Losing the love of your life...

My Grandfather is 84 years old and unfortunately, not in very good health. He has been through being shot in the head in WWII where only his helmet saved his life, cancer, heart surgery, diabetes, etc, etc. He is a strong, humorous, admirable man. Well today he lost someone who we all consider to be, aside from my Grandmother, the love of his life, his sweet Chihuahua, Susie.
Susie (full name being "Brown-eyed Susie" because she had a brown patch of hair around one eye and that's my Grandfather's sense of humor) was one of those Chihuahuas that was only sweet to the people she knew or liked. She growled at my cousin every time she walked in the room! My aunt and I were the only ones besides my Grandfather that could hold and snuggle with her. I LOVED that dog!!! She would nuzzle all over my neck and kiss my nose, snorting the whole time! In fact, I held her just yesterday while she did this, leaving white hair all over me, with no complaints from me! Well today she died of heart failure on the way to the vet. She was only eight years old and dearly, dearly loved!!!!
My other cousin's Chihuahua came from the same puppy mill as Susie (we didn't know it was that at the time). She died earlier this year of something similar and untimely. My point in mentioning this is to remind and beg all of you to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider where you buy your dogs!!!!! If you can, adopt but PLEASE do not support these puppy mills!!!! These dogs were inbred, which is the reason for their poor health! I don't mean to preach but this has to stop!
I'll step off of my soap box and just ask for your prayers for my Grandfather and his broken heart! If you know of a dog that would love him and enjoy being loved by him, please let me know!

What the hell are we going to do for New Years?

I figured I would just get right to the point with that title. Why beat around the bush?! But seriously, what the hell are we going to do???? It's a lot of pressure deciding what to do. Supposedly what you're doing at midnight is what you will be doing for the majority of the year....or something like that. I don't know how true that is but it is an important night for "plans". Your cool quotient rides a little bit on that. Deny it all you want but if you're sitting at home watching Dick and nodding off on the couch at 11:30, you feel a little less "cool". But how "cool" is it to pay $30 (and up!!!) to get into a bar that was free to get into last week, only to push your way through hundreds of strangers to get a $5 beer every hour or so that you actually manage to get the bartender's attention?!?! You could have a party at someone's house.... too many people, and it's cops showing up and neighbors pissed off...too few people, and you're back to that nodding off with Dick thing. So what do you do?????????????

For those of you who may not know, I live in Charlotte, NC. We have plenty of bars and cool restaurants to choose from. I have a decent amount of people I know that live here......yet here we are two weeks away from New Years Eve and I have nothing planned! My husband and I were invited to a friend's get together but she lives kind of far out from us, which would put us out with the crazies. We like to stay as close to where we live as we can....it just cuts down on the potential for drama. But we do live in a great area with close proximity to lots of choices ($15 cab ride to uptown) so we're not limited there.....it just brings us back to the "cool" but expensive bar. We have a few people that are planning to join us...once we all decide what to do....but we're not sure that we have enough to have that party that falls between the pissed off neighbors and nodding off number. None of us have children yet so we want to do something fun that hopefully involves a decent amount of alcohol while we still can!
So again I ask, what do we do??? What are your plans? What have you done in the past? If you didn't have kids now what would you do? Any suggestions, ideas, invites ;-), recommendations would be greatly appreciated....

Romantic/Sexy/Hot/Insert your own adjective songs

My husband and I make a weekend mountain trip every December. We've been making this trip since before we were married so this year marks the 4th annual. We always make sure we have some sort of hot tub and/or jacuzzi where we stay because that defines relaxation for us.....and it's....well.....romantic....I'll leave it at that. Music adds to this romantic mood so we always make a CD/playlist to listen to. This year I am stuck! I can't find the old cd's we used to use (first year we have MP3 players) and for the life of me, I can't remember what songs we usually include. I tried to Google this topic last night and found myself feeling very.....disturbed...to say the least! (People really listen to "Particle Man" by They Might be Giants for this sort of occassion???)
SO....I need ideas!!! Tell me what you like, what you recommend, what you have on your own special playlist. I don't like cheesy (one I saw was "Up Where We Belong" ewww) or cliche ("Let's Get It On") or dirty ("Freak Me" Silk)
Sultry and sexy is what we want.....("Anytime Anyplace" Janet Jackson...."Feelin' Love" Paula Cole - HOT song if you've never heard it)
Ideas people......keep 'em coming!