25 Random Things

1. I have been downhill skiing three times in my life, and my best accomplishment on the slopes is that I only fell 5 times one day. This is a huge accomplishment for me!


2. I am kinda scared by the water skis in our garage right now, since I've never been able to actually get out of the water in my many attempts. This summer presents a challenge for me...we now have a waverunner, and I'm scared silly of all the sore muscles I'll get trying to learn :(


3. A huge personal goal that I hope to reach by the time I am 30 is to run one mile in 7 minutes or less. I am currently working at getting less than 10 minutes per mile, but have a LONG ways to go. I can run 2 miles in just under 20 minutes - small victory! I would also like to run a half-marathon at some point.


4. I have been surprised lately at how many people have no idea that I play the piano. I actually played for 12 years, and am really horrible at sight-reading. I play by ear, and am really good at playing by ear. In fact, when I started at college, my goal was to become a concert pianist, which I realized wouldn't put food on the table unless I was the best. Thus, I became a computer programmer.


5. When I was a single girl in the city, my favorite thing to do on a Friday night after a long week of work was to get take out chinese and watch at least 2 chick flicks by myself. I miss those days, but wouldn't trade my life now to have them back :)


6. I'm coming to grips with the fact that I don't get many phone calls anymore. Granted, I've really come to despise talking on the phone ever since I met Mark and talked to him for at least 2 hours a day. But to be honest, it kinda stinks that the phone never rings.


7. One of my favorite things to do at the beginning of a new year is to mark special days on a new calendar.


8. I really want to convince my husband to leave the country for vacation before we have kids. If I could only choose one place, it would be Australia. However, if I successfully whet his appetite for international travel, I would also like to go to Italy, Germany, and France.


9. I lived in Indiana for the first 17 years of my life. We moved to Humboldt, Iowa the day after Thanksgiving in 1998, during the middle of my junior year of high school. I certainly don't regret it, but find myself very jealous of people who didn't have to go through that. I really wish I had a high school reunion to look forward with familiar faces, instead of people whose names I barely recall for the brief year I lived there before graduating.


10. I'm not entirely sure I turned out how I thought I would when I was a little girl. I'm not sure if it's better or worse than I thought I'd turn out either, just different. I didn't think I'd be doing what I'm doing (programming), I thought I'd be thinner, I thought I'd live in Fort Wayne, IN or Indy, close to my friends, and I didn't even want to start looking for a husband until I turned 27. I am now a 27 year old programmer who has been married for over two years and lives about a 12-hour drive from my Indiana HS friends.

11. I really love to play volleyball! I played from 4th grade through 8th grade. I also did the summer training to play in high school (WCHS was cutthroat), only to screw up my ankle. I was MIP in 5th grade and MVP in 6th grade. I was manager my freshman year of HS and started working that next summer, so I didn't have time to train. My elementary school actually had cuts in 4th grade!! I always regretted not playing in HS after my injury, but I know it was my own fault, and I can't turn back time.

12. I also took gymnastics and wanted to be a gymnast really bad when I was little. I think I was about 10 then. Unfortunately, I got too tall too fast and became too uncoordinated to really become a gymnast. I still like to watch what those shorties can do!

13. I worked at HyVee between the Humboldt store and Sioux Center stores for seven years. I was a Shift Manager in Sioux Center for three years. The day I finally quit HyVee, I think I was in shock for a week - it felt SOOOOOOOOOOO good!! After seven years there, I was only making $7.65/hr.

14. Although I know I can't complain about having a free gym membership, I would pay the $42/month any day to be able to have the luxuries I had at my old gym in Sioux Falls. On some days, I would LOVE to just swim laps again in the pool, relax in the hot tub, sweat it out in the sauna, or run around the track with the pace lights. It's kinda depressing when there are only four treadmills, ellipticals, and a stairmaster to challenge me.

15. My favorite season by FAR is Autumn. I love the beautiful colors, leaves falling, the smell of the woodburning stove on our brisk walks around town, apple cider, pumpkin spice stuff (and pies)...I LOVE it :)

16. My Dad was killed in an accident in June 2007. It has been a tough time for our family going through the past year and a half without him, but we now have such a phenomenal reason to praise the Lord through it all! The woman who hit and killed my Dad has been attending Bible Studies in prison, and her husband became a Christian a few months ago!! While we can't always see the big picture, the Lord knows!! He sure has been speaking to me lately, and it's exciting!!

17. I don't talk to my family nearly as much as I should, especially in light of the past two years. Partly this relates to my dislike for talking on the phone anymore, but I really do wish I kept in touch with them more.

18. I think about and pray for my little brother, Josh, more than he knows. He was in a bad dirtbike accident in mid-September 2007, and since then, I think about him a lot. He has been through a LOT in his life, and I praise the Lord that he is healthy and healing so well! I also can't wait until the weather gets better so that he will be able to enjoy his job as a mailman without all the ice and nasty-cold temps!

19. I lost 30 pounds between February and June of 2007. By October 2008, I gained 12 of those pounds back. I'm disappointed in myself, but proud that I'm getting back on track and working at wittling the weight away again :)

20. I hate it when I'm at the gym working SO hard and looking a mess with my much-too-big gym clothes on, and then this one girl comes in who is.about 5'10" and maybe 120lbs soaking wet with spandex, cute hair, and a tank top, and she ALWAYS decides to run on the treadmill next to me...and runs way faster than me for 10 minutes, then leaves. I don't quit or give up, but it's still kinda discouraging. Can't she treadmill-stalk someone her own size?


21. It blows my mind that I've been out of college for four years already! Come January 16, I will have been a programmer for four years! I still have to laugh at how incompetent I was my first two months at Raven, and it amazes me how far I've come from then.

22. I sleep with a little white stuffed polar bear named 'Charlie'. I named him after my Dad, whose middle name is Charles. I got him in Duluth last summer. Mark secretly likes Charlie, even though he pretends he doesn't sometimes. I told Mark that for any holiday or my birthday, Charlie would really like to have a stuffed grizzly bear friend. Mark said the grizzly bear would probably antagonize Charlie. I gave him an evil glare and told him that bears of all sorts get along just fine...especially when they're stuffed.

23. I'm kinda a picture freak, and generally take over 2000 pictures a year. I generally get lots of flack for my picture-taking obsession, but no one complains when they have zero pictures from these events/trips and I've got 500. I am so glad that prints are only 6 cents apiece at Winkflash.com...

24. I secretly have a dance club in the server room at work. Whenever I go in to change backup tapes, I break out some crazy dance moves for sometimes up to an entire song, but most times not quite that long.

25. I LOVE my new job!! I never thought I could be happier while working, and I seriously LOVE it. I was absolutely miserable at my previous job, and especially with the commute to Sioux Falls twice a week. My boss is amazing, hours are fantastic (even if I do have to come in on the weekends), commute is non-existant, and stress level is at about at 1/10. I actually feel valued at my job, and not as though I am always being evaluated. It's awesome to see the people who use my programs and see what a load has been taken off them. The absolute worst day here has been a million times better than the BEST day at my old job. I can only praise the Lord for the way this worked out, and for putting this job right in my lap!

Rediscovery and Internet Boyfriends

After years and years of not being able to remember what my AIM password, I finally remembered what it was! Unfortunately, none of my contacts apparently use AIM anymore. It was kinda crazy looking through the contact list, since I haven't used AIM since probably my Junior year of college. It was fun to think about some of the people I haven't talked to for ages who were on there. It was also a bit scary thinking about some of the crazies I used to talk to on there!


When I was in high school and my early college years, I think it'd be safe to say I was an internet addict. I'd probably spend about, oh...4 or 5 hours on the computer every night in chat rooms and messengers. I had a few internet boyfriends (of course, I never met any of them). One in particular, I internet dated off an on for like...oh...3 years? When I was 15, I was convinced I was going to marry this guy some day. Boy am I glad I wasn't that crazy!!

During my senior year of college, I used to still talk on the phone to him on occasion (say, once every 3 or so months), until one day, he called and told me all this seriously crazy stuff that was going on for him - including some sort of gang activity, a friend of his getting severly beaten, drugs, and his desire to move to Iowa to live with me!! I was SOOOOOOOOOO freaked out! I mean, this guy had my address!! I changed my phone # a few weeks later, moved, and never told the guy where I was ever again.

SCARRY!! A few months after Mark and I got engaged, I was at work one day, when out of the blue, I had a phone call that came in from our front desk. (Strange, since I NEVER get phone calls, and I think that in my 2 years there, I'd never gotten one from the front desk!) It was this crazy internet boyfriend of mine from when I was 15!! He had somehow tracked me down and was calling me at work!!!! I was pretty terrified that he was like, waiting outside waiting for me to go to my car and follow me home. I had a coworker walk me to my car that night and was scared to death for the next week.

Moral of the story: Don't talk to crazy internet guys when you're 15 and give them your home address. They may stalk you for years to come...especially when you're stalkable!