My sister has decided to move out here to Arizona!!! And, since she is a fellow photowhore and likes to go on day & weekend trips, we’ve decided to create a list of “Must Do” places here in AZ. Here are just a few things… I’ll be making a page soon with a full list.

• Grand Canyon via the Ride the Verde Canyon Railroad including the Skywalk (which scares the peepee out of me! lol)
• Sedona
• Flagstaff
• Tombstone / Bisbee
• Lake Roosevelt
• London Bridge in Lake Havasu City
• Montezuma’s Castle
• Out of Africa Safari
• Dolly Steamboat
• Pueblo Grande Museum and Cultural Park
• Hoover Dam
• Wildlife World Zoo

While there I ended up taking a ton of photos myself and I finally felt the photo juices flowing in me again. I got burnt out. Not only do we hardly ever go anywhere, until recently, there was no one to go with. Not to mention that it’s like a bazillion degrees out in the summer. So, now that Shelby is all in to photography too… Maybe I’ll get to go out more often!

I also started entering contests at W1k again. Just recently, I did really good with one of the photos I took while we were at Goldfield. Well, actually, I did super good! LOL It was a contest on making something look like a toy model. My submission got me 5th place in an advanced contest AND my highest score to date! That was a lovely confidence booster.

Another cool thing. A few weeks back, one of Shelby’s assignments was to find as many letters of the alphabet that weren’t really letters… like this:

So, we decided to have a competition to see who could find the most letters. We haven’t tallied the numbers yet, but it was an amazing tool to see beyond the big picture! I took so many photos of things I never would’ve even thought of because of that! We’ve decided we’re going to do that from now on (when we actually go somewhere). My goal the next time we go to Disneyland is to find the entire alphabet and as many hidden Mickeys as possible! It will be a ton of fun! Not to mention, the alphabet is good for 26 days straight of post for my photoblog! LOL

It took many hours to load my music. I went to bed at 1am while it finished loading the last 1287 songs… and (this is so pathetic LMAO) I actually had a nightmare that it loaded a ton of crappy music I didn’t want on it!!!

I feel like I have a ton of music, but I actually only loaded 2601 songs. Of course I still need to load some that, for some odd reason, I never ripped. Plus, there are 100s of other songs I know, but don’t like.

I also downloaded a few apps as well… Twitterrific, eBay, IMDb, mailPro, WeatherBug & a few games too.

Some of the coolest features… It has a built in speaker, voice command & shake to shuffle songs.

I also downloaded the trial version of TuneUp Companion. (TuneUp is an iTunes plug-in for Windows users which helps you analyze, clean up, and correct track tagging SNAFUs in a fraction of the time it would take to do them manually.) It seems pretty cool, and I may purchase the full version.

Yes… I am super in love with it!

Whatcha Got Cooking? Is a blog of recipes that have been tried, tested & invented by Me, my mom Janet, my sister Tammy, My SIL Tawnua & my brother’s girlfriend Shannon and our families. Some are traditional, some are super funky and some are a little of both.

The goal with this blog was to share our various recipes with personal tidbits… all of which have been made by one of us. I didn’t just want to fill up a blog with random recipes… there are so many blogs out there like that already.

Top 5 Files was born out of my love of lists. I am compulsive about them… and I have no clue why.

This blog also stems from something my family loves to do when we all get together. We will just hang out and go through random topics picking our favorites… least favorites… and so on. Over the years, we done many such rounds and I have a whole brain folder full of them.

To start, the lists will mostly be mine & any interesting ones I find on the net. The topics will range from Music, Movies & Television, Recipes, Traditions, Funniest, Craziest and so on. Basically, anything goes… within (PG13) reason of course.

I lost my huge magnetic paged photo album with 1000’s of stickers my Sophomore year of high school when my locker was broken into. It was heart breaking, especially when I started seeing my stickers stuck to just about everything all over school.

A few months ago, Nikki and I started talking about stickers & she told me she always wanted to collect stickers too. So, for Christmas, we got her a nice 12″x12″ scrapbooking binder, extra sleeves and pages and a bajillion stickers. I had WAY too much fun picking them out for her. Then she told me that she thought it would be awesome if I started collecting them with her. Well! Who am I to say no to some super fun Mom/Daughter time!? LMAO…

So, I bought myself an album and exactly 1 sheet of stickers… can you guess what they are??? St. Paddy’s Day of course! Yay! I am officially collecting stickers again!

First, let me say (belatedly) Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa… and so on.

Our holiday week was both great and devastating. I’ll start with the devastating and get it out of the way.

As I wrote in my last post, our car died on the freeway, leaving me stranded for 4 hours. Well, it turned out to be the timing belt. Let me just say this first… DO NOT BUY A KIA and second, if you do or already have one… CHANGE THE TIMING BELT BEFORE 60,000 MILES.

OK… here goes. When our timing belt broke, it destroyed our engine and I mean that literally. From the 50 bagillion phone calls I made and the 100 bagillion people I talked to, I have come to find out that: 1. Side mounted engines such as the one in ours suck 2. The timing belts that come in the Kias are notorious for being defective 3. Warranties don’t mean shit when it comes to the important & can often screw you!

We had 2 warranties (the 100k tranny warranty via Kia & an extended 100k bumper to bumper warranty via Fidelity) and neither, after paying all that money, was willing to cover us for a new engine, not even a used one. We were a few thousand miles over the 60k mark so the tranny warranty wouldn’t cover it & because we had a tranny warranty, the extended warranty wouldn’t cover it… nice little loophole system they all have worked out, isn’t it?

And here’s the kicker… we can go on Craig’s list and buy a used, running, kia for less than what they want to charge us to put in a used motor! Needless to say, we will be parting ways with Kia. Thank God we still have the Taurus! God Bless American!!!

OK, enough of the bad crap… and even though it cast a shadow over Christmas, it was so wonderful to see my Mom, Sister & BIL! We had an amazing ham dinner that turned out waaaaaay better than I was hoping for! Juicy, juicy, juicy!! I don’t even think the Honey Baked Ham I got a few years ago was that juicy! We didn’t get to do the all girl cookie party we had planned on, but we’re gonna try for our next get together.

Christmas day wasn’t half bad either! The girls were quite happy with their presents. We had a wonderfully quiet day and then T grilled us up some delicious ribeyes to go with my “famous” pan fried potatoes and Greek salad. I didn’t get an iPod… but with the car issue, it would’ve been stupid to spend that kind of money.

And last… My SIL found a nice daycare for my nephew so I won’t be watching him anymore. I’m going to miss having the little guy here, but the driving was killing all of us and his mom wants him to have more interaction with other kids. On the upside, we are going to set it up so that I can have for the day every couple weeks or so… and I’ll have more time to work on client’s blog templates.

All in all, it could’ve been a better holiday, but we made do and the girl’s were happy… and that is what counts!

I was on my way home from dropping off my nephew, about 10 miles from home AND about to get on a high ass exchange bridge, when the car did a little chug then just powered down. (I guess the timing belt broke from what every says.)

Extremely long story short on why I was out there for four friggin’ hours…

1. We have extended warranty (thank gawd T was on the ball with that one) so I called the dealership… which isn’t the original dealership because they closed. They tell me to call the warranty people since they don’t have any records from the other dealership.
2. I couldn’t find the warranty info, so I called my car insurance roadside assistance & they tell me towing isn’t covered on my policy although I distinctly remember saying that we wanted it.
3. I call back dealership & they agree to send out a truck & defer payment to the repair bill.
4. I wait 30 minutes for tow guy to call me & call back only to find out that the dealership’s tow guy got off at 6:00
5. I search & finally find the paper work on the extended warranty & call them… Ya… they closed at 5:00
6. I finally break down & call the roadside assistance back & have them send me a tow truck… out of pocket.

Yes… it was a night from hell. BUT… my faith in man has been restored… from the gentleman who stopped about 20 minutes into the ordeal to try & help to the guy at the dealership who was willing to defer the towing costs to the 2 super hunky cops that helped me push the car into a safer spot & put up flares for me to the guy that stopped just minutes before the tow truck came to make sure I was ok.

Now… I get to spend the day trying to find out if we do have towing via our insurance company… If we have to take the car to the dealership… How we pay the deductible on the warranty ($100 so not too bad in the grand scheme of things) and so on. Oy.

1. I don’t technically have an iPod… yet… but I’m hoping Santa will leave me one under the tree…

2. The Top 5 Files is a blog I intend to start after the hub bub of the holiday season dies down & I am caught up on all my client work.

It will be a blog of lists. The lists will only be 5 long though. I am a super list whore. I love them, make them, revise them, print them, carry them… and so on. I also like to see what are on other people’s lists. So, to start, the lists will mostly be mine & any interesting ones I find on the net.

The topics will range from Music, Movies & Television, Recipes, Traditions, Funniest, Craziest and so on. Basically, anything goes… within reason of course. I’m hoping that, eventually, I’ll be able to send out a topic and post the top 5 responses from readers…

Anyways… All day, I’ve been going through my (38 page) music list to update with songs that have come out since my last update and it made me think of the Top 5 Files blog I want to do & I thought, maybe, if I started here & did some lists for a few weeks I’ll get some readers to carry over when I do make the blog.

So… I decided to start with Music… since I love it so much… Mostly of the Rock genre.

The Top 5 Bands That (will) Own the Most Real Estate on My iPod

1. Metallica
2. Patsy Cline
3. The Doors
4. The Beatles
5. Aerosmith

Top 5 Bands You Will Never See on My iPod

1. Coldplay
2. Celine Dion
3. Nelly, et al
4. Any Boy Bands
5. Britney Spears

Top 5 Bands You Would Be Surprised To See on My iPod

1. Neil Diamond
2. Bette Middler
3. Gordon Lightfoot
4. Shakira
5. ABBA

Top 5 Bands You Would Be Surprised Not To See More of on My iPod (because I actually just don’t like them)

1. Led Zeppelin (1 Song)
2. Pink Floyd (1 Song)
3. AC/DC (2 Songs)
4. U2 (1 Song)
5. The Rolling Stones (4 Songs)

It’ll be interesting to see what responses (if any) I get… especially on that last list! LMAO

I manged to make it out with only having broke a napkin ring… LMAO… last time, I broke a chair! No, it wasn’t because they stuffed me with turkey… it was because I have short ass legs & they had a bar stool height table… and I had to use the leg brace to get up on the chair… it wasn’t pretty… I think I wore that pinkish hue for about 4 days… Moving on…

Today, we’re having my brother, his GF & the accumulated children over to put up the Christmas Decorations. It’s gonna be a fun filled chaotic day and I may actually have to hit the 3 bottles of Grape Smirnoff Ice that have been in the back of my fridge for about 5 months now! LMAO

I will try to get a Christmas-y template made for myself today… but I’m not holding my breath!