Joleine Blog

Crazy husband antics

2008-07-04T01:50:01Z

So I don’t usually share the crazy antics that go on in our house on a daily basis, because well then I’d be posting all the dang time.... But this week has left me with extra funny material to share..

The other night we’re cleaning up the house for company to come over.. I’m in the living room fixing the damn curtain rod for the umpteenth time while Mike is in the kitchen dusting the table.. when all of a sudden he exclaims “oh my gosh, there is a HUGE scratch on the table!!!” and I tell him “Yeah, there’s been a scratch on it for a while.. “ but oh no, he continues to tell me that it’s this HUGE gouge that will never be able to be repaired as if *someone* set something big and metal on the table and it dug into it.. it’s just so huge, he’s so disappointed that our pretty new (We bought it in February) table is RUINED for good now.

So after I fix the curtains I head into the kitchen to find this OMGHUGE gouge in the table..

A quick “scratch” with my own thumbnail revealed it was just some dried food of sort.. no scratch, no gouge.. nothing.. Kind of amusing if you ask me

But wait.. the days get even better around here..

Last night Mike asked the dog “would you like an ice cube” (dogs love ice cubes, it’s crazy really) and proceeds to get an ice shard from the freezer door and drop it on the floor where it promptly melts before the dog can even lick it. So I tell him “why don’t you get a full cube?” .. so he presses the “cube” button on the freezer door, puts his hand under the dispenser.. and presses.. wait for it.. the WATER button..

I don’t think I had laughed so hard in a really long time.. It was amusing to see him dispensing the water all onto his hand.

Oh fun times at the Sigler household for sure..

Puppy Update :)

2008-06-20T05:03:00Z

First off, not sure if I mentioned it before, his name is Xander.. He’ll be 12 weeks old on Saturday and he’s just oh so freaking cute

He’s doing great! He had a very busy and exhausting weekend with grandpa(my dad) in town and auntie Jen and the puppy-cousins visiting. The puppy-cousins seemed scared to play with such a little guy and he let them know his displeasure with their lack of enthusiasm over playing with him, by barkbarkbarking for many many hours.. to the point he was hoarse! He wasn’t liking eating very much to the point I was worried he was losing weight.. So I read some Boxerworld.com forums and decided to see if he’d eat his food if it was watered down.. Low and behold he LOVES it that way and eats the entire bowl without stopping or complaining. We had a breakthrough with the potty training this morning when he walked down the stairs by himself (I used to have to carry him to make sure he didn’t just stop and pee somewhere) and walked outside, pottied.. came in, ate ALL of his breakfast while I sat on the couch doing my makeup.. When he was done eating I said “go outside and go potty” and he did just that, walked outside on his own and went potty! He came back in and played with his toys some before we had to go to work, when Mike came down to get his shoes on I said “Xander, outside go potty one more time” and he did just that, walked outside and went pee. You should’ve seen the look on Mike’s face! His chin was dropped, mouth wide open shocked! He said “how did you get him to do that?” I said “he just did it.. he just got it, I don’t know, but I hope it sticks!” He got a treat of course for being good, and another treat for going in his kennel so well. We’ve now taking him on 2 long walks (1 mile each) and he does well. He did better the 1st day (Tuesday) than yesterday, but I think that is because yesterday we went about 30 minutes earlier and all the neighborhood dogs were out for their walks too. We’ll have to see how he does tonight

I’ve taken some pictures and put them on Flickr here: http://flickr.com/photos/joleine/sets/72157605488794450/ I need to take some more as he’s getting big!!

Puppy!!

2008-05-21T04:05:00Z

Tonight Mike and I drove out to BFE (Estacada, Oregon) to look at some puppies. Mike decided for my birthday, I should get a puppy.. I’ve wanted a boxer for years and years and now we finally get one! He’s almost 8 weeks old, but we’re not going to pick him up until he’s 10 weeks old. But I gave the lady a check and we’ll go get him on June 7th! He’s oh so cute. The lady has named him “patches” for now.. but I’m sure we’ll pick a new name He’s the puppy on the left in the picture, the one with the patch around his eye

I can’t wait to bring him home! We’re very excited. I even went and bought “Boxers for Dummies” today and will read it front and back a few times before getting him!

Yard, garden and patio .. show?

2008-05-05T18:10:00Z

Okay so we didn’t go to a show.. But we did do some work on our yard, garden and patio this weekend!

Started on Saturday morning with a trip to Lowes:

Left there and it was raining a lot.. Mike got home from helping Jim out at his house and we needed to go BACK to Lowes.. So off we went.

Came home and started tearing up a corner of the yard to put the garden. That was a feat in and of itself, since all of our soil for the first foot down is chock full of pebbles and below that is very full of clay.. Lovely ‘eh? So the odds of our garden flourishing are NOT in our favor. Oh well!

After a couple of hours of digging in the dirt and moving it around, laying some top soil, mulch, etc.. We have a garden!

Sunday we got up and Mike mowed the lawn.. Then it was BACK to Lowes to buy a grill!

As you can see, we needed one badly, as this is our old grill.. ugh

That was our weekend.. Now we’re exhausted and just want to sleep, and eat food off of our grill

Real Life

2008-04-30T13:41:01Z

I’m pretty sure this is a conversation that has been had at my house

Halfway there

2008-04-24T04:30:00Z

This last weekend was absolutely fantastic..

Friday after work Mike and I went to Beer and Blog at The Green Dragon for a little bit. I had to leave at 5:20 to go to Dosha to get my hair done.

How does it look?

Saturday we got up and had to go back out to The Green Dragon so he could get his debit card he left the night before and grab some lunch. I had already eaten a decent sized breakfast so I just had some crepes w/ rasberry jam and nutella (OHMYGOD so yum) and Mike had a cajun meatloaf sandwich (YUCK). After lunch we headed back towards our house stopping at Target to get presents for Jim’s oldest daughter Hannah’s birthday. We got her some cute pink and brown plaid shorts with a pink tshirt and a brown tshirt. Also got her 2 books. Headed to Jim and Rebeccas house for Hannahs birthday party. She’s 9, wow, that makes ME feel old. We hung out at their house all night, having dinner, playing games and watching The Mist and oh my gosh, it was great. If you like “scary” (not gory horror, but suspenseful, wtf type movies) movies you need to see this movie asap.

After watching The Mist we headed home having borrowed Once curled up on the couch and watched that. If you haven’t seen it, SEE IT NOW. Go, leave your house right now go to Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, The Red Box, whatever.. and rent Once.. See it. It’s good.. The soundtrack is awesome too.

Sunday we got up and cleaned house. ughhh.. Hate cleaning :D We were having some friends over to have dinner and play games, so we had to get the house presentable Martin & Lia and Alex & Kim came over and we all had a great time. Played a few games, ate dinner and hung out.

Monday I went to the podiatrist to get my toe looked at. I’ve been nursing an Ingrown Toenail for a couple of months so it was getting to the point that it hurt more often than not, so off to the doctor I went. The doctor and I discussed my options and we decided since this was the 2nd time I’ve had one in this toe in the last few years, it was time to fix it permanently. I made an appointment to go back today to have that done and headed to work.

Today I got up and back to the podiatrist to get the toe fixed. The doctor is a really nice guy and he explained in great (I mean GREAT) detail exactly what he was going to do, then did it. OKay so it wasn’t that simple. It took him about 45 minutes to get the damn thing numb enough to do the rest of the procedure and that part hurt a LOT. :( Once it was all done and overwith everything was pretty numb so I was on my way back to work. However, some asshat in the parking lot parked *SO* close to me, I had to climb in my passenger door. I was not pleased about that at all. Especially since this moron that parked so close had a handicapped permit hanging from their window! This hospital will do free valet parking for handicapped people! And I was parked about as far away from the entrance as I could, because the parking spots are SO tight at this hospital, I was trying to avoid what had happened. Grr, I was not happy.

This weekend the weather is supposed to be nice, lets hope it is as I’m heading to the beach for the day on Saturday

My own personal graphic designer

2008-04-18T18:24:00Z

As most people that know me obviously realize, I did not create this website all on my own. I do accounting for a living, and can barely operate MS Paint. However my darling husband, does graphic design for a living and took the time out of his schedule last year to great my website. I told him “I want it, pink” so he went with that and made me what we all came to know and love as the OMGBIGGIANTPINKEXPLOSIONOFGOODNESS site that I had up until last week. Then a couple of weeks ago I said “I think I want it, less pink… can we add some brown in there?” so then he redesigned it real quick with some new colors. Yay! Well that was all fine and dandy until Firefox 3 came out and everyone started upgrading to that (myself included) and everything broke :( Well when he was changing it to the brown theme, he fixed that too. Yay Again!

So I just wanted to thank Mike for all of his hard work on my site in addition to all of the other sites he does. He does good web.

Threadless

2008-04-18T18:12:00Z

A month ago Mike ordered us some shirts off of Threadless. He got me 2 cute ones, Refrigerator Running and Collateral Damage. I wore the cutsie yellow and bunny-fied shirt right away, loved it! Then when I went to wear my cute blue tshirt with the adorable refrigerator on it, I noticed there was this weird square outline from where they screenprinted the shirt. Dangit! I couldn’t wear it. So after a couple of weeks of my attempting to remind Mike to return the shirt, I finally sent it back on Monday. He got notice yesterday that they sent out a replacement, free of (shipping) charge obviously. They also sent him a code for $7 off of his next purchase. So kudos goes out to Threadless by standing by their product, making the return/exchange process smooth and easy, and most definately enticing us to buy more shirts! In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Mike has about 30 threadless shirts. Moral of the story, buy from Threadless!

R Palate

2008-04-18T18:11:00Z

Wednesday night I went with Mike to Baileys Taproom so he could meet up with some geekytype people and we could have beer. So we had beer, he met the geeky type people and then we decided to play some Scrabble. Scrabble with Mike is NOT fun, he cheats and “bends” the rules so that they work out to his advantage and I don’t enjoy it :( But we still had a fun time even though he cheated! After that we decided we’d just stop somewhere for dinner since it was already 8 and by the time I got home to cook, we’d be eating after 9pm. So we stopped by this little hole in the wall joint on 6th and Oak called R Palate. It looked skeevy to me at first and the stuff on the menu didn’t look all that great at first. I decided to get the duck, which was pan seared with a date butter sauce and served with goat cheese risotto (think, yummy cheesy rice). It was to die for.. Oh sooooo good. Mike had a flank steak that was super tender and he said it was the best steak he’s had. I tasted it and while yes, it was tender, I wasn’t a fan of the flavor. The place was great and we’re looking forward to going back there.

Margaret Cho comes to Portland

2008-04-18T18:11:00Z

Last night we went to see Margaret Cho live. Mike was kind enough to buy me tickets many months ago when they went on presale, and I’ve been patiently waiting the entire time to go. It was a great show, absolutely hilarious. Ian Harvie was her opening act and he/she was a riot too. We had a great time and now I want to go home and watch all of her DVD’s all over again. I really enjoy what Margaret always has to talk about, and I am really glad that this time she pretty much kept the political/war talk to a minimum. Sometimes she gets so into what she’s discussing that she goes off on a tangent.. Which is all fine and dandy but her political/war tangents tend to get a little angry and I don’t miss them at all. Before the show we stopped at Oliver Twist restaurant in the Hilton for dinner. Food was good, although our weird portobello mushroom appetizer was disgusting. I was mildly amused that while we were waiting for our food some interesting people were seated next to us. They had some troubles getting into the seat because of where it was located and the pepper fell off of their table. When Mike picked the pepper up to put it back on the table, one of the diners called him “sweets” .. I was amused to say the least. I still don’t know if that particular diner was a MTF or FTM .. Having a hard time distinguishing, what with the feminine voice and the beard..

I am however, very surprised I do not have Margaret’s “Eat my pussy” song, stuck in my head.....

Saying I do, without doing it.

2008-04-05T18:39:00Z

One question that has plagued me for a while is women that don’t take their husbands last name when they get married. Why? I just don’t get it. Why bother getting married and going through *that* tradition if you’re not going to go all the way with it and take his last name? If you’re so afraid of losing your independence or whatever reason you have, why get married? And if you’re getting married so you can have kids, wouldn’t you want to have the same last name as your husband and kids? It just doesn’t make sense to me. I guess I just don’t see a good reason for it. If you want to keep your last name, why bother getting married? Tax break? Hardly, getting married screws you in taxes (unless you have kid) Wedding Presents? Unless you’re getting your wedding paid for 100% by someone other than you, or you do the courthouse gig like we did, the ROI on presents is null. I can kind of understand not doing it for professional reasons, say if you’re a doctor or teacher. But really? Can’t you just slowly do it instead of just flat out not?

I guess with the divorce rate being at 50% it’ll save you time and effort of having to change it back, ‘eh?

So ladies, what gives?

And then she slept.

2008-04-03T05:07:00Z

It’s been a crazy-busy few weeks.. Lets see if I can recap

A few weekends ago on the 15th Michelle and I had a “girls day” which consisted of yummy lunch at Ruby Tuesday, a 90 minute time-share schpiel to get a free trip to Vegas (Airfare included baby!) and of course a trip to Target.. We can’t have a girls day out without a trip to Target!

On the 22nd Mike had to work all day, so I ventured out and bought a lawn mower.. That was an interesting ordeal, getting the lawn mower into the trunk of my civic. But I managed to get it home, put it together, turned it on and mowed the yard! Twice! It needed it so bad.. The grass was out of control, it needed 2 mowings in 1 day. I also sprayed moss killer on the lawn and hosed off the driveway.. I felt so.. handy That night we met up with Michelle and Nate at McMenamins for beers before heading to Sunset Lanes for a few games of bowling. Fun times

On Easter, my sister, Michelle and Nate came over for food, games and hanging out. I made a HUGE ham, potatoes and green beans. We also had snacks, dip, crackers, fruit, bloody mary’s, etc.. Good times were had.. We played some games and just hung out

This last weekend was a pretty busy one. Josh came down to visit from Spokane. Friday night a bunch of us went to Buffalo Wild Wings after happy hour for dinner and ate far too much food for our own good. Saturday we got up and went to Startupalooza which was actually pretty cool. It was fun hearing about the different success (and sometimes not so much) stories of Portland entrepreneurs. Matt and Bill 2 of Jive’s founders also spoke, which was pretty cool. Got a lot of great insight and ideas for if/when we ever start our own business

After Startupalooza we had our house warming party which in my opinion was a success. We had a full house of friends over to hang out, drink some wine and beer, play games and eat chili and cornbread that I made! It was a very funtime and I’m pretty sure we all had a great time

Sunday we spent recooperating from the last couple of months of go-go-go before going back to work for Month/Quarter end, where I worked 2 15 hour days in a row. Ugh.

This coming weekend is looking to be nice so far. I’m off of work on Friday so I’m going to get a massage and then head down to Dosha for a manicure and pedicure.

New glasses and a book..

2008-03-12T06:27:00Z

So I went to the eye doctors on Saturday for my annual exam.. My eyes are getting worse :( .. Not TOO much worse.. The prescription has only gone down -.25 in each eye from last year.. But it’s gone down quite a bit from the last time I bought glasses 3 years ago. But then again, I rarely wear glasses… I think I’ve only worn them twice in the last year (to work) .. But I still need something that works.. And I figured now, while we have pretty decent vision insurance (the rest of our health insurance sucks ass though) I’d get some new glasses.. So off to Lencrafters we went.. And man, thank god we do have insurance.. If we didn’t then they’d have been $534! That’s just ridiculous. How do people with no insurance afford decent glasses? I feel pretty confident that these frames will last me quite a while (for the price, they freaking better) and hopefully my prescription will stop changing and I won’t have to fork out $$ for new lenses next year either. Our insurance is weird and that it covers Frame and Lenses ($100 and 20% towards frames and $90 towards lenses) or Frame and Contact Lens fitting (So, 100 and 20% towards frame and $90 toward lenses) .. well, since I knew I had to have a contact fitting, and the fitting for astigmatism’d (I know, I just made that word up) eyes is $99, I figured it best to use my benefit for that.. just in case I opted not to get glasses.. Well, now I got glasses too.. I think we would’ve paid the same out of pocket either way.. so, oh well… that lesson in insurance coverage was pointless ‘eh?

Now I’m going to take my 3 year old glasses to bed and read before sleepy time.. oh yeah, I’m reading the funniest book I’ve read in years.. you all should read it. Every single one of you!

It’s called “Bitter is the new black” and holy crap is it funny. I got it for Christmas but just now picked it up.. I can barely put it down.. The author has another book out called “Bright Lights Big Ass” that I need to go buy ASAP so I can start reading it when I’m done with this one… and another called “Such a Pretty Fat” coming out May 6th. I can’t wait to get that either..

Anyways, I highly recommend this book.. very funny…

The full title is actually “Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office” And the back says “This is the story of how a haughty former sorority gal went from having a household income of almost a quarter-million dollars to being evicted from a ghetto apartment in less than two years. It’s a modern Greek tragedy, as defined by Roger Dunkle in The Classical Origins of Western Culture: a story in which “the central character, called a tragic protagonist or hero, suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaninglesss, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected.”

In other words?

The bitch had it coming.”

so, go buy it. now

Today, we painted ..

2008-03-03T07:22:00Z

It was a lot more work than I expected really.. We should’ve gotten started earlier, like oh.. yesterday. haha..

We only did the kitchen/dining room today .. and did 2 colors. The main color is “butternut wood” (brown) with an accent wall of Jungle Green ... funtimes

Of course, I took pictures!

Before:

After:

More pictures can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joleine/sets/72157604034442077/

Now, it’s bedtime

Moving, the plague and whatnot

2008-02-23T06:53:00Z

Well we moved last week.. Technically 3 nice men that we paid an arm and a leg for came to move our stuff. Yes, we hired movers. I was not about to move all of our crap down 3 flights of stairs in February. And it’s probably a good thing too… Since Sunday Mike came down with the plague and I got it on Monday night.. Okay, not quite the plague, but the flu with bronchitis, fun huh? Nothing like running a fever for 4 days straight and coughing so hard I can barely move now. I did get some good meds from the doctor yesterday though

So yeah, Wednesday (the 13th) the movers came in the morning and it took them 6 hours with drive-time to move all of our crap out of the apartment and into the house.. But it’s all here. For a minute I felt bad, when I was sitting on the living room floor in front of the new gas fireplace eating lunch and the men were out in the rain getting our stuff off of the truck.. but when I wrote them the check to pay for their services, I no longer felt bad. We managed to get quite a bit of stuff unpacked on Wednesday, which is good since we didn’t have much time after that to get it done. Thursday and Friday I had a payroll class to go to for work.. which was actually highly educational.. Thursday night for Valentines Day we went to The Melting Pot for dinner. yumyum. Friday after my class and stopping by the office to work for a few hours my sister came out to help me unpack and decorate.. See, we didn’t tell anyone we were hiring movers.. We told all of our friends that we needed help moving on the 16th.. but in reality while Mike was meeting everyone at the empty apartment, I was back at the house making up a big batch of chili getting ready to party.. we threw our friends a “surprise, thanks for helping us all of those other times” party… So we ate snacks, chili and cornbread, drank beer and played games for a few hours.. It was fun times

Sunday we were exhausted so we just vegged out in the morning, but got up in the afternoon and went to Target, Linens & Things and Bed, Bath & Beyond for curtains and other house decorationy type stuff. We spent WAY too much money but got curtains for all of the windows (except for the one above the sink, I don’t want a curtain there) and some pretty green placemats and napkins for the new dining room table that we got last week.. oh and an outdoor firepit that was on sale for $50… can’t wait to use it next summer Got home from shopping and I hunt up almost all of the curtains.. then proceeded to make dinner in my new giant kitchen.. oh I love my new giant kitchen

Monday I had taken off to unpack and get more organized in the house.. but Mike woke up with a 102ish fever and needed to be taken to the doctor.. So I did that in the morning, him to the doctor, pharmacy, etc.. Then once I got him into bed with lots of covers, cough syrup and a movie.. I started coughing and getting achey.. by 3pm I was full blown sick too :( We were both sick in bed Monday and Tuesday.. then Wednesday we went to work, which just made me sicker… So we’ve been home since.. Thursday I went to the doctor to get the same diagnosis Mike did on Monday, so I got some of my own antibiotics and cough syrup. joy. Today was the 3rd annual Ski Trip that our work takes all of the employees on.. but we stayed home so not to get sicker or give anyone else the plague :( Sad.. I hear they all had a great time… Michelle said I was missed, so that’s always nice

Tomorrow I’m hoping I’ll feel better in the morning so I can clean up the house and take pictures.. all of Mike’s family want to see the house.. I also want to get the curtains up in our bedroom and the office.. We’re also hoping to paint in the next month or so.. the way the house is laid out, if we paint 1 wall, we’re going to have to paint them all.. There isn’t really anywhere you could “stop” and have it look good.. and with cathedral ceilings, it’ll be interesting

It’s sad that it’s 10:51 on a Friday night and I’m going to bed… but my cough syrup has kicked in so that’s where I’m off to.