Monthly Archives: July 2008

Laughing out Loud

Posted on by
5

I am having so much fun with TDH… too much fun, maybe.

He made us dinner last night, during which we listened to old records (The Cars, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin), danced in the kitchen with our glasses of wine in hand and chattered about the most random things before settling on the couch to watch one of my favorite movies, Happy Accidents.

We munched on Dark Chocolate Covered Joe-Joe’s from Trader Joe’s and wound up on the floor where he tickled me, I perused his many books, and I showed him some of the easier Personal Training moves from ManMate.

Besides actually liking this guy, I relish in the fact that I laugh… a lot. I don’t remember the last time I smiled and laughed this much with a guy.

(Random side note: apparently the blog world doesn’t care to read you when you’re happy. My page views are significantly lower now that I’m seeing someone. Interesting.)

Love/Hate

Posted on by
1

It’s been far too long…

Love: Apartment Hunting.
Hate: The idea of packing. At first I thought I didn’t have a lot until I realized I own 90% of what’s currently in my apartment. I am also a little nervous to live all alone; I know I’ll like it but there will be no ManMate to hang up the curtain rods, take out the trash or walk Jack if I come home a little too inebriated to walk. TDH is just going to have to stick around!

Love: Cheap heels.
Hate: Cheap heels. I bought this hot pink pair at Charlotte Russe only becuase they match a few of my favorite going out shirts. However, the balls of my feet hate me after about one hour and since I wear heels nearly everyday of my life, I know it’s the quality of said shoe.

Love: Summer.
Hate: I feel it slipping away. Grad school courses start again in a month. ONE MONTH. Bridal Showers/Bachelorette Parties/Weddings also start in August. While I’m excited for Canada (okay, who am I kidding? I’m very excited) and my friend Mel’s wedding, I’m not prepared just yet to end the Summer of Nora. I forgot how liberating it is to do things that you want to do and not doing them because you feel obligated.

Love: FOOD.
Hate: I have marginally fallen off the healthy eating bandwagon. I’m still hitting up the gym four-five times a week for an hour each time, but my body is angry with me for neglecting my grilled chicken, broccoli and protein. Dating makes it hard. Having a life makes it hard… so I am going to have to buckle down.

Milestones

Posted on by
Reply

As we all know each relationship has significant milestones: first date (ours was Blueberry Hill & Ted Drewes), first time he holds your hand (the night he made me dinner not only did he hold it, he gave me a really awesome hand/arm massage), first kiss (also the night he made me dinner, pretty impressive), first time he calls you his girlfriend (see yesterday’s blog) and then other things like meeting his best friends, crashing at his place for the first time, making weekend plans together.

Yesterday was a two-in-one. Meeting the friends and staying at his house. The staying at his house part was easy… cute, even. Brushing our teeth together. Getting water before we trekked up the stairs to the loft part of his condo. Setting our alarms in unison (although he got to sleep until 7 and I was gone by 5:45).

And meeting his friends went pretty well. We did a low-key dinner at a Mexican place in South City, complete with margaritas (so much for my not drinking for one month idea). I was insanely nervous only because these are his main friends, you know, the kind you see three times a week. For some reason I feel more comfortable meeting people’s families over their friends.

So, two hurdles completed in one night.

Next up? I’m cooking him dinner next week. That is how you know I really like him. I rarely cook for people.

Red Carpet Divas

Posted on by
Reply

I realize I glossed over the Red Carpet Event KH and I attended on Friday night. My company is dedicated to helping out local charities so we donate sometime and computers pro bono to the Youth Lifeline America Foundation when they have their Life Skills camp in the MidWest. In exchange for our kindess Roland Williams gives us a few tickets to attend the Red Carpet Event which is comprised of:

  • Open Bars. Lots of them this year
  • A casino where you can gamble for raffle tickets to win some of their great prizes
  • An oral and silent auction. They had two totally adorable black lab puppies in the oral auction this year
  • Since they held the event at the Maserati/Bentley dealership, there were plenty of fancy cars to look at
  • Music
  • Athletes, athletes and more athletes. Highlighted Athlete of the evening: Kurt Warner. Wearing a suit that was a bit too tight (the buttons looked strained) he hung around by himself with some toilet paper stuck to his shoe. I didn’t have my camera with me of course, but it’s nice to know that even celebs have real-people moments
  • Funniest event of the evening: One of our partner companies had employees there as well and one of the women who attended has abnormally huge boobs and she wore a dress to show them off (think nude colored mesh. not attractive). When she was moving through the crowd someone ran into her and spilled a whole glass of white wine down her front. KH decided to grab a napkin I had in my hand, although she had no idea there was a cannoli wrapped up in the napkin, a “surprise,” from a co-worker of mine. As KH grabs the napkin to hand it to miss-fake-boobs, the cannoli flies into the air and miraculously lands on my plate instead of this woman’s cleavage. We were all laughing so hard we had tears in our eyes.

Off the Market

Posted on by
2

Conversation with TDH, Saturday night during KH’s fantastic 24th Birthday Celebration.

Nora: So those are your friends? (He had just pointed me out of the crowd and a table of men were waving frantically at me.)
TDH: Yup. They wanted to know which one was my girlfriend.
Nora:… huh?
TDH: I mean, which girl I’m seeing.
Nora (giggles): Ah, okay.
TDH: Although, it has been close to seven or eight dates. That’s usually the threshhold for me in terms of that conversation.
Nora: Did you just ask me if I am your girlfriend?
TDH: Yeah, pretty much. So…?
Nora: You mean you don’t want to “kind of,” date me anymore (long story, inside joke)
TDH: Nope. I want to date only you. And I want you to date only me.
Nora: Okay, I think we can make that work.

( It was much cuter than it reads, I promise. Mostly because TDH has an adorable smile that was plastered to his face during this entire conversation. And I was caught off-guard. I mean, how often does a guy actually ask you to be his girlfriend like that?)

*****************

The next morning I changed my facebook status from “Single,” to “In a Relationship.” That means it’s really official.

Sleepy Sunday

Posted on by
Reply

I’m going to be totally cliche and overuse a phrase that I don’t really like but it fits the way I’m feeling: life is good.

Why????

  • I didn’t let myself look at a computer screen as part of my detox for the last two days. It does wonders for the mind, the eyes, and the blood pressure.
  • KH and I attended a blacktie event on Friday night for a local charity. The people watching was at it’s best (note: do not ever wear silver heels that have metal, spiral coils up your calves with a dress that doesn’t cover your buttcheeks, has hideous zippers and a collar) and we enjoyed some light food fare and complimentary cocktails.
  • Little Man had his fifth birthday party yesterday and I was lucky enough to be invited. We partied with Chuck E. Cheese, enjoyed some fabulously greasy pizza (really, it’s pretty good!), and I couldn’t help but smile as I watched him parade around from game to game, informing people he’s growing because he’s five (duh, Nora, didn’t you know that you grow when you’re five?). I have been sitting him for three years now and will be around as long as he lets me.
  • KH turned 24 yesterday which naturally called for a celebration including way too many beers, shots, pictures and dancing festivities followed up with late night pizza. TDH (that’s the Irishman’s new nickname) met KH and TLo yesterday and they really like him (thank goodness).
  • Managed to go to the office for two hours today to bang away at the accumulation of email, paperwork and random crap that piled on my desk in the last week. Tomorrow, though it will be a Monday, should be relatively smooth.
  • Surprised TDH at one of his kickball games, met the team, and then returned chez moi for a great walk with Jack, laundry and laziness. I really do love Sundays. And those weekends where everything was perfect, everyone got along, and all you can do is smile.

O Canada…

Posted on by
3

So you know those supremely awesome days where everything goes right, you have a snazzy outfit on and you feel unstoppable?

Today was that day for me. As much as these conferences can be hard work, you know, constantly engaging in high-level discussions, being “on,” all the time, soaking up all the information and managing to run your job/business from the road, they can be very rewarding.

At the suggestion of The Boss and partially due to my own pride for our business, we self-nominated (weird, I know, but that’s how Microsoft does it) ourselves for an award. We managed to win three awards, all in great categories, in highly visible regions and in front of key Microsoft employees.

I also was asked to do a presentation on Social Networking (Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, LinkedIn, so on and so forth) for one of the groups in which we won an award. It’s always challenging and nervewracking for me to get up in front of 40 people, all of them above the age of 35 and have them buy-in to what I’m saying. Feedback on my segment of the day was good, I’ve initiated some sidebar discussions and look forward to growing our social networking both for my company and this group we belong to as a whole.

And to cap it all off, The Irishman (btw: I’m looking for a new name for him. He’s in IT, knows I have a blog, and while I don’t think he’d search for it, I’d rather change his name, just in case. And I suppose I’m going to stop posting pictures of myself, remove references to my city and etc. Anonymity to an extent is what makes blogging the release that it is! So… suggestions for his new name?) asked me to go to a wedding with him. It actually happens to be the wedding of the woman who set us up (he’s best friends with her fiance) and it is (Drum Roll, please) in Canada.

Before you get started with the “it’s only been a few weeks,” and “it’s too soon!” and “momentum like this can’t keep up forever,” let me stop you there. I am excited. It feels right (if it didn’t, I wouldn’t have said yes). The Boss and I had a l-o-n-g discussion about relationships, my past relationships and dating late last night over dinner post-Microsoft parties and networking and he admitted he hasn’t seen me this ecstatic about a boy since the last-serious-relationship-of-which-I-do-not-speak. I’ve spent two and a half years of my young dating life watching from the dugout, too afraid to step up to the plate and bat, for fear of striking out or worse, getting hit by a pitch. So now, I’m up to the plate, ready to swing for the stars and if at some point I happen to get caught stealing a base or thrown out while running to the next step, so be it. Until then I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.

Retracting Texas Fun Fact #1, and Fact #4

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to a commenter on my Texas Fun Fact #1, I did some research about the Texas Flag & United States flag regarding their height. Evidently, according to Wikipedia, it’s an urban legend. In fact, any State flag may be flown at the same height as the U.S. flag but most state laws suggest the State flag be flown below the United States flag. My apologies for posting information that was erroneous!

From Wikipedia:

It is a common urban legend that the Texas flag is the only state flag that is allowed to fly at the same height as the U.S. flag. Allegedly, Texas has this right inherently (as a former independent nation) or because it negotiated special provisions when it joined the Union (this version has been stated as fact on a PBS website[3]). However, the legend is false. Neither the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States nor the Ordinance of Annexation contain any provisions regarding flags. According to the United States Flag Code, any state flag can be flown at the same height as the U.S. flag; the U.S. flag should be on its right (the viewer’s left), however. Consistent with the U.S. Flag Code, the Texas Flag Code specifies that the state flag should either be flown below the U.S. flag if on the same pole or at the same height as the U.S. flag if on separate poles.[1]

Texas Fun Fact #4: King Ranch is the largest Ranch in Texas.