Technical web thingys I could not live without..

Google SMS - If you aren't using Google SMS (or God forbid you haven't HEARD of it), you are way behind the times and wasting lots of your own precious minutes. High level explanation. Send a text message to Google (466453 - add it to your phone contacts, you will be using it often) and type in something like "Kinko's Houston TX" and hit send. Less than 15 seconds later you will receive a text message(s) with not only the phone number but the address too. Makes calling 411 seem like the slowest most archaic process in the world. But it gets better.

Say you are like me and you live in a huge city and there are 20 Kinko's. You don't want one on the other side of town, you want the closest one, right? That is why you would enter "Kinko's 77063" and it will give you the CLOSEST Kinko's. Amazing right. Not finished yet. Of course if you have an iPhone (and if you don't, you should), the phone number is a link that you just click on and it dials Kinko's for you. Plus if you decide you want to visit this Kinko's to mail that important package, you don't have to ask for the address because it is right there for you.
There is more. If you wake up and don't know whether you should wear shorts or a sweater that day, send Google a text that says "w 77063" and you will get the weather forecast for today and for the next five days.
Trying to figure out what time that awesome new movie is playing? Type in "m 77063" and you will get a complete listing of movie showtimes. Movie showtimes at the theatres CLOSEST to you!

Believe it or not, there are more features. Too many to list here so I am attaching a pic of the list of things you can do with Google SMS. Trust me you will be an addict in no time.


--Tena

Tomorrow I get my papito back!

Saturdays is when I get "my week" with my darling Luca and I get so excited as it gets later in the week. I spent so much time this week cleaning and "de-allergizing" the apartment as it seems that he has unfortunately inherited my allergies. Poor baby was sniffling and coughing and came down with an infection last week.

I am dying to to see him and can't wait to see all the amazing changes that will have occurred in just a week. He changes by the day so after a week it seems like he is sooooo different. He is saying more and more words every day. I love him so much it hurts me inside and it has taken the last five months to get past being totally depressed on "Amine's week". It is a hard adjustment to make, to not be with your baby every day and I am trying to make the best of it. I am trying to focus on "quality vs quantity" and I hope I am doing a good job. He is an amazing little boy and I want to give him everything in the world.

I love you Luca. Mommy is here. She is always here.

Boy, has life changed...

I decided to start this blog so that I could force myself to slow down and record things that were happening, instead of everything moving at warp speed and not being noticed.. My ADD brain has trouble ever calming down but having a son has helped that a lot.

This blog will mainly be about my son as he has changed and saved my life. My world is upside down and it is all due to him.

Things that have changed in the past two years:

• I gave birth to a beautiful, angelic, perfect baby boy
• I almost lost my life in a coma caused by a medical mis-diagnosis
• I bought a house, moved out of house, and am now living back inside the loop
• I lost a lot of family and friends as I starting learning to stick up for myself
• I learned the meaning of "dog eat dog" world
• I quit my beloved job of 10 years at Idea Integration
• I divorced my husband, who is the best father in the entire world
• I became a true Mac person
• I gained 65 pounds during pregnancy and still have 25 of them left
• I learned how to set up a home network, a surround sound, and reformat a Mac
• I have experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows of my life
• I discovered that for the first time I would gladly die for someone else
• I stopped caring about Gucci shoes, Prada bags, and designer labels
• I realized that I am more selfish than I thought and am working to fix it
• I started seeing the world differently through my son's eyes
  

Never imagined myself not working

I still can't believe that I have not worked for the past five months. After leaving Idea, I decided to take at the most a month off of work (seemed like a LONG time) to rest and spend some time with my baby son, who I had hardly seen since he was born.

Then I spent three solid weeks with Luca, fell in love with him, and nothing has been the same since.

It has been such an adjustment for me as I really didn't realize how little outside of work I had in my life. Leaving Idea was so incredibly hard and I miss so many people there but I realized that while they worked there, they all managed to have a personal life as well, and I somehow had not been able to do the same.

Even doing simple things like grocery shopping or putting gas in my car was a totally new experience. Taking care of a one year old child for the first time was unbelieveably hard and unbelieveably rewarding.

Ok, so my Christmas cards were a BIT late..

I can't believe I really just mailed my Christmas cards in the second week of January. If they didn't have the most adorable picture of Luca on them, I would have been too embarrased to send them. But he is so cute that I figure people won't care when they got the darn things. :>)