Girls night in

There is simply nothing better than week night with girlfriends, drinking pomegranate martinis and talking. Something about it soothes the soul, renews your outlook and makes you feel wonderful.
Today during an all girls email my friend Jody made the mistake of stating "My man is working tonight, my kids are away and I am basically home alone - who wants to come over for drinks". Sadly for her - she had hit me during a rough time of the day and even though I had a lot of stuff to do at home to get ready for this weekends camping trip - I eagerly answered. After high pressuring my close friend (her sister) into attending also the night was set. We had hoped another friend would join us however she inevitably baled due to children issues (apparently swimming is more fun that sitting around with Mommies friends).
Our gracious hostest welcomed us around 7pm with an open bottle of wine and promise of a delightful dinner. After predinner toasts we ate and talked. Call it the martini but I could feel myself relax with ever syllable spoke. We talked about everything from ex husbands to friends ex girlfriends and everything in between. From a fresh bottle of Skye vodka to the last 3 inches of it - we had a great time.
Dinner with girlfriends is the best thing after a stressful day! Thanks to all my girlfriends that know a martini and a talk can cure the worst of day - hugs and love to ya!

Sniffing it out

I have an uncanny ability to smell things that no one around me can smell. I am always the first to smell the daily office perpetrator that burns the microwave popcorn or if the roller on the printer is jammed and getting hot. It has always been this way for me. My mother says I get my sense of smell from my great grandmother - Grandma-ma. She was legally blind my whole life and we've all heard what they say about your other senses kicking into overdrive when one is no longer working. She once walked onto the back porch at my grandparents house and could tell that the night before (she hadn't been there) that someone had been sitting on the porch smoking even though no cigarette butts or ashtray lay around stinking up the country air.
Not only can I smell things others can't at first but, I also like weird smells. For example - I am crazy about walking into a shoe store - especially cheapy PayLess. Something about the fake leather and cheap rubber smells amazing to me. And Rick can only shake his head every time I sniff my Ugg boots and smile before I put them on!
For me - my olfactory works overtime. Therefore it should really be no surprise to me that today while waiting in line at the cafe downstairs my nose tempted me into ordering a sandwich I knew I wouldn't like. Something about the ham today just smelled good. Boy was I wrong! First I am not a big deli meat person; it's slimy and just plain gross. Second I am not a ham person - the occasional seasonal (i.e. Easter) ham - but never deli ham. And third I don't eat white bread on a normal basis - I like sourdough or french but just regular white - NEVER. Of course then what do I order? A ham sandwich on white bread with mayo and mustard. WHY WOULD I DO THIS? My nose - that's why, it smelled good so I ordered it.
So, here I sit trying to swallow slimy meat and sticky white bread. I am thinking of trashing the whole thing and opting for a vending machine lunch of poptarts. Poptarts smell good - like fruit and pastry and all things right from a vending machine!

My own personal Office Space

Much like all 20/30 something - I adore to movie Office Space. It felt like every scene was from a day of work. I bonded with the stapler guy, felt sorrow for the receptionist and wanted to ease the flare blues of my TGIFriday's waiter.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when takes apart his cubicle and pushes it down to see out the window. Many people think I like it because we all want window cubicle. Let's be honest here though I like the destruction of it all. Just ask Rick- he'll constest to my love of destruction.

In order to emulate this, I've devised my own plan which, not only allows me to be destructive BUT also allows me to vent my frustration at work. Whenever I go to the restroom I will take a dime with me and visit by visit, I shall unscrew the bathroom until with a simple PUSH it shall all fall apart!!

Now I know I spoke of doing this at my last job however, I never had the audacity to actually do it. I figure now, SCREW IT! I am in! Unscrewed stalls here I come. My only worry - should I wear gloves so they can't finger print it????????????

Exterminator

I don't like snakes. Most people know this. It's my one weakness. I do well at maintaining in most panic situations - unless the slither are involved. Tonight, however - I proved this to be incorrect when I screamed like a 7 year old school yard girl that was being chased by the boys so they could throw a frog on her.


Let me give you a short back story. About 2 weeks ago I was home, alone, and someone knocks on the door. A door to door sales man tries to sell me a exterminator package. Feeling bad for the little guy I agree. Then later call and cancel when Rick says no no no!

Fast forward to tonight. I am walking into my bedroom to get something and as I turn on the light, I see something scurry into the hall. I don't freak out right at first, I figure its a frog, or maybe a cricket - which I will catch and nicely put outside. I look closer as it tries to wedge itself under the dog gate. It's at this point that the 7 year old school yard girl kicks and I start screaming and jumping up and down. Poor Rick! He freaks out and runs into the hall where I am jumping, screaming AND pointing at this THING - that is neither a frog or a cricket.

Grabbing a close by shoe he smushs it. And we investigate what turns out to be a HUGE SPIDER. I MEAN HUGE! I am not talking dime size. Or even quarter size. This little beast was at LEAST the size of a silver dollar. GROSS.

Tomorrow - Rick is calling the exterminator back - bye bye monster spiders!

Insomnia

AUGH! It's 1:30 am on Monday morning or Sunday night however you prefer to think of it. And, for some reason I am suffering from what I am sure is self inflicted insomnia. You'd think after my happy pill (which usually knocks me out after 15 minutes) and 2 glasses of wine - after having wine and a beer at my sister in laws house, that I would be passed out, much the same way that Rick is yet here is I am, blogging at this early/late hour.
The last few days have been a trial of mental proportion. After find out my aunt (on my fathers side) had passed away, I was torn with the decision of making the long trip to Oregon to attend the funeral or staying home. One would think this NOT a hard decision. However, after not speaking to my father in over a year and the fact that I would spend close to 20 hours in the car to attend the funeral for 3 maybe 4 hours I decided not to go. Let me say that I am NOT close to my father side of the family at all. However this aunt (and uncle for that matter) are quite possibly the only members of my patriarchal family that were ever kind to me and that ever showed me any type of love (including my paternal grandparents). It was difficult to make the decision to not go, but I feel like my aunt would understand and know that in my heart I was thinking of her.
Other than that I had a good weekend. Friday my good friend Terra came over for dinner with my beautiful baby girl Amelia (I've decided to adopt her, only her parents won't agree - so Rick and I have the honorary title of aunt and uncle). We all hung out and chatted until Amelia decided it was time for bed! Then Saturday I worked which is great for the pay check! And afterward went to Killians 2nd to last baseball game in the playoff series.
The game it's self was good! They of COURSE won and will be playing their last game Monday (if they win, they will be the champion of the Sacramento area). The kids played excellent and other than a few issues with "blue" it was a good game.
After the game we ran home, showered and beautified ourselves and went to meet our friend Becky and Greg to drive to SF to go to see 3 for all (BTW- thanks to Becky who explained to me how to link a website to a word on blogger). They were amazingly funny and we all enjoyed the show. We dined before hand at one of Rick and I's favorite restaurants Ti Couze in the Mission District. We all enjoyed a rich dinner which included the meat and cheese plate, the organic green salad and then of course a savory crepe. Greg and I opted for the special which had Fontina cheese (I LOVE CHEESE), grilled sweet red onions and a red pepper sauce and Becky and Rick both had a scallop crepe (EW!). We were all delightfully satisfied but ran out of time for desert (SCREWED!) and had to leave for the show. After the show we tried to hunt down a good place for desert. We went to Ghirardelli square in hopes of finding something. The actual Ghirardelli desert place had a HUGE line so we opted for Lori's diner (also in Ghirardelli square) - we should have waited in line. The weird smell should have been our first clue that we shouldn't stay - but of course we did. We all ordered desert. I made the mistake of thinking that the hot fudge sundae would be a safe choice. Needless to say - it wasn't. We finished our desert and left unsatisfied and ready to rid ourselves of the foul smell.
I've ended my weekend with a very surreal fathers day (which in NO way included my own father). We had a WONDERFUL family breakfast at my Aunt Billie's house - with our traditional biscuits and gravy (this is the stuff fatty thighs are made of - SO GOOD!). Then Rick and I came home and had a few hours of nap time before heading off to Sissy's house (Rick's sister - LOVE HER). We had a great dinner there with wonderful food, wine and conversation.
Now here I sit at 2am trying to go to sleep. I am hoping that any minute the exhaustion will kick in and I'll just pass out! I guess I should be lying down in case that happens. Off to bed I head! Happy Monday all!

YAY FOR RICK!!

At Blue Shield they have an employee recognition program where their coworkers can send a recommendation for someone who has gone above and beyond to get a bonus. Rick has been making big impressions on all the uppity ups and today his supervisor told him that he has been award a bonus!! He was elected by his supervisor, manager, director and project manager for a presentation he did in regards to a new program.
I am super proud of him! YAY RICK!

Happy Wooden Anniversary to me!

On Saturday, June 10, 2006 Rick and I celebrated our 6th anniversary (which the proper “modern gift” is wood – how that is modern I’ll never know)! YAY US! To commemorate this happy occasion we decided to spend the weekend in San Francisco doing the normal touristy stuff as well as see a musical that Rick has been dying to see.

We left Friday afternoon, a little later than originally planned – however traffic was super light and we made it in record time. After a recent bachelor party Rick had attended in Reno he’s become interested in Horse Racing so we decided, for our first night to go to Bay Meadows horse track since they had live racing. I was skeptical to start – I figured it would be SUPER boring! Once we got there though – it was a whole different story! First it was college night and Rick just happens to be wearing a San Diego State sweatshirt so we got in for $1! Then it was $1 hot dog/$2 beers – what could be better than cheap beer and hot dogs? Let me tell you – WINNING, WINNING is better!! Our first race we bet $3 to win on horse 4 (Riverun Thruit – named after Brad Pitt of course) – he was slow out of the gate, but blew the competition away on the final stretch! I was so jazzed up, I was jumping up and down and screaming and grabbing Ricks arm (spilling his beer on the chair of the cranky lady in front of him - opps)! For a $3 bet, we won $26!!! We only placed bets on 2 more races, neither of which won, but we still had a ton of fun. And our winnings from the first race paid for our drinks, snacks and bets!

After horse racing we went and found our cute little boutique hotel in Union Square, Hotel Metropolis. Super cute décor and amazingly friend staff made this hotel one of my favorites. Also they had a great internet special where we got free valet parking with in and out privileges as well as a $10 gas card every night we stayed. In addition to this great special every afternoon from 4-6 they offered free wine in their “library” – it wasn’t the best we’ve had, but it was worth its freeness! The only down fall to this hotel was it location, which wasn’t the best neighborhood ever but aside from that, it was a lovely place to stay.

On Saturday we woke up bright and early and headed out, we had full days ahead of us! Our first stop was breakfast. We have a tradition of always going to Ti Coupe on Valencia whenever we go to the city – they have the best Hungarian crepes and TO DIE for blood mary’s and hard cider! We got there about 9:45 – only to realize that we forgot we were on SF time and that nothing was open yet! We walked around until they opened at 10, when we were able to enjoy our mushroom, cheese and sautéed onion crepe, cheese plate, berry crepe, cider and blood mary. We left feeling full and ready to conquer touristy SF.

We took our car back to our hotel and left it, then walked the 2 blocks to the trolley car station. In all the times I’ve been to San Francisco I’ve never ridden a trolley car – we bought all day passes and took off with our first destination being China town. When we jumped off the trolley in China town we didn’t know what to expect – in the past when going there, it’s usually closed down – this time was so different. The streets were packed with shoppers buying fresh fruits and veggies from corner merchants that had lined the sidewalks of their stores with all different varieties of produce. Some items I’ve never seen in its natural state before – like water chestnuts - I always just thought they grew in a can pre sliced! We went to the fresh fish markets where people pick the fish they want from HUGE tanks. They also had frogs and turtles – which were HUGE and super cute. As long as I didn’t think about what was going to end up happening to them, I was okay. We walked around and bought a few things – some cute slipper shoes and different trinkets. Then on our way out, Rick saw something that caught his eye, he stopped and was enthralled by it. Not positive he was seeing it correctly he asked the merchant what it was, to which the response was “Paper shirt”. A paper shirt you say – what could be more entertaining to Rick than a paper shirt and tie – the next thing that was going thru his mind was ‘who could I buy this for?’ To make sure he’d heard correctly he said “I am sorry did you say ‘a paper shirt””. Apparently the merchant thought this rude because she then yelled “YES! Paper shirt to burn for the dead!!!” Startled by the yelling and amazed at the thought of a paper shirt being burned for dead folks, we quickly left the store and thus ended our trip to China town.

Next stop on the street car trolley was of course Pier 39. Our plan was to go to Alcatraz. When we got there it was a little later in the day than we’d planned so we decided to put Alcatraz off until Sunday and we caught the F line back to our hotel where we partook in the afternoon wine drinking! We met a delightful lady and discussed SF and the Haight street fair that was going on the next day. Since we wanted to catch a comedy show at the small comedy club across the street we headed to our room and changed for the evening. We headed across the street to the 50Mason Lounge where we saw 6 different comedians. The funniest by far was Ali Wong . She reminded us a lot of Margaret Cho who has been our favorite comedienne for a long time.

After the show the night was still young so we grabbed the trolley and head out to find some food. We ended up in Del Monte square – where we saw a marquis that had Kyle Dunnigan as the headliner (for those who are crazy and don’t watch Reno 911 – Kyle Dunnigan plays Trudy Wiegels’ serial killer boyfriend, he is also the guy in the Carls Jr commercials who shakes the cow to make milkshakes). We decided to see if we were too late to catch the show luckily we weren’t and we got there just before he took the stage. Let me just say – he’s hilarious. He did an amazing job of cracking up the audience and not going blue while doing it; both Rick and I were very entertained and left the show feeling like we’d gotten our monies worth.

Sunday was our last day in the city by the Bay and we ended up going to Ghirardelli square as well as the Maritime museum and Ripley’s believe it or not. The highlight of the day however was our evening plans where we had tickets to see the Broadway musical “25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”. If you haven’t heard of this musical, it’s about a group of kids in the finals for their counties spelling bees. The plot of the story does a great job of attaching you quickly to the competitors and fast paced and humor full songs make the musical a delight, it is definitely something we’ll go see again.

And fair reader that wraps up our anniversary trip to San Francisco. The last thought I want to leave you with is this: I now want to move to SF. Rick and I have always been big fans of the city. However this deal sealed it for me. Its so amazing there, I love the hustle and bustle of the streets, the diversity of the people and the fact that even at 10pm on a Sunday the streets have people everywhere. I was born to live in an urban city I think. And if I could afford it, I’d move in a heartbeat – so I am saving my pennies and nickels and hopefully . . . .

Chore day

What is it about chores that make me revert back to being a 13 year old? I always hated "chore day" when I was a teen. I thought of it as a medieval torture device my parents used on me. Do the dishes, clean your room, scrub the toilet, it was murderous the tasks I was assigned. I would drag my feet and get distracted doing other stuff trying my hardest to avoid the inevitable. In my opinion chore day is what gave me the A.D.D., I have self diagnosis myself with. It never fails I'll start cleaning and I'll find something to side track myself with. Even today - I took half a day off so I could pick up my house because we're going out of town this weekend for our anniversary (YAY US! 6 YEARS!) - I have this "thing" about having a clean house before I leave on a trip - this too is my mothers fault. And, yet here I sit blogging to you - to avoid cleaning.
I have found a technique that helps me clean. It involves at LEAST 2 cans of GO GIRL (which I highly recommend to one and all - male or female - super good with vodka or Bacardi mixed in), my Ipod filled with my ‘get psyched mix’ and being alone. Each of these are important qualifiers to getting my tasks done.
The GO GIRL's give me so much energy that sitting around isn't really a choice. In fact if you could see me right now you'd see why - I am typing faster than I ever have before and bouncing my leg as if trying to keep the beat to a record of the Chipmunks set on high speed. Whenever I drink GO GIRLS, Rick calls this me getting stoned - only because I do get all jazzed up and I talk really really fast!
My ‘get psyched mix’ on my Ipod is also very important of my cleaning. Without it I have to have the TV on and that will cause me to sit down and get interested in something, for examply my favorite teeny bopper reality shows on MTV that I have DVR'd and that Rick refuses to watch (hmmmm...speaking of which I have a few new episodes waiting for me now). Give me some 80’s rock, popular hip hop and the best of Garth and I’ll have this place shining in now time while, the neighbor may NOT appreciate my singing along it really helps me (and besides that F my neighbor the old hag who lets Willow go – ergh)!
The last part while, I know sounds funny, is true I clean much better alone than when Rick is home. I don’t want you to think for a minute that he’s not helpful – he’s actually better at this than me. However when he's here, I want to spend time with him. I get diverted from cleaning the bedroom if he's cleaning the kitchen, I would rather be in there with him. Then I pester him to stop so we can play! So if he's not here, I can zip around and get it done so that when he is here, we can be together!
Now that I have successfully wasted about 15 minutes and my fingers hurt from the speed of typing I think I should set off the start cleaning! It's 4:27 now (yes, I know - I got off work at 1:00 - but I had to find a hotel on line for this weekend, and then I was IM'ing Taylor, and emailing Rick and looking at things to do in SF and before I knew it 4:30 - see how easy I get distracted and how well I make excuses!). So now I go to clean before Rick gets home at 5:30! Watch out scrubbing bubbles - here I COME!!

America's favorite pastime

Take me out to the ball game! Take me out to the crowd - buy me some nachos and snack bar snacks I don't care if they do make me fat. Let me root root root for my cousin’s team if they don't win - it’s a fixed game! For its one, two three kids crying in the old ball game!

This season marks the 3rd that my adorable cousin Killian has played baseball. Now usually Rick and I could give a crap about all sports in general - however for this little fella we pull out all the stops and try to attend as many of his games as possible. There is a key problem with this however, neither of us are HUGE baseball fans in general, we only know the basic idea behind the game
I am lucky that I married a man who much like isn't big on sports. But we both pull out all the stops for Killian and go to the games, where we are often distracted and unentertained except when Killian is up to bat or doing something great in the field. I know we SHOULD cheer for the other players, but honestly - I don't want to, heck they got families let them cheer and ring cow bells.
Add the fact that I have NO idea what the "strategy" behind baseball is, although I have been assured by baseball fanatics that there is one. From my prospective, the strategy was to hit the little ball with the big bat and run like hell - apparently there is more to it than that. At a recent game I heard the coach yelling to the batter "the Easter Bunny is still coming" - I looked around to see if anyone else thought this was odd, but no one blinked an eye. Next batter up when I yelled with all my might "Santa Claus is coming to town!! GO GET 'EM!!" I am pretty sure that the ump called the local asylum to see if someone had escaped. My thought was 'hell, if the Easter Bunny is coming, SC must be here too!” apparently not though! Rick and I both find ourselves coping what other people yell and cross our fingers that we're not insulting someone!
Tonight we cheered and made up sayings and watched as Killians team finished their normal season in the first place spot putting them into the playoffs. Next Monday they start the grueling task of seeing how far they can go. Of course we're going to be there to cheer our boy on because not only do we love him a ton - but if by some chance this baseball thing takes him somewhere in the future and he becomes a famous famous player, I'd like for him to remember us sitting watching these little league games, in the hot hot sun on the hot hot metal bleacher and think to himself "I should really buy Ricky and Terri a summer house in Hawaii"!! Okay, not really (although I wouldn't turn it down!) but I want him to know how much we love him and how proud of him we are!