Not much happening

So my diet has been going okay, down about 3 pounds since it started so I can't complain.  I have broken it once at work, I ate a cupcake but I made up for it by walking around the work site for about 3 hours afterwards!

The weather has been gorgeous lately so we have been doing more things outside.  Today we went on a nice bike ride and then came home and power washed the brick and cut down a huge limb that was hanging on our power line.  Football starts next Saturday so I hope the weather stays as nice as it has been! We also installed new handles on our cabinets in our kitchen, we both like them a lot!
















We have also talked about our trip next year to Europe and we have decided, assuming I get approval for the days off, to spend 3 weeks (23 days) in Central/Eastern Europe.  Where we are looking at going now is: Salzburg and Vienna Austria, Budapest Hungary, Krakow and Warsaw Poland, and Munich for Oktoberfest.  The money is pretty much saved for it so we are starting to get excited!

This is a slight rant after the recent political news.  How did people in America forget separation of church and state?  The Mosque in NYC has to be allowed to be built, America is a country for freedom of religion and we cannot tell any religious organization where and when they can build things unless we equally do the same to every religion (so this would mean no churches in NYC also).  Then today Beck does a speech and starts it out with "America today begins to turn back to God."  That would be fine is it was "American's" as in the people of our country but our country isn't for or about God.  Our country was built for the religious and nonreligious.  American's need to realize that the separation of church and state is the only way to guarantee everyone equal freedoms but at the same time that does not prevent individuals from being religious.  Okay rant over, but I am slightly scared for the next elections.

Promotion!

My Promotion from work went through today!  I will see the paycheck next week :)  Part of taking the job for the "intern" program was at the end of one year and the end of the 2nd year I would advance 2 grades and see decent pay raises.  So now we will have about $500 more in disposable income to use.  So far we plan on putting an extra $125 towards my student loan and $200 towards a new car per month.  The rest we will just have to see what we want to do with it.  On another good money note, our savings officially has enough to go to Europe in Fall 2011 so now everything we add will go towards other vacations, emergencies, or a new car!  I have my eyes on a Prius, but we will see.  I hope to get one the spring of 2012!

I also purchased Lonely Planet Central Europe on Amazon.com to start planning, I get excited and plan really early!  This is the same book, only an updated version, that we used on our last trip and it was great.  We haven't really decided what we are going to do but so far we know Oktoberfest and Vienna.  Ideally I'd want to do Oktoberfest, Salzburg, Vienna, and Krakow in the 2ish weeks we're going to be there.  We discussed London or Paris but both decided in the far future when we have children those are easy cities to travel with them to so we're saving them for the future.  We've also thrown around doing the Naples area or Venice in Italy.

More on traveling.  I finally finished our online travel blog over DC and Europe.  They are here
http://www.travbuddy.com/dlstegelman/blogs