I was going through old blog posts here this morning in an effort to organize a few things, and came across my birthday countdown from last year – the one with a LOT of old pictures of me. When I spotted my graduation picture from 1993, I knew I had to do this with it:

At the left, me at 16 after my high school graduation in 1993. At the right, me at 32 after my college graduation in 2009. I just did the math in my head and realized that I doubled in age between these two pictures….damn!

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I suppose that this series of posts over the past few days means that I’m back as a regular blogger. Without school occupying my every waking moment, I have more free time…so here I am. You get bullet points tonight, because hey, I’ve been to happy hour and bullets are easier than paragraphs.

• Less than 2 months remain until IzeaFest! I purchased my ticket months and months ago – I can’t really pass up a blogging conference in Orlando…a mere 2 hours from my house. Throw in a scavenger hunt (I was on the winning team last year, as you may recall!) and a SeaWorld blogger takeover and I was ALL IN. Of course, it helps that the conference means a mini-vacation for me…no kids, no husband, all bloggers, all geek speak, all weekend. Bliss!
• Billy Mays was snorting coke and that’s what led to his death. I didn’t expect that one. I’m a bit naive about drug use I suppose…
• Speaking of drug use, I’m in agreement with Laura that Crackbook Facebook is killing blogging. It is WAY easier to bore people with mini-updates there than full blog posts here.
• I’m going to see the local team play baseball tomorrow. Meeting my sister, taking the kids – full on best mom ever mode. Yay me!

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I’ve seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off at least 100 times – how could you miss it when it’s on TBS every other weekend? I practiced scenes from The Breakfast Club in drama class in high school. I loved Jake Ryan. So it is with a heaviness in my heart that I reflect on the passing of John Hughes – the 80’s teen flick director who made teenage angst compelling time and time again. From Ferris skipping school to Claire Standish putting on her lipstick using her boobs, John Hughes was a freaking genius. Need I mention he wrote National Lampoons Vacation, giving us such quotable lines as “I don’t know why they call this stuff hamburger helper. It does just fine by itself, huh?” and “First ones here!” which we quote on a regular basis in my house.

Edited to add: Amy posted this amazing story of a teenaged girl who was pen pal to John Hughes during the 80’s. Good stuff.

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I might be the only parent out there NOT looking forward to back to school. On one hand, I do look forward to my electric bill going back down – with the kids home all day, every day, my a/c has been cranking, and the electric bill has been $250 a month easily. But on the other hand, I don’t look forward to trudging through the store buying all of the assorted crap required to go back to school…dry erase markers, 37 composition books, fancy calculators that will probably never be used, and the like. I don’t ever recall my parents buying me a $100 calculator for school, which come to think of it, is probably why I failed Algebra and had to retake it.

Back to school also requires me to be ON TOP OF THINGS. Like checking homework and signing permission slips and writing out checks for one field trip or another. I have to be ON TOP OF THINGS all day long at work, and when I come home, I like to be done with that sort of nonsense. It’s lovely to come home from work and know that as long as the kids are fed and loved, I have done my job, but that is simply not good enough come August 24th. And the paper – don’t even get me STARTED on the amount of paper generated by the school. Not a day passes that 10 different forms are sent home – fill out this in triplicate, or hold onto this because we’re going to refer to information on it 6 months from now!

So yeah, I guess my kids aren’t the only ones in our house not looking forward to their return to school.

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Nope? Me either.

Apparently people in Boise and Buffalo saw me, but in my local market, my segment was replaced by a paid segment. (Probably the lawyer who talked to the host while his URL was flashing at the bottom of the screen?) Ironic that a segment about a Tampa girl on paid blogging and making money online was bumped for a paid segment?

I’m currently in negotiations to get a copy of the show with ME on it.

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Two important things should be noted about tomorrow:

1. It’s my birthday, and I will be twenty-thirteen.

2. I am going to be on a local morning show to talk about sponsored blogging and Izea! It’s the second time I’ll have ever been on TV. My television debut was at the ripe old age of 4 on Romper Room. I’ll actually be on the very same TV channel (WFLA – Channel 8 in Tampa) tomorrow morning on the Daytime show. The show airs from 10am until 11am, and I’m scheduled to go on around 9:30, so set your DVR’s!

*Edited to add: I just returned from taping my segment – it will air on THURSDAY, not today as I thought.

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Had a great shopping spree at Publix yesterday with the amazing coupons Kraft has been putting out in the past few weeks. The current sale prices are good through Wednesday so there is still time for you to get these deals!

Kraft Bagel-Fuls – $4/2
I had four $1 off coupons making my cost just $1 per box

Kraft American Cheese singles – BOGO at $2.59 for 2 packages
I had four $1 off coupons making my cost 1.18 for 4 packages

Kraft BBQ sauce – BOGO at $1.49 for 2 bottles
I had four $1 off coupons, Publix paid me $1.02 to buy this BBQ sauce!

Kraft salad dressing – BOGO at $2.99 for 2 bottles
I had four $1 off coupons making my cost $1.98 for 4 bottles

Wheat Thins – BOGO at $2.79 for 2 boxes
I had four $1 off coupons making my cost $1.58 for 4 boxes

Kellogs Corn Pops and Rice Krispies – $1.99 per box
I had $1 off coupons making each box 99 cents.

I also got a frozen dinner, some spaghetti sauce, and Tyson nuggets. I had $19.60 in coupons and saved $23 and change on specials / sales. My total out of pocket paid was $22.86!

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…that sounds dirty, but isn’t.

It means “with praise”, and it’s an honor added to diplomas and degrees for work that is above average. It’s going to be on the degree that I’ll be getting, having graduated last weekend fro Saint Leo University with a Bachelor of Arts in Human Resources Management.

Was it really just a year ago when I entered the university as a junior and blogged about taking my first class after an absence of several years from school? Yep! Here I am, just over a year later, having received that degree, and I’ve already been able to use my new education to get myself a 15% pay increase over what I was making this time last year. Talk about putting my education to work for me!

Not only did I graduate, but my husband received his degree as well, after being out of college for 13 years. It was a very unique experience, walking together from the library to the auditorium with our classmates and sitting side by side during the ceremony. Thanks to alphabetical order, I received my degree just in front of him and it was neat hearing them call our names, one right after the other.

Now here I am, contemplating going back for an M.B.A. with a concentration in Human Resources…who would have thunk it?

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The man and I enjoyed a few days off together earlier this week, and we had a delightful time. Among our activities:

• A day with the kids at Busch Gardens (by coincidence, the same day as our wedding anniversary, so we popped into the Crown Colony for a special anniversary lunch!)
• Lunch out at a small cafe in town I’ve been drying to try since we moved here – and we weren’t disappointed!
• A trip to the nail salon – a pedicure for Jim, a manicure for me!
• Lunch out AGAIN at Ruby Tuesday and a trip to the salon where I got my hair cut and colored and Jim got a trim

I’ll make a metrosexual out of the man yet!

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During my class yesterday, my professor (not the most technological person ever…but a nice lady) was complaining about filling up her flash drive too quickly. She’s been putting her PowerPoint slides for each weeks lecture on her flash drive and bringing it to school with her so she can pop it onto the computer in class and display the slides on the projector. Her daughter told her to invest in an external hard drive, and I think that’s the way to go. The computer memory on the new external hard drives is a really versatile option for someone like my professor. Instead of putting a single lecture on a flash drive, she can pop all of her lectures for the entire course onto an external hard drive and have all of her course content at her fingertips – tests, quizzes, slides, and even handouts.

Computer memory options like the external hard drives I linked to above have gotten amazingly cheap over the past few years. I remember being amazed seeing computers with a 6GB hard drive in the late 90’s, and now it’s not uncommon to buy a PC with a 160GB hard drive. You can buy more memory online as well as video cards, optical drives and laptop batteries.

Come to think of it, I should probably take my own advice and get an external hard drive to store all of my digital pictures on…or I’m going to need some more memory myself!

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