On Passing Tests and Planning Trips

It's official, I'm legally a Professional Engineer!  That means that I can actually sign off on official engineering drawings and be liable for their contents (eek!).  Here's my results letter:

Results Notice
PE - Environmental Exam

05/31/2013

State Board: New Jersey
Exam Type: PE - Environmental
Exam Date: April 2013
Exam Result: Pass

Congratulations! You have achieved a passing score on your recent NCEES exam. Please note that NCEES does not release numeric exam scores; results are reported as pass or fail only.

See below for information on how to proceed with the licensing process in your state. We wish you continued success in your career.

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Your certification/license will be issued by the State of New Jersey within 60 days of passing the NJ Law examination, receipt of the Activation of License form and all license fees. If you passed the FE exam, you must also forward your final transcript to the NJ Board prior to the issuance of your certification. You will receive written notification and a copy of the NJ Law Examination if you have passed the FE/PE examination and have not already taken the NJ Law Examination. PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT THE BOARD OFFICE FOR ANY MATTERS PERTAINING TO THE NJ LAW EXAMINATION.

  

I'm beyond excited, and, truthfully, RELIEVED!  That I don't ever have to take that exam ever again!  And, really, that I don't have to study any more!  Ever if I really don't want to.  I mean, unless I go back to school to get a master's or a MBA, there's no reason for me to study ever again for anything!  Weird, right? 

We'll see what happens!

In other news, Greg and I just booked tickets to go to Ireland with my Grandmother, Mom, Aunt, and Cousin in the fall.  I'm very excited about going back to the Green Isle - Greg and I went once before we were married - and the country is truly spectacular!  I can't wait to taste delicious Ireland-sourced Guiness, eat tons of potatoes, and dodge sheep herds while driving from town to town.  It's going to be EPIC!  Here's a picture of our first trip to Ireland...it'll be fun to compare these pictures to the ones we'll get in a few months...I'm sure we look much older now!  haha.

 

 

Love Letter to my Husband

My Dearest,

Phew, where has the time gone?  Five seemingly short years ago, while on a hot, sunny beach on a tiny island off the coast of Puerto Rico, we vowed to love, support, protect, cherish, and laugh with each other for the rest of our lives.  We made all those promises based on getting to know each other as "more than friends" for a mere 1 year and a couple months.  But, at the time, I hadn't been more sure of anything in my life.  Plain and simple, you were (and are to this day) THE ONE!

These past five years have been tremendous.  We have gone from being somewhat careless city dwellers to suburban homeowners.  From hockey-stand builders to true do-it-yourself construction "experts" (even if we're the only ones who will certify that to be true).  We have traveled to distant continents as well as explored a few near-home locales, all of which have been intriguing in their own right, but none have been more comforting than the calm we feel when we return to the home we've made together!  We have experienced MANY ups and our fair share of downs, but we have managed to stay on the same page, forever forging forward, together, in what is now OUR life.

In the grand scheme of things, five years doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment.  Especially when you compare our longevity with that of many of our friends and family, who have managed to stay the course of loving one person for 10, 20, 30 years and more.  However, based on the life we've lived these past 5 years, I have not one doubt that we will surely be celebrating a Golden Anniversary, together, 45 years from today.  Think about that.  45 years from now.  That's more years away than either of us has been on this earth individually.  And, yet, I'm confident that we'll be old, gray, wrinkled, and still together, and, more importantly, still in love 45 years from today.  I HOPE that we'll be comfortably retired at that point also - but even that I'm not 100% sure of.

I know I don't take enough time in our normal day-to-day routines to stop and thank you for simply being the one person I share my life with - the one who I want sharing in my every happiness, every pitfall, and every roller-coaster ride in between.  Sometimes, when I talk about you with other people, I realize just how lucky I am to have such a loving, devoted, understanding, and non-judgemental person standing by my side.  You truly are my rock. 

Thank you for being unjaded, and for constantly striving to get me to see things through the same rose colored glasses you seem to wear daily.  Your ability to see the positive side of every situation amazes me - and your willingness to work hard to achieve your goals without letting the "little things" slow you down sometimes seems like a miracle to me, who gets caught up and hung up on too many details to see the big picture you see so clearly.

Most importantly, my dear, thank you for choosing me.  I have no idea what I did in this life or ones I've lived in the past, but I am positively certain that good karma and some act of kindness from "the gods" had a hand in us ending up together.  I love you more today that I did 5 years ago, and I look forward to experiencing our love grow as we both grow as individuals and together as the super awesome team that we are.

Happy Anniversary. 

Always,

Sarah :)

We have PLANTS!

Forgive the picture quality, as these were taken on my terrible Blackberry phone, but we finally have some plants in front of our house!  We are also trying to grow more grass, so we spread some topsoil, which is why there are parts of the lawn that look like big patches of dirt. In the front of the porch, we have pencil hollies on the outer-most corners, dwarf lilacs in the center, burning bushes adjacent to the stairs, and Jacob's Ladder in front of all three.  Around the tree, we have hostas, coral bells, day lillies, and more Jacob's Ladder.  I hope these things all grow in nicely!  Greg did a great job of outlining the garden borders using Belgian Block we got for free from our town (SCORE!).  I still wish the garden to the right of the stairs was a bit higher in elevation so that everythign in the front of our house didn't look so askew, but, to accomplish that, we'd need to add a retaining wall and fill in soil from the sidewalk back, plus we'd need to raise the screen stuff under the porch - which, as you all know, took entirely too much time to get installed last year, so we aren't really interested in modifying it at this point.

We'll see what happens as these plants grow in - I was afraid of planting too many things close together, but the front still looks a little bit bare to me.  Here's hoping these things start growing and blooming!

 

   

I've Been a Very Bad Christian

Today is Good Friday.  And Greg asked me this morning if this was the day that Jesus had the Last Supper with the Apostles.  And I promptly replied, "No, today is the day Christ rose from the dead."  Then I stopped and thought for a minute at the same time that Greg said "Umm, didn't he rise on Easter?"

RIGHT!  I thought.  Easter.  That's when Christ rose from the dead.  And it was a miracle because it was three days after he died...three days...count back from Sunday...three days prior is Friday...making Good Friday the day that Jesus died.  Of course.

It scares me just a little that I had to think about this.  Because, as I've said before, I acknowledge that I'm not a practicing Catholic - but seriously, I went through a LOT of religious education, PLUS I went to church every single Sunday of my life from the time I was born up until I was 17 (almost 18) and headed to college.  I have all the tools I need to know exactly how to answer my curious husband with definitive and correct answers related to the fundamental principals and, certainly, the MOST PROMINENT FOUNDATION of Catholicism!  Yet, today, I FAILED!  Miserably.

I don't know why this bothers me so much, but it does.  Certainly I don't like failing at anything, but it's more than that.  I feel a little bit sad to know that I've lost a little bit of something that was such a huge part of my childhood.  Logically, I understand that it's because of my choice to no longer practice Catholicism, and being out of practice gives plenty of reason for why my knowledge would diminish - I'm just shocked that the diminished part is about the most important celebration in the Catholic church.

Now I'm off to prepare for this most festive holiday.  Have a Happy Easter everyone!  Afterall, it is the day that Jesus saved all the Bunny rabbits in Nazareth and brought them to a manger and had formerly scandalous women wrap the bunnies in cloth that was stolen from some dead person's tomb while his mother, Mary, cried because all she wanted was for Jesus to turn some water into wine so she could drink to forget that, despite her uncouth upbringing, her son Jesus was in love with Mary Magdalen.  Or something like that right???

Flowers, Please!

Yeah, it's been a while.  And I have nothing much to report for my lack of posts.  Mundane, I know.


On a positive note, Spring is right around the corner...and Greg and I are planning projects for our house, which is always exciting!  This year, to compliment the work we did on our front porch, we plan to tidy up our yard - raise the grade where erosion has had it's pesky way, add some plants to our "flower beds", plant some grass, and fertilize and water our lawn regularly to see some green results.  We'll see how it goes.

You've seen the "before" pictures of the front of our house from the multitude of pictures I've posted from our front porch renovation.  Now, I'm scouring the web for inspiration for planting plans for our front that will work with our lifestyle and what we want the front to look like.  Here's a few things I'm considering thanks to Better Homes and Gardens online garden plans.  At the risk of sounding exactly like my mother, grandmother, and probably my great grandmother -- That magazine sure is full of great ideas!

Cracking the Fat Loss Code: Week 4

I know, I know, I haven't posted anything in a while.  On the plus side, I've actually been following the diet I wrote about in my last post - and have only made a couple of *oopses* - not too bad for someone that usually has less willpower than a kid in a candy store.

Add a few years of life to this chic, and basically you have
a pretty good picture of the extent of my willpower.

I usually have great ideas that I don't follow through on, and find all reasons in the world to blame my lack of committed-ness on.  General reasons include having other more pressing things to do (ie watching re-runs of Happy Days), washing my hair, and my general love of chocolate.  In short, my willpower essentially equals zero.  So, when I manage to stick to something for almost a full month, I am nothing short of shell shocked, amazed, and overly proud of myself.  Gooooo me!

Anyway, it's been successful thus far - I've lost approximately 7 pounds in those 4 weeks, and I've definitely noticed a change in my feelings about food and portion sizes and eating times.  The one down side to this whole lifestyle change is that I still haven't managed to convince myself to start exercising.  I don't know what the hang up is - it's not like I have lack of time as an excuse - I think it must be pure laziness.  Why would I exercise when I could simply sit on the couch and watch MORE Happy Days re-runs?  Or a few episodes of Kourtney and Kim take Miami (or is it Chloe?) - they're all interchangeable to me.  And equally ridiculous.  I repeat, there's NO EXCUSE for me not to exercise, I just don't.  I'll get to it, I swear!

Greg has also lost weight as he's been participating in this program with me.  It's been great to have him supporting me while also making changes to live healthier - and, again - having friends at work who are also following the same plan helps on those days when I can't remember why I started this mess in the first place.

Here's hoping the good work keeps up!  I'm nervous about the SuperBowl on Sunday - watching it in the absence of chips and salsa, wings, and beer seems JUST WRONG on many levels.  I've been trying to think of low carb snacks I can eat instead - maybe something like cucumber slices with some kind of cheese and protein topping (maybe shredded chicken in buffalo sauce with blue cheese).  Hmmm...that could be interesting.  We'll see.

Enjoy the SuperBowl everyone!  And, if you're trying to lose weight, I officially state that I endorse this Crack the Fat Loss Code book - it's reasonable to follow, doesn't require weird food combinations, and teaches you really great ways to change the way you eat.  So far, so good!

Happy New Year

This post is a little bit late, but, hey, better late than never, right?

This year I have several resolutions - all of which are pretty intense to tackle:

1.  Get my financial life in order.
2.  Lose some weight
3.  Start exercising or at least moving around more regularly
4.  Pass my PE exam
5.  Create a Living Will

All of these are seriously daunting tasks for me - but I have had enough of my "just go with it" attitude.  Things need to change, and I'm the only person who can make the changes I need to make to be a better me.  Yeah, I just said that.

Thankfully, Greg has agreed to work on all of these with me - so I have a partner in crime.  Which is awesome.

So far, here's what I've accomplished for each goal:

1.  Greg and I re-looked at our budget, set up a LearnVest account that truthfully tracks the money we're spending, and are holding each other accountable for every single purchase we make.  We'll see how we fare at the end of the month when we look at totals of what we spent in January.

2.  I started a diet today.  Thankfully, Greg is on the same diet, as are two of my female co-workers - so I have lots of people to look to for support.  We're following the "Crack the Fat-Loss Code" book - which means that I can't eat any carbs this week at all.  Which is going to be interesting.  But I'm up for the challenge.  The good news is that the diet requires me to eat once every three to four hours, so hopefully I won't feel too hungry at any point in the day and lose my resolve to continue.  Today's menu:
6:30 AM - Egg McLehrer "Muffin" (mini egg/egg white crustless quiche made with turkey bacon and cheese)
9:30 AM - Cheese stick
12:30 PM - Salad with lettuce, cucumber, cabbage, grilled chicken, and dressing
3:30 PM - Tuna fish mixed with celery, onion, and a little bit of mayo
6:30 PM - Steak with steamed broccoli and salad with cucumber and dressing
9:30 PM - Protein shake (probably chocolate raspberry or something like that)

I know you're jealous!  Greg and I have both recorded our starting weights - I'd like to try to get starting pictures also - we'll see how that goes.

3.  I walked one day last week, and once over the weekend - not Great, but better than what I was doing before. This week I'll try to walk more - maybe like 3 times??

4.  The exam is in April - I will be paying for it today - and start studying soon.

5.  Living will documents filled out, just need to get some witnesses to sign off on them and make sure the people I've identified as proxies are OK with taking on that responsibility.

So far, not so bad, right?  Wish me luck!

And, good luck to all of you out there who have resolutions of your own.  You can do it!!!!