I’m super excited about this.  I’ve wanted to run my own business since high school, and advertising is a passion of mine.  The only thing that stopped me until this point was the fact that I have zero creative skills.  However, that’s an irrelevant problem now, given that I married a graphic designer!  Andrew will do all of our design work.  Stay tuned as this blog may evolve into a business blog for our company.  (I’ll have to come up with another sweet new phrase for my personal ranting blog

TLC : I think it used to be known as The Learning Channel, but they really mostly broadcast non-trashy reality tv shows. Cameras follow around actually-interesting people, and we get to watch the non-celebrities tackle life, just as we all do. It’s really quite captivating.

My Monday nights used to be forsaken due to Fox’s Prison Break and 24 (my blog’s namesake). Those fictionalized shows tragically killed off the best characters, and I’m not a huge fan of death, so I switched to the happier Monday-night-guilty-pleasure, “Jon & Kate Plus 8″. My husband is still learning that I am physically and emotionally unavailable during the Monday night Jon-and-Kate marathons. I don’t think he is huge fan of that, but he semi-reluctantly watches with me and laughs along as the kids say hilarious things and we marvel at the crazy life this family has and cement our desire “to never have kids.” (We will, of course, one day, but for now it’s great birth control.)

Some of the network’s shows are too estrogen-filled for my loving husband (he abhors the set-in-a wedding-dress-boutique “Say Yes to the Dress” and the single-parent dating show “Must Love Kids”), but he’ll actually submit to “What Not to Wear” (and complain that they should makeover guys too), “Rock the Reception” (we both love Tabitha and Napolean, the choreographers from “So You Think You Can Dance”), and of course, “Jon & Kate”. Andrew is a fan of “Take-Home Handyman”, I think because it makes him want to be a handyman. He gets all small-home-project happy, which will pretty much benefit me a lot once we get our own home.

I like TLC so much, that on the off-chance that I turn it on and see “Mystery Diagnosis” (which has far too many corpses for my taste) or “Miami Ink” (far, far too many needles) is on instead of one of my beloved favorites, I actually get sort of bugged. How unhealthy is that? That I get mad at my favorite network if my favorite shows aren’t on…

I need TiVo…badly…

I was a tad busy the last few months doing this:

But I’m back now and committed to actually using my wonderful blog again, which I hope will be looking sweeter soon too, if I can convince my brilliant graphic-designer husband to do some work for me.

So here’s the update: We have been married for four months—married life is fantastic! (Except of course for the occasional money-fight, laundry mishap, or the permanent credit card removal, but we are making do.) The wedding came off perfectly despite a few major hiccups.

I was in the hospital having scans and ultrasounds on my rapidly-deteriorating tummy one month before the big day. Whoever said being engaged is great was LYING! It was by far the most stressful time of my life…almost killed me, in fact. My doc basically loaded me up with anti-ulcer meds. Then to top things off, I had one of the worst cold/viruses ever the week of the wedding which left me drugged out on Aleve Cold & Sinus and wiped my memory of some of the weeks’ pre-wedding activities. Thankfully, I recovered well enough (with the help of the Aleve and Vapo-Rub on my feet the night before, by counsel from one of my bridesmaids, which shockingly worked wonders), and the big day was awesome, amazing, blissful, and fantastic! We have some great pictures, and I’ll find the time one of these days to scan through all 1500 of them and actually make some prints and books.

Our honeymoon in Hawaii was unbelievable! Thanks to a dear friend, we stayed in an amazing Marriott resort on Oahu that was so beautiful, elegant, and secluded that it made us both seriously contemplate never returning to the mainland. We had plenty of time to see all the sights on Oahu (Polynesian Cultural Center, Oahu Temple, Waikiki Beach, Pearl Harbor and of course, shave ice at Matsumoto’s) and still spend loads of time on the beach healing my ulcered stomach, getting some sun, and enjoying our first days as husband and wife.

We live in my old apartment now and are working on paying off our debt so we can buy a house next year. And, hopefully, actually post a few more times between now and then….

I’m now hip-deep in bridal magazines and books….I have business cards for everything from ice sculptures to cake decorators….and at least 30 pictures of me in various wedding dresses (to be scrutinized, squealed about, and oogled over by every female in my life). We got engaged on Christmas Eve and I’ve been proudly and ever-more-expertly displaying my left hand every day since.

Like every little girl, I always dreamed about my wedding day, but I never realized that it’s a full-time, non-paying, high-stress job to plan one! I also have never had to make so many decisions in my life. I officially decided, given the hours I’ve spent looking at color wheels trying to pick a wedding color scheme, that I hate every color (literally, all of them!). I had no idea that there were upwards of a 100 different kinds of silk. I’ve never been more psycho-observant of every floral display I run across. I can’t believe that cakes come in every conceivable shape including round, square, bundt, and off-balance Who-ville towers. I still don’t understand how invitation paper could cost more than my wedding dress.

I have also never had so many opinion-givers in my life, with an opinion about the lace on my dress, the ribbons on my favors, or the absolute necessity of a wedding videographer. And I’m feeling slightly unpopular now having made my guest list and recognizing less than half of the invitees (apparently I have fewer friends than our parents’ lists of old friends, church members, and long-lost relatives).

I know that this is possibly one of the most fun moments in my life, being the one who is pointed at when a dress shop owner asks my entourage who the bride is. I get to play dress-up in a gorgeous gown, have an awesome party, and marry the love of my life. And I plan on documenting all the splendor (read: laughs, tears, squeals, near-bridezilla-moments…) here on this blog….stay tuned….

The doc gave me some drugs that I have to take for a few months (at least), and she ordered me to give up carbonated drinks, spicy foods, and chocolate (which means no more Dr. Pepper, Bajio, or Snickers, at least for awhile….so not fair).  So I’m not dying, but I wasn’t perfect either.  I’m supposed to be mostly better soon, but it takes awhile for the stomach lining to heal so I still have to tread lightly when it comes to food for the next few months.  The pills are definitely helping…I’m no longer sustaining life on my usual afternoon cocktail of Pepcid, Tums, and Mylanta.  Now I’m basically just driving my boyfriend crazy begging for a coke every time we eat out!

I’m nauseas pretty often, but it’s been worse lately (and no, weasels, I’m not pregnant…don’t be stupid), so I have spent most of the last few days convincing myself that I am dying of a million different diseases. How many can you name? Because I can name a lot: leukemia, breast cancer, hepatitus, meningitis, lupus, stomach cancer, aneurysm, Lou Gehrig’s disease, AIDS, Ed’s disease (that’s lack-of-sleep-from-too-much-dating-disorder), syphillis, generalized anxiety disorder, etc. I’m driving my mom and my boyfriend nuts by constantly asking, “Am I dying? What if I have fill-in-the-blank?” 

To make matters worse, I have an extreme phobia of doctors, so until I am tied up and physically dragged to the doctor’s office (which my boyfriend keeps threatening to do), we’ll never know the answers to those questions.  I actually crossed the line into totally-irrational-land yesterday when I asked if there was such a thing as tongue cancer.  Yea, I know.  Crazy.

So since I am considering seeking medical attention, we will now start the betting:  I am either a) dying of a horrible disease, b) suffering from simple ulcers over all the worrying about dying of a horrible disease,  c) dying of multiple horrible diseases, or d) certifiably insane……or e) all of the above.  Place your bets. 

I didn’t.

I have been existing quite happily on Earth, far from the edge. Well unless you count Nashville. (Kidding, guys.) I spent two glorious weeks there this month, recooperating from my particularly hectic life lately. And I have been going at ninety miles a minute since….

Work is awesome; the last few months have been busy, but lucrative. I’m taking over as President of a local business organization in two weeks, which will add more chaos to my life…small sacrifice for the honor and recognition. Family is doing well…all partying in happy valley currently. I’m spending the precious few remaining hours with my new boy, who has been so amazing to put up with me and my craziness lately. And I think I’m somehow managing to get a few hours of sleep…..somewhere in between the pop tarts and vitaminwater.

I promise I’ll be back with more fun soon, but until then, sneak a peek at this video I saw today.  This dude actually won the competition, the cash prize, and a record deal. What an inspiration! We should all find our inner diamond.

Am I talking about seeking treasure? jewels? holy grails?  No such thing…typically only something shockingly ordinary.

This happened last weekend as I got into my head an overwhelming desire to watch the 80s flick, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” The title came up during dinner, and I decided (without vote, I’m sure) that we stop at a nearby store so I could buy it and we could watch it.  I still don’t know if my dinner companion embraced this idea wholeheartedly, but he went obediently along with it.  As we stopped at not one, not two, but three stores (and I thought Wal-Mart carried everything!), we resorted to running to a Blockbuster and simply renting it or something else. 

As we pulled up to Video Rental Store #1, I joked that they would stock it (unlike the stores) but it would be rented out.  Of course, I jinxed us right there…it probably disappeared in a puff of smoke the moment the words came out of my mouth.  I have been on one too many late-night trips to the video store during marathon 24 sessions in a desperate hunt for the next disc…I’m used to the disappointment of coming up emptyhanded. Naturally, my prediction was correct (turns out, sometimes I do hate it when I’m right!), so we had the clerk call another local store…out. 

Convinced that we were now committed to the quest, we hit a different video rental chain to seek out the elusive, cheesy-yet-entertaining flick.  Out.  Informing them of our insane search, they willingly called another location.  It was in that store’s computer, but (miraculously) stolen.  The clerk offered to call the last location in the county we hadn’t searched.  As this latest development was the most fantastical explanation for our shortage of fun-having-girls thus far, we said, “Why Not? May as well try one more….”  Eureka!  They had the apparently-recently-very-popular film and held it for us.  We watched, we laughed, satisfied with completing the quest, yet laughing ourselves silly at the complete absurdity of it all.

 Heaven help you if you are in a five-mile radius the next time I start a ridiculous quest….