We're Back!

Guess what I got for Mark's birthday? A head cold. Please kill me.

I did luck out in that I didn't get sick till late on Sunday - so we were able to enjoy Friday, Saturday, and most Sunday before I got terribly whiny. (gasp!)

On Friday, we enjoyed the beach and ate pizza.

On Saturday, we spent more time at the beach....


And were a little goofy...


and other people were goofy...

(yeah, this guy is walking his cat)

On Saturday, Mark went abalone diving with his cousins and uncle. I took his cousins' wives and aunt (and the cutie baby) to the small indoor mall because it was raining...and we're no dummies! It was nice spending time with the girls because we don't really spend much time together. I thought that one of the girls really didn't like me...but she said something to me about how she was telling the other girl that she was excited that I was going to hang out with them because I'm so blunt and funny. That was really nice to know.

We spent the evening with the group and went out to mexican food. And I spent more time talking with one of the wives. It was a good time.

On Sunday, we went to the beach again. And I made Mark a sand birthday cake...and he made us a protective wall and moat.


We went out to dinner again on Sunday and we spent a lot of time watching TV from the jacuzzi tub. We also met a really pretty kitty at the Humane Society Thrift Store, but didn't bring him home. (we've had a hard enough time integrating Jack into the house!)

All in all, it was a lot of beachy fun.

Camping!

Whew! We made it back! And with minimal injury, and LOTS of dirt. Woot!

We packed the truck up on Friday morning and headed out to Gerle Creek. We got all set up and then we waited for the rest of our peeps. The rest of the weekend was a blur. There was an abundance of food and beverage (wee!) and s'mores and swimming and EXTREME wading. The guys fished and bonded over the proper way to cook a tri tip. And OMG does food taste better outside!

Here is a myriad of photos, in no particular order, because frankly, I didn't get nearly enough sleep this weekend and I'm feeling particularly lazy tonight. All I really want now is a pedicure. :)

Just one example of "Extreme Wading"

My Fisherman

Tracy in Kitchenville (aka shady town)

This is what love (and 4 hours of drinking and 2 hours of sleep) looks like

See the scary face next to the hot dog? Like to the right at the end of they burny stuff? You would if you were drinking. I'm just sayin'


See more pictures on my flickr!

I Have a NEW JOB!!

Here's what I was talking about before. You know, the superstitious thing? I've been waiting for a "formal" offer of employment - and I got that TODAY!!! So, my last day at my current job will be July 19!!

Did I mention I'm excited?! Did you notice the exclamation points?!

I will be working in budgets, which is totally new to me (other than the little bit I've done here over the last 7 months). It will involve lots of training and a boss that I LOVE and a coworker who seems really sweet. So, yeah, happy happy happy!!

NOW, I'm all set to head out of here early today and go shopping for camping stuff - Go spend the weekend with good friends and good food (and My VERY GOOD FRIEND Jack Daniels).
Good times!!

Have a great weekend!

Campin'

Sorry, guys. I've totally left you with these lame celebrity gossip posts because I am LAZY. My excuses go like this:

1) I'm superstitious (sort of) and don't want to talk about something that I know I'll talk about if I blog too much, and then it won't happen and that will suck. So give me another day or two on that one.

2) I've actually been working. I was all proud because on Monday I worked A LOT. Which means this: "I didn't do much till 9 a.m. At 9, I worked straight through till 12:15 and then went 'oh shit! it's lunch time!' Then I got back from lunch and worked from 1:00 to 4:00." Nevermind that my actual hours are 7 to 4:30. It was close.

3) I'm making lists. We're going camping this weekend and the lists abound. We're trading lists between the 5 of us. We're dividing. We have yet to conquer. But the lists are coming together.

I'm really excited to be getting away this weekend with the girls (and a couple boys) It will be the first time we've all camped together and we have big plans for playing in the water and hiking. Not to mention the 2 page list of food that we NEED.

So, alcohol and s'mores are almost packed and then hopefully (fingers crossed) I will have some exciting photos and some interesting stories.

When Not At Work

Because Tracy said so, and because, well, I always listen to her. (bah!) Here is my "Celebrities! They're just like us!" photo.

(I do my own windows! I'm so down-to-earth)

The rest of our vacation (Mark and I took all last week off) included seeing two movies. We saw Pirates (ick!) and Knocked Up (cute!) We cleaned. We ate. We put up the pool!

I also did a little makeup shopping. I had no idea that MAC had it's own store. Apparently they put one in the mall about 6 weeks ago. I used to have to go to the dinky little counter in Nordstrom. But now, a WHOLE STORE. And lots of girls who wear drag queen makeup. I will say that after going to Sephora and to MAC, I'm in love with MAC and the girl who helped me (Sarah!) She was so sweet and her makeup was pretty and not at all garish, I bought this - which I LOVE.

I also went to the Lancome counter for a special makeup artist appointment that they were offering. It was kind of funny because I have really dark brows...and apparently, the girl thought I had colored them in. So she comes at me with a cotton pad saturated in something (makeup remover) and says, "I'm going to remove your brows" and I'm like, Uh! NO! (thinking: what kind of makeup artist appointment is this?!) I had no idea that she thought they were colored. I thought she was coming after me with Nair. Apparently, having dark brows is a good thing because both girls were very excited by them.

Apparently, I dodged a bullet for just a moment at MAC and made up for it at Lancome. The artist wanted to do "dramatic" and I'm like, "sure, okay, whatever." And I got dramatic. And BLUE. This will be a great look for, uh, walking the dog or making dinner, I'm sure. I do LOVE the silver under my eyes though. LOVE.



*****

And now vacation is officially coming to an end. I'm going back to work with a positive mindset and I hope that it will last longer than a day or two. (keep your fingers crossed). Tomorrow I am on the road, going to a breakfast meeting and site visit, which is a nice transition back to the grind - even if it does involve 4 hours of driving. ::sigh::

I mentioned in the last post (or two) that I joined a running club (also because Tracy told me to!) I'm really excited about. I keep checking my email to see if the trainer sent out the schedule yet and I have plans to start training tomorrow. (and including Mark and Chance in my run). I have to remind Mark to learn how my new watch works so he can show me (and so it will stop beeping already!!)

This running club came at a good time. I've been feeling like I need a hobby. Like I'm not doing anything that is just because I enjoy it. I'm really liking spending more time with Tracy and B too. The three of us are usually super-busy, and this will make it easier for us to hang out. So with all this excitement - and the growing anticipation of a camping trip with them (and our respective boy toys) - I'm looking forward to a fabulous summer.

Vacation Part II

I'm back! I only have one more day left of vacation, and I'm very very sad about this. I'm also very very tired from doing the "pace run" at the running group meeting this morning. I think I need another nap. But first! More pics from Southern California.

I have no photos from Saturday. Saturday does not exist. Saturday was a very long day full of driving. Driving sucks. Wait! There are pics. I lied. And we're eating!


After eating breakfast at Ruby's at Huntington Pier, and watching a guy stand on a surfboard and paddle his way out to sea (very strange! He was wearing normal clothes, not even a wetsuit or anything)...we went shopping. We drove in to Santa Monica and over to Hollywood and LA and West Hollywood. We searched for parking, we bought very little and then (because I hate freeways!) we proceeded to drive home via the Pacific Coast Highway, all the way from Santa Monica! It was almost a two hour drive. But it was more tolerable than the freeway that day.


Sunday wad fun though. We had breakfast (yeah more food!) and then we went to Huntington Beach and shopped. And then we rented beach cruisers and rode those.

(I do not recommend enlarging this photo, as it is entirely possibly that my boobs will leap from the screen and devour you whole!)

I need a beach cruiser now. SO MUCH FUN!

We spent the rest of our time laying on the beach, getting burned. woohoo! And then we picked up Tracy and drove home. I talked to Mark around 9:30 and he said, "you have 100 miles left? I'll see you at midnight!" and I'm like, "uh, 100 miles, 90 miles per hour, uh the math for that one just doesn't add up" I'd like to also add that I tried to stay right around 85...and every time the speedometer hit 90, my mom would make the "eek" noise from the backseat. Good times.

I'm Alive! Or Vacation! Part I!

Oops. That was a bit of a haitus. Sorry about that. For those of you who worried (bah!), No, Splash Mountain did not kill me. (read: I chickened out)

Mom, Tracy, and I had fun while we were down in LA (though we didn't see Tracy much outside of the very long car ride).

We left around 12:30 a.m. on Friday. We drove through the night - where we were all a little loopy and we stopped at EVERY SINGLE REST STOP ALONG THE WAY. I think Tracy will be doing a little blogging about those conversations. hee. We got into town around 7 a.m. and dropped Tracy off at her parents'. Mom and I decided to be insane and go directly to Disneyland. ACK!

We got lost, which killed some time and then the parking situation was crap, which killed more time - which actually worked out perfectly because we got there just as the park opened. We went straight to Adventureland to check on my favorite ride (Indiana Jones) and the line was a little long, so we headed to New Orleans square to Pirates of the Carribean. They have added some really cool stuff that really ties in the movies and the ride - including a projection waterfall with Davey Jones' face (from Pirates, not Marcia Brady's crush). They also added the Jack Sparrow character and it looked REALLY GOOD.

Then we went back to Indiana Jones and then we got sidetracked by the Casey Jr. Circus Train - we had never been on it so we went - and it was really cheesie, but hey, I tried something new right? Then we went on Thunder Mountain Railroad. After that we headed over to California Adventure and went through the tortilla and sourdough bread company tours (free lunch!) and went on Soaring Over California and the River Ride (Grizzly Bear River something or other).

Then we had some (real) lunch and went to check into our hotel. This is the face of someone who may not have gotten enough sleep.


After a nap, we headed back to Disneyland to see the fireworks and have dinner. Dinner at Disneyland being one of about 300 meals we had while on vacation for two days.

See how the food helps one's demeanor?




We had pasta at Pizza Port and then watched the fireworks. We stood right in the middle of main street and we actually got to see Tinkerbell fly and OMG it's worth it to wrestle your way through the crowd of 4 million people just to watch that. It was the coolest thing EVER.

Look! People!
Afterward, we headed into Downtown Disney to listen to Drew play and to look for coconut macaroons (there were none to be found!) We stopped at Basin and then headed back to the hotel, stopping only to buy donuts. Dude, I swear, everwhere you turn in Southern California you can see a donut shop. But there are no places to buy pizza! Where the hell are your priorities people?!

Stay tuned for Day 2....

I Just Felt Like Runnin'!

Thank goodness there are only a few more days left until VACATION!! I NEED it.

Yesterday, I decided to take a break from some of the cleaning to go running with Tracy. I'm not sure what I was thinking, since I had to get up at 7:00 to get ready to be there by 8:00. But, I made it over there and we headed out to the trail. We did a warmup (walking) and then alternated between 1 minute walking and 2 minutes running. Tracy is smart and has a watch that she can program to beep and let us know when to alternate. When I tried this with some other friends, one of us had to hold the stop watch. BAH! That was at the beginning of my health kick, and it was hard to even jog one minute, so I was happy to see that I've made some progress.

We apparently did almost 4 miles. That's the longest distance I've ever done. I mean, I'm sure I've hiked that far in a day (or even one hike) while in Yosemite like, a frillion years ago. But it's definitely the longest distance I've ever done like this. I think Tracy was a little surprised that it went so well. I know I was!

The trail is funny because there are so many people there and a lot of them are really friendly and everyone says hello or talks to their dogs. At one point, some ladies yelled, "you're doing good!" or "keep it up" or something encouraging. And I laughed because I'm totally thinking that no one would cheer on some skinny athletic looking girls. I was thinking, "Way to go fattie!" was what that really meant. Apparently, this happens a lot and not always to those of us who don't look, um, athletic.

Today I was a little sore, but I'm ready to try it again. Maybe even with the 3 or 4 minutes of running 1 minute of walking that Tracy normally does. We're going to go again this week I think. Yeah!!

After the run, Mark and I went out to DQ University (the tribal college) to meet up with Mom at a pow wow. We ate indian tacos and watched grand entry. And that was pretty much it. We had lots to do, but we wanted to check it out, since there aren't many pow wows close to us. We went on a date to Baskin Robbins later in the evening (and watched the finale of the Ultimate Coyote Ugly). Fun!

We're in super cleaning mode over here too. We got so much done this weekend, including steam cleaning the carpets. Everything looks awesome, and the only thing I have left is our room and bathroom. The rest of the house looks FABULOUS. I even planted some more flowers to replace the ones that died. (that's my brown thumb at work).

I'm off to finish up. I'll add pictures to this post later.

I think my job is affecting my mental health. I am sitting at my desk muttering, "I hate you I hate you I hate you" under my breath at my emails. Someone please kill me.

Yesterday was a really bad day. The final concensus (Thanks Julie) was that I need to quit my job and start a petting zoo. I'll let you know when I've worked out the logistics. I do have some other plans in the works though, so keep your fingers crossed, please!

So let's think of something happy, shall we?!

If I can get through today, and next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; I will be on VACATION for over a week! A much needed vacation, I remind you.

On Thursday, I plan to go to the County Fair. Mom and I have a longstanding tradition of eating our weight in fried food on a stick every year at this time. This day usually ends in me dragging a large potted plant from the plant sale all the way out to our car about 2 miles away. Because I'm smart like that.

That night, Mark will be picking up his brother from the airport. Side story: We were talking about the LOST season finale and Mark, who has been super excited that his brother will be in town, got all upset that he would miss the LOST finale because of his F*ing brother coming into town. I about died. It's the wrong night anyway, but it was pretty funny how important LOST seemed at the time. (Mark and his brother will be going on a guys' hiking trip into the wilderness with their cousins for the weekend.)

Later that night, Tracy, Mom, and I will be heading to Southern California! YEAH!!! We're going to drive at night and then when we get into town, we'll take Tracy to her parents and mom and I will hit Ruby's at Huntington Pier.

Then we will relax on the beach and maybe find a bunch more sand dollars like we did last year ( think we came back with at least 15 really big ones). We might do some shopping, at Crossroads, which happens to have 4 or 5 locations in Southern California (3 of which are pretty close to each other!) Crossroads in So Cal has a really great selection of designer stuff, so I'm hoping to find something FABULOUS.

Also in West Hollywood is Heavy Petting, the pet boutique which is completely awesome and carries canopy beds and trundle beds for cats. How much would you all heart something like that?! I'm totally looking at you Marianne!

Also on the agenda for the weekend is a trip to Santa Monica Pier to ride the beach cruisers and some celebrity stalking might insue. (shhh).

We're also going to....DISNEYLAND! Yayayayaya! We're totally obsessed with Disneyland, FYI. I'm very sad that Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln will not be up and running (it's our favorite!) but no other good attractions will be closed, so that's a plus. We're going to do a park hopper so we can go back to California Adventure too, which has the best innertube ride and I can't wait to get wet! woot!

We also plan to see Drew play his violin, and to hit downtown disney and go to the ESPN Zone. I can't wait!

See! This got a lot cheerier.