name for my cat. What am I going to do when I have kids???

I just saw this ... in navy_wives no less. WIVES! as in married.

I had a livejournal in middle school so i just rejoined and i'm trying to figure this out...lol.

OK 8th grade was the first time I ever went on the interwebs and I don't even think I grasped what it was or even how to use it. It was like a "this is the world wide web, it's neat kids" demo at school.

but I guess if LJ is 10 years old and she had her LJ right when the site was new, she COULD be 21-23.

but still, I've been on LJ since my freshman year of college and I was #18,099 on my first LJ account. (notmargaret is #9,291,664 and I've had it since 2006 ... wow.) although now all of you who are older than me will make fun of me (I'll be 27 in a month).

If you haven't checked out The Official White House Photostream on Flickr, you should. It's really cool.

Hey, guess what? Would you believe it's a week to Steve & Loren's wedding and I still haven't decided what shoes I'm wearing? And would you believe that so far I have bought three pairs of shoes? And I'm still not sure if I like any one of them enough? I have photos ( Read more... )

OK, I just went to chicagotribune.com, and this is the main story:

Prom without the price tag

For decades, families have dished out big bucks for intricate hairdos, manicures, tanning, facials, dresses, tuxedos, limo rentals, flowers and photos—all to make prom night magical for their children. Not this year.

Really? Who are these families? I always paid for everything myself and as such did my own hair and nails and I'm 26 and have still never gone tanning or had a facial, and we never rented a limo for prom (but we did once for the trip to Great America the next day, which I thought was a better idea anyway). So it sounds like prom today is a lot like my prom was 9 years ago. Thanks, Trib, for making me feel poor.


OH GOD, now I'm ready the article, and the public high school near me (where my kids would go if I had them) normally has their prom at The Field Museum. As in the huge natural history museum on Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago. And now they are cutting back to a venue near home - I'll shit myself if it ends up being the nicer venue where my [poorer] high school had our senior prom (vs. the crappy place where they had my junior prom). Although when my brother was at our high school 5 years before me, they did prom on a boat off of Navy Pier, so I guess I can't get my panties in a wad about going to a poorer school.

I have been spending way too much time on the internet finding shoes for Steve & Loren's wedding. Here are all the shoes I've found.

Here is my dress:



Loren told us to get yellow or blue shoes. Here are all the shoes I've found that I like:

1 - from oldnavy.com


2 - from ebay


3 - from ebay (I think these might be dark brown heels and not black)


4 - from ebay


5 - from ebay


6 - from 6pm.com



HMMM which ones to buy?? I'm leaning toward the first three, but is it OK to wear dark brown shoes with a black dress?

I was out grocery shopping earlier, and I stopped at Aldi's first. In their freezer section, they had frozen lobsters for sale. They were individually wrapped, and from what I could tell, it was indeed, a whole lobster. The thought of eating an entire lobster weirds me out*, but an entire lobster from Aldi? Just seems wrong. I don't remember what the price was. (* A lobster tail from a reputable restaurant is just fine. A whole lobster looks too much like a giant mutant bug to me.)


Someone in the apartment works nights. Every night, from about 8:30 until 9:00 or so, their alarm goes off. Continuously. Not like very 9 minutes while they snooze, but every second. I can hear it even with the TV on. What I don't understand is why they fail to turn it off EVERY NIGHT. I can understand snoozing for an hour, I've been known to do that, but to just leave your alarm beeping? EVERY NIGHT?? Does it take the person an hour to hear the damn thing?

But, since I figure someone sleeps in the evenings, once I hear the alarm, I know it's OK to practice my flute. Because if that alarm isn't waking them up, my flute sure won't.

I think I'm getting close to running my course with LJ. I was so into it for so long (since October 2000, and really obsessed with it for quite awhile) but for the past year or so, I just haven't been as into LJ, both posting updates and reading updates. I'm much more guarded about what I write about, and I'm just not into the communities, and the f-list other than real-life friends' updates or people I've been following on LJ forever to the point that they almost feel like real-life friends. And my paid account is expiring and I might not even renew it, wowzers.

I think I should probably try to limit my time on social networking sites in general. I need to focus more on my non-internet interests.

But, I think I'll still stay on here since it is the best way to stay up to speed on some of the real-life friends (I'm not much of a phone person).