Signs of the South

As a simple Midwestern girl, I recognized my perception of the world was very limited. I think in many ways I was very aware of how little I understood other parts of the country. While nothing I have seen down here is something that I hadn't heard about, seeing it and experiencing are different.

One of the more subtle differences are the signs. Let's begin with street signs. As my husband and I drove down "Lee White Rd" to get to "Dollar Store Road" on which his parents are building a house, we pass numerous cotton fields and pecan trees . He pointed to a place of business that had a sign on the building to discourage trespassing...
"Trespassers will be shot
Survivors will be shot again"

Now this is a place of business, not just some random person's residence.

I'm getting used to the confederate flags hung up on poles in the front of people's yards, as decorative license plates on the numerous Ford-150's that drive around town, or tattooed on the guy's arm in front of me at Wal-Mart. But I still do a double take.

As we drive up to Atlanta, you see the exit for "Peachtree City" and of course their is a Waffle House off of that exit, as there is at every exit on I-85. Now Mark and I are slightly addicted to the Waffle House, so we love how available they are.

But the greatest testament is that the beginning of our journey to Atlanta, we take "Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway." If that isn't a sign of the South, I don't know what is.

Moving, changing your name...the sequence of events

Moving to a new state and changing your name requires a fairly time-consuming process. The order of events in which you make these changes is critical to successfully completing the transition. Everyone told me what I needed to change, what I did not know was that order was critical.

First-Get married, you really can't do much until that is done

Assuming that was a given, here is the order of events

Wait until your marriage license arrives. You will need this to do anything.

Go to the social security office and file for a new card. You must bring I.D., your old card, and your marriage license.

Get your driver's license changed-You'll need to have (at least in GA) old driver's license, your birth certificate or passport, marriage license, proof of residency (utility bill, apartment lease, something that looks really official with your new address on it).

Change your auto insurance to your new state. You will need your spouse's information as well as your own.

Get new plates for your car. You'll need to have your title, registration, proof of insurance, and new driver's license.

Everything else: Bank account, YMCA membership and so on.

It takes a while but eventually you live where you are supposed to with the name you now carry.

Best wishes!

Warranty

In an effort to improve my timeliness, I purchased a clock for our bathroom. Since all it really needs to do is remind me that I am late, I figured your basic Wal-Mart clock would be just fine. Well I hit a deal when I found a red clock that matches our bathroom perfectly for $3.78. Quite the find.

Mark was taking it out of the box to hang on the wall and he noticed the warranty information. How great of Wal-Mart, insure the quality of there products with a warranty. Upon reading the information, the pamphlet informed us to include $5 for processing when redeeming the warranty. The clock only was only $3.78 to begin with!!

I am hoping this manufacture makes other more expensive products that might justify a $5 handling fee for warranty redemption. If my clock breaks, I'm just going to get another one. Three cheers for another American's conspicuous consumption.

Mr. and Mrs. Mark Lindberg

Here is another wedding photo :)
mark and I

Buying office chairs

As Mark and I set up our home office, we decided this weekend that sitting on extra kitchen table chairs was no longer acceptable. Well Mark had to finish a final for school, so I ventured to Tallahassee Florida, to purchase chairs. Since I'm not very familiar with Tallahassee and we had a lot of Target gift cards, I went to Target right on the north side.

Well these chairs come in some large boxes and I was shopping by myself. They only had 2 left so I put them in my cart right away for 2 reasons.
1. So that no one else would take one and I'd not have enough
2. So they'd take up the space they'd need and I could stuff my other items around.

The first one I put inside my car. The second one I put on the bottom part of my cart. The top of the box was not secured properly so it flopped around. So instead I tried to turn it around. It didn't fit that way. So I had to take the first one out, put it on the ground. Remove chair number 2 and place it inside the cart. I then awkwardly put chair 2 underneath the cart.

(By the way down here in the south a cart is called a "buggy," since I'm still adjusting I'm going to keep calling it a cart.")

I then proceeded to push my chairs all over the store so I could make my other purchases. I used up all the gift cards as I completed my registers. It was quite the successful shopping trip.

Mark, being the wonderful husband he is, helped me carry our chairs upstairs to our apartment. I was quite proud of myself managing the chairs by myself and not falling down once. They are so much more comfortable than the kitchen table chairs.

Well back to work...

Mrs. Lindberg

Well it is now official. I'm Mrs. Laura Lindberg. It is a huge pain to change your name but I figure that I am only doing this once, so it is worth it. We had a wonderful wedding and wish to thank our family and friends for all the love and support throughout our engagement and the beginning of our marriage.

The entire planning process and actual day was very fun and reasonably stress-free. It drew us closer as a family and I enjoyed it immensly. I wouldn't want to go back as it is wonderful having Mark around all the time but I will always remember the wedding with joy.

This is Mark and I with my siblings. I miss them very much and each played an important role in the wedding.

Moving down south

All my worldly belongings have arrived in Georgia. Mark tells me that I'm out one lamp and one bookcase that were damaged in the move. Since these were some of the cheapest items I owned (probably why they broke) I wasn't too disappointed. I'm pretty sure we didn't pack them very well.

I'm going to make a little plug for ABF U-Pack movers if you are ever going across the country. I was able to ship all my stuff down for less than what renting a u-haul and driving it down would have been. It was great having Mark + brother-in-laws receive it down in Thomasville.

The trailer was really clean and nice. So simple to use and now I don't have to drive an annoying truck all the way down there.

It's less expensive than full-service movers because you pack and load it yourself. The coolest part is that they don't charge you by weight. Instead it is by running feet in the truck. My move took 7 ft. A lot of movers can pull one on you saying your belongings way more than they do. Or they will quote you for a weight that is way too low. I have no idea how much my stuff weighs. I just know that my sofa is heavy.

You can visit them at www.upack.com. Seriously...long distance moves that you need to do inexpensively, this is the way to go.

I'm off to GA to unpack and set-up our new home. I'll be working on my southern accent.

Can 8-year olds to go prison?

At a recent lunch meeting, my co-workers and I were sharing stories about our childhood. I have a coworker "Mindy" who has a very energetic view of life and tends to succumb to spontaneity.

Traditional marketing practices in the late 60's and early 70's often included sending potential customers free samples via mail of a newly introduced product. I'd venture that many a child was enthralled by these new items as Mindy was. Not really understanding the concept or purpose of mail, daily she would check the mailbox to see if any new samples had arrived.

One summer day a fabulous new item arrived. She doesn't remember exactly what that item was but it was fabulous. She excitedly opened the package and used the sample. Now wouldn't another one be great. She looked around her neighborhood and noticed that every house had a mailbox. They would all have these samples too! She quickly took her bag and proceeded to remove the mail from everyone's box. Now most of it was just worthless paper, which she promptly hid underneath a tree in the backyard.

That evening many neighbors noticed the lack of mail in their boxes. Typically neighborhood gossip help identify the culprit. Being a less than logical honest 8-year old, she quickly denied her crime. The threat of federal prison from her neighbor lady caused such fear in her that she continued to deny her involvement for several days.

Finally after it became apparent this issue was not "going way" she surrendered her bag of mail. The neighbors promptly dumped it out on the table and claimed their mail.

She still wonders...is that neighbor lady right...could I go to federal prison for this?

Here is the picture

Well yesterday I had trouble with Blogger not wanting to upload my pictures. I figured I'd give it a shot today. It worked!! I hope this picture brings a smile to your face. I'd say we are one happy crew.

Doesn't he look happy?

The weekend of July 22-23 my parents and I had the privilege of flying down to Atlanta, GA to spend some quality time with the Lindbergs. Our families are getting along splendidly. So much that part of the Lindberg fam came over to my parents house yesterday sans Mark just for dinner. Some of my cousins and grandparents also came. I had to leave at 7:30 to get back to South Bend but apparently everyone else stayed till almost 10. I'm so thankful that this bond was so easily created. I knew I had a fabulous family, now I have an even bigger fabulous family.

I have included one of my favorite pictures from the weekend. It is Rachel, Mark's youngest sister, and I showing Mark that we love him. He looks pretty content doesn't he?

Ok... so I was going to upload this cute picture of Rachel and I with Mark. But Blogger isn't up for it so you'll just have to take my word for it that it is pretty cute. He has such a loving family that I feel blessed to become a part of.

Avoid Generic Ice Cream

I'll admit that I'm a naturally frugal person. I will look at the display labels at Kroger that inform me of the per unit cost of an item to determine which size gives me the best deal. I've learned grocers have fooled much of the American public that "bulk" hence "bigger" is better. I discovered that I could pay $3 for 1 40oz jar of peanut butter or buy 3 16oz (48oz) jars of peanut butter for the same price. Natural inclination would say that the "bigger" jar would offer the better deal. I also discovered this recently buying 4 quarts versus an entire gallon of Gatorade.

My careful spending has also led me to try many generic items. Many of these things have worked out wonderfully. I've found products I like equally well or even better at a lower price. These are typically your staples or basic items. Items that exist in nature make wonderful generic products. Items that are man-made have a lot more room for error. It is sometimes best just to spend the money for the name brand product.

Below is a list of products I find equally good
Milk-It is really all processed the same way, who cares if it is "Prairie Farms"
Applesauce-Kroger Brand is excellent
Oatmeal-It's basically just oats
Pasta-They've got this one pretty well down
Hamburger

Things that you should just buy the name brand
Ice Cream-FMV Chocolate is more "ice" than anything else
Oreo-type cookies-They have the name brand recognition, just go with it.
Crackers-I'm not up for stale cardboard

Whatever your preference, take a moment to check out all your options. It isn't a good deal if you don't like it. $1 saved doesn't feel like much when you are missing the smooth running of creamy chocolate ice cream down your throat.

How we define ourselves

Working in a Knowledge Management Department and interacting frequently R&D, we are not the "cool" kids of the company. While well respected for our work and contribution, if you are looking for those to spice up your party people from our department are not at the top of that list.

Now we enjoy each other's company immensely and are very content to create our own protected social circle. Hence we are "cool" to ourselves that is enough. We embrace the brainy, data-oriented, researchy image assigned to us.

As we strive for knowledge and understanding, we work very hard to make sure define ourselves correctly. We used to throw around descriptors such as "dork" or "geek" at random, assuming they meant a simple affinity with scientific and technical pursuits at the sacrifice of social popularity.

Last year R&D hired a naturalized citizen from Croatia, whose first language is Croatian. He expressed some concern with the labels we had assigned our team. His unwillingness to adopt them made us question the meaning. Well upon further investigation we discovered what those words truly mean. It is humbling to have a non-primary English speaker teach you your own language.

I have included links to dictionary.com with the definition of each word.

Dork

Dweeb

Geek

Nerd

I can handle the "dweeb" and "nerd" as they match the original intent of our jest. I'm probably not going to use "geek" or "dork" again in the near future. While old habits die hard, I want my message to be clear.

Unblinding Love

As many have accused me in the recent months of having my head in the clouds, I've had numerous opportunities to reflect how love changes the way we view the world. It certainly has it's effects but I challenge the notion that love clouds our vision.

"Love is blind" is a popular expression to convey how often new love allows us to suppress/diminish our beloved's flaws that of course everyone else sees clearly. I challenge this notion. Love doesn't blind me from another's faults, but rather helps me put them in the proper perspective. It's not that I completely miss my beloved's flaws, but rather I focus on the qualities that make him wonderful.

If we examine how the Bible describes love, patient, kind, beareth all things, believe all things, endureth all things, etc...we discover that the focus is on lifting up the person we love. Christ who showed the epitome of love chose to focus on the soul of man not the corruption. He shed his blood and died on the cross to rise again, to cover our faults so that we can experience the love of God. Nobody would argue that Father sees very clearly and his love is certainly not blind.

It is man's corrupted state that assumes reality is only that which is negative. We obviously aren't seeing clearly if we don't pointedly identify the bad. I argue those who only complain or seek the negative have their eyes clouded by sin and selfishness.

Love isn't blind, it just looks at someone the way God does, as a man/woman with an eternal soul.

Mixing of tastes

Eating is a pleasurable necessity. In times of financial hardship, food is viewed as a mandatory expense even if it is very primitive. Due to the enormous wealth most American's enjoy, food is no longer about sustenance but pleasure. Food is expected at celebrations of all sorts. To be truly admired, the selection must abound with different tastes and textures.

While all people enjoy some level of variety, how this variety is experienced in a single meal has two variations. We have the separatists and the mixers.

Separatists - People who prefer to eat all of one item on their plate then proceed to the next item. My brother and my fiancee are both separatists . Maybe they'll start with their meat, then the vegetable, then eat their bread and so on. The next item will not be started until the first one is completed. Separatists usually do a very good job of cleaning their plate. Some will only take each item from the serving dish as they are ready to consume it, reducing the likelihood they will dish up more than they can eat.

Mixers-Those who like to combine tastes and textures throughout the meal. I'm definitely a mixer. I'll take a bite of a hamburger then some baked beans followed by a bit of salad. The problem is my eyes are often bigger than my stomach and I take too much. Since consuming all my food does nothing to help the starving children in Uganda, I choose to waste some food before I'm willing to add it to waistline. I love the switching from sweet to salty then back again. I chase pretzels down with a can of Diet Pepsi. Usually having a bit of the pretzel still in my mouth when I fill it with that sweet flavor.

Now separatists can eat casseroles and other pre-combined foods, the foods are then just considered a single item. Mixers, like myself, may like casseroles less because it removes some of the personal creativity behind the combining of foods. I mean frozen pizza dipped in applesauce, who would have thought it could be so good.

However you experience the pleasure of food the only caution is to remember- there can be too much of a good thing!

luke warm pizza and chocolate

Due the craziness of my work life and some mild distractions coming from my personal life, I've decided this week to use my time efficiently and work through lunch. Doing this allows me to come into the office a bit later (because I'm up late on the phone with this amazing guy) and leave a bit earlier (so I can hit up the gym before I talk to aforementioned amazing guy).

We've had several people bring in food to the office. Nothing like spreading the unhealthy eating habits to those you work with. As I type this blog over my "lunch" break I'm snacking on luke warm pizza (I just didn't feel like getting up to warm it) and following it with a few chocolates from the S.B. chocolate factory that my secretary brought in. Now these things are fabulous...I wish I really didn't like them right now. Besides the fact the sugar wacks out my blood sugar and I get a bit lightheaded...it just doesn't sit well with me.

My boss also brought in cheese and crackers yesterday. I love crackers and the brie he had was fabulous. I really need to be stocking up on the fruits and veggies. I ate an apple at 2 out of shear remorse.

The only kudos I can give myself is that I'm not chasing this down with a can of Diet Pepsi for the caffeine boost. I know it is is vicious cycle. If I ate better, I'd feel better, etc...but I'll get there. Probably not for another 89 days but eventually.

Well I'm going to get some pretzels now...catch you later.

knock at my door

Last night while on the phone with Mark (a very common thing for me to be doing if not at work, I had an unexpected knock on my door. Since I wasn't really expecting company and didn't want to interrupt my conversation I quickly sushed and tip-toed over the peep hole.

I peered outside to see a above average height gentleman carrying a red pillow standing in front of my door. I didn't recognize him at all. As I had just come back from a run and wasn't particularly dressed for company, I quickly and quietly returned to my bedroom and spoke in hushed whispers till I was sure he was gone.

This is the most unfriendly I have ever been in my life. Mark wasn't very thrilled at the idea of me opening the door to a strange man (protective side of him coming out :)) so I refrained. I'm not confident that I did the right thing. I just hope he figured out where he was going.

If I wasn't his fiancee...

I'd probably be accused of being his stalker.

This was the comment my co-worker made to me regarding the recent explosion of pictures decorating my office. Mark and I may only have a few pictures together, but I do have most of them placed somewhere in my office. I'll admit this causes frequent distractions at work, yet I'm strangely comfortable with this.

I have included Mark and I's first picture together in the airport at Mo Bay. (Special thanks to Perry K. for this shot).

I'll admit my day hasn't been the most productive. Thankfully I was super productive at work yesterday which will compensate for my reduced output today.

I have to publicly apologized to all of my previously engaged friends who I thought were unnecessarily ditzy during this chaotic time. I'm worse than anyone I've ever interacted with and I hope that they'll find it in their hearts to forgive me.

Stories of a 9-year old drama queen

I have a good friend "Jenny*" who has a 9-year old daughter "Carrie*" who is the epitome of a drama queen. She has the big eyes, pouty lips, and lungs to blow the 3 little pigs house down. Carrie is rather opinionated (which she certainly has inherited from Jenny), yet her positions on issues don't always follow the soundest logic. This may be partially a factor of being 9 and the other part for her to be right you must be wrong. Hence she has to pick something completely outlandish.

Recently at soccer practice, the coach instructed the players to find partners for passing practice. Carrie of course is the coolest kid, so patiently waited for her partner to find her. When her intimidating stance failed to draw anyone, she pranced over to Jenny with a sincere pout.

"I can't practice, I don't have a partner". Jenny noted that there were several little boys still left that also didn't have a partner. She less than gently pointed this out to Carrie. "Go ask him over there."

"MOM!!" Carrie whispered loudly. "The only people left are boys and they are all ugly."

Well now how does one even begin to combat that. The coach did so rather swiftly with the "You don't find a partner and practice quickly, you won't be playing." But that really didn't address the crux of the argument. Then again, I'm not sure what would.

Carrie decided she could practice with her eyes "half open" and it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Oh well. Another issue solved in the life of a 9-year old drama queen.

*names are changed because some things are best identified only in person

Pride goeth before the fall

Whenever I'm going to be gone for an extended period of time, my office colleagues fish-sit my beta Russ. I align the experience of leaving children at Grandma's house. Russ of course can do no wrong and he is the most interesting thing there ever was. "Do I feed him enough?" they ask.

When it was time to take him home after my trip to Chicago in March, most of the office was quite sad and protested his leave. After many promises to be good to him, they finally allowed him to come home. To fill the void, Molly purchased her own beta, Willy.

Now Russ was 2 years older than Willy. He was not a spry but certainly had great fish wisdom. Molly wanted to test out the "fighting fish" idea behind the beta. She placed their two tanks right next to each other. Willy being the energized youngster flared his fins and prepared for battle. Russ being well seasoned did little to raise a flipper. Willy continued to circle and attempted to attack Russ. Molly decided that while this live "animal planet" was interesting, it may not be the best way to care for my fish. She then returned Russ to the other office, out of Willy's view.

Willy was very annoyed at this as his hot pursuit was interrupted. Molly comes back 2 hours later to find Willy had disappeared, fish bowl still on her bookcase. Now fish don't typically "wonder off" so she assumed one of our office mates had played a practical joke. After hounding everyone and being met with sincere denials, she began the search of the floor around the book case.

There she found poor Willy flopping on the floor. Apparently in his pursuit of Russ, he forgot he was a fish that needed water. He jumped out of his bowl only fall behind the book case. He was still flopping when Molly returned him to the bowl but his injuries were too substantial. He died a few hours later.

Russ on the other hand is still calmly swimming in his bowl enjoying a great deal of admiration and affection. He is completely oblivious to his predator's demise. Had Willy humbled himself and swam away from the fight, he may still be with us today.

Rest in Peace Willy.

Love of my Life

It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the love of my life Mark :). Believing God has called us together, we are anxiously anticipating a September wedding. I want to praise God for his direction in bringing us together. Mark is a wonderful godly man. I could type pages on all the things that make him amazing but I wouldn't want to embarass him.


Hope you all have a wonderful week!
Best wishes
~ Laura