tee hee

So last week i ordered something online and i have been patiently waiting for it to arrive.

Yesterday, there was a hang tag on my front door from Fedex - they had tried to deliver my order but i wasn't home. They wanted me to sign the hang tag so that they could leave my order there tomorrow if i wasn't home.

I couldn't wait until tomorrow so i called them to arrange to pick it up myself.

As i was speaking to the Fedex agent, he was gathering all of my information so that he could locate my order.

"Here it is" he said. Then he paused and said "Wait.............did you order a Dwight bobblehead??"

i replied: "Umm.....yeah.....and a Michael bobblehead, did they not arrive together????"

Fedex agent: "That's awesome!"

Get the gas!

A lot of people stumble across this blog looking for answers on smooth-top electric vs. gas stoves.

Here's my opinion: Go with the GAS.

I am so disappointed that i let myself get talked into buying the smooth-top electric stove. I wish i had splurged and gone with the gas.

The smooth-top is much too high maintenance. You have to be very careful about not scratching it by dragging the pots across the top which is very tempting especially since it's a smooth top and when you have a pot of water boiling over.

Your pots and pans must be 100% flat. Nothing wonky - not even slightly. We have had to get rid of so many frying pans because they weren't 100% flat, it's ridiculous. We even had to get rid of a few wrought-iron pans because they had a ridge along the outside of the bottom of the pan. When a pan is not completely flat and it doesn't make full contact with the stove, the stove "thinks" that there is nothing there and it will turn off the element.

Along those same lines, if i turn up the thermosat on an element to max, it will regulate itself by turning itself on and off frequently. It's trying to maintain an even temperature, but it has the opposite effect. It's very annoying when you're trying to boil or fast fry.

The element stays hot long after you turn it off. I didn't think this would bother me, but it does.

Along with the element staying hot for a while after you turn it off, is you can't clean it until the element cools down completely. This is especially annoying when something has spilled over and you want to wipe it up before it gets hard and crusty. You can't, and you risk burning the cloth you're using and having the fibers stick to the stove permanently.

Again, the surface is very fragile and high maintenance. If you spill any sort of hot sticky stuff on the stove, you're in trouble. Anything that is hot with sugar will pit the stove top - not good.

Furthermore, the surface is just plain hard to clean. We have to use a special cleaner for smooth top stoves, and you have to remember that you can't use a regular scouring pad to remove anything that's stuck on - you have to use a "special" scouring pad that will not harm the surface.

All this to say that i wish i had spent the extra dough and got a gas stove. Just the piece of mind alone that i don't have to be so gentle around the stove would have been worth the extra bucks, nevermind the added bonus of having gas.

It isn't easy being green.

I hate CFLs.

It's a hard thing for me to admit. On a regular basis, i do as much as i can to be environmentally conscious (save driving my car and running the water when i brush my teeth).

I have bought the reusable grocery bags. I refuse to have my meat wrapped in plastic grocery bags. I never take clear produce bags unless i'm buying beans (which is very very rare). I recycle all paper and cardboard including the toilet paper rolls and envelopes from junk mail. I save all of my leftover food. I save almost all of my plastic yogurt containers for future use and recycle the rest when i have too many. I hang my laundry to dry. I turn off lights. I turn off the heat.

I truly wanted to like CFLs but i just can't. I HATE them.

They suck. They are expensive and yet ironically, they look like discount. I can spot a CFL from a mile away. When i walk around my neighbourhood i can point out every house on the block that uses CFLs - "CFL, incandescent, CFL, CFL, incandescent" or instead i'll say "gross, nice, gross, gross, warm".

It doesn't seem to matter if you buy the "warm" light CFLs. They still cast a hideous, low wattage film all over the room.

Mat has even tried to trick me into liking them. He will install CFLs where he thinks i wont' notice, but i always do. Now they're in my closet and make my already sorry wardrobe (if you can call it that) look even more pathetic. There's one in the hallway and another in a side table lamp. Hate hate hate.

Thank god the pack we bought don't work with dimmer switches which we have in the rec room.

And hey - did you know they have mercury in them? I didn't. I dropped one and it broke and i just wiped up the broken glass and vacuumed. Now i've learned that if a CFL breaks you are supposed to make all humans and pets leave the room for at least 15 minutes immediately after the bulb has broken. You are supposed to ventilate the room by opening outside doors and windows. You are supposed to turn off the central heating and air conditioning. Then, when you clean it up you are supposed to but the broken pieces and anything you used to clean the area into a GLASS JAR with a METAL LID. THEN, when you vacuum (which you are only supposed to do if you have carpet because by vacuuming you are increasing the chances of it being recirculated into the air every time you use the vacuum) you are supposed to again turn off the central heat / air and then wash the vacuum canister or dispose of the bag into a GLASS JAR with a METAL LID. You are supposed to follow the same procedure of ventilating the area and turning off the heat / air the next several times you vacuum. You are not supposed to wash clothes in the washing machine that have come in contact with the mercury because it can contaminate other clothes when you wash them in the machine - you are supposed to DISPOSE of any and all clothing and bedding that have come in contact with mercury. Only clothing that has been exposed to the mercury vapor is ok to put in the washing machine. Don't believe that this could be actually true? Here you go:

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf

Umm.....scary much??

I am so worried when the time comes that incandescents are banned. I've told Mat that when they make the official announcement i will stock pile our house with incandescents. I mean really, at 80 cents each or however much they cost, it can be my Christmas present.

Does anyone else have a problem with CFLs?

Wedding update

Do i owe you an update?

yes, i think so - thanks to the 2 people left who might be checking this blog - a BIG thank you.

ok, so updates....

My dress came in (about a month ago - i know, i know...sorry!) i had a nightmare just once that my dress came in the day before my wedding, which didn't bother me, and thankfully it didn't need any alterations, and i wore all day on my wedding and then at the end of the night when it was just myself, Mat and my parents sitting in the empty restaurant after everyone else had gone home, did i notice that my dress was NOT the colour that i had ordered - and i balled, and everyone kept trying to convince me that it was fine because i didn't notice until NOW and it's all over anyway and that it looked great in the colour that it was, but that didn't help me because it was NOT MY DRESS. Dreams are so weird. Needless to say, my dress DID come in the colour that i ordered it in because i checked the tag and it said "platinum". Phew. You have no idea how badly i want to post a picture of the dress, but we'll both have to wait for another 6 months...

We have finalized so many details. We've got the church booked, we've taken our mandatory marriage prep course, we've booked the venue and paid our deposit, we've booked our photographers (yay!), we've got the favours picked out, we've finalized a budget, we've started the invitation design process, we've finalized our flowers (bah! so many flowers!), we've started the cake hunt and the DJ hunt...just a few more things to do and we're still 6 months out . I'm feeling good about this considering i am the world's biggest procrastinator.

So, any tips and advice from those of you who have gone through this? One of my favourite parts of Martha Stewart Weddings is the "One thing i learned" section. Did i mention that i've been collecting Martha Stewart Weddings magazines for 10 years? I have every issue which come out 4 times a year - i have about 40 Martha Stewart Weddings Magazines! It made getting ideas easy!

What are some of the things you're glad you did, or wish you had, or enjoyed at someone else's wedding?