killer bug

So, here's what I came down with last week:
He may not look so bad, but he had a lot of relatives over and I was out the last half of the week and not doing well the first half. My temperature reached a (personal) record high of 103.7 degrees! I thought my face was going to burn off despite the streams of sweat pouring off of me. The worst of it was Wednesday night through Friday, but I've still got a lot of congestion and have to take cough medicine to sleep (without hacking up a lung) at night.

So that's pretty much all that I've been up to! Joe took really good care of me, including making two big pots of chicken and dumplings that were delicious and soothed my throat.

Monday night we made chocolate pudding WITHOUT a Jello Pudding packet! (who knew?!?) It was actually really yummy and very easy. It just had cocoa, sugar, cornstarch, butter, vanilla and milk. We added mini-chocolate chips at the end to make it even better. Neither of us have had chocolate pudding warm before, but it was actually tastier that way.

getting rid of one, more attacking

I recently paid off a student loan. Since then, I have received even more offers for ways to spend my extra money (presumably the monthly payment I no longer have to make). Even the letter from my loan carrier quickly went through "Congratulations! Keep this document for your records of paying off a loan." to get to "We offer a wide-variety of other loans to meet all your needs!"

All that reminds me too much of this passage - Jesus speaking (Matthew 12:43-45):

"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation."

(EDIT: I wrote this and saved it several days ago. I've been very sick with the flu. Please pray I get better and that I haven't made anyone else sick. So far, Joe's healthy and he's been so sweet taking care of everything I need / want.)

Anniversary trip to San Antonio

December 26-28 Joe and I went to San Antonio to celebrate our 6-year anniversary!

On Wednesday (the 26th), we headed out from Joe's parents to drive to San Antonio.

We're almost to downtown!

We stopped to eat a BBQ lunch at Bill Miller's BBQ. I thought it was the worst BBQ I've ever had (Joe thought it wasn't THAT bad), but they had them all over San Antonio. From the parking lot, we took these pictures of the Alamo dome (where the Aggies were playing on Saturday).


Then we checked into our hotel, which turned out to be a lot cuter than we had originally thought! We had a two night free stay, so we expected the worst, but the Downtown Holiday Inn turned out to be nice.It also had a great view at night!


Next, we headed out to Fiesta Texas. They had "Holiday in the Park" which means that about half the park (plus the water park) was closed, but the rest was decorated with lots of Christmas lights and there were holiday-themed shows. The neatest thing about the park is that half of it is surrounded by cliffs (you can see some in the picture below).

I had printed out the rides that were open, so we were ready to hit the best ones first. It turned out to be very empty, and most of the night the only waiting we did was for the ride to stop so we could get on. After an hour and a half we had gone on all the rides we wanted to AND watched a 20 minute show (carolers). We were going to go on one roller coaster again, this time in the front car, and had three pairs in line in front of us. Once we were the next in line to get on, the ride operator (a.k.a. the high school kid wearing shorts when it's 37 degrees out) said the ride was temporary closed due to "technical difficulties." We waited, and they ran it once with no one on it. It came back, but they said they would have to shut down the ride for the night! They said it was something about the ride not being safe below certain temperatures. That's one of those times when you're glad you just avoided an unsafe situation, but sad because you were two people away from having fun! We both agreed that the best thing there was the light show - they had a bunch of lights arranged in an area and different things / colors would light up / turn off / fade along with the Christmas music. It was very well done, and very cool!

That night we shared a yummy burger at Red Robin - a place I had first gone to with Joe in California (in our earlier years). We also picked up some wine from World Market which fortunately turned out to not have a cork (otherwise we would have just had to use The Force to open it).

The next day wasn't quite as pretty, but we wanted to explore more of downtown San Antonio.
Joe had found a location and took me to La Madeleine for breakfast - one of my favorite breakfast places.

After realizing it would be expensive (and possibly impossible) to park near Market Square, we decided to park the car back at our hotel and walk. We looked in many (nearly identical) shops and tried some tasty Mexican cookies. They also had a couple street musicians (on panflute and guitar) who weren't bad. We ended up walking to a cute Mexican food place that had tasty food (even though our waitress mysteriously disappeared, never to return... well, not that day).

We next got to visit the Conception Mission - check out the pictures: (One is of some original painting that was done inside the mission!)



That night we ventured out to the "Nationally Famous" Riverwalk. The Christmas lights were still up!


This one is us outside the Riverwalk Mall (a nice young lady volunteered to take our picture).


We had taken a trolley to get to and from downtown, which was an adventure all in itself! Finally, we went to Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner. I had grown up going to the one in Dallas for many special occasions, so it's a fun place in my book. It was funny because other than the two of us, the restaurant only had three large groups dining - each with over 20 people! Joe pointed out that we had a "Romantic" day of food - food from French, Spanish, and Italian speaking countries.

Friday morning (our actual anniversary!), we unsuccessfully looked all over for a place to eat breakfast before returning to our hotel to check out. We headed north on I-35, and found brunch at a Shoney's.

Next we went to a disc golf course that Joe had read about. On the 16th hole, Joe threw a disc that went straight into a forest. He called a Mulligan, and threw another disc to the same spot. We went to look for them and found one pretty quickly. The other one was Joe's favorite disc that he recently traded in four older discs to get! We looked for about 15 minutes, and I thought I found his yellow disc, but it turned out to be someone else's nice disc they had lost. There was no name or phone number on the back, so it's now Joe's! We kept looking for the lost disc, and about five minutes later a father / son pair walked by and asked if we lost a disc. Joe said he had, and said he thought it was somewhere in this particular area, and the father saw it right away! It was at the top of a tall tree, so the next few minutes were spent throwing rocks and sticks at it, but it finally fell down. We were both very happy to get the disc back, and to find another one. As we were walking out of the park, we noticed this sign that tells about the park's namesake.

We warmed up in the car and drove to San Marcos. If you're female and know the area, you're probably thinking the right thing: Outlet Malls! Though we were unsuccessful in finding the jeans we needed, we found some great Christmas decorations and a wreath at Kirkland's for really good prices. We went to Taco Beuno to eat dinner, and I'm pretty sure the employees thought we were aliens. We hadn't been to one in so long, we had to ask what several things were, and changed our minds several times. There was clearly one thought going through the cashier's mind: Come on, it's just fast food. But we enjoyed it!

We made it back to College Station at a reasonable hour, so it was good to wrap up our anniversary at home.

Fraud?

A post about our anniversary is still coming, pending pictures. Until then, enjoy a few test questions from the "Reporting Fraud, Waste, and Abuse" training I had to take today. (I won't grade this for you, but you can let me know if there are any questions for which you need the answers.)

1. An employee responsible for reconciling a bank account lists a check that does not exist in order to balance the accounting records. The reason the account is not balancing correctly is that he has been taking money from this account for his personal use. Is there anything inappropriate with this employee's behavior?
Yes, this is an example of embezzlement fraud.
No, the employee is probably just borrowing the money and can return funds to the account without penalty.

2. Sam works in the vehicle maintenance department for a System member. When he isn’t busy, he works on friends’ and coworkers’ cars in the System garage using System tools. Sam is not being paid for this outside work. What is inappropriate about Sam’s actions?
Nothing is inappropriate.
It is inappropriate because Sam fails to charge his friends and coworkers for the work he does.
System equipment can be used only for System business, and this is not System business.

3. Allie is responsible for contracting repair and maintenance work for the A&M System. Although bids are taken, Allie is the only employee involved in the selection process. The same contractor always wins the largest projects. A coworker lives near Allie and has noticed that this contractor has been at Allie’s house for several weeks adding a room onto her house. What should the coworker do?
The coworker should accuse Allie of taking a bribe.
The coworker should confront Allie and demand that the contractor build her a room just like Allie’s.
The coworker should report what she knows to her supervisor, another administrative official or the System Internal Audit Department.
While the above situation doesn’t look good, there has probably been no inappropriate behavior. The coworker should do nothing until she investigates the situation more.

And my favorite...

4. An employee often changes the amount of hours on a time sheet to claim hours she did not work. Is there anything inappropriate with this employee's behavior?
Yes, this is an example of fraud.
No, the employee is underpaid, and she just wants to earn what she is worth.

PANIC ATTACK!

(okay, I need to upload more pictures before I can blog about our anniversary and rest of the holiday... but if I keep waiting on that, it may be weeks before I post!)

A few weeks ago, a friend of ours asked Joe and I to do some acting for a video series he did for Expert Village on panic attacks. He even paid us! Here's one that has us both in it (I look awful most of the time, but I guess someone having a panic attack shouldn't look great!):

Click here for more on "How to Help Someone Having a Panic Attack"

If you'd like to see one where Joe shows you how to breathe, check this one out. Congrats to Ben for being an expert!