*blows the dust off her blog*

Why yes, I still exist. I’m being guilted by my newly married cousin to start blogging again. We both made a promise to blog, and she’s kept up her end of the bargain, and I haven’t, so… here I am.

So the last few months have been pretty busy!

In April, I got the chance to visit five states (six states?) in a weekend, flying from CA to Dallas for a layover on our way to Memphis, TN, then a drive to our hotel in Mississippi, and another drive across the Mississippi River to Arkansas for a wedding! lol! After the wedding, we drove back to Memphis, pitstopped at Graceland, and then flew back home by way of Atlanta. I was so freaking tired after that trip. haha

At the end of May, I had the pleasure of attending my cousin’s wedding. She was a beautiful bride, and her hubby is pretty cool. Not only was it fun to see one of my “baby” cousins getting married (the other one is getting married next year! they’re making me look bad! LOL!) but it was great to see family again. I haven’t seen my peeps in WI in quite a few years, so it was really great to see everyone and also introduce them to Joe.

Aside from the wedding, I basically spent the month of May knitting a baby blanket. LOL I found out a co-worker was pregnant and got the invite for the baby shower. I started a baby blanket for her as soon as I got home the day I got the invite. The blanket started out great, but after a few weeks of working on JUSt the blanket, it got really boring really fast. Too bad it turns out so cute, cuz I’ll probably be knitting it again. LOL

I finished it the night before the baby shower, and it was a big hit.

I’ll have more to blog about after this weekend. We’re bottling the wine we picked grapes for last September. I’m sure that will be loads of fun.

It’s been raining for the last 3 or 4 days, but that’s okay. We really need the rain. The only time it actually bothers me is when I’m driving on the highway. What is it about driving in the rain that brings all the jerks out of the woodwork? On my way to work, two out of three days, some jerk has been driving stupid and won’t let me in. I’m not an experienced enough or cocky enough driver to just wing my way into my lane because I need to be there, ESPECIALLY in rainy, crappy weather. It’s not safe, and it pisses me off when other people do it, so I won’t do it. So, I ended up just taking the exit that my lane turned into an off-ramp for, and I took the city streets. Honestly, at that point, I was moving faster than the highway anyway.

If you’ve been paying attention to my Flickr page, you’ll notice that I’ve been uploading at least one picture a day. I’m trying to participate in that Project 365 thing, where you take a picture of something every day, then post it. I haven’t posted them on a blog anywhere, but I’m considering opening one up. I was going to put it here, but the domain and the hosting on this is up at the end of March, and I’m not planning to renew it. I haven’t blogged enough the last year to warrant spending the money on the hosting or the domain name, so I’m not going to. I’ll probably have a LOT to say, of course, once it expires, so I’ll open a new blog somewhere on Blogger or Wordpress.com or something like that and post the address when I figure all that out.

Anyway, this Project 365 thing.. the one thing it’s made me realize (not that I didn’t know it before) is that I am REALLY boring! lol.. there is NOTHING going on here. lol I need to fix that. Or just take random weird angle shots that make it look like I’m interesting. In any case, I had to document today by immortalizing the fact that I cooked dinner in photographic form:

It’s a recipe that I made based off a conversation I had with some friends this weekend, and it’s pretty good. My friend suggested Trader Joe’s enchilada sauce, but I didn’t really feel like going to Trader Joe’s, so I just bought something at the store. It’s just down the street, but that parking lot is HELL. I got the “hot” spiciness, and I think i would’ve liked it better if I would’ve gotten medium or mild, but it was pretty good. Another thing I would do is that I would make it in a smaller pan (8×8?) so I get a bigger concentration of chicken and cheese. This is kinda spread out. Tastes good though, and if it gets the Joe Seal of Approval, I’ll make it again. I hope it does… I’m really tired of eating out. :/

If anybody has any ideas or recipes for cooking at home, I’m all ears!

Well, I finally have something worth blogging about! lol

Joe and I got together with his family and some family friends, and we picked some grapes! Just a few…

… buckets of grapes!

We picked them from a semi local vineyard in about 45 minutes between about 10 of us, and we took them back to his parents’ house so we could crush and de-stem them. Not the I Love Lucy kind of crushing, but it was still messy and fun nonetheless. They have a machine that you crank the grapes through, and it takes the stems off and crushes the grapes at the same time. It’s pretty awesome. The whole process was pretty fun, and I suggest if you ever get the chance to pick and crush grapes, you SHOULD!

I don’t know the whole process, but I know it probably won’t get bottled until next year. It’s going to be exciting to try it, because I”m not much of a big wine drinker, but the grapes tasted pretty good. lol

Here’s a picture of me at the crusher…

Here’s Joe working it, too…

There are plenty more pictures to check out in my Flickr Set, if you’d like to take a look (seriously, I’m not posting all 60 pics. LOL), but I’ll leave you with one more for the road…

For those of you who don’t know, several Major League Baseball Teams host a Stitch N Pitch night, where they open up a section of “special” tickets for a game (that probably won’t sell tickets very well), and the people who buy the “special” tickets get to all sit together and knit, and you get a ticket for a special “Stitch & Pitch” item.

My first time going was last year to an Oakland A’s game. They played the Texas Rangers, which I thought was hilarious. Honestly, I don’t remember who won or really anything other than that we got an el cheapo reusable bag w/ the logo on it & a free pattern and that I was probably the coldest I’ve EVER been. Just a note – if you find yourself at the Oakland Coliseum on a July or August afternoon, BRING A SWEATSHIRT & A BLANKET. It will be EFFING COLD.

This year, I finally got to go to AT&T Park where we watched the SF Giants (Joe’s favorite team, FYI) play the Pittsburgh Pirates. My friends from knitting group and some of our families decided to go, and we had a BLAST.

We were almost up as high as we could go, and it was no where NEAR as cold as it was in Oakland, even though it started at 7 at night, and the fog started rolling in. Here’s a pic before the game started:

We had really good seats considering they were up in the nosebleed section, and were able to see pretty much everything. We all had fun. Here’s a pic of Joe and I. Ignore my hair and the fact that I need to lose a MILLION pounds… or just stop wearing that particular shirt. Ugh.

Here’s a nighttime shot of the field after the fog came in and the sun went down, right before we left:

Our special item this year was a Lou Seal (SF Giants mascot) bobblehead. You hear bobblehead, or at least I do, and you think some plastic piece of junk that’ll break in five seconds or at least be really cheesy, but the one we got was actually probably the best quality bobblehead I’ve ever seen, and he’s CUTE to boot!

I took him to work the next day, and every time someone comes up who hasn’t seen it before, they stop mid-sentence to say how cute he is. hehe

BTW – if you’re the praying/good thought/good vibe kinda person, please keep “my cat” Symphony and my sister in your thoughts. I found out that Symphony has diabetes & they have to give her shots of insulin every day now. Megan said she seemed to be doing better even after just the first one, so fingers crossed that she’ll get better quickly. I love that darn cat, even 2000 miles away! Also, send my sister some speedy healing vibes – she got hit by a car (she’s fine).. some jackass drove down her work street & their side-view mirror hit her really hard on the arm. She’s doing okay, other than waiting for what is surely going to be a massive bruise show up on her arm. Karma’s a bitch, that’s all I gotta say to the dumbass driver.

First of all…

This weekend was a mix of good and not so good, but I’d call it a success over all.

We woke up on Saturday and actually DID something. Not anything very exciting (took the car in for an oil change), but still. Something! While waiting for the car to be serviced, we went to breakfast at Mimi’s Cafe. I’ve been CRAVING their pancakes something awful for a while. I keep thinking I’m going to go in the morning before work, maybe on a Monday since I go in a little later, but it never happens. After breakfast, we went home & waited for the call to come pick the car up. After we picked up the car, we ran some errands and explored the little bit of Fremont near the shopping center and Fry’s. Um, in case you were wondering, there are no hidden gems that we found. What you see is what you get. LOL I got some stuff at JoAnn’s for a couple of projects I’m working on, and then we came home and chilled out for a bit. Joe had a party to go to & I had some things to do, so we did our own thing for the evening.

Today did NOT start out very wonderful, but I spent the first 2 hrs or so of being awake FREAKING OUT. Everything’s okay, but it was definitely not a good way start the day. It’s shaken me up all day today. Vague, I know, but I don’t feel like getting into it.

Anyway, after all that cleared up, it was a pretty laid back day. I ended up being exhausted after the emotional rollercoaster of the morning, so I ended up taking a nap. I woke up & we went to Costco to get pizza (yum!). When we got home, I called my mom & wished her a Happy Mother’s Day just as she was sitting down to dinner. rofl. Oops. We watched Quantum of Solace (eh. Honestly, I wasn’t really paying much attention), so I can send that back to Netflix.

I’m kinda tired, so I expect that I’ll be going to bed soon. How was your weekend?