Halloween at Work

Happy Halloween everyone. Some people dress up where I work. There's a lot of candy and other craziness. Here I am (I didn't dress up...I know, I'm such a loser) with my friend (and co-worker), Jeff. He's dressed up as a Hawaiian tourist or Bernie from weekend at Bernie's.....one of those.

Doesn't he look dead sexy? I love the sunglasses. :)

Lame Halloween Celebration....

Sorry for the blogging hiatus last week. I was really busy at work and didn't get a chance to post anything.

So, Terralyn and I decided that instead of dressing up and celebrating on Saturday night (she was going to dress up as Jem from Jem and the Holograms and I was going to attempt to be Pizazz, the head Misfit. Remember Jem? She's truly outrageous!).

Well, after trying on different clothes and not feeling the whole thing, we decided to bail on being adventurous and went to go play pool at Kips Pub. There was a lame live band, a "grittier" crowd than we are used to, and LOTSA pool. So, we got our pool on and ditched the costumes. It was fun despite being somewhat lame compared to what we were trying to do that night.

NOTE: I have a bunch of new pictures on my Flickr Photo site if you wanna check 'em out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94106373@N00/

Swing your partner round n' round!

Friday night I went to Conner Prairie (an outdoor history museum) with Terralyn and some others. We ate some food, roasted marshmallows and went on a haunted hay-ride. The hay-ride was cool with a very realistic looking headless horseman riding up behind us toward the end of the ride. The coolest part of the evening, however, was the barn-dancing (square-dancing, essentially). That was kick-ass. I was Mariah's partner (Terralyn's daughter) and we circled left, circled right, sashayed and passed on through! Yeeeeeehaaaawwww!

Pictures coming soon....I left my camera cord in TL's car and so I have no way to download them at this time. :)

Getting Fit!

After two winters of getting sick a lot which made me feel quite sloth-like (Sloths move only when necessary and then very slowly: they have about half as much muscle tissue as other animals of similar weight. They can move at a marginally higher speed if they are in immediate danger from a predator (15 feet per minute), but they burn large amounts of energy doing so), my level of physical fitness has noticeably decreased. In turn, my weight has increased a tad.

Things have been better recently, so I've been able to get back to the gym on a regular basis. For over a month now, my friend, Tyler, and I have been hitting the gym to lift weights three days per week. We recently added in cardio to the mix, running on Tuesdays. I also try to swim once per week and I believe I might add in another cardio day on the weekend at some point, but not yet.

The results are already noticeable! I've been getting back a more toned figure and, more importantly, I've been feeling better - more positive and energetic. It's my hope that I lose about 8 pounds of fat (give or take) within the next two or three months. Yay!

Squirrel Story

I often drive home to eat lunch. It makes for a nice break in the day and my cats love the company. Well, the other day I was driving back to work after lunch and drove my car wheels directly over a small mound in the road so I wouldn't actually hit it (I didn't know what it was and I hate driving over road kill.....I know it sounds weird, but it seems like I'm being disrespectful of the dead little animals if I drive a tire over them). As I drove over it, I looked in my rear-view mirror to take another look at it and all of a sudden I saw a little head pop up. I sucked in my breath in shock and slammed on my breaks....what was it?? Did I hurt it?? So, I turned my car around and went to check it out.

As I got out of my car, parked at the side of the road with its flashers on, I started walking over to the mound. As I got closer, I realized it was a young-ish looking squirrel. It looked like a teenager squirrel. It didn't look hurt, but it wasn't running away from me. I was within a foot or so from it and it used it's little front arms to get away from me. It's little back leg was squashed....Awwwww, poor little guy. So, I shepherded the squirrel across the road. It kept running (with it's front paws) in circles, so I had to get him to go in the right direction. He was so close to me I could have bent over and picked it right up. I got him close to a tree and then got back to my car.

I sat in my car for a good minute looking at the squirrel. It wouldn't live long.....a cat or other predator would surly snag it for a snack. What do I do? Go back to work without trying to save it or go back home and get the tools to catch it and take it to the Wild Animal Refuge in Bloomington? Of course, I'm sure you all can guess what I did. But, upon my return with my cat-carrier and a towel, the little guy had climbed the tree to a branch tall enough that I couldn't reach him. So, I saw this as a sign that I did all I could do and went on to work. But, I've kept my cat-carrier in my car since then just in case.

No Clear Winner....

Thanks for voting on my poll!!! Unfortunately, there was no clear winner. The top three 80's TV shows were:

• Three's Company
• Alf
• Family Ties

Mork and Mindy got no votes at all. Looking back, I guess that was a pretty dumb show. Oh, and I decided that it will be a bi-weekly poll, as every week is too much polling.

UPDATE: I've had some new voters and it looks like Three's Company is the winner! Whoo hoo!!

Happy Birthday to Leila...

Happy Birthday to my sister, Leila!

Love,
Mona

PS Leila is in blue. I'm in pink.

Mona's Weekly Poll...

Wanna have some fun wasting time at the office? I've decided that all my blog-viewers need to participate in a weekly poll. I will ask random, unimportant questions with answer choices that you vote on. You can check back to view results, but I'll announce the winning answer-choice at the end of the week. I may downgrade to a monthly poll if it seems that the weekly poll is a bit too aggressive of a time-frame.

This week's question?

*What's your favorite 80's TV show?*

To vote, visit my poll website:

http://blue.butler.edu/~mkheiry/

Thanks for playing, folks!

A menagerie of interesting tidbits....

Congratulations to Jen and Silas: I'm a Godmother! My good friends in Denver, Jen and Silas, just had their baby girl, Emma, last week. While I don't believe, religiously speaking, I am an official godmother, they have asked me unofficially to be the godmother. I am proud to take on the task! I hope to visit them sometime soon so I can meet my new godbaby.

Happy Birthday to James! A big, heartfelt happy birthday to James!! I hope it's a happy celebration despite your foreign surroundings. :)

Flickr Photos: For those of you who have not noticed, I have a link on the right side of my blog to my Flickr photos page. It's a site that stores all my photos, although I only have a small percentage of all my photos in it right now. I will slowly populate it with the rest. So, check back and see if you're in it!

Bonfire: I didn't do too much this weekend, but I did attend a bonfire gathering at my friend, Rachel's. It was fun. We drank cider, made smores, made ice cream and played a bit of euchre. Of course, I totally kicked ass at euchre. But I can't claim that it was because of my phenomenal skill since one of the team-members I was playing against was Terralyn and she had never really played before (she's from Florida and has a lot to learn from us mid-westerners).