Posts (page 2)
My birthday is seven days away, and I have a pretty concise birthday list. I bought myself a flash for my camera, and got a really good deal on an 8GB memory card, so those two things are squared away. Also, Manda sent me some Victoria's Secret Dream Angels Desire lotion, so that's taken care of as well. But I still want a larger laptop hard drive (250gb), a stereo for my car, maybe a smaller, more portable flash for my camera (the SB-400), and ink for my printer (hah, I'm a dork). I wouldn't mind a few girly things, such as some tungsten rings, and a charm bracelet or necklace.
I can't believe I'm going to be 24. Ah! Where is the time going!?
It wasn't my intention to disappear for four days. It just kind of...happened. Aside from work-related blogging, using the internet to do my regular work, checking email and fixing a few urgent issues at Lavish, I didn't do much on the internet. In fact, on Monday I never turned on my computer until it was almost 7pm.
So what have I been up to? Reading (btw, I'm on GoodReads!)Organizing, cleaning (sofa, carpets, bedrooms), re-arranging the living room so that Ryan can't access the AC unit to mess with its buttons and turn it on and off (before the sofa was right in front of the window containing the AC unit. Now it's across the room, and the entertainment center and television effectively block him from reaching the AC unit now!), and going out. A lot. For errands. To pick up this, get that. The park (twice). The library (twice). Etc, etc.
Highlights of the week? Well, on Monday I found a lovely surprise in the mail from Manda (thank you darling!):
Tuesday Dan and I took the kids to the library, signed up for a library cards, picked out books, and signed up Alyssa for a princess themed story telling on Wednesday.
Wednesday was the story telling. And a day filled with endless work for me, and then three more hours of running around and doing errands yesterday evening. Sigh. I was exhausted by the time I dragged my ass home last night at 10pm. Too many days of not enough sleep and doing too much caught up with me. It was all I could do to get up yesterday morning when the alarm went off at 9am. I crashed HARD last night at 10:30pm. Anyone who knows me and my sleeping habits knows that is utterly INSANE, as my normal bedtime isn't until at least 2am. Better/worse still, I slept straight through until almost 10:30am this morning, with the exception of waking up twice: once to go to the bathroom, and the other time because I somehow yanked my nose stud out of my nostril and the resulting pain woke me up.
The princess themed story telling was adorable. The princess was from a local amusement park, and the kids were encouraged to dress in princess attire. Three books were read, chocolate animal crackers were passed around, and the kids had the opportunity to make paper crowns for themselves.
(Even princesses get tired!)
Ryan has been especially adorable lately, tromping around outside in the grass, getting his cuteness on with overalls and such:
Today (Thursday) I refused to leave the house. Refused. The kids and I have been running out every single day for hours on end, and on two different days we went out twice (coming home just for dinner!). So, we definitely needed the day inside. I caught up on housework, played singing games with Alyssa, colored with both her and Ryan, read my own book, did more work, caught up on email, and uploaded photos to Flickr.
Oh, and I baked! Finally! I have cookies to send to Dez and Anna and Shannon! At this moment, the boxes are ready, the first two batches of cookies have been made and vacuum sealed, and all that's left is the peanut butter. I would have done them earlier tonight, except that my mom and brothers came over for a few hours, and with two adults and four kids in the house, it was a little... rowdy. And loud. Very loud!
Friday: free swim day at the local pool! Dan has some stuff to do until about 1:30pm, and then we're getting our swimsuits on (yuck: swimming is nice, prancing around in a swimsuit... not so nice!), lathering up with sunscreen, and then dragging ourselves, kidlets and swimming gear to the pool. It's supposed to be a disgusting 90 degree day tomorrow, so it will be perfect. I hope.
Is it okay to wear contacts in the water? I'm assuming you just shouldn't be getting the water in your eyes. No worries there... I don't open my eyes underwater, and have no intention of getting water splashed into my eyes. It'll be so nice to be able to SEE! :) :) :)
Saturday-Sunday: a circus is in town, and we have coupons that get kids in for free and adults for $12 per person, so we're going to go on one of the days. :)
Lastly, I'm holding a contest at In My Bag, with the prize being a $25 Lowes gift card. For details on entering, see the official contest entry: Win a Lowes gift card!
Whew. I think that about wraps up this MONSTROUS entry (so sorry). How are you doing?
I'm in the mood to bake cookies. I baked some the other night, and sent all but two or three home with my brothers. Shannon expressed her desire for someone to bake her cookies, so I'm going to send her some. I'm sending a batch to Dez, too. I stocked up on flour, brown sugar and butter today, so I should be good to go with the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies and Shannon's awesome whipped shortbread cookies.
As I write this, the covers for my couch cushions, arm covers and throw pillows are in the washer. I'm going to vacuum out the couch, and then do a thorough vacuuming of the living room floor. Dan has promised to scrub the hell out of the living room carpet with a couple of cans of Resolve High-Traffic Foam tomorrow night, and then I'm going to steam clean it.
Whew.
Today? I just sent my brother home via Dan, who will drop him off on his way to work. He stayed overnight last night and played with Alyssa for most of the morning and afternoon. I have dinner to make soon. I'm working on Lavish right now -- several mods broke during the upgrade to the newest stable release of phpbb 3.0.
I'm also tempted to rearrange the living room in the manner we had it last summer... the AC unit is in the window behind our couch, and it's really hard to hear anything on TV when it's blasting away!
My sunburn is peeling. I love the peeling stage. Too bad I can't reach it. :(
So it's June. June! My birthday is in exactly thirteen days. I'm not excited about turning 24, but I am excited about the get together Dan and my mother are planning. This is the first time I'll have ever had a party in over ten years, and I'm excited. :) My birthday falls on a Friday this year. Friday the 13th. I don't think I've had a Friday the 13th birthday since I turned 13. Good thing I'm not superstitious or anything like that. ;)
But back to now. It's June 1st! Dan and I do our monthly "Happy [month]!" thing, and he definitely got me this month:
He gets bonus points for thinking outside the box. ;) Me... pfft... I'm sucking at creativity here. I keep doing phone calls and text messages. Last month he set his alarm for midnight and stuck a post-it note on it. Then there's this month -- adding an event to my Windows Outlook calendar. Smarty pants. I'll have to get him good next month.
And... jenn.nu's June theme is here! On time! Amazing, I know. I guess I kind of cheated, since I used the same theme from last month. But I did use a different header image, and changed the colors from green and pale pink to blue and a more vivid pink. So that all counts, right? Right! :)
I'm watching Bridezilla right now. Holy spoiled, prissy entitlement bitches. It's a wonder these women still have a *man* waiting for them at the altar!
Sunday... I'm hoping to take Alyssa to the pool. The pool opened on Saturday, but the temps didn't go past 72 or so, and it was raining. Obviously, going to the pool was out of the question. Alyssa took the change of plans quite gracefully, and instead waited until the sun came out later this afternoon to go outside and play for a little bit.
Last week I upgraded Firefox to 3.01 RC. Greasemonkey promptly up and died, and I wanted to cry, because I use several scripts to make browsing, commenting on photos and posting photos from Flickr a lot easier, and quicker (photo posting).
So I searched around, and found this new release. And it works! Perfectly! I am happy once again. :D
Alyssa discovered a caterpillar in our yard yesterday. She befriended it, letting it crawl up and down her arm, giggling when its tiny bristles tickled her fingers. My mom and brothers were over at the time, and my ten year old brother was playing outside with her. When it was time for dinner, I asked him to take Alyssa back outside to release the caterpillar. He said okay, and out they went.
Five minutes later, they're back in and we settle down for dinner. After a bite of chicken, Alyssa informs me that they took the caterpillar outside, my ten year old brother dropped it on the ground, then stepped on it and squished it around. As if that wasn't mean and disgusting enough, he then made sure to point out the smashed caterpillar and its blood on the ground.
It's now today, and she hasn't stopped talking about seeing the sleeping caterpillar, the dead caterpillar and the dark blood on the ground. Each time the conversation comes up we tell her not to worry about the caterpillar, and go on to talk about something else: the animals at the zoo, our planned trip to the pool tomorrow (I can't wait to go swimming!), what she'd like for a snack, draw us a picture, etc., etc. I'm not one to hide away from the realities of life (death), but she's THREE. She does not need to know about it, and she certainly does not need to keep thinking about and talking about a dead caterpillar and its blood on the ground.
As for my brother, I chewed him out for it. There was no reason to kill the caterpillar, and there was certainly no reason to make a big deal out of it to Alyssa, including showing her the body and its blood. What he did was wrong, and to then discuss it with her in detail was very inappropriate. My mom yelled at him too, and I know that if Dan was here (he was at working), he would have reamed him out as well.
Well, I'm off to try and get Alyssa's mind on other things. Unicorns, flowers, sparkles, sugar cookies, rainbows, and the like. Anything but the poor caterpillar. :(
A few days ago Dan asked me why I always listen to my iPod and iTunes on random, rather than listening to full albums. My answer? I don't know. Heh. So tonight I'm going to focus on one album at a time. I can definitely see advantages to doing so. It's a little weird to make the jump from Methods of Mayhem's Get Naked to John Mayer's Daughters. Right now I'm on Savage Garden's self-titled album. First up is To the Moon and Back, which is where the inspiration for this blog entry came from. Boring, I know.
I swear, this cat is more dog than cat. Part Siamese, part Labrador? He greets us at the door. He follows me into the bathroom and sits at my feet. He pants. He likes his nose rubbed, and enjoys being scratched behind his ears. He comes trotting at his name being called. Oh, and he drools. Drools. His favorite thing to do to me is wait until I'm settled in bed, and then come in and lay on top of me. And purr. The purring isn't bad. It's what comes next: the drool. There's nothing more unpleasant and squirm-inducing that a drop of warm, fresh cat drool splashing onto your naked chest or neck. But I think Dan got it worse the other night: Kirin drooled on his face. Serves him (Dan) right for laughing at how squealy I get whenever Kirin drools on me.
My birthday is in two weeks. TWO WEEKS, people. I'm not ready for 24. I feel like I'm getting old. I have this feeling of dread, like this is the best it's going to be (in terms of physical health and being in my prime and all that jazz), and it'll all be downhill from here. Am I wrong? Are these feelings unfounded? Blech. I'm too young to be thinking this way!
What I want for my birthday: 250GB hard drive for my laptop, 8GB memory card for my digital camera, a smaller external flash (the SB-400) for my Nikon (good for long trips and outings where lugging around the hulking SB-600 would be tiresome), and a new stereo for my car. The kind that has the input jack an iPod can be hooked up to. Currently we use one of those cassette converter thingies in the Hyundai. With my car I'm just SOL, since it only has a CD player. I'm over burning CDs. That is so 2001!
My sunburn is healing. I have new freckles/splotches, though I'm still red. I'm itchy, and I think the back of my neck and upper back are starting to peel. Fun. Too bad I can't really reach it. Yes, I am one of those gross people that likes to peel the sunburned skin off! Dan is too -- he already volunteered to do the spots I can't reach. Now that's love. ;)
At my mom's suggestion, I picked out an adorable bandanna for Alyssa. Too bad I like it, too. More than she does. Though it was only $1, so I wouldn't break the bank if I went back and bought a second one for myself.
And... 1:37am. Ew. Tonight is going to be a late night. We did some car swapping around earlier today, and so my mom and brothers are here at my house, both cars are here, and Dan is at work, dependent on a ride to get home. I'm just waiting for the call to go and get him. I hope it's soon, because I'm tired!
A few days ago Dan asked me why I always listen to my iPod and iTunes on random, rather than listening to full albums. My answer? I don't know. Heh. So tonight I'm going to focus on one album at a time. I can definitely see advantages to doing so. It's a little weird to make the jump from Methods of Mayhem's <a href="http://www.lyricsmania.com/soundtracklyrics/girl_next_door_the_soundtrack_lyrics_256/get_naked_methods_of_mayhem_lyrics_3917.html">Get Naked</a> to John Mayer's <a href="http://www.lyricsdomain.com/10/john_mayer/daughters.html">Daughters</a>. Right now I'm on Savage Garden's self-titled album. First up is <em>To the Moon and Back</em>, which is where the inspiration for this blog entry came from. Boring, I know.
I swear, this cat is more dog than cat. Part Siamese, part Labrador? He greets us at the door. He follows me into the bathroom and sits at my feet. He pants. He likes his nose rubbed, and enjoys being scratched behind his ears. He comes trotting at his name being called. Oh, and he drools. Drools. His favorite thing to do to me is wait until I'm settled in bed, and then come in and lay on top of me. And purr. The purring isn't bad. It's what comes next: the drool. There's nothing more unpleasant and squirm-inducing that a drop of warm, fresh cat drool splashing onto your naked chest or neck. But I think Dan got it worse the other night: Kirin drooled on his face. Serves him (Dan) right for laughing at how squealy I get whenever Kirin drools on me.
My birthday is in two weeks. TWO WEEKS, people. I'm not ready for 24. I feel like I'm getting old. I have this feeling of dread, like this is the best it's going to be (in terms of physical health and being in my prime and all that jazz), and it'll all be downhill from here. Am I wrong? Are these feelings unfounded? Blech. I'm too young to be thinking this way!
What I want for my birthday: 250GB hard drive for my laptop, 8GB memory card for my digital camera, a smaller external flash (the SB-400) for my Nikon (good for long trips and outings where lugging around the hulking SB-600 would be tiresome), and a new stereo for my car. The kind that has the input jack an iPod can be hooked up to. Currently we use one of those cassette converter thingies in the Hyundai. With my car I'm just SOL, since it only has a CD player. I'm over burning CDs. That is so 2001!
My sunburn is healing. I have new freckles/splotches, though I'm still red. I'm itchy, and I think the back of my neck and upper back are starting to peel. Fun. Too bad I can't really reach it. Yes, I am one of those gross people that likes to peel the sunburned skin off! Dan is too -- he already volunteered to do the spots I can't reach. Now that's love. ;)
At my mom's suggestion, I picked out an adorable bandanna for Alyssa. Too bad I like it, too. More than she does. Though it was only $1, so I wouldn't break the bank if I went back and bought a second one for myself.
And... 1:37am. Ew. Tonight is going to be a late night. We did some car swapping around earlier today, and so my mom and brothers are here at my house, both cars are here, and Dan is at work, dependent on a ride to get home. I'm just waiting for the call to go and get him. I hope it's soon, because I'm tired!
Since a child I have had my fair share of sunburns that peeled, oozed and rendered me useless for washing my own hair, wearing tops and moving around without pain. One summer I got severely dehydrated at an amusement park and nearly passed out (the following summer my mother did the same). So to me, summer safety is about keeping cool, in the shade, wearing sunscreen, and drinking plenty of replenishing fluids. It wasn't until tonight that I gave much thought to boating safety. In particular, boating safety in regards to not operating any type of watercraft while under the influence of alcohol.
Just as DUIs can kill and cause tragedy, so can OUIs. I watched a detailed Arizona Boating reenactment video tonight that showed the death of a ten year old girl, while her parents stood by, helpless to do anything as they watched a drunk boat operator run right over her as she waded in the water (she had fallen off her water ski and her parents had turned back to get her).
The videos I watched on Boating Education were created by an Arizona government agency, but their message detailing the risk of Boating Operating Under the Influence is meant for everyone. Specific laws related to alcohol and operating under its influence may vary slightly from state to state, but the risk of injury and death as a result of being under the influence is one thing that remains constant, no matter where you're at in the world.
If you're interested, check out the following videos:
Fifteen minutes after I wrote up the Where the heck is my mom?! blog entry, my mom showed up. She left late (of course), then had to stop for gas, and got stuck behind some slow as molasses, lost tourist (poor guy was really lost to have been down our way!) all the way to our house. But it wasn't too bad. It gave Alyssa time to eat a quick snack (she was too excited for breakfast, lol) and me time to write up a review on Shutterfly note cards.
So we left the house by 10am, after running back to grab Alyssa's hair bow and sunglasses. We stopped at McDonalds (Dan and Alyssa) and Arby's (me) for "breakfast", and then hit 30, jumped onto 202, and finally made it over to 76. Even with sitting in traffic that slowed to a crawl for the last four tenths of a mile to the Girard Ave./Philadelphia zoo exit, we got down there by 11:30am. Finding parking was a bitch, and we wound up parking in Fairmount park and walking three or so blocks to the zoo. But we were in and waiting in the fifteen minute line for the bathroom by a little after 12.
The zoo was FUN. I'm glad we went when we did, because even though the temps were "only" in the mid 70's or so, it was HOT. And very bright, and very sunny. I somehow forgot the sunscreen, and paid for my forgetfulness with a pretty painful sunburn that is on my upper shoulders, back of my neck, and then comes down to where the front of my shirt was. It's most painful around the back of my neck and down my shoulders to my chest, and I have geeky camera strap marks from having my Nikon D40x around my neck all day long. Luckily, Alyssa didn't pay for my stupidity. Between running around, walking in the shade and sitting in the stroller with the visor open, she was protected -- absolutely no sunburn, anywhere!
We saw everything but the aviary (under construction) and small animal (the zoo had been closed for a half an hour when we left, so we didn't want to dawdle any longer) house, and did everything except the hot air balloon ride (Alyssa is dying to; my fear of heights is kind of holding me back!), swan boat ride and kids tree house. Alyssa had her face painted (she chose a tiger, and the painter made it pink to match her clothes) and rode a pony (or was it a horse?), and generally had a wonderful time alternating between walking, riding in the stroller and on Dan's shoulders while we traipsed all over the zoo and checked out all of the animals.
Photos! Oh, my goodness. So many photos. 664 of them (5.02GB worth!) to be exact. It took me over four hours to go through them all last night! I was shooting in RAW format, and actually filled up both the 4GB memory card and 2GB memory card that I brought along! My 24th birthday is in 17 days. I'm thinking I should ask for an 8GB memory card. ;)
I uploaded almost 100 photos altogether to Flickr. The set is here, and my favorites are beneath the cut. :)
I love the peacocks.
Lurf.
Did you know that hippos have fuzzy ears?
Elephants are beautiful and majestic.
Sleepy kitty. ♥
It's a Lissy Tiger (with a glittery nose!).
A mural in the childrens' zoo.
Feeding the ducks.
As if I don't see enough of these around here!
Fat, lazy and friendly goat in the petting zoo.
What is wrong with this goat?! Pregnant? Huge hips? Tumors? Drug smuggling?
Alyssa riding the pony (horse?).
A quite moment with Daddy. :)
Cheetah.
Meow.
This zebra needs a bath! Check out how the stripes extend into the mane.
Rainbow in the fountain as we were leaving. :)
Ten minutes after we left the zoo. Snoozing away with the stuffed tiger she picked out at the gift shop.
And... my painful, painful sunburn. :(
Tired. Sunburned (bad; it fucking hurts :( ). Off to play GTA4 and finish going through all 5.2GB worth of photos from yesterday's (awesome! fun! exhausting!) trip to the zoo.
I hope everyone enjoyed their Memorial Day weekend! :)
