Thursday, November 20, 2008

A good ticker!

So, today we visited the Cardiologist and it was an hour and a half experience. First, we had to wait for twenty minutes before we went to the examination room and then a resident assistant/Dr. lady checked him out and asked all the history questions and everything else. We were with her for half and hour and then the specialist came in that we were there to see. He did basically all of the same things that she did in about 10 minutes then we went down to look at the echo cardiogram (a.k.a. the heart ultra sound). After checking everything out he let us know that we don't have anything to worry about with Austin's heart. He said he agrees it is probably just excercise induced asthma. So we are very thankful that we have eliminated the possibility of a problem in the heart. Next, we will need to meet with our primary physician or meet with the Pulmonologist to figure out what the four nodules on his lung are and if that has anything to do with the 'asthma' diagnosis or with the chest pains that he has. So thank God for his provision with the Austin's heart and thank you for all of your prayers!

Oh, and a great part about it was that my work a.) allowed me to leave work for THREE hours and b.) I got paid for those THREE HOURS! I had to come back to work though (I am here now) and I clocked out when I got back (that's what she told me to do) but I will only be staying for approximately an additional hour. So I got two hours paid for not even being at work. Praise God, he's Amazing and Great!

One additional note, our friend Alyssa is coming into town, she's Kurt's girlfriend, to spend the weekend. So she'll be in tonight through Sunday or Monday I believe. Also, the lights festival of Michigan Avenue is this weekend on Saturday, so we'll be looking forward to that!

That's all for now folks.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Dead things and Bamboo...

So on top of all the eventful things that have been going on around us, I think the stress wore on our fish as well... I am sad to say that we had a death in our family this week, our beloved Pebbles died on Thursday morning. She had been sick for about four days or so, just 'sitting' on the bottom of the tank, and whenever she would swim it was not far off of the bottom and usually swimming off balance or sideways... bad stuff. Anyway, so now we are down to only 5 fishies. Everyone else seems to be doing well. While Pebbles was sick, I think Pirate was sympathizing with her as he would often lay next to her, I thought he may have been sick too, but when he wasn't laying next to her he was buzzing around the tank, so that showed that he wasn't sick. After she died everything was good with the others, so I'm not worried... yet. Anyway, that's our sad news. One the up side, I got bamboo!!! LOL! So, we have another 'living' thing in our apartment. I've been wanting a bamboo plant and a hibiscus plant, both of which are fairly expensive, but we got this healthy, sprouting bamboo for only $2.99 at Ikea! Well, I shall wrap it up for the evening, since I am at work, during both of these posts, lol, AND I need to work on some homework! Tata!

Emergency Room visits and Doctor check-ups...

Hello all, I'm sorry for the delay in posting this information, but it's been a crazy time with this situation and with my work schedule. So, I regret to inform you that Austin has had a visit to the ER since I've last wrote to you. Yep, fun times.

Here at Moody we have a Lifetime Fitness class both our Freshman and our Senior year. It compares how our fitness has improved or declined and what we can do to keep at a healthy weight and fitness level, etc. Well, it's come that time that Austin had to have his Senior year class. During these classes part of the comparison is based on a mile and a half run. Austin did fine in completing this during his Freshman year, just a little winded, but this time (10/28) it had an adverse affect on his body. He only finish about 4 or 5 laps of the 13 and 3/4's. Which of these laps a few were walking. He became increasingly winded until he could no longer run or walk. He had to stop and went to talk to his professor, while speaking with her he began getting very light headed and dizzy. She figured that he was experiencing an asthma attack (which he's never had one before). She sent him to the on campus health department and they gave him a few of the general tests and his heart rate 20 minutes after he had stopped walking was still up at 120 bpm. With this news the professor wouldn't allow for him to leave the fitness center until our friend Kurt came back (he's in the same class) to walk Austin out and promising to DRIVE him to the ER so that he can get checked out because of the asthma attack and the increased heart rate.

So, six hours, three different Doctor's opinions at two different places and a chest x-ray later he came home, only with a diagnosis that it was PROBABLY an asthma attack, the increased heart rate was PROBABLY only because of the constriction of the airways and SUPPOSEDLY his chest x-ray was fine. His Doctor had told him that she wanted him to follow up with her in a week, so he went back to visit her and she basically said 'I have no idea why the ER told you that the chest x-ray was fine, because we actually found four nodules on your lung'. After this she told him that she wanted him to go get another chest x-ray in order to determine whether the nodules were growing, shrinking or may be something that he has always had. Also, she wanted him to go get a heart 'ultrasound'. I went with him to get the heart 'ultrasound' which was actually a really neat experience, we saw the inside chambers and valves of his heart in 2D. Neat stuff. The chest x-rays (original and second one) would be sent to a Pulmonologist to examine and the 'ultrasound' would be sent to a Cardiologist for examination. He spoke with his Doctor once on the phone and she told him that they did find a small abnormality with his heart, but that most people who have this abnormality never even know it or do not have any noticeable affects of it. She hadn't heard anything back from the Pulmonologist yet about the x-rays. He has to go she the Cardiologist this Thursday and we'll hear what the diagnosis is about the abnormality of his heart. From there I believe we'll then have to set up an appointment with the Pulmonologist and then go back to see Dr. Batista, the family Doctor for the final on what we're doing with all of this information or if anything needs to be followed up with. So, we're still in a time of waiting.

Austin has handled everything very well, he's put it all in God's hands and is completely worry free and not nervous or scared at all. I on the other hand have been extremely anxious. It's been a lot easier lately because we haven't had to deal with it lately and I've been pretty busy with work(48 hours this week). I would appreciate prayers! :D Also, a great praise that we have to give God is that from his whole day in the emergency room ($2000 worth) our insurance has taken care of ALL of it. Yep, ALL $2000 worth! That's been a great praise. Our family Doctor told us that with our insurance we should get away with only having to pay about $40 a piece to visit the two specialists and we've had to pay the her only $25 for an office visit. So $100 to get this all taken care of! God is AMAZING! Well, we would greatly appreciate your prayers for Austin's health and God's will in this situation, and for my anxious thoughts. :) Thank you SO much to all of those that have been praying for us already. We have heard of SO many different prayer chains that are praying for us and we are so thankful that God's family comes together in times of need.

I will keep this as updated as possible, and I will post after the Cardiologist visit on Thursday to let you know what we've heard from them. Please, if you have any questions drop us an email. I've posted our email at the top of the blog now, so you can contact us. Thanks everyone!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Our Mini-Vacation!

Hello Everyone,

I said when I started this blog that it was no guarantee how often I would be able to write on it, so I am terribly sorry that it has been so long. (Apologies especially to Aunt Erma who sent me a reminder to get back on this, lol) I am writing to you today as we are traveling on a train back into the city. We have had the great fortune of being able to enjoy a wonderful weekend (extended) outside of the city. We spent Friday until today (Tuesday) about an hour outside of the city. We traveled to St. Charles, IL via Metra train. This was a little of a surprise to Austin, he knew of the weekend and the plans, except one thing, I’ll get to that in a second, but I had arranged everything.


So… this is the time during our ‘fall break’. Our school has a ‘Missions Conference’ every year, where instead of classes Wed-Fri (morning) we have sessions that we have to attend. There are 1 hour sessions with separate individual speakers that you can choose which one you would like to go to out of probably about 50 or more different ones and then there are a few general sessions where everyone has to attend. Anyway… so then on Mon and Tues of the following week we get what are called ‘Study/Reading Days’ basically they want you to be caught up for the week after the break, but most students use this time off of school to take a vacation home or go somewhere with floor mates or something else.


So… we left the city Friday afternoon, after demolishing our apartment and packing on Friday morning to try to get ready and traveled on the train about an hour out to St. Charles. Friday, Sat, and Sun nights we stayed in the cheapest hotel we could find which happened to be a Days Inn a little outside of downtown St. Charles. It was an okay hotel and an okay room, nice King bed, I think that’s our favorite part of staying in hotels, lol, the nice big king bed compared to our Queen. Friday night we attended a conference called “Love & Respect”. We had read part of the books from the speaker, also called “Love & Respect”. It’s an amazing insight into relationships between the sexes. It’s obviously geared towards the marriage relationship, but it is a great communication tool for others in your family and to teach your children too. I highly recommend the book, especially for married people. Again, it’s called “Love and Respect and it’s by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. The conference was Friday night and also Saturday afternoon, it was at a church called Wheaton Bible Church and we had met some great people, Darren and Pam, that agreed to give us rides to and from the church for the conference days and also on Sunday when we attended their regular Sunday morning service. It was an amazing blessing to us, as we soon realized that using taxi’s as a sole means of transportation, as they don’t have public transit, when traveling on average 2-6 miles gets quite expensive. We figured out that Darren probably saved us about $125 and then he even insisted on buying us lunch on Sunday which was WAY more than we ever could have asked for or wanted, but he wouldn’t let us pay! The church was amazing in and of its self. They have a huge campus. The church is three stories with three separate auditoriums. One for the main service, one for the Hispanic service and a completely separate auditorium for the high school youth. It was a beautiful, beautiful church.


Anyway, after the conference and church we just spent some good relaxation time in our hotel room and I got a bit of homework done and we even spent some time in the pool. We had some good dinners at; Olive Garden and TGIF and also a yummy lunch with Darren at a place called Sweet Tomatoes. It’s basically like a Ponderosa but instead of a full buffet it’s a salad buffet. They also have some homemade soups and breads and such. We were able to walk to our restaurants mostly, they were all within about a mile, so not too bad of a walk, thankfully the weather stayed pretty nice this weekend also, we didn’t get rained on or froze or anything.


Monday morning it was time to switch hotels, YAY! Well… so we thought. So after spending three nights in a regular, average, okay sort of hotel, oh yeah… with a lady bug infestation, we wanted to spend our final night in a nice, luxury sort of place. Yes, it was fairly expensive, as this whole weekend was, but we’ve been able to save up some and get a little ahead so that we decided we could afford to have a nice get away. So… we check out of our Days Inn hotel and walk down to the downtown area of St. Charles, about another mile, this time lugging along our luggage behind us, lol, we got some funny looks in this small, nice, town. Thankfully, the wife was smart enough to think of this and bring the rolling luggage instead of the duffel bag. We get to the hotel, which has a check in time of 4:00pm, our check-out was 11:00am, but the hotel was going to hold our luggage for us. Early check in was $25 but instead we decided to just drop our luggage off and spend a few hours at the mall, a mile past our original hotel, so now about 2 miles away. After dropping our luggage off at this amazing, beautiful hotel… we had only seen the lobby, but it was amazing. We went to the mall, by taxi, and spent a few hours there. We walked around, spent some time window shopping and walking around in the stores, no purchasing though and then went to see a movie. We saw “W.” it’s the movie about President Bush. It was decent, a little dry, definitely something I recommend seeing after it comes out on DVD, don’t go see it in the theater. Then we traveled back to Hotel Baker, via taxi.


So, a little info on Hotel Baker, it was built back in 1918 as a hotel by honorary (because of his racing horses, he was given the name) Colonel Edward Baker. He inherited 20 MILLION dollars from his sister, Dellora, who was an heiress to the Texaco Oil Company, when she passed away and he used over 1 million of that to make this beautiful hotel. The hotel is situated right on the Fox River. It literally is on the river, as you’ll see in some pictures. The hotel is created solely of brick and concrete which makes it very solidly constructed. The wish of Colonel Baker was that no two rooms be the same or even decorated the same, so he spent a lot of money decorating with pieces of furniture, rugs and ect from all over.


Well, after we got back, we checked in and went up to our room, beautiful elevators, beautiful hallways and I loved the doors to the rooms, you’ll see those in pictures too. BUT… we walk into our room and bam… it’s a small room, smaller than Days Inn, it’s average for any hotel room and decorated minimally with supposed antique furniture. Well, as you can guess this was less, much less, than expected for what we paid and for what we thought should be of this great, historic hotel. We sat in our room, both disappointed and me VERY discouraged on what to do. Do we just leave? Will they give us our money back, or even part of our money back? Should we find a different hotel? Should we cut our weekend short a day and just try to go back home? Grr… frustration was definitely setting in and my perfect weekend was coming to a screeching halt. Finally, we had made our decision, we’d tell them we weren’t satisfied and ask if we’d get our money back or at least a partial refund and see if we could find a cheap hotel room or decide to go back into the city. Well, when Austin called the front desk to tell them we were dissatisfied… they said they would show us another couple of rooms, a little nicer, and see if we might be interested in staying in one of them for the same price, as they weren’t busy at all. I think there may have only been one or two other rooms occupied, as it was a Monday night. So this nice manager named Melissa came and knocked on our door and took us down the hall to a ‘King with a parlor’. I wasn’t really all that impressed with this room either as it was basically our room, low quality furnishings and dingy, but with an added ‘room’ with a sofa in it. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to switch to this room for the same price as I didn’t feel it was really worth the price either. She said, well I can show you another room, but I think it’s basically the same set up as your first and you may be dissatisfied with it also. She also mentioned how some people just didn’t like the feel of the refurbished, old hotel. We said, this wasn’t the issue, but just that we had expected a little more for our money and the quality just wasn’t there. I said it couldn’t hurt to see the other room, so she took us down the hall to the elevators and as we were waiting she said she’d make a call to the front desk to see if a different room was available. She called and then we went up one more floor to the 5th floor. She took us to this room that was very similar to the 1st and it was a definite no, so she took us to the last room that she had called the front desk about… It was a beautiful room that was about 3 times the size of our original reservation AND had a small balcony WITH a hot tub! We were completely shocked that they were even offering us this room as an option, as it was at least $100-$150 more than our original reservation. We told her this was so much more than we could have asked for or expected and we told her we were very appreciative and felt bad for accepting this but we would gladly take this room for the same price as our original reservation! So, we got our luggage, that was in poor shape by this time, our handle was not taking to the weight in the bag very well… and moved to the new room. My big excitement about this hotel, was that they had complimentary fluffy robes, I know, small, but exciting. To our dismay, this new room did not have any… lol. We were too embarrassed at that time to call the front desk after all they had just done for us.


We settled in, both still in shock and disbelief at this amazing opportunity and then decided to go out to dinner. We ate dinner right across the street at Szechwan Restaurant, a great little Chinese restaurant. We came back from our dinner and went back up to our room deciding to get to the hot tub and take advantage of that. At this time, we called to report our missing robes and promptly received two soft, fluffy warm terry cloth robes. We BOTH enjoyed them VERY much! So we spent two whole hours in the hot tub. It was great, just being able to relax and enjoy the view. We were on the 5th floor as mentioned and our balcony overlooked the street down below and you could see part of the river. It was nice because even as we were sitting there in a busy little town, cars streaming by down below it seemed quite. We realized it was different because there were NO blaring car horns, very few sirens, I think we heard all of like two and it just seemed serene. So after our wonderful two hours in the hot tub we were both so relaxed and sleepy, we were ready to crawl into the most snuggly, warm, comfy King bed EVER! With nice soft Egyptian cotton sheets and pillow cases. Plus, even though the street lights shined up from the street below, there were amazing curtains that made the room totally dark. The most wonderful evening I can remember!


Neither one of us wanted to roll out of bed this morning, but we reluctantly got up so that we could eat a European Continental Breakfast. Yummy! I of course had to make a fool out of myself, of course it definitely could have been worse… So, it must be a European thing, but they had eggs (still in the shell, not scrambled or something of the sort)… I was excited, cuz as the Cunningham’s will know, hard boiled eggs are something that runs in the family. Well, I had eaten the majority of my breakfast and decided to have a crack at my egg… haha get it… anyway… I decided instead of using their nice soft nice cloth napkins, I’d grab a cocktail napkin from the breakfast bar and I opened it up and put my egg neatly inside so that I wouldn’t get egg shells everywhere. I go to roll it on the table to break the shell and crush it around the edges and to my surprise… IT’S NOT HARD BOILED, NOPE, NOT COOKED AT ALL! HA! So, thankfully I had my napkin around it and it didn’t get everywhere, but I felt pretty stupid. Especially when it’s so fancy and we’re eating on real plates and they come and clean your food for you, lol! After that we went to the front desk and asked about the ‘complimentary transportation’ and got a ride set up for check out time to take us back to the train station. Anyway, so we finished packing up and lay on our wonderful bed for about 15 minutes to soak it all in for the final time.


After this we went downstairs and this cute little old man was awaiting us to drive us to the train station. He was SO adorable and he gave us a wonderful historical, educational ride to the train station. We were talking about some of the recent growth in the town and he says to us… “After you’ve been here for 75 years you notice the changes”. He had lived in this little area his entire life and had even KNEW Colonel Baker himself. He spent a lot of time on the Colonel’s nieces' (she inherited the hotel after the Colonel died) property as he was growing up. He talked about her 9 hole golf course, her pool, her horses, her huge house and land. He was SO sweet, I just loved him. Anyway, so he was a great blessing to us also, educating us about the history of the town and about Colonel Baker’s other contributions to the town. We both really enjoyed the historical lessons. The town was adorable also in its sweet old townie feel with all its little shops and parks.


It was a wonderful weekend and I’m glad to share it with you all! Hope you enjoyed it!


P.S. Sorry there are SO MANY pictures on here. I just really wanted to share them all to give you an idea of where we were and the fun we had. Thanks for bearing with me in this...


This is the church, Wheaton Bible Church

Huge

This is Austin with Colonel Baker's niece.

The hotel from across the river


The city building, it's a clock/bell tower so we figured out

Getting Closer

Told ya it was ON the river

Me with Colonel Baker himself.

Austin surprised an amazed at our beautiful view and hot tub

The street below

Pretty sunset


Us, on the balcony

The start of the trip around the room... (out to the patio)


Most comfy bed EVER!



Nice Shower




The cool door, very heavy too.

We had no idea what these used to be for


This was over the entrance to the hotel

Down the the enterance

Lots of Spanish flavorings

"The Writing Room"

Elevators on the 2nd Floor

The "Rainbow Room"- used to be a happening dance area.

Austin, in the little Spanish Villa, I loved that!

Spanish Villa!

Again, so cute!

Us, in the elevator, small, but there were mirrors on the wall that kind of made it look like you were in a really long, never ending dark hallway.

Our elevator lobby on the 5th Floor.

Our door from the outside

Down the hallway towards the Colonel Baker Suite, that's the door at the end of the hallway.

Austin, enjoying the hot tub

View from the hot tub towards the river


Us in the hot tub

The amazingly, awesome jets

I had to take this picture because it makes Austin look like he has a booty, lol!

Austin, enjoying his robe in the morning

Me, also enjoying my robe in the morning

We loved our robes, and our stay!

Friday, September 12, 2008

Our fallen world...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKFZjg4eGMk

Okay, so every time I see this commercial, it drives me crazy!!! "We are a nation of consumers... and there's nothing wrong with that". WHY? Because there's A LOT OF COOL STUFF out there. What? Really? The only 'truth' to this commercial is that if we spend TOO much on that 'cool stuff', if we get "...a little carried away..." then "this material world of ours can stop being wonderful and start (HA) getting stressful" So Discover is going to 'instead of encouraging us to spend more, they're going to help us SPEND smarter.' "Maybe then we can have a better quality of life." "Less debt and more fun (because that definitely equals a better quality of life, as long as we're having fun! ...right)" (as three women are getting in a cab to obviously go out for the evening). Obviously fun, but is it spending smarter? "And this 'material world', could get a whole lot brighter." Really, because supposedly we're not already stressed out, there aren't a bunch of pressures on us already, and our world will be completely sunny and 'bright' with a Discover card, that helps you "SPEND SMARTER!"

This is a ridiculous commercial and a ridiculous idea; that nothing is wrong with being a nation of consumers, that we just need to 'spend smarter'. What does that even mean, it's not like they show you that through the ladies in the taxi cab. Well, this is my little rant. I just ran across this commercial again and felt like I needed to vent somewhere about it! I hope I have enlightened you to a few things and given you a better prospective of NOT looking at commercials with ignorance, but actually listening and seeing what they are portraying.

Have a great evening everyone!

Monday, August 11, 2008

Fishies and hiking

So, I have now adopted fish, free of charge. I got the whole kit and kaboodle for free. I now have six little chillin's. I've bonded with them already, lol, and named each one. So, it's really pretty sad actually. We got them last night and Austin left last night for his South Dakota hiking trip. So, they are keeping me busy and entertained. In case your all wondering, which I doubt you are, their names are; Gadol, Dogani, Pebbles, Spaz, Pirate and Lollipop (the last two are bottom suckers, hence the fun names, lol). Gadol means 'Big Fish' in Hebrew, as in Jonah and the big fish. Dogani means 'my fish' in Hebrew. Spaz is crazy, he's not real 'social' with humans. So, I'm not sure if this is a normal thing for common goldfish, but Gadol like to eat rocks, well, not really eat, but he mouths them and then spits them back out. I thought it was weird. He kind of does it attackingly also. He'll be swimming along, minding his own business and then dive into a mouthful of rock, spit those out, get another mouthful, spit those out and so on and so forth. Well, enough about the fish, cuz I'm sure after you read this you'll think I'm really out of my tree for obsessing so much over fish. I think it's only because it is the only other living thing in our apartment and now Austin is gone, lol. But, really, I don't think I should be this entertained.

Well, as of Austin. He set out on his journey with four other guys in a tiny 5 person subaru packed with equiptment for South Dakota. That was last night, I texted him before I went to bed and received a text from him at like 2:30a which was not when I went to bed. But then he texted me this afternoon, before I came to work, letting me know they made it safe and that they were eating lunch and going to get the hiking underway. So, I'm very excited for him and know he's going to have a great time. He was only afraid of the snakes... ;-( I'm just praying that their endurance holds up because those pack were HEAVY!!! Well, that's all for now, He'll have to write about their adventures when he gets home. They are expected to return Friday night sometime!

Monday, July 28, 2008

Newness....

So, I decided to start into this new realm of blogging. I'm not making any promises or guarantees on how often I will blog and post new things, but hey I figure it's somethin' compared to nothin'. Well, our summer has been pretty busy! I'm really not sure where to start... We started off our summer going to our friends wedding back in Escanaba and since then we've had two family reunions. One for the Cunningham family, my dad's fam. in South Branch and another one that we have dubbed the REB reunion after my Grandma Begy, mom's mom, which took place near Monroe.

This reunion consisted of mom, dad, me, Austin, ALL of my brothers and MOST of the grandkids. Since this was mom's big birthday year 6-0, we did something REALLY special for her. Since there isn't a family photo that exists with all 7 of us kids in it, we decided we would make one. So... all 7 of us got together, unbenounced to mom and got a professional photographer to take pictures for us. It really turned out pretty amazing! Mom of coarse LOVED it and cried every time she talked to one of us after that. Well, that was in the middle of July and now we are nearing the end of the month.

Since we've been home from that reunion I have been working like CRAZY and Austin has been able to pick up a few jobs. Our, well, my, last venture of the summer will be one more trip home. I'm really looking forward to it since we haven't been home since the end of May. It's a surprise to Mom and Dad. Well, I hope to keep it that way anyway, I won't give her my blog address until then, lol! Austin will have one more exciting adventure of the summer before school starts up again in the fall. He's going to be going to South Dakota to the badlands for a hiking/camping trip with some of the boys. He's really looking forward to it. I'll miss him, but I'll find 'girly' stuff to do while he's gone. I say 'girly' in quotes because as most of you know... girly isn't really what I'm all about. But anyway, so we're both looking forward to that. I'm really excited for him!

Well, I think that pretty much wraps up my first blog entry, although I think I'm gonna have to go back and type up another one about our life and where we're at, because not everybody knows all that news. So this will probably wind up actually being my second post. Signing off for now!

Where we're at now...

Okay, so I decided to go back and add a blog about where we are at and what we're doing now. So, we've been married for 2 years now. To be precise it's been 2 years and 2 months. Austin and I are both attending Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and living right downtown Chicago. He'll be graduating in the Spring and I just started this past fall ('07). But, I do have some transfer credits that transferred from our community college back in Escanaba. So, hopefully I'll only have 2 years left or 4 more semesters after this fall ('08). After Moody eventually I want to go for my Master's, somewhere, in counseling. I haven't quite decided where and we will most likely start a family before then. Austin will graduate from the Bible department with a degree in Bible and I am working towards my degree in Pre-Counseling. After Austin finishes up his undergraduate he will be moving on to a Graduate program with Moody. So we'll be in Chicago at least another 2 or 3 years.

Austin would like to work within a church teaching small groups and mentoring people. Teaching basic fundemental classes about the faith. I would like to work out of a church or Christian organization, broad terms because I'm not really sure, with children, elementary school and under, doing counseling for those that have come from troubled homes, abuse situations, sexual abuse situations and ect.

As far as work is concerned, Austin works for Jewell Events Catering and for Moody with their on-campus catering. He enjoys it a lot. Even better he finally just got a really nice raise. So it makes his job even more enjoyable. He gets to see lots of fancy places and eat lots of really good food. His job is very easily explained especially when you compare it with my title. LOL! I am a Qualitative Assistant for a Marketing Research Facility. That basically means that I work in a place where companies come to conduct focus groups about their products or the advertising of their products and I am basically their personal assistant while they are at our facility. I get them food, make copies, start recordings and whatever else they might need. It's a fun job, nice and laid back and I've made some good friends through it. I've been working there since September of 2007, with only last summer off. It's right on Michigan Ave. so right downtown and it a beautiful area of Chicago. I love it!

And for all of those chatty cathy's and anxious people, no we are not expecting any time soon and not planning to start a family for another 2 years probably. We're at least planning on waiting until my senior year of undergraduate studies. That's all folks, for now anyway!