Another week gone by

This week just seemed to fly by! I was having a meltdown earlier this week, but luckily things worked themselves out by Thursday.

And an exciting change, the company is now letting us have iPhones on our employee accounts. I ordered my 8GB for $49, and it will be here tomorrow or Monday at the latest. Now Mom will finally be able to use that outfit coordination app she saw on the Today Show. :-)

My youngest older brother (sounds weird, I know!) and his wife are having a baby! So excited, can't wait to be an aunt again. I look at how big Braydan, Tes, and Vann are already, and it just throws me how much time has passed.

I recently celebrated my 5-year anniversary at AT&T, and the company gifted me with a 1 carat blue topaz ring in sterling silver (our company colors, of course). I also received a pay raise, and all of my sick days are now paid. Previously, it had to be consecutive days in order for it to be paid. Now, if I need to take off early for any reason, it will all be paid.

I'll be spending Sunday at my parent's house, the Niners play the Seahawks at 1:05 sharp; immediately following is the Primetime Emmy Awards. Mom and I are planning a celebration menu, but we haven't decided on the theme yet. I'm leaning towards finger foods or desserts.

We chose sushi for the Oscars, and boy was that yummy!

Lazy Sunday

I'll be relaxing most of today, looking forward to the Niners game at 1:15! Season opener against the Cardinals, NFC champions last season and Super Bowl contenders. I'm not expecting us to do very well, our 1st string proved they were no match for a tighter team like the Chargers last week. But I am hoping they get some points on the board without having to rely on the kicker Joe Nedney.

He and the punter Andy Lee spend way too much time on the field.

My jazz shoes came in on Thursday, I was supposed to audit the class on Tuesday but couldn't because the shoes hadn't come in yet. Took a few spins on Mom and Dad's hardwood, and my ankle felt great. My balance is still an issue, and my spotting, but I'm hoping that will all come back to me in time. As long as I keep doing the strengthening excercises my physical therapiost gave me, I hope my joints can keep up.

And it looks like some of Dad's gaming bug rubbed off on Mom! She's playing a bunch of apps from her Facebook account and signed up for one through MySpace so we could play together. Our favorite is YoVille, which is a slightly altered version of the Sims. You get to deisgn your character (facial features, clothes, hairstyle, etc.), and you get an apartment to deocrate. Visting people, playing games, and working at the factory all get you coins and YoPoints. As your YoPoints increase, you earn extra items and can wrok towards buying a house. It's very fun, and you can see all I've been able to do in the last week.

Shame on me!

Sorry for the neglect, things have been quite busy as of late...

-The fleas have been eradicated! No more buggies on our babies, beds, or bodies, and the house just feals so much cleaner.

-It's been a pretty mild summer so far, only needed to run the A/C a few times.

-House-sitting for Mom and Dad while they were in Vegas was fun, Goose enojoyed being back at home.

-Our trip to Vegas was awesome! Had a fantastic birthday dinner at the sushi place Ra, saw the fountains at Bellagio, and did a ton of walking. Also discovered my memory card was damaged and lost over 400 pictures, including all the pictures from the trip.

-Work is going well, a new team shift takes away some of my responsibilities. Not sure if that's a good thing or not, time will tell I suppose.

-Roomie and I getting along well, and we have a drifter on our couch. :-) Just kdding, a friend of ours needed a place to crash while she gets some thing in order, so we offered our very uncomfortable couch and tiny bathroom. How could she resist?

-Jazz shoes are on the way, and I have an audit of the modern jazz class on Tuesday after work. Physical therapist says my ankle is stronger now, but I have to be careful trying to go up en pointe. As long as the toes aren't woo worn, I can go into a demi and the untrained eye won't know the difference.

-Baking a lot, made Grandmama's Blueberry Buckle last week to rave reviews. Next is Nana's Dump Cake!

Die! Die! My Darling!

It's going down this weekend, I'm bombing my apartment. Btw, people look at me funny when I say that. :-)

I found 3 foggers at the SuperTarget in Atwater for $7, and my roommate is out of town this weekend. I'm taking Goose to my parents house and spending the night while the rooms are being treated, George will come by later in the evening to air things out. The hard part will be getting everything covered on the entertainment center. There's a lot of electronics out that can't be exposed to the chemicals, and everything in the bedrooms needs to be covered too. We bought a bunch of huge garbage bags we'll split open and tape them over all we can.

I'm going to Tami's baby shower tomorrow, I'll post pics soon!

Park Pictures

Fleas, barbecued hot dogs, and infomercials...

That's what my days have been filled with as of late. Last Sunday, George and I went to Donnelly Park to mark 6 months together (kinda silly, I know). We barbecued hot dogs and toasted garlic cheddar sourdough bread, then took a walk around the water. It was especially nice, as the park was where we had our first official date. Pics to come, as soon as I can find my USB cable.

The fleas at my apartment have gotten terrible; my roommate's cat got outside a few times and we've been fighting them ever since. Luckily, since my cat doesn't play well with others, he hasn't been infested too bad. I find the occassional blood-sucker on his belly, but my room is pretty okay. Downstairs, however, is a totally different story. I'll walk across the living room and into the kitchen, and my socks will be covered in a least a dozen. George refuses to wear socks, and he likes to sit on the floor when he's over, so his feet are absolutely horrendous. We've used the powders on the carpet, gotten collars and drops for the cats, vaccuumed religiously for weeks and they keep getting worse. We're missing something, so we're talking to our landlord about bombing the whole apartment.

I've been looking into getting an AeroGarden 3 for awhile, especially now that I've discovered the backyard gets absolutely no direct sunlight. That blows all my plans of growing any veggies out there this summer. I wanted to do lettuce, basil, chives, sage, carrots, strawberries, and cucumbers. When I heard about the AeroGarden, I went to their website and found they had seed pods for everything but the latter 3 items. It's essentially a counter-top hydroponic system, using water, grow bulbs, and nutrient packets. There's no soil at all, and the technology was originally designed as a way to combat hunger in countries that don't have proper conditions to grow vegetation. The infomercial gives a side-by-side comparison of a few different seeds grown in the hydroponic system and in normal soil, and the hydroponic system is about 3x faster. It makes me wonder if we're on the brink of finding a real solution to world hunger.

I've been watching the infomercial for the GT Xpress 101, also. I bought my Foreman Grill about 3 months ago and I probably use it 4x a week. The GTX is the same principle, but it's a flat griddle surface instead of the grill. The griddle is round, and divided into 2 chambers (all your food would be in the shape of a semi-circle, and some of the reviewers mention that it's a little irritating to eat the same shaped food all the time). The recipe book has a lot of ideas for re-using leftovers, which as I mainly cook for myself, doesn't happen very often. Even still, it had some delicious sound recipes for omelettes, chocolate cake, fruit pies, etc.

I absolutely love the infomercial for the Magic Bullet, and I would probably own it now if I hadn't had a bad experience with it a few years back. I was making shrimp and crab dip for a New Year's Eve party and my ex's house, and his mom had bought the Magic Bullet pretty recently. It basically pureed everything I put in there, which was good for the dip, but not for things that are supposed to stay chunky. And the container was so small, I had to do it in 4 or 5 batches.

The reviews for the GTX are mixed, so I'm pretty wary of dropping $30 for it if I'm going to have the same experience that I did with the Magic Bullet. I'm hoping to find someone who has bought it themselves so I can ask to borrow it for a few days and see how I like it.

Now it's off to bed, I start work at 8:00 this week.

<3

Flickr Mosaic

Heaven help me...

Netflix has Deadliest Catch Seasons 1-3 available on instant view.

I may never leave my apartment.

<3

Valentine's Day (dated 2-16-09)

Valentine's Day this year was pretty great. I had warned George before that they are usually pretty awful, so I didn't want that to happen again. But on the upside, the bar wasn't set very high.

Last weekend, he surprised me with what he called the 1st part of my present (which I didn't have to tell him I wanted, yay!): season 6 of The Simpsons and a Nightmare tee w/ Jack and Sally. I gave him a flat iron so he'd stop stealing mine, a johnny cash tee, pj pants, and a box of Whoppers (the only candy he says he likes).

On Valentine's Day, we went to JapanTown with Cookie and Amanda. Originally it was just supposed to be us, but they had no plans and it's always more fun to take trips with friends. At first, I wasn't too happy with the idea of people coming with us on our first Valentine's Day together, but then I remembered that I love those guys and wondered we hadn't thought of inviting them before. We had all been at C-Dub's Friday night playing FHL. And when I say "we", I mean "them", because I just watched as I suck at FHL. Needless to say, we did not get out of town as early as we planned.

George drove us to Pleasanton where we caught the BART, and almost missed our train because the schedule I had was a little misleading. Thanks to a very nice conductor, we got on with a few minutes to spare. George had never been on the BART before, and wondered why we were going slower than the cars on the highway. It wasn't until the ride home that we heard the rain had been forcing them to reduce the speed.

Once we got to San Francisco, somehow we ended up on the wrong side of the street. So, all the directions I had were backwards. After stopping at BK so Cookie could get his first burger of the day, we set off in search of the shopping center. A few blocks later, I realized we were moving away from the Miyako building. From here on out, I will not stop at a gas station for directions if there is a Holiday Inn anywhere in sight. We asked several people and got more lost because of it, but the bellhop actually got us a map and drew out a route that wouldn't take us through "the hobo part of town."

The downside was the BART only took us to the Civic Center, and the mall was about 2 mi away. I had given everyone advance warning about the long walk, and everyone said they were fine with it. We ran into some kids who George recognized from some of his favorite anime's, and it turned out there was a convention in town. We never did find out where, but some of the costumes were pretty awesome.

We split up for lunch: George and I went to Izumiya's for sushi while Cookie and Amanda headed a few blocks back for McDonald's (Cookie's 2nd burger of the day). By that time, we had spent about 4 hours there and seen just about everything we could. We all agreed being in San Fran past dark was no bueno. After all, Amanda was almost killed by a cab and had a few encounters with bums already. :-)Our last stop was a bookstore on Van Ness that has some of the biggest books I've ever seen. Ridiculously big, almost in a cartoon way, and they were too big to ever actually be read. Definitely meant for decorating purposes, which defeats the whole purpose for me.

On our way home, we decided to hang out a little longer and relax. I made burgers (Cookie's 3rd and 3 1/2 burgers of the day) and we watched Almost Heroes, which none of us had seen yet. I had put Snickerdoodles in the oven, and they were a tad overdone when we discovered the potholder had been ruined by George's cats and I couldn't get them out fast enough. Amanda said they were still good.The rest of my present is still to come, and I can't wait to see what my guy has in store for me.

Click the pics below to see our trip