Mom blows out the candles on her ice cream cake as Dad looks on.
Happy Birthday, Mom!

Mom turned 75 today.

It’s hard for me to believe that she’s 75. Mom and Dad have been blessed with health and a strength of spirit that I admire. As we celebrate these milestone birthdays, it scares me a little to see how the passage of time seems to pick up speed with every passing year. With the busyness that consumes my every waking moment, I often feel like life is passing me by. When I saw how truly happy and appreciative Mom was to have some of my undivided attention tonight, it made me realize that I need to refocus my priorities and spend more time with my family.

Working full-time and attending school has been a major burden for me and now that I have only 3 more days on my academic calendar before my last class officially ends, I feel like I can now have a good chunk of my life back to do the things that I never had time to do. I know it will be a challenge not to simply fill the void with even more busyness and activity. One of the things that I know I want to do is make time to take my parents out for shopping/lunch/dinner/movies on a regular basis. I don’t want to live with regrets, knowing that I didn’t give them the time that they always unselfishly gave me as I was growing up.

The older I get, the more I learn about what is truly important. Family is one of those things.

Happy birthday, Mom! I love you.

Do you have a list of songs that evoke emotions, stir memories or can only be described in one word: “magical”? For some odd reason, I was pondering that tonight as I was going through my yet unorganized iTunes Library while deftly avoiding my homework. My list may look pretty hokey to you, but these songs, for one reason or another, are among my top favorites. What are yours?

You’ll notice that these songs are mainly from the 80’s pop genre. I have a whole ‘nother list of hard rock “hair band” songs, but I’ll save that for another time. After all, I do have homework to finish. Stop distracting me!

“I’ll Be Over You” by Toto
“Fortress Around Your Heart” by Sting
“Head over Heels” by Tears for Fears
“Love Theme from St. Elmo’s Fire” by David Foster
“Man in Motion” by John Parr
“The Flame” by Cheap Trick
“Something About You” by Level 42
“Take Me Home Tonight” by Eddie Money
“Lay Your Hands on Me” by Thompson Twins
“Down Under” by Men at Work
“Miles Away” by Winger

Friday 5′ing with today’s theme — “how many”?

1. How many times do you hit the snooze button on a typical morning?
I don’t hit a snooze button, but I set two alarms, five minutes apart. The first one goes off at 6:10 am and the second one is the alarm feature on my cell phone. It’s a recording of Hubby’s voice saying, “babe… wake up. Babe. Wake up.” Bonus Tidbit: “Babe” is one of my many pet names. Yes, “babe” — like the cute little talking piggy. In my defense, he started calling me that way before the movie ever came out.

2. How many cousins do you have?
Too many to count, many of whom I would not recognized if I passed them on the street. Sad, but true.

3. How many bones have you broken?
None, although I almost busted my skull on 3 separate occasions. That explains a lot — like my diminishing intelligence, for example.

4. How many pairs of shoes do you own?
Eight, although I wear only three pairs regularly. One pair, I wear nearly every day to work. Boring, yes, I know. And to answer the question I know is burning in your head: yes, they’re black and they’re ugly, but comfortable.

5. How many things that belong in the kitchen are in your bedroom?
Shhh… the correct answer is “none,” but I will admit (albeit, reluctantly) that I have two drinking glasses in our bedroom that we neglected to take back to the kitchen.

If you’ll excuse me. I need to take those drinking glasses to the kitchen now.

This morning at approximately 7:07 am HST, Hawaii was rocked into wakefulness by a 6.6-magnitude earthquake that centered off the Kona side of the Big Island. According to the Honolulu Advertiser, it was the “largest to rattle the islands in 23 years.”

When it happened, I was in a compromising position, sitting on the toilet in a state of semi-wakefulness when I felt the ground moving under me. When the shaking continued and intensified, I jumped up and sought out the Hubby who was at the coffee maker, staring curiously as the water swayed in the reservoir. I clung to him as the quake continued. The dishes rattled in the cupboards and I wondered if anything was going to come crashing to the ground. Luckily, nothing did and the shaking stopped.

However, shortly after, the entire state lost power.

Despite the power outage, we went to church and had an awesome service — albeit, in the dark — but the worship team (led by the fabulous youth) proceeded, unplugged and unshaken. The message, given by Pastor Clint, had words specifically for me, and I mean specifically. It always freaks me out a little when that happens, even though I shouldn’t be surprised since I prayed that the Lord would open my heart and speak to me this morning. And boy, he sure did.

After church, we went to Long’s and stood in the line outside the store. For crowd control, they were only allowing a small number of customers in at a time and you had to be escorted around the store by an employee who made a list of everything you put in your wagon and the cost of each item. We were lucky enough to obtain the very last bag of ice and they closed the store to customers right after we went in. Without electricity, the store could only process cash transactions. Between Hubby and I, we only had $17 and change, so we had to limit our purchases to ice, bottled water, and a pack of D-batteries. Luckily, that was all we needed. This taught me that we should always keep some cash on hand just in case. I often walk around with less than $20 in my wallet, usually opting to pay with my handy-dandy debit card. When there’s no electricity, it’s only a piece of plastic.

We went home, put on the radio and listened to the news coverage of the seismic event. We mostly lazed around the house, took naps, talked story, read in bed by the tiny beacon of a book light, ate bread and a can of vienna sausage for dinner and waited for the electricity to come back on.

We waited a long time. In fact, at 8:45 pm, I decided to go to sleep.

Almost exactly 15 hours since the outage, at 10:10 pm, I heard the tell-tale beep of my answering machine powering up and the digital cable box clicking on. Lights from the carport outside peeked through my vertical blinds and I saw the glowing red numbers on my alarm clock flashing from across the room. The power has been restored! Hallelujah!

With normalcy firmly back in place, I can now sleep in peace.

I must admit. I seriously love Weird Al Yankovic. Amazingly enough, he hasn’t aged much since his hey-days in the 80’s/early 90’s. Well, they say that humor keeps you young. There must be some truth to that.

“White and Nerdy” is one of his best works yet, in my opinion. But then again, maybe it’s just because I can relate to it. You must watch this video! In between the bouts of excessive eating and exercise, it’s been my stress reliever all weekend.

By the way, look for Donny Osmond in the video. Absolutely hilarious!

Another set of fantastic questions brought to you by Friday5.org:

1. In what area of your life do you seem to have bad luck?
I don’t consider myself having terribly bad luck in any area of my life — although I may often lament that I am lacking in good luck, especially in terms of contests, games of chance, slot machines, etc.

2. In what area of your life do you seem to have good luck?
I consider myself lucky in the area of employment. Opportunities have always presented themselves in timely fashion and I’ve had the ability to work in various different areas, each time gaining new insights and experience. Although lately, I’ve been having to convince myself about the being “lucky” part.

3. Who in your life seems to be expecially lucky?
My long, lost friend Terry (do you still stop by to read, Terry?) who is the only person I know who consistently returns from Vegas in the black.

4. What do you do when you need a little bit of luck?
I don’t particularly believe in luck, but when I feel I am in need of help, I will pray — hard!

5. What are some of your daily rituals?
No interesting rituals here. I’m pretty boring in that respect.

I’m totally avoiding anything resembling productivity tonight. Found this site via a referral link from Mitchell’s current meme. Since I’m not ambitious enough to answer 49 questions, I took a shot at this one. Continue Reading »