In Sickness and in Health

This week I have been battling a lot of sickness (once again), which may be due to all of the vaccines that I had this week for our upcoming Guatemala trip (the shots had the possibility of giving flu-like side effects...and that's what I've got). So, needless to say, I've been a little under the weather lately.

On Friday night, being oh-so-thankful that I didn't have to go to any classes or work for a couple of days, my dear husband told me to lay down and rest while he made me supper. That melted my heart, I thanked him profusely (with the little voice that I had left, due to my sore throat) and I went to lay down on the couch.

After getting to rest for a while, I woke up and dinner was ready. And there, my friends, on the table were some of my favorite foods. Husby had made Red Hot chicken (mmmm...this is AMAZING, and I am going to blog about it soon in a "Favorite Things" post, don't you worry), macaroni and cheese (anything with lots of cheese in it is a favorite of mine), and broccoli (yummy and good for you!). I was pretty satisfied after that delicious meal. Thank you, husby!

We were supposed to go out on a date Friday night (we always try to have at least one date night a week...where we don't let anything distract us from each other), but since I was sick Jonathan suggested having a stay-at-home date night. I wholeheartedly agreed!

We decided it would be fun to finally order pictures for a couple of frames we had yet to fill. (Yes, we have been married for 6 months, but it has been a busy 6 months, and we have yet to finish all of the apartment-settling-in that we want to do.) So, we grabbed our big collage style picture frame, and sat around the computer to begin looking at wedding pictures to put into it (with the playlist from our wedding reception playing in the background).

That, my friends, was a wonderful night of walking down memory lane (even though it was only 6 months ago, we can still walk down it.) And it was a productive date night too, because we now have wedding pictures up in our living room (and it makes me oh-so-happy.)

Even though I have spent this weekend battling sickness, it has been a wonderful time, because I've been able to spend it with my husband. And I couldn't be more thankful.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

One of the best things about the bloggy world (or as some like to call it, the blogosphere) that I have come to know and love, is the ability to give and receive information. So this is where I'm going to let you in on a little bit of information that you may not have known before: a few of my favorite things.

This post is the first in a series I will do throughout the weeks, months, however long to come, where I will share with you a few of my favorite things. Whether it be recipes, products, books, or restaurants...I am going to let you know a few of life's simple things that make me smile (my husband, family, Jesus, friends, etc. are favorite things that obviously make me smile...but these I'm about to mention are a little less obvious.)

These are a few of my favorite things...

Hot chocolate with french vanilla creamer. I just need to take a moment and tell you how wonderfully delicious this combination is. You have not tasted the amazingness of hot chocolate goodness until you have tried putting french vanilla creamer in your hot chocolate. You will not be disappointed, my friends. Trust me and try it. And if you want some extra yummy hot chocolatey goodness...try putting some whipped cream on top. Heaven in a cup.

I don't know about you, but for me there is nothing like a nice warm and fuzzy blanket to go with my yummy hot chocolate. This blanket is my favorite! We have the Full/Queen burnt red blanket, and in addition to it looking nice folded neatly on top of our white down comforter in our bedroom, it is also great for wrapping around you on the couch to read a good book!

The C.O. Bigelow Mentha Lip Shine from Bath and Body Works is amazing. If you like your lips to be a little shiny, to feel nice and smooth, and to taste, smell, and feel minty...then you will love this lip gloss. I sure do! It's definitely a favorite. My preference is the peppermint (it's colorless), but they have it in a lot of different shades and flavors.

Whenever I hear the word free, my ears definitely perk up. So, naturally, when a friend of mine told me that she got some free ring tones for her cellphone, I was definitely interested. If you go to www.myxertones.com, you will find a smörgåsbord of music for your phone. Just type in your favorite artist, song, or genre, and I'm sure you'll find something you like. For example, I got this and set it for when husby calls. This one is for when my office calls me. And I just had to have this one to set as my alarm clock. I hope you'll have as much fun looking for new ring tones as I did! The only drawback is that they send them to you via text message...so if you go crazy with new tones, then you might rack up the amount of text messages on your phone bill (but if you have unlimited texting, I'd say go for it!)

So, there you have it, a few of my favorite things! And who knows...maybe they will become some of your favorite things if you try them out. :)

Stay tuned for part 2, which will come at some point in time.

Have a great weekend!

LOST Season 4: Episode 2

Warning: this post contains contents about LOST Season 4: Episode 2 (if you didn't guess that by the title, then now you know). This article may contain spoilers. Don't say that I didn't warn you.

Let me start out by saying that this show is crazy. Crazy amazing and crazy confusing! I'm pretty sure that every episode introduces several new questions, and I am looking forward to the day that those questions are finally answered. (Seriously though, what is that crazy black smoke monster? I've been wondering this since Season 1, and I thought they were going to answer that question last night, but I was greatly disappointed).

Last night's episode of LOST was intriguing, to say the least, as we are introduced to new characters and forced to question the motives of these "rescuers".

Let's take a closer look at these new characters...


Daniel is the first "rescuer" that we are introduced to. He is the first to parachute down and find Jack and Kate. In a flashback, we see him crying in front of the TV when the news reporter announces that they found Oceanic Flight 815 on the bottom of the ocean floor, and all passengers have been proclaimed dead. When his wife asks him why he's crying, he responds "I don't know."

I can't help but like this guy a little. When other members of his team show some violence toward the islanders, Daniel shows some compassion, and you can see that he really doesn't want to harm anyone (at least that's my impression).

Miles, on the other hand, I don't really care for so much. In a flashback, we see that he is some sort of paranormal investigator. He goes to an older woman's house, and she pays him $200 to go up into her grandson's (who was murdered) bedroom to investigate. He goes up, turns on a strange device that makes some sort of white noise, and then talks to the empty room as though he were talking to the spirit of the dead grandson. He tells the "spirit" that he is hurting his grandmother by staying there, and he wants him to leave...but first the spirit must tell him where "it" is. There is some sound over by the bookcase, and Miles pushes it aside to find a paper bag with a bunch of cash and a little bag of powder (probably drugs) in it. He then tells the grandson's spirit that he can leave now. Miles keeps the cash and leaves (after giving the grandmother $100 back, and telling her that her grandson is at peace now).

Sketchy.

On the island, we see that he is the hot head of the new group, and can be somewhat violent. Based on first impressions, I don't really like the dude.

Charlotte appears to be an archaeologist (or maybe an anthropologist?), as we first meet her (during a flashback) in Tunisia at an archaeological dig. There, she sees the bones of what, at first, appears to be a dinosaur. Under closer examination, they see that it is a polar bear. Charlotte digs around in the dust surrounding the remains, and finds what appears to be a collar...with a DHARMA Initiative logo on it. (Whaaaaaaat???) Let me point out that Charlotte smiled when she saw that logo. She did not look upon it with a puzzled face...she smiled, as though it was not unfamiliar to her. Hmmm...

Back on the island, Charlotte seems rather sweet and innocent. After parachuting, she is "captured" by Locke's gang of followers, because they don't trust her or her team.

Frank (in a flashback) is watching TV, when the news report of the discovery of Flight 815 comes on. It shows a graphic view of the plane underwater, and shows what they claim to be the pilot. Frank quickly picks up the phone and dials the number for the Oceanic hotline and demands to talk with a supervisor. He then tells them that the person who was pictured on the news was not the pilot. When asked why, he said that he knew the pilot, and the pilot always wore his wedding ring...and the dead body pictured did not have a wedding band on its hand. When questioned further, he said that he knew this because he knew the pilot well and he was supposed to be piloting Flight 815 the day that it crashed. (dun dun DUN!)

In the final flashback we see Naomi talking with the so-called Oceanic lawyer who met with Hurley in the nut house during last week's episode. The "Oceanic lawyer", who is named Matthew Abbadon (yes, I had to look that name up), is giving Naomi a team...and sets down the pictures of Daniel, Miles, Charlotte, and Frank. She doesn't think that this team is a good choice, because none of them have military experience, and that they will be unprotected. Abbadon tells her that she is their protection and that each of the team members were chosen for a specific reason.

At the end of the episode, we find out that the "rescue" team is not there for the survivors of Flight 815. They are there for Ben.

And the plot thickens, my friends...

What do they want with Ben?

What are the specific reasons that each of those team members were chosen?

Can we trust them at all?

If you have any speculations concerning any of the questions or points that I have mentioned, then please do share! I would love to hear what you all think about all of this.

Comments Are Much Appreciated

I just want to take a minute to thank those of you who choose to comment on my blog posts. Comments really are the proverbial fuel that feeds this blogging fire of mine. When you comment, I know that you're reading, and therefore I make more of an effort to post things for you to read. You see? It's a cycle. "The Circle of [Blog]Life" (cue Lion King theme music here).

Now, perhaps you are new to the world of bloginess, and you don't really know how to comment. Well, here I will tell you...

If you notice, at the very end of each post there is a spot that says "0 comments", or "6 comments", or perhaps one day (if I become a blogging genius), "100 comments". Well, that little blue link that has a number and the word "comments" is a link that will take you to the page where you can leave a comment. So, click on that link. Come on, you know you want to.

Now that you're at the comments page, the comments are listed on the left, and on the right there is a field where you can type a little message, called a comment. Now, in this comment you can simply say "Hey, Tiffany! I read your blog! You should keep writing!", or maybe say "Hey, I really liked the movie Suburban Girl...I can't believe you didn't!" Or whatever you would like (within reason, of course...if it's something inappropriate, then it will be deleted).

So, write your comment and then put in your name. For example "Mawmaw and Pawpaw" (come on, grandparents, I know you're out there reading this here blog), or "Miranda" (seeester!), or whatever your name may be.

And then, comes the exciting part...hit "Publish Your Comment"! And then, my friends...I will receive your comment, and I will feel loved (or at least feel like this blog is worth writing on).

This ends my little tutorial on how to leave a comment on Life in the Time of Tiffany. Now, you have no excuse for not commenting (except for the fact that maybe you're just not reading this).

So, come on...show me some comment love!

Movie Mondays: Suburban Girl

On one of our recent stay-at-home date nights, husby and I decided to go to Blockbuster and see if we could find a good movie to watch. We didn't have a particular one in mind, so we spent quite some time browsing the aisles looking for something that may be worth watching.

Since we've watched quite a few action and thriller movies lately, I was in a (rare) mood to watch a chick flick. I mentioned this to Jonathan, and he graciously agreed, and said that he'd watch any movie that I picked out.

Suddenly, the pressure of having to make the choice on my own made me feel a bit woozy, and I believe at that moment in time...I lost my good judgment. And because of this momentary loss of good judgment, I picked up Suburban Girl from the shelf. I had never seen the preview for this movie before (red flag #1), and had never even heard of it (red flag #2). BUT there was a huge shelf that contained many copies of Suburban Girl and most of them were gone, so I came to the conclusion that, "Hey! Lots of people have rented this movie, so it must be a good one!" We read the back of the movie case, and the description sounded interesting...

So, my dear readers, we rented Suburban Girl. And at that moment in time, our fate (for the evening) was sealed...

Imminent doom.

From the first two minutes of the movie, we were thoroughly confused as to where this movie was going. Normally, when you're trying to create a good plot, you at least attempt to catch your viewer's interest. But in the first two minutes of the movie, all we saw was this girl walking down the streets of New York while editing a manuscript.

And I'm pretty sure that was the highlight of the movie.

For a movie that is described as a romantic comedy, I was highly disappointed, because it was neither romantic nor comedic. The plot was not firm, and went in way too many different directions. For fear of spoiling the movie for anyone out there who may want to see it (although I highly advise against it), I will just give it to you in a nutshell:

Basically, Suburban Girl is about a young woman (Sarah Michelle Gellar) who has high ambitions to be an editor. But instead of pursuing those ambitions on her own, she ends up dating and eventually moving in with an experienced editor (Alec Baldwin), who is twice her age. It is a story of self-discovery which happens through a series of mishaps and ultimately being mistreated and cheated on by her elderly boyfriend.

When the movie was over with (after cleaning up all of the hair I had pulled out of my head), we were wondering why we had just wasted 90 minutes of our lives. 90 minutes that we can never get back.

Dear readers, I have a feeling that I will be watching nothing but action and thriller movies for the rest of my life...for I fear that Jonathan will never again trust me to be the movie picker-outer.

P.S. I later found out that this movie never made it to theaters. If I had known that piece of information beforehand, that would have been red flag #3, and I believe that I would not be here telling you this tragic tale.

When It All Seems a Blur...

Saying that this week was a busy one would be an understatement. Looking back on the last few days, it all seems a blur, as every day melded into the next. Most were non-stop from dawn 'til midnight with classes, work, and obligations...and as the events piled up each day, so did the dishes in my sink.

How do I get this busy? I ask myself. Of course, most things that occupy my time are non-negotiables. Such as classes, work, rehearsals, and the occasional meal. I really try not to commit to more than I can handle. I had several people call this week wanting to hang out, and I regretfully had to decline. If only there were more hours in a day. (Can we vote on this? I propose that we add more hours to each day. All in favor, say "Aye!")

In an attempt to be completely honest and open here, I have to admit that I didn't really handle my busyness very well. I laughed, I cried, I complained. And now, at the end of the week...I look back and am disappointed in myself. If this crazy week were a test from God, then I highly doubt I passed with flying colors. Instead of giving my stresses to God and trusting Him to help me, I freaked and let it consume me.

This lesson I have learned is all too familiar. It is one that I have been taught a multitude of times...and this probably isn't the last either.

I will continue to try not to over commit myself, but in the meantime...during those days and weeks which are crazy, I want to be able to give it to God and let Him help me.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." -Matthew 11:28

With all that said, I have to brag on my husband a little...

Last night, when I got home late from rehearsal, I walked in the door to a clean house (all the dishes done and everything!) And he then, that precious husband of mine took me out to dinner and to see a chick flick that I've been wanting to see for a while. I am truly blessed, my friends.

LOST Season 4 Premiere!

Warning: As stated in the title, this post is about the LOST Season 4 Premiere. So, if you haven't watched it yet, or you don't wish to hear about it, then...well, don't read this post.



As many of you know, the premiere for the 4th season of LOST was last night. And boy, was I excited! Along with family and friends, I was huddled around the TV in eager anticipation for what the writers of this addicting show were going to feed us next. And after an hour of new LOST footage, I'm anxiously awaiting next Thursday night.

As usual, there were quite a few questions that came up after watching the episode.

For you fellow LOST fans, let's discuss them here:

1. During the flash forwards, Hurley referred to himself as one of the "Oceanic 6". Who are the Oceanic 6? We know that Hurley, Kate, and Jack all got off the island (because they have all been in the flash forwards). And I believe that Sawyer is also off of the island, because in the last episode of Season 3 (in the flash forward), Kate says to Jack that she needs to get back to him. And then there is the person who was in the coffin in Season 3's finale. Perhaps Ben or Locke? My guess is Locke. And as for the sixth one, your guess is as good as mine. Who do you think are the "Oceanic 6"?

2. Charlie appears to Hurley in a flash forward, and Hurley freaks out. Charlie says that he is dead, but also here. What exactly does this mean? Do you remember how in last season, Naomi said that Oceanic Flight 815 was found on the bottom of the sea and that all the passengers were found dead? Well, perhaps all of the passengers are dead (because they died on that ocean floor), yet still here (because they were on the island). An alternate reality? It's a rather confusing idea in my head.

3. The eye that Hurley sees when he gets "lost" in the woods, and comes upon Jacob's house...whose eye is it? I'm thinking that it's Locke.

If anyone happened to watch the premiere of Eli Stone following LOST, then you may have seen the commercial for Oceanic Airlines that gave a little tid bit for LOST.




So, the plane is underwater...and "we can't trust them". (And check out www.flyoceanicair.com)

What are your thoughts on last night's episode, and LOST in general?