Because yeah.

Sadly I don’t have all that much to update about my life. We’ve been enjoying the day to day… working towards cooking at home more often, trying to find the motivation to exercise, playing with the dogs. Oh and watching Big Love during any free minute we have. We’re in the middle of season two; it’s so addicting! I can’t believe we waited this long to start watching it.

Last night, Cale decided he wanted to finally make some cupcakes with the rainbow chip icing we had purchased about a month ago. Which is an amazing feat in itself; that frosting lasted an entire month without getting eaten straight out of the can. And since he’s such a wonderful husband (or since I’m such a horrible cook and lazy wife who was busy doing the laundry), he grabbed the mixer and took it upon himself to make them.

So if you would like a cupcake, please come! We have about a million, and I really don’t want to eat them all.

Sidenote: I’ve been using the hipstamatic app on my iphone to randomly document my day to day life and have been posting every so often at stephcorwin.com since it’s just so easy! If you haven’t been following over there, I think I’ll maintain the format that longer posts will be here and random snippets will be there.

Now having been deep into my “real life,” for two years, I’ve found that, yes, the life that I was waiting for is very much worth the wait. I do enjoy being self-sufficient, and I’m so glad I toughed it out and finished my bachelors. So much so, that tonight I’m starting back in college. I am starting my Masters in Taxation at San Jose State. Exciting as it probably sounds to my readers, I’m actually pretty psyched about it. Everything I’ll be learning will directly relate to my job, and I’m just ready to be back in a classroom again. We have a lot of trainings here at my work, but it’s much different being enrolled in a class that will accumulate into degree. A pretty piece of paper I can frame and gaze at longingly while patting myself on the back.

It will most certainly not be the same experience I had going to college the first time. I’m just taking one class a quarter; Thursday nights this time around. So while it’s not going to be exactly like my undergrad, I’m at a place in my life where I’m actually looking forward to sitting in a lecture and soaking in more knowledge. I’m hoping I get a lot out of it, especially since I won’t be wishing the time away in hopes for something bigger and better.

Remind me of this blog post when I’m about half-way through and am thinking Why in the world did I want to do this again??

How long have you been out of school (if you are), and have you ever thought about going back? Or if you are currently in school, what are you studying?

• Work. Yeah not fun but for whatever reason I can channel my inner college student to cram in work when I need to.
• TV. Well to be specific, Dead Like Me on Hulu. We now have the iMac set up with hulu desktop and have it linked to our Harmony remote. So that basically controls my life. I’ve determined that if a show is on Showtime, I will most likely love it. Weeds, Californication, Dead Like Me, Dexter, United States of Tara. Yep we’ve watched them all. And I forsee Nurse Jackie being added to that list very soon.
• Fixing computer issues. Not that I obsessively spent four hours into the night trying to fix some random hosting issue. No I would never do that. Except I did. And literally had to drag myself away and into bed when I still could not figure it out.
• Cutting Cale’s hair. At midnight. Because that is normal. The spending an extra thirty minutes assuring him that no it’s not too short, and no you don’t need to shave it all off now.
• Folding laundry.
• Surfing The Knot because I’m shooting a friend’s wedding next week, and I am so not prepared whatsoever. Thank goodness it’s pretty low stress being a backyard wedding. But still, new territory freaks me out.

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep but I really cannot believe it’s already Friday. This week has been pretty darn exciting though. I went to Shaver over the weekend. Came back with a nice tan. Monday found out I am being promoted at work. Which I would totally be over the moon about had everyone in my start class been as well. But it’s a total bummer that not everyone has something to celebrate. (Shakes her fist at the economy) So while I am definitely happy and glad to be recognized at work, it’s not as great as it could be.

Cale and I have also been day dreaming about this completely abandoned, rundown cabin for sale in our town. I know, such a random thing to drool over right? But it’s super cheap, and even though we weren’t planning on buying in the Bay Area for a long time, it’s a small possibility that we might look into, should we get the information we need from the county on what needs to be fixed and approved through them. But even though we’re not committed to it, we’ve been having fun picking out kitchen and bathroom stuff and talking about it like its ours. Maybe it’s our way of making up for the lack of the HGTV or TLC channels since we canceled our cable. We won’t be heartbroken should everything not work out (to be honest, I think it would save me one giant headache), but we’re casually looking into it.

I’m in a pretty good place right now. I love when I can look back on a week, overlook the occasional bad mood I encountered, and be very pleased with how it went. I struck a good balance (regardless of the sleep issues), and I know my life’s headed into the right direction.

However I have had some pretty cool stuff happen in between working hours. I got to go to Dooce’s book signing where I was accompanied by Sarah, her friend (okay shoot, I’m going to start calling you my friend since we’ve met a whole two times okay?) Elizabeth, and her sister-in-law. It was awesome to see Dooce in person and I was star-struck. During the book signing I told her that her ring was pretty and she said she got it at Banana Republic. So yeah… we’re BFF. Already sharing style tips.

A signed copy of Dooce’s book!

I’m on about page 50, and it’s just as good as I thought it’d be.. and some. You know what I’ll be doing all weekend… when I’m not working.

I even have a picture with her that Sarah was kind enough to take for me! So once I get that, you know I’ll be posting it.. my proof that I MET DOOCE!

Moving on… I finally took pictures of our new bedding and our updated bathroom. Before the bathroom was the typical porcelain blue and tan with an occasional seashell. You know, because when you get out the shower you really need to feel like you’re at the beach. Well, okay so I got over that, and hit up Pottery Barn for a new organic shower curtain and some new rugs to replace our beaten and battered old ones. It’s astonishing to me how hard we are on our linens. Our bedding was a disaster as well, and we’d gotten all these things new after the wedding. Less than two years ago. But now I’m in love with our new stuff, and hopefully we (and when I say we I mean the cat and the dogs) don’t destroy these quite as quickly.

yummy sage green and chocolate brown sheets

The updated bathroom. I love that now it can be more eclectic and I can just add little things that I love in there. Plus the bright colors in the shower curtain and the yellow rugs just make me happy. And yes our bathroom really is that small, and yes it makes me want to kill someone sometimes. It’s our tradeoff for the huge backyard.

Neo likes the new bedding too. And he loves the fact that the dogs are no longer allowed on the bed, so he gets it all to himself. Except now with the brown sheets and his white hair, we are now trying to enforce a no animals at all policy. Cats though are just a little bit harder to teach “No” too.

This is my little attempt to cheer myself up and convince myself that my life isn’t all about work right now. I have balance…. right? You all could help by stopping your lives too. Make me feel less like I’m missing out on everything. Juuuuust kidding. Oh well, April 15th is just around the corner and pretty soon I’ll be back to a normal routine of eating dinner at a normal time, actually making it to the gym, and may possibly then I’ll finally be able to get through my blog reader.

What is the most exciting thing that’s happened to you this past week?

EDIT: Picture of me and Dooce is up at stephcorwin.com Eeeee!!

What Downtown San Jose looks like from the freeway late at night

Well it definitely helps when you have an awesome husband who cooks dinner and helps out when you are working late. When I said that my husband has been such a huge help this past year, I was not kidding.

So this week when I came home and he looked like this in the kitchen, I just had to take a picture.

He’s a pro, what can I say?

How have your weeks been going? All I know is I’m exhausted and am so ready for this weekend.

Cale sleeping with the dogs (that clock says 8:57 by the way)

Neo curled up in the recliner.

My spot on the couch

The wine and Christmas candy that got me through the studying

Overall we just try to keep ourselves together and enjoy our time without letting it fly by in front of us. If this much has happened in only twenty days, I cannot wait to see what else waits for us this year, including our first wedding anniversary!

This week prior to starting work has been very eventful. Cale surprised me by getting me tickets to the Michael Buble concert this Saturday, so we rode the BART into San Francisco to pick them up. We are also looking forward to finally getting our sod put in tomorrow. I already scheduled a grooming appointment for the dogs. I am excited to finally have a pair of clean dogs. Then Sunday I am going to spend the day doing major cleaning. The dirt outside has destroyed the house, so I look forward to taking my house back into the state I prefer it to be in: spotless. We have a busy weekend ahead of us, but I hope the work I do this weekend makes my workweek more bearable.