Easter Monday	Monday, March 28, 2005 2:00:25 PM
I noticed on my calendar that today is Easter Monday, a holiday observed in Canada. I went in search of information about this holiday and found a couple of interesting articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Monday http://www.calendar-updates.com/Holidays/Canada/eastermonday.htm - note for Mike: please never wake me up on this date by hoping I won't ever wither!!! http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1999/159929.shtml - I like the wish "Help us, Lord, that we may see each other in the next world, the way we see each other here" Neat things about a holiday that is not an American tradition, except in North Carolina.
Very innovative!	Friday, March 11, 2005 4:06:47 PM
I love it... http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2005-03-11T133402Z_01_DEL28902_RTRIDST_0_ODD-ODD-INDIA-TAX-DC.XML
Becoming more real	Friday, March 04, 2005 12:22:26 AM
With about 6 weeks to go to the wedding, everything seems to be speeding up. I can't wait to get married! :) Monday morning, Mike and I both took off of work to apply for and get our marriage license. I became a little insane with trying to make everything perfect for this - we brought 3 forms of ID each when we only needed 1 out of 3, I filled out the forms so carefully that the lady processing our application made fun of me, and then she had to deal with me changing my answers for the marriage record. Main issue - what is my father's occupation? Minister sounds so much more high-brow than DBA (which she didn't know what a DBA was), but my dad is retired from that and is working as a database administrator at this very moment. Mike said "computers" (which at first she typed in! My dad is NOT a computer!), but I made her change it since our great-great-grandchildren will be looking up this information. I know, because I have gone on many a trip with my mom to find dead relatives and this is a key piece of information to find. Yes, I was a bit insane. Then, I became very emotional because I had a cold and wasn't feeling well and the lady at the courthouse gave me a packet of information about changing my name and I don't know if I want my name changed and I felt pressured. (At least they also had a side in the paperwork to allow the groom to change his name too or instead, so that made me feel as though they were being a little more PC.) Then, we met with our pastor who was also sick and I felt like I didn't come off perfectly because I was feeling tired and sick and emotional over getting the official documents and more emotional over hearing lovely things about how proud he is of both of us. Today was a much better day since I am feeling better and have had some sleep and have been taking more vitamins. I took the whole day off of work to have my first dress fitting. (I didn't realize that it was like a 30 minute thing.) It should also be the last dress fitting since they only had to take the straps up and get the bustle put in. *laugh* A bustle is a funny thing. Grand total: $50. On the one hand, that seems like highway robbery for taking two straps in and putting in a button and button hole. On the other hand, we are spending so much lately that I have lost all sense of perspective with money, so it seems like a steal. Before my fitting appointment, Mike and I went to Center City to pick up my wedding ring. His turned out to be the wrong one, so we only picked mine up. I love it - it is so beautiful and sparkly. You will just have to see it and be in awe that we found something already made to match my unique engagement ring so wonderfully. When we picked the rings out a couple of weeks ago, I took a look at Mike's finger with the ring of his choice and don't really have the words for all of the feelings that flooded through me. Proud, happy, thrilled, possessive... in just a few short weeks he is going to be mine, all mine. :) For the rest of the day, I shopped for flower girl dresses for Lia. (I was terrified of taking a vocal 2 year old shopping from store to store, especially if she tired of trying on clothes, so I decided to shop around and bring the dresses to her.) I definitely went way overboard and bought over a dozen dresses. But they were all so cute and I'm returning the ones that are not selected. I think that I found at least one that will be absolutely perfect. We'll have to see it on her, though. While shopping for Lia, I also shopped for the honeymoon. ;) Yay, honeymoon! Can't wait... I think that shopping for an event really brings it into a reality. Yes, I'm getting married and going to Hawaii and these are the things that I will wear when it is not sub-zero outside. So, I am trying to wait patiently to start my life with Mike and relax with the ever-shrinking "To Do List" and enjoy everything that is happening in the time leading up to the wedding. Saturday is my bridal shower and that is another fun milestone on the way to the main event. It is the first time that I will be the guest of honor at one of these shindigs. Usually, I just have fun celebrating everyone in their bridal and baby showers. And now, people will be celebrating me. It is a weird feeling, yet I'm so glad to have such wonderful people that I love helping to honor and share in this transition in my life. I'll have to write more about that once the party is over. Good night!
Ooo Google	Thursday, February 10, 2005 1:55:23 PM
How beautiful is the new Google map site? http://maps.google.com Here is a map to our church to try this out: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=153%20north%20eagle%20rd%2019083&spn=0.031555%2C0.056793 It's in Beta right now, but I think that this will be the mapping program of choice very soon.
Hodgepodge	Friday, February 04, 2005 11:59:03 AM
I noticed that out of all of my friends, only Beth is posting anything regularly and Mike, Michelle, Emily, and Jamie are posting sometimes. I am a huge offender of this, but my excuse is the extensive text from our wedding site. So, I thought I'd post a meandering tale of things that I have thought about in the last couple of weeks instead of in separate posts. Note to my friends with websites that aren't blogging - you are causing me to develop an eBay fixation in those breaks where I used to catch up on your lives. Help me out here. :) Indoctrination It was interesting to me to hear about the atheist who wanted the inauguration day prayer abolished because it was forcing him to accept Christian beliefs. They didn't go forward with it because he couldn't show how listening to a prayer would cause him injury. I have a much more insidious complaint about living in Philadelphia than he did with a 1 minute prayer. Every single day in the Eagles playoff run for the last four years, I have to listen to the Eagles fight song. I can't get away from it. It is everywhere - supermarkets, office cubicles, on the radio, in the news, practically in church. A good example of this was on January 20th. I was listening to the 6 o'clock news and the top stories were: (a) the big blizzard and how it would affect the Atlanta Falcons coming to town, (b) the big blizzard and how the groundskeepers would clear the field, (c) how the Atlanta Falcons were practicing at home and how the Eagle's practices were so much better than theirs, (d) Terrell Owens talking smack about possibly playing in the game. Interspersed with all of this were clips of kids all over the Delaware Valley singing the fight song while wearing their Eagles gear. When did they mention that President Bush was sworn in for a second term (the top non-Eagles story)? 6:20pm. Yes, that is fully twenty minutes into the program on what is ostensibly the less local news time slot. How does this cause me injury? I am a die-hard Giants fan. I always have been and always will be. Yet, I find myself humming the Eagles fight song all of the time when I don't want to. Against my will, I have been indoctrinated with Eagle-ness. Imagine the torture of the little kids who are Giants fans in schools all over the Delaware Valley. Today, I sit in my cube on the day that all of my co-workers have been given permission to dress in Eagles gear. I have been asked at least 20 times why I am not wearing an Eagles jersey. (As if I would spend the money to fit in with my co-workers!) I tell them that I tried to wear greenish khakis, but that was as far as I was going to go in the Eagles wear. People have asked me if I want an Eagles sticker to dress up my sweater. No, thank you. I would like to point out that I am still a Giants fan, even if I will be rooting for the Eagles for the good of my adopted city. It will be a lot of fun to experience even if I do want the Giants to displace them next year. And, it would be nice in a year of broken curses to have the Eagle's curse broken. Hockey This Sunday will be an especially sad day for me. Usually, I have the Stanley Cup playoffs coming soon after the end of football season to look forward to. Yet, this year they leave me with absolutely nothing to look forward to. (Every time I mention this, Mike asks me to rephrase that to "Nothing in sports to look forward to. Yes, I'm excited about getting married!) I'm so bummed. Seriously, seriously bummed out. I was hoping to wear my Devils jersey to work and get killed by the Flyers fans at some point this winter. How could they do this to me? I have to wait until August for football again? AAAHHHHH! Here is a wonderful article about how the Canadian fans are coping with this: http://www.ktvotv3.com/Global/story.asp?S=2435602&nav=1LFuS2in. I meant to post this ages ago, but this was lying in my "To Be Finished" area in my blogging system. Enjoy! Small World A funny thing happened yesterday. The co-worker that sits directly across from me turns out to have been from the same area that my parents moved to after I graduated from high school and was friends with my youngest sister. This has now dated me a small bit in the office since he is 3 years younger than me, but it was so wild to find that out. This is my first Pennsylvania contact person (although he does live in New Jersey) to know about my family in the x years that I have lived out here. Post-Wedding Free Time We are getting down to the wire in terms of pulling off the production of the biggest party that I have ever planned. Between this 2nd job and my official job, and my volunteer work, and the occasional consulting gig, I have very little free time lately. Last weekend, I took off (and felt a little guilty about that) to spend time with Michelle in NYC. The smashingly good time that we had made up for the lack of planning time this week. I now have a list of things that I will do with all of my free time after May. (Wedding and honeymoon through the end of April, moving Mike in through the end of May.) For example, I will learn how to refinish furniture so I can take care of the dining room chairs. And I will visit my parents in Florida and all of the friends that I haven't had time to see. And I will pick up writing the Great American novel again. And take more classes because learning to do mosaics is really a skill I'd like to acquire. Plus, we will need to sell off the duplicate stuff people don't want on eBay and I hear that takes time. Except, will I need to spend time adjusting to married life? Will Mike and I have to figure out how to share space and squeeze the toothpaste tube from the proper direction and keep the apartment clean with both of our stuff in there? I tend to think not, but married people tend to look appropriately smug when I say that. I wonder if other newly married people feel the same way after the hectic pace of pre-wedding days? What in the world do you do with your time except for write funny books? ---------- That's all for now. I had a long list of things that I do still want to post, but you will have to wait for more updates when I have time.
Things I learned this Christmas/New Year's	Friday, January 14, 2005 3:03:53 PM
1. Lia really likes to open presents now that she is almost 2 instead of almost 1. I turned around for a second and she had finished unwrapping all of her presents and Brandon's presents and had started on Alex's before he rescued them. She is very fast. 2. Babies come with brown eyes, too! I was completely fascinated by my new niece, Morgan, who has really beautiful dark brown eyes. I can't remember the last time I've seen a baby with brown eyes since my sister and cousins only produce these blue-eyed or light hazel-eyed babies. I just kept telling Mike "this baby has brown eyes!" and he kept saying "Yeah, like me and everyone else in my family except Tony". True. I wonder whose genes will win out when/if we start having kids? Probably mine if the Becky/Jay mix is any indication. But, Morgan is a beautiful example of Kullen genes, so I think that we will be blessed either way. Brandon basically slept the entire time we were visiting the kids, so we didn't get to see if his eyes are going to stay a dark blue or are turning something different. Who knows? All we know for sure about him is that he really likes stripes. 3. "This is what I *really* wanted" and all variations of that is a great thing to hear, especially from my 10 year old nephew Alex. I thought he was at an age where I might like to learn card tricks and whew! he is. It is getting harder and harder to shop for him since he is a boy and I didn't grow up with any boys. Mike will have to start stepping into the gap in my experience soon. We were also very excited that Dakota really liked the card game Chomp! we bought him. We knew he really liked games for his Game Boy, but weren't sure if a non-electric game would be a hit. Yay! (Luckily, he is 4 years behind Alex, so I have some frame of reference.) We played a handful of times and Dakota beat us every time. Dakota told me that it is because he is so good at the card game war. Yep. He is great at that, too. 4. Speaking of Dakota, I also learned the secret of being cool. He showed me his Lance Armstrong "Live Strong" wristband and told me it was the best Christmas gift EVER and the one that he really, really, really wanted. I asked him why and he told me that the coolest boy in the area wore one all of the time and now that he had one, he was really cool too. I agreed that he was really cool, with or without the wristband. I had to stop and think, but I can't remember the last time when I cared about what I did or wore in comparison to another person and my coolness factor. (OK, now I can remember a fairly recent time.) However, it definitely took me back to childhood and all of those moves/school changes and trying to fit into a new area when what was cool at your old school was not cool at your new school. 5. And speaking of childhood, my parents gifted me with a small piece of childhood. Background - this year, the box that I was saving at my parents' old house got lost somehow in all of the moving and storing, etc. It is a very long story, but suffice it to say that it was a big loss for me since it contained all of my baby blankets and the favorite dolls and stuffed animals that I carefully put aside to keep: my Cabbage Patch kid, Amanda Grace (aka my childhood confidant), a handful of special Barbies (aka the actors in the plays I wrote when I was little), and all of the dolls my dad brought back from his travels when I was little. I took it hard and felt like I didn't have anything left from my childhood to bequeath to my future children (especially any daughters). So, for Christmas, my parents sent me three Barbie dolls. They knew it wouldn't make up for my loss, but wanted to give me a little something of what I lost. I laughed so hard and immediately took the two brown-haired ones out of the box and admired them. It was like being 10 again. I wonder if parents feel like they are going back in time when they give their kids toys that are sort of like the ones they played with? It was a definite moment of fun and a very sweet gesture on their part. Mike couldn't see why I took them out of the box, but I wasn't about to give new Barbies to any future daughters. They had to be played with at least once. Note: this is not to encourage more Barbie gifting, since they have been sitting under the Christmas tree ever since and they are going to be put away shortly. And as for the "two brown-haired ones" comment, yes, I'll admit it. I have never liked blonde Barbies, except for one. One of my two favorite Barbies (Pretty in Pink Barbie - check out that hat!) had sort of mousey blonde-brown hair (not gleaming blonde like in the picture). I remember thinking that this was a factory glitch when I saw her in the store and had to have her because all of the other ones had really shiny hair. She also had a slight leg ailment from when my Russian wolfhound, Snoopy, grabbed her from me. My other favorite Barbie, Sweet Roses PJ, definitely had brown hair and violet eyes. (While searching around for that Barbie's picture, I stumbled onto this page. Kudos to the link writer not only for her comments, but also because Understood Betsy is a great book!) I seem to recall that I later got another brown-haired PJ doll (because Barbie won't deign to let her name go to a brunette) with green eyes, but that was right around the time I was losing interest in them. I know that I've bored you with this topic long enough, but I found out that Barbie no longer has bent arms. Wow! All of my Barbies had arms at 90 degree angles. No longer. How will they acheive a singing career or eat dinner? They also don't appear to come with engagement rings anymore. Maybe that is because Barbie and Ken aren't together anymore. 6. Finally, I found that Michelle's childhood could also be strangely and miraculously recreated. Her cat, Topper, came back from the grave. That cat has about a billion lives. I hope that everyone else had a fabulous and educational Christmas and New Year's, too.
del.icio.us plans	Monday, December 20, 2004 3:11:59 PM
We are about 4 months away from the wedding and every spare second of my time seems to be involved with wedding plans. That includes my lunch half-hours and anytime someone leaves me alone with a computer. Just in case you find yourself in the midst of a huge research project, I wanted to share my two biggest helps so you can possibly benefit from my experiences. Biggest Help #1: My FTP/web site. I can't imagine doing anything without this. For the less tech-saavy, this is basically a protected folder on the Internet (instead of Windows Explorer/My Computer) where I store all of my wedding project files. When I'm ready to work on something, I just download a copy of the file to whichever computer I'm at. I always upload a copy of the file when I'm finished so the most recent one is on the Internet. This allows me to continue working at Mike's house, my house, my office, etc. I guess you could get around this by saving things to a diskette and keeping that with you at all times. But, three out of the four computers I typically use don't have a diskette capability or CD burning capability, so it wasn't a possibility for me. Biggest Help #2: del.icio.us. This is something that I didn't start out using, but it was so critical to certain areas of research that I would have to say this is indispensible. Del.icio.us is a place where you can store all of your favorite links in one place. This way, wherever you are, you can access those links. Plus, you can organize them into various categories. It isn't private, but that has good parts and bad parts to it. The downside is before I posted this, I had to check to make sure that all of my posts were acceptable to the people who might be looking at my website. The upside is that it shows all of the other people who have linked to the same thing and you can visit their sites and possibly find other cool things from other things that they've linked to. If I didn't have this, I'm not sure how I would have finished the wedding invitation research. You can see the 33 finalists here: http://del.icio.us/kathichelle/invite. There are all of the subcategories to the left of it (tea, square and regular sizes, embossed, bevelled plain and decorated). When I had initially started, I couldn't figure out how to get everything in one place to compare them, break them down into good comparitive categories so I could start weeding them out, and then show them to Mike to see what his vision of invitations would be. Three cheers for del.icio.us! I was able to go through thousands of invitations, save about 180 in my favorites here, and then start comparing and weeding them out with and without Mike's assistance. Definitely sign up for this. You won't be sorry. :)
hopeful, joyful, blessed	Monday, December 13, 2004 12:06:55 PM
Yesterday, while our worship team gathers to pray before the Sunday morning service, our worship leader, Ben, asked us to all go around the room and say three words that described where we were in our lives right then. I somewhat surprised myself with "hopeful, joyful, and blessed" and thought that I would give a little public kudos to God for that. Lately, I've been having a lot of stressful situations - I moved over the month of October into an apartment that was late in being finished, set up the apartment in November to suit both Mike and me since he'll be moving into it in April, hosted Thanksgiving dinner for both of our families, had some family health scares and one of my own that is still going on and have been stressed over wedding plans that are really going well, even when I can't see that. So, I find that I am very hopeful in the true sense of confidently knowing that God will work everything out in my life to the good and not in the "I wish" sense. And, I find that I am joyful in the sense that the joy of the Lord is my strength. I may still be tired and stressed out, but I have the joy of knowing that God is with me every step of the way and He will give me the strength and wisdom to keep on going. And, I am blessed because I have a wonderful family made up of my biological family members, very good friends, and the best church in the world (in my opinion). The amount of support and love that have been given to me and the prayers that have been given to God for me are more wonderful than words can describe. Add that to the very long list of blessings that I have already been given (roof over my head, food on the table, a free country to live in, etc, etc, etc), I feel as though I am the most blessed person on earth right now. So, praise God for He is good and his love endures forever.
Good job, good company	Thursday, December 09, 2004 4:50:08 PM
It is nice to be able to work for a good and stable and growing company. http://www.latimes.com/business/investing/wire/sns-ap-earns-toll-brothers,0,5200903.story?coll=sns-ap-investing-headlines And unlike the Internet tech boom, I have a feeling that this will not implode on itself.
Brandon	Friday, October 22, 2004 11:03:22 AM
Happy Birth Day, Brandon!!! My new nephew, Brandon Thomas, entered the world yesterday at 11:25pm. He was 6 lbs, 11oz and is 20 inches long. Becky tells me that he looks like a boy version of Lia with the same masses of brown hair and big blue eyes, but with slightly shorter hair and eyelashes and slightly smaller eyes. Mike and I will be visiting him shortly to see this gorgeousness in person and then will post pages and pages of pictures so he doesn't feel left out.
Almost all moved in	Monday, October 11, 2004 11:10:54 AM
All of the kinks in the moving process somehow worked out and I am now in my new apartment. I love it there - brand new kitchen with fantastic new appliances (including the new refrigerator that arrived in the nick of time), brand new bathroom, all new carpeting, 2 bedrooms, lots and lots of windows with nice views of trees, etc. Mike and I divided up the closet space so I don't "accidentally" take over all of the space before he moves in there. And we picked out some of the furniture that is going to be "ours" once we get married. However, I think that he is less excited about the dining room table and more excited about the half-interest in the TiVo. Just kidding. :) Mike has been really hands-on about everything, down to the closet organizers that I was looking at. I think that he is thrilled that there is just enough things for him to fix up - weird closet rails, a handful of upside-down electrical outlets that he can turn right-side up, replace the dining room light switch with a dimmer switch, and replace two other light switches because they are too loud when they are switched on. (Yes, he may be adding things that don't really need to be added to the list, but he is happy when he fixes things and I like him to be happy.) So far, he has already replaced one electrical outlet and added a telephone plug to both of the bedrooms. He is so handy! I'm glad that there was something for him to fix since this apartment seems not to have any door knob issues. (I think that he has fixed every door knob at my apartment and all of my friends' houses and apartments and his parents' house.) I still have to move over all of my clothes and dishes and closet stuff, but I figured I would go through that slowly at the old apartment, since I have the luxury of having that space for the rest of the month. Anything that doesn't fit or that I don't want will never come to the new place. Yay! I'm so excited and Mike is so excited. The new place is beautiful and wonderful and I'm so glad that everything worked out. Massive quantities of gratitude for making this all possible go out to (in alpha order): Andre, Chuck, Emily, Jay, John, Michelle, and Mike
Welcome to the world!	Monday, October 11, 2004 10:31:24 AM
My cousin Erin and her husband David were blessed with a beautiful new daughter on September 29th, Isabel Clare. They are all happy, healthy, and doing well. Congratulations and God bless!!!
A Jonah Day	Thursday, September 23, 2004 12:43:12 PM
Today has been one of those days where it seems as though nothing is going right. One of my favorite series of books through the years was L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. She used the term 'Jonah Day' to describe these types of days. I thought I would do a search to see where the term came from. I didn't find anything, but it turns out that there are celebrated Jonah Days in the Coptic Church. That is kind of cool. Especially when you think about the fact that Jonah eventually stopped having such a bad day.
Amusement for Mike	Monday, August 23, 2004 1:27:44 PM
I knew he'd love this. :) I was afraid that if I called, I would end up signing up for something just to get off the phone. *whew* Almost there... Hopefully, I will have good news in the apartment hunt soon!
Welcome to the web!	Monday, August 23, 2004 9:13:44 AM
Michelle joins in the blog community. http://www.xanga.com/chellebelle615 I should probably start linking to my friend's blogs like Mike does. That would help me click through and see if anyone has anything new out there. Michelle's blog has moved to here: http://michelleinnewyork.blogspot.com/ due to a blog stalker.