Thursday Thirteen #8

Thirteen Things that have made Blond Girl smile today! You know, I was once accused of being too much "Lollipops and Sunshine" in my blog but decided I prefer the positive approach to life rather than the bitchy outlook. So, while I am going through a few challenges right now (and yes, that's why you haven't seen much of me this week), I am going to look on the bright side and share with you 13 smiles from my day. 1. When I woke up this morning, the first thing I felt was Champs reaching out to stroke my arm and scratch my back. What a lovely way to wake up! 2. The next thing I felt was Sweet Girl crawling into bed for a hug, a tickle and a gentle "I love you, Mommy and Daddy" (we'll overlook her elbow ramming into the girls for now. :-) 3. Today at work I was able to ferret out a long standing network administration problem. I haven't gotten it solved yet, but at least I was able to prove that our help desk is wrong about the "lamentable condition" of my CD/RW drive and hopefully I can get them to fix it tomorrow. 4. Also at work I was able to deal with a client problem and arrive at a solution today. See, I worked at the home office of The Big Company for 7 years in Minneapolis. Now I work for a Big Company advisor. My home office experience gives me contacts and "inside knowledge" that allows me to get results that often amaze and please my employers. 5. I found out that Wally World sells money orders for $.46 a piece, which is waaay better than the $2.00 each that my lame bank wants me to pay. If you need a money order, visit the ATM, grab some moolah and head over to Wal-smart. 6. When I got home, I checked the mail and found two important letters. Both were confirming our actions to place alerts on our SSNs. See, one week ago tonight, Champs and I discovered that we had been the unfortunate victims of malware, credit card fraud and identity theft. You can bet I went to work immediately. Geekwif and The Geek were supremely helpful in the process, telling us all we needed to do to fix our end of it. In fact, I may post about it soon to help all of you. The upside is that I am back to trusting my computer. Thanks, Geeks! 7. After that, Sweet Girl and I headed over to my bank to get a new debit card. It was good to get a new debit card that is safe and un-thefted. After we picked up the card, Sweet Girl wanted to go to the lower level (for the ride on the glass elevator). Once there, she found that they were selling coins and begged me for one. I bought a silver eagle; one ounce of silver in a plastic sleeve. She thought that was pretty cool. The gal working there had the same first and middle name as Sweet Girl, so that made the visit even better. 8. When we got home, I made some Alfredo primavera for our dinner. This is Sweet Girl's favorite meal (she calls it "trees, cheese and twisties"), but I stepped it up tonight by julienning carrots and cooking them in with the broccoli. See, first you make the pasta twists and when they have just one minute of cooking left, you throw the vegi's right in with them. Perfect every time and you don't need to do any special steaming. 9. After dinner I put in a load of dark laundry. This made me smile for two reasons: first, this was the third load of laundry I've washed during the week. This means that I won't be doing laundry all day on Saturday! Yeah! Second, I bought these cute J.Jill ribbon-tie jeans on e-Bay and they arrived today. I washed them so I can wear them on Saturday. Too bad we don't have casual Friday at work... 10. I finalized some plans for Sweet Girl care the weekend of October 27-29. Why? Because I am GOING HOME! WOO HOO! My friend, Curly Girl, is getting married. I didn't think I would get to go, but at the last RSVP moment, Champs told me to go for it. Yeah, I'll have to drive 18 or so hours in three days, but I will get to see my Mom, Geekwif and my friend's wedding. Certainly worth the 550 mile drive in my book! 11. I tucked Sweet Girl into bed with our normal night-night mantra: "Mommy loves you, Daddy loves you, Grandma loves you, Gus loves you and Jesus loves you!" She repeats each one back to me... I never fail to smile leaving her room after that. Especially since I know that she is a very good girl who will stay in bed and won't get out except to go potty. Once she's in bed, she's in for the night. How wonderful is that? 12. I finally figured out how to use the cool header graphics available over at the official Thursday Thirteen site - and I didn't have Geekwif help me, which in and of itself is nearly amazing. I really am an HTML dweeb. 13. As soon as I have this posted, I am going to bake some oatmeal-raisin-chocolate chunk cookies as a welcome home surprise for Champs. I think he'll like that! Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

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