Things have been pretty busy for me lately, but that's no excuse! I'm going to be more diligent about keeping this updated....probably. :-)
First off, I'm in my new place: a 1 bedroom haven for me and Goose. My rent is less than $400 a month, which is pretty amazing for Merced. The landlords were remodeling the unit, so I had to wait about 6 weeks for the work to finish. The upside is I was the first one to ever to use the shower, touch the counters, put anything in the cabinets, etc. I was sleeping on an air mattress for about 2 months before my boyfriend Ryan bought me a pillow-top queen set. It didn't take long before I started getting junk mail, but Goose likes to help with it.
Speaking of the boyfriend, I've been dating Ryan for about 5 months. We met while I was dating someone else, but his ringtone at the time was from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, and we became friends soon after. I had been single for a few months when his roommate (who happened to be my old roommate) decided to set us up. We haven't been apart since.
I got to spend a lot of time with my family the last few weeks: Kris and Lydia came out west with their new baby Eve, Nathan and Lindsey came down with all the kids, and Brian and Rhonda came up shortly afterwards. We had a great time on the 4th, even though the economy ruined most of the big celebrations. Ryan and I bought a bunch of fireworks from the stands around town, and had a little celebration of our own on my parent's driveway. Braydan was pretty brave with the sparklers, holding 2 in each hand by the end of the night. Tes was a little more timid, the sparks seemed to make her nervous. Vann was very much into them, he would follow me around asking for "nutter one!" Luckily, we had 60 sparklers and they lasted long into the night.
We took a trip to Monterey so Kris could take a tour of a school he's interested in. It would be great to have them back on the West Coast, especially as Eve gets bigger. I've always hated how far away my family is, it would be nice to have us all on the same time zone, at least. Unfortunately, they'll be in New York for at least another year. Oh, well.
Monterey was loads of fun, I rode up with Brian and Rhonda and got to watch Brian's digestive pyrotechnics on the way up. He started feeling nauseous in Los Banos (irony!), so Rhonda and I got to dish about our high school experiences while he slept on the backseat. She's really funny, and she's exactly who I thought Brian would end up with.
We got to walk around Fisherman's Wharf and had lunch at a great seafood restaurant. They were handing out samples of clam chowder at every restaurant, by the time we got to the restaurant we had planned to have lunch at, we were already feeling kind of full.
There was a free trolley that ran around the city, and we decided to take that back to the college where we had left the cars. About 5 minutes down the road, we realized it was going the wrong direction. We hopped off, and jumped onto the trolley headed the other direction, and ended up right back at the Wharf. We gave up, and walked up the monster hills.
Briand and Rhonda introduced us to the best game ever: kind of a cross between Pictionary and Telephone...Pictiophone...or...Telenary. Whatever.
The rest of the extended family came over on Friday, and it was so great to see all the younger kids together. It's strange to think that we were all their ages once. We played the game again, and we've all agreed it's going to replace Pit as the staple game at all our family events.
I'm hoping to be able to visit my best friend Sarah, her husband Noah, and their daughter Audrey sometime this year. I haven't been able to see her much since they moved to Oklahoma, this is the longest we've been apart since we were just weeks old.
That's all for now, hopefully I'll remember to keep updating!
