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.

Megan & Symphony

Symphony was our cat. We got her shortly after my mom and stepdad got back together. So, we’ve had her like 10 or 12 years, and she was already about a year old when we got her from the pet store. She was a playful kitty, and more human than cat. She liked to eat pizza crust. And bananas. She hated anything cherry flavored. She liked to sniff things.

I remember the first time we tried to take her outside. We put her on a leash so she wouldn’t run away. She wanted to go outside so bad, so we took her out and set her on the ground. She FREAKED THE FUCK OUT and tried to get inside. We opened in the door, and in the span of about 30 seconds she ran into the living room to one couch, across the coffee table to the other couch, through the computer room and into the family room under the couch with the leash still attached & flapping behind her. She could’ve gotten caught on something, but she didn’t. She liked to drag yarn around the house, meowing while she held it in her mouth. She liked to fight with Goatee. She liked to follow you in the bathroom and sit in the bathtub, waiting for you to turn the water on so she could drink from the faucet. The only time she growled is when my sister would cradle her in her arms like a baby and twist around. It was so freaking funny.

I couldn’t take her with me when I moved out, so she stayed at my parents’. She was really the family cat anyway, even if she was mine in my heart.

She was a crazy cat, and now she’s gone to kitty-cat heaven. In the last year, she’s just deteriorated. Her medicine hasn’t helped, and she couldn’t move around as well as she used to. She couldn’t jump up on things, it was too difficult for her to get into a litterbox, and she’s been dehydrated. Age has caught up with her, and my parents had to put her down today. We went through this a few months ago before they changed their mind. I’m glad they did because I got to see her one last time when I was there at Christmas. I knew it’d be the last time, and I actually cried driving back to our hotel. I love that cat more than most people.

She was awesome, and I hope she’s not suffering anymore.

Love you, Sympha-cat.

(I would’ve put more pictures, but apparently, that one of her and my sister was the only one I had up on Flickr or on my computer.)

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!

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…

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.

I did eventually get that copy of Kerplunk! I spent birthday money on it. We went right back to Blockbuster Music, where it had been but no longer was. I FREAKED OUT. They looked it up in the system, and the computer said they had it. They had to go dig around in boxes for it. I also got the copy of 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. I threw a tantrum of EPIC proportions when we were back in the car, and I don’t remember why my mom gave me the money for it, but that she did. I had to run back into the store and get it, wiping tears off my cheeks.

I share with you my newest trip down memory lane…

Green Day – "21 Guns" – HD

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?

A couple of weeks ago, my office found out that we had.. erm… some little friends. What started out as a small ant hill type thing that people thought was the cleaning crew not doing their job ended up being a case of termites! Termites who are LOST. Apparently they hit a crack somewhere and took a wrong turn, which landed them in our office, coming through a crack in the concrete under our carpet.

Someone put a paper cup over the mound on the ground so people wouldn’t step on it & so we had something to show the pest control people. A couple of days after we called someone, they finally showed up, and we moved the paper cup to find something like this (only a bit taller):

Ew, right?? Well, the first pest control place we called ended up being a pain in the ass. They sent out a “rep” to take a look at it, who said he’d call the “termite guy”, and then the “termite guy” said he was going to have to call someone else to come out to actually take care of it, and then they never showed up. WTF? After the weekend, we came in to this:

I didn’t take any pictures of it all week. Anytime I’d walk past, I didn’t have my phone or a camera. This morning, though, I remembered to bring the phone with me, and I took some pictures. Good thing, too, because we found out someone is supposed to be coming into the office tomorrow (yes, on the weekend!) to drill some holes and inject the “termicide”. This is what it looked like when I came in this morning:

Here’s a side view, too.

The gross part about this one is that I THINK the white things are the termites. GROSS! According to one of the ladies who works back there, she said it grew quite a bit before the bug guy took it down. I’m sorry I missed it… they ended up doing it while I was at lunch.

This sign was up when I was taking pics this morning. LOL

Memorial services…. ROFL. This afternoon, after I got back from lunch, this is the scene:

That small hole near the center is where they came up from. I am so sad that work is going to be so boring now. While I’m icked out by the whole concept, it was kind of like a trainwreck. I just couldn’t stop staring. LOL It is a good thing I work all the way up in the front, or I would just be camped out there watching it happen. haha.

Anyway, sadly, this has been the highlight of the last couple of weeks at work. Actually, there is happier news not having to do with work, but I am not putting that with the Termite Post, so I’ll wait a day or so before I squee about the other good news. LOL

… chocolate frosting on a graham cracker!

One of my favorite childhood treats is this tasty thing. Spread some chocolate frosting on a graham cracker, break it in half (or you can break it in half first, or just make a really big one by using 2 sheets of graham crackers), and eat! You could use just about any frosting, but the chocolate versions are the best.

Joe and I have had a very laid back Valentine’s day. This is actually our very first Valentine’s Day together (he was traveling for work last year. BOO!), but he’s not feeling very well, so we did lots of tv-watching and napping and video-game playing. I also knit a bunch. For dinner, I really had my heart set on Breakfast for Dinner & none of the options sounded good to Joe so he decided to take one for the team, so we went to IHOP. Joe’s a bigger fan of Breakfast for Breakfast, and it’s not his most favorite place to go anyway, so I really appreciated it. I think, though, that we need to make it a tradition, because IHOP? On Valentine’s Day at 8pm? Very nearly dead! No reservations, no waiting for a table. It was great!

I hope your Valentine’s Day is/was all that you hoped it would be, and filled with lots of love!

The TV we use for video conferences is not “set up” for real TV, and all the websites that you’d be able to watch it on are BLOCKED!

I tried my phone, but it’s not letting me either. WTF?!

I guess I’ll have to see it on the news.