Wrapping up 2010!

September 2010

In September we met up with my sister and her friend Molly in Vegas to celebrate my sister’s birthday. We stayed in the Palazzo. The highlight of the trip (for me at least) was going to a live stage show of The Price is Right. It wasn’t the taped version, but it was a Vegas replica. In order to maximize the number of people that got to play, they called all new people up for each game (like the 4 people guessing the price didn’t get to stay up there, they had to go back to their seats each time). So the Showcase Showdown people were selected just for the Showcase Showdown. None of us had been selected throughout the entire game, and had pretty much given up hope. But then my sister was called to come on down!!!! I had read on Yelp that the Vegas Price is Right prices, specifically in the Showcase, were VERY LOW. The Showcase (there was only one, both contestants bid on the same one) contained a car, two vacations, 1000 shares of Yahoo shop, and a couple of other things. I showed her numbers on my hands, I think I had her bid $12K and the actual retail price was about $13K. Of course the other lady bid like $25K or $30K since it SEEMED very impressive, and my sister was the “big winner”. What the audience didn’t know, but they had told her in the 90 seconds between when she was called up and had to bid, was that she was bidding on these items but unless she came within like a penny (or who knows, maybe it was $100, I don’t remember), she would only win one. So they decided she won the Mexican cruise. She went for the cash out option and got $300. Certainly not bad, but it seemed like she was winning thousands and thousands of dollars, and she won $300. Lots of people kept coming up to her and congratulating her on her new car, and she was like yeah… I didn’t win a car. They were all mad! It was pretty funny. The guy who got to play Plinko (who was a really sketchy guy… he was in Vegas without his wife and gave a really sketchy story about where his wife was? But he didn’t speak great English, so that may have been party of the problem) won about $800… my sister was like how is the Showcase EVER worth less than Plinko?! Again, how can you complain about winning $300… it was just the whole ridiculousness/cheesiness of the whole thing that was funny!!!! Definitely a great time was had by all, in spite of or more likely BECAUSE of the cheesiness. I would recommend for sure! Other than that, we just had fun eating, hanging by the pool, and shopping. I probably played a few penny slots but none of us are big gamblers. Oh and we watched Iowa football (Christine and Molly both went to Iowa) – we couldn’t get anyone to tune to a Northwestern game (which was on Big 10 Network or another obscure network) without agreeing to spend like $100 on food and beverage. No thanks. All in all, a great weekend! (and I did get to spend my gift card that Geoff gave me on the most fantastic purse I have ever owned)

October 2010

October was the month of the cake! My friend Laura’s daughter was having her first birthday, so she asked me to do her cake. I hadn’t made a cake in a couple of years, so I had to “practice” :) First I made a going away cake for someone who was leaving our group at work. Then I made a birthday cake for a friend who invited me to a Girl’s Weekend at the coast for her birthday – that was tricky to keep a surprise! It was a three tier cake, and I had to drive separately because my cake took up so much room!!! Then I had to get some of the other girls to take Kim on a walk so I had time to assemble the cake!!! Then was Baby Claire’s birthday – her birthday is the day before Geoff’s and her party was on Geoff’s birthday. I decide to make Geoff a surprise cake that looked like a big plate of noodles with meatballs (chocolate cake mixed with chocolate icing and rolled into balls) and spaghetti sauce (strawberry filing poured down on top of the cake). So I spent a lot of prep time early in the week making what I could ahead of time for the cakes – one for Claire’s party, one for just Claire to eat, and one for Geoff. Luckily Geoff had class on Thursday night I made his cake and the strawberry filing, then hid the cake in the storage underneath the camper and the strawberry filing in the back of the fridge. Friday morning Geoff and I “moved” – aka parked our camper outside at Ryan and Laura’s house. We would stay there for the weekend to make it more convenient, since Geoff was smoking ribs and chicken for the party and I was doing cake! So Friday I took half a day off of work and went to Laura’s house to finish Geoff’s cake before Geoff got there, then start on Claire’s. I finished Geoff’s cake and hid it in Laura’s garage. Geoff also left work a bit early, but luckily I was done before he got there! Geoff, Laura, and I all worked on Claire’s cakes the rest of the day – instead of finishing them Saturday morning like we planned, we stayed up until 2 AM working on them. There are pictures of all of these cakes on Facebook. It was a lot of work, but we had a great time doing it!!! Oh, and Geoff was COMPLETELY surprised – his parents actually came to Claire’s birthday party so they could see him on his birthday, and I went out to the camper and got my strawberry filling, poured it over his cake, and brought it in from the garage to surprise him. I think a lot of people were more impressed with the spaghetti cake then Claire’s cakes – I assume because it looked like something other than what it was? It was about 239852398 times easier that Clarie’s cakes.

October also brought my high school friends Kathleen and Stacey visiting! They came to Oregon for a wine tasting trip. They stayed at our house Saturday night (we had agility class but just left the door unlocked for them and arrived home about 30 minutes after they got there). Then Sunday we all went wine tasting together and then picked up pizza for dinner. It was a ton of fun!!! It was the longest I’ve been able to really visit with them in about 10 years, so it was great! We went to some wineries I’ve been to before as well as some new ones, including one that had just opened several days before that they heard about in a previous winery on their trip. It was really fun to see them!

November 2010

When we were in Vegas, I saw that I was missing a fabulous Groupon – a 14 day trial membership to ClubSport, a gym I have always been interested in! I knew that it was nice and had a rock wall, but didn’t know too much else about it, so the Groupon would have been a perfect way to check it out. But I didn’t see it until the day after it ran. But in November, someone at work realized he wasn’t going to have time to use his, so he was looking for a taker. Lucky me, I got to be the taker! Geoff was super jealous… until a couple of days later when the guy emailed me and said that his wife also wasn’t going to be able to use hers, and was I interested in that one too? Yes please!!! So Geoff and I went and checked that out (ok, so we might have started in October, but most of the 14 visits occurred in November). WE LOVED IT. It was soooooooo nice and made working out so much more fun!!!! Each treadmill and bike (our primary cardio choices) has an individual TV, which is great especially for Geoff, who likes TV more than anyone I know (except maybe my mom!). I enjoy the TV too, but will often read instead, especially on the bike. There is an indoor pool, an outdoor pool that has a cabana so you can get lunch and drinks, 3 NBA size basketball courts, 2 smaller courts, racquetball, squash, the largest rock wall in the Northwest, a restaurant and bar, nice locker rooms with towels/shampoo/conditioner/body wash/shave gel/blow dyers/q-tips/you-get-the-picture provided (and the women’s has a lounge area with a TV, comfy couches, and lemon water), a spa/sauna/steam room in each locker room), 3 fitness studios, and I think that’s it. Actually there is other stuff like physical therapy, an “Edge” room for more intense classes and personal training, a small store with fitness clothes and stuff, and a spa area with massage and pedicures. They have all sorts of events and activities and parties going on all the time too. Anyway it’s a really nice gym!! It’s great for kids too, they have kid-oriented classes and camps, and for the smaller kids there is a GREAT kids club area where parents can get 2 or 3 (can’t remember) free hours of childcare a day. I have read yelp reviews from new moms that are like I LOVED that time to take a shower and just a bit of me time a day! Plus the outdoor pool is just a recreational pool (no laps or classes), so I imagine that will be a GREAT place for kids. It opens May 21^st so that will be our first chance to see it in action. I’m super looking forward to it. Oh, so I guess I just gave away the fact that we joined – we got a really great discount through our company, and we got a lot of use out of our Groupon, so we decided to join. It’s more than our old gym was, but we have enjoyed and used it a lot more than our old gym too. I think it’s worth it – we look forward to going to the gym!

My sister came and visited us for Thanksgiving – it was the third year in a row she’s come for Thanksgiving, and it’s always so much fun. We got her passes to the gym (negotiated that when we joined!) so she was able to check it out. We also did some shopping, volunteered on Thanksgiving day, and some general hanging out. It was just kinda a low key fun weekend!

December 2010

I eluded to my online nail message board earlier in this “year in review” – well in December one of the gals organized a “Portland area meetup”. So 6 of us got together at a Starbucks to meet each other, chit-chat, and trade nail polish. It was quite a site to see us each with a box of colors that we didn’t love, and we swapped with each other for colors we’ll love more!! I know it sounds really really lame to first HAVE a nail polish message board and second of all meet up with them, but I don’t care. Nail polish has turned into an awesome hobby and it was fun to meet up with others who share the same hobby! The same gal is organizing another meetup as we speak!

December of course is also Christmas (stick with me, you’ll learn a lot – ha). We travelled to Dallas to see my parents and sister. It also worked out well because my aunt and grandmother came in from Albuquerque to visit, and my cousin came up from Fort Hood with her family! I had met her husband once before (before they were married), but had never met her little girls (almost 5 and almost 3 at the time). It was so much fun! We hadn’t spent any real time together in 10+ years so it was just great! The other highlight of the trip is that we took the dogs – that’s right, we got these carriers called SturdiBags – I found them on clearance at PetSmart (they are no longer carrying them) and had a 15% off coupon to go with it! So even though they are expensive, we got a great deal on them and everyone we asked about which carrier to use recommended a SturdiBag!! We got them about 3 months in advance and started throwing treats in there and getting the dogs used to them. They travelled like pros!!!! We had to take their collars off and pull them out of their bags to go through security, then stuff them back into their bags. No problema. A little fussing from Jax but really not a big deal. Overall they were VERY calm on the trip there and back. I would do it again any time. Oh, and they travelled under the seats in front of us as one of our carry ons, not underneath with the baggage. I don’t think I would do that. Yay for small dogs! It was a great Christmas with the family and our little dogs!

WHEW!!!!! 2010 is done – that is my year! I’ll start in on the first part of 2011 later today!!!

2009 - 2011, continued

March 2010
I know I already covered this, but I didn't remember anything. I do now. March was my first "hunt" for nail polish with my MIL. She has two boys, and she loves to hunt. So what did she get to hunt for growing up? The latest Hot Wheel collections. She also is a knitter, so she has gone on hunts for "retired" yarn colors before. But she was VERY happy to have the opportunity to hunt for nail polish, even though she didn't really know what she was looking for. :) We went to a local store called the Dollar Shoppe, lots of TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Big Lots, Dollar Tree, etc. Those types of stores have great old drugstore brand (Revlon, Sally Hansen, etc.) nail polish for about 50 cents a bottle!

Also, we started agility classes for the dogs. I thought it would be fun for Jax since he's so athletic, and Geoff decided to take Roxy too even though her legs are about an inch and a half long.

We already covered April, so I'll skip that.

May 2010
In May I came up with the genius idea to get inflatable kayaks. I have always loved kayaking, we live right on a river, and there is at least one place we camp that has a great river available for kayaking. Plus we were going to visit my sister in Monterey where there is fantastic kayaking. So I got two 2 man kayaks, complete with life jackets for the pups. They have proven to be SO much fun!! I spent much of last summer kayaking - there are several put-in points on the river, so I typically will just drive to one, kayak down, and pull myself out near where we live. I deflate my kayak, carry it back to my house (although later I got a little cart to carry it, way easier, cause they are heavy), and then when Geoff has time get him to take me back to my car (or if I went with someone, the second person just takes us back to the first car). In all honesty though, sometimes there is so little flow in our river I could just put in and get out at the same place!

We also did the Portland Doggie Dash in May... super fun event with vendors and dog contests. We did about a mile and a half walk - that's all Roxy can handle! Jax could handle the longest run they have as an option.

May was also when we took the camper down to California for my sister's graduation. We met up with my parents (they stayed with us), and my aunt, uncle, and grandmother rented an Airstream at the same RV park we stayed at. It had a great dog park complete with agility equipment and we had a fantastic trip. After the graduation, Geoff and I had an extra ~5 days and we pondered what to do - Vegas and Disneyland came up as options. Then we realized we could go to San Francisco and eat at really expensive restaurants and it would be way cheaper than either Vegas or Disneyland. So that's what we did. We found a nice RV park overlooking the Pacific and just drove into San Francisco for a fabulous dinner each night. It was GREAT. Plus, I was driving my sister's Civic back to Oregon (to store it for the summer while she went to NYC for the summer), so we had that car to drive into SF with - made it way easier than the giant truck. We had three fantastic dinners, each easily ranks among the top 10 dinners of my life. I love food. :)

June 2010
This is another month that I remember absolutely nothing about! Such a disappointment. I guess you can't have an awesome month EVERY month. ;-)

July 2010
In July I started playing BINGO!! The gal that manages our doggie daycare, Chelsea, and I got to talking one day about cruises and how she played bingo on her cruise and loved it. I had been secretly Facebook stalking Chelsea for months, convinced we would be good friends (creepy much?!). Anyway, she mentioned bingo and I asked her if she'd ever been to Sunset Bingo, a local bingo parlor. She said she hadn't, and I hadn't either. So we decided to go together. Neither of us knew at the time, there is a LOT to learn about bingo!!! It's not just straight lines and four corners - there are seven ways to "regular" bingo! Then there are specials and rules about when you can call BINGO and you have to figure out what to buy and all of this craziness. It was soooo crazy, but so much fun. We got really into bingo and were going once a week for almost the rest of the year. We have only been ONCE so far this year, but we're going again tonight. Bingo will never get old! And it's not super expensive either - $6 will buy you about 2.5 hours of fun! We've come a long way and know a lot about bingo now... we're pros now. ;-) Oh, and in every state but Nevada (except for at Native American casinos), bingo is non-profit! So when we play, we are contributing towards local ameteur sports (like my boss's kids are fencers and part of the money goes towards fencing!).

July also brought a BBQ with my friend Laura and some of her girlfriends. We are coworkers and she has a general "no friends that are coworkers" policy but she decided I was an exception. ;-) So she invited me over and we have become quite close since then. It helps that we see each other daily for work!

We also had our first agility trial in July. It was a VERY hot weekend, but we had a nice sun shade and great setup, and our dogs did their best in a "fun" match (not judged seriously). My MIL and SIL came out to watch it, it was a super fun day!!

August 2010
The only notable event in August was our 3rd wedding anniversary. Geoff and I follow the traditional wedding gifts, which is really fun and about the only traditional thing we do. It just makes it really fun to have to try to put a modern twist on traditional gifts. So the "theme" was leather. We actually came up with very similar ideas - he got me a leather luggage tag that contained a gift card for my favorite handbag "store" (there is only one store in the US and it happens to be in Vegas, where we were going to be going in September). I got him a leather wallet that contained a bunch of different gift cards - Chipotle, Best Buy, movie tickets, etc. It was really fun! And we went to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Portland.

...Part 3 to come later....

2009-2011 in review :)

Late 2009
So the last little bit of 2009 after we sold our house - the highlights I remember are moving into the camper, getting Portland Trailblazers season tickets, my 5 year college reunion at Northwestern, my sister visiting for Thanksgiving, and my first Christmas not spent with my parents. Oh, and at the VERY end of December, I believe the 29th?, we drove up to Washington to buy a new (used) truck.

January 2010
Why did we buy that truck? To buy a new RV of course. :) We made a hectic-crazy road trip down to Tucson, AZ in our new (used) truck. It's a 2008 F-450... man is it a BIG truck. A very very kind friend drove along with us - and we drove about 25 hours straight through to Tucson. It was the 3 of us, Jax, and Roxy, towing our "old" (2008) camper that we were going to be trading in in Arizona. We left Portland around 6 AM Wednesday, January 6th, and arrived in Tucson on Thursday around 11 AM. We checked out the RV, did a full pre-delivery inspection (PDI), and then signed our paperwork. They had a great setup - they allowed us to pull our old camper with the door aligning straight to the new camper. Geoff stood in the old one, passed stuff to Rick (our friend who made the trip with us), and Rick passed it to me and I scrambled to find a "safe" place to put it so it wouldn't get damaged on the trip back. After the "move" we were on our way - we went to Phoenix to visit some friends - Hart, Becky, and Patrick. We went to dinner at my FAVORITE restaurant, Los Dos, and then the dogs got a nice break running around in Hart and Becky's backyard with their dogs. Then back on the road. We made it back by about midnight Friday night - a fantastic ~60 hour roadtrip. And the craziest part was the boys never let me drive! I think by the time they did all the driving there, they decided that they were going to drive it back themselves. So I did my part by sleeping a lot and being "ready" in case they needed me. ;-) Our new RV is beautiful and I still to this day love living in it.

One other highlight of January was couple's weekend, an annual trip to the beach with friends. It was there that I read through a backlog of Real Simple magazines and saw an ad for OPI matte nail polish. I owned about 7 bottles of nail polish at the time, including 3 OPIs, because a friend had told me in college OPI was "the best". But I thought the matte looked cool, so I went to Ulta when I got back from couple's weekend and purchased a bottle. That led to me googling better application tips for nail polish, which led to me finding that there are nail polish blogs out there, which led to me finding a community named MUA (Makeup Alley) nail board, which led to a love of all things nail polish. My nails have not been unpainted a single day since late January 2010. I LOVE nail polish... this is easily my longest lasting hobby. I know it's weird for nail polish to be a hobby, but it is. More to come.

Feburary 2010
We had some friends over for the Super Bowl - our first guests to the new RV! Geoff and I took our first trip to Seven Feathers, which quickly became our favorite and is rated among the top RV resorts in the country. We spent a glorious 3 day weekend there, and I towed the RV back the entire way. It was my first towing experience with the new RV. The following weekend (my birthday), Geoff was on men's retreat, so Geoff's mom and I towed the trailer down to Eugene to Armitage County Park, which quickly became another favorite of mine. They have the county dog park right there, so it's great to let the dogs go play. It's a public park, so PLENTY of space, plus fire pits, and then have wireless, which is always a plus for me. I LOVE towing the trailer!!!

March 2010
I honestly remember nothing significant about March. The Blazers wrapped up their regular season in early April, so I do remember Blazers games getting a lot more intense as we got closer to the playoffs. But that's about it.

April 2010
I remember being sick on Easter. Sad! I had painted my nails a beautiful pastel manicure for the occasion! Also, we took our trailer in to have some warranty work done on it, so we lived at my in-laws for a couple of dates in late April.

I thought I'd finish this all in one post, but I am going to stop here and finish May 2010 - April 2011 tonight or tomorrow. :) I will keep chugging along on this!

Just a quick hello

I haven't blogged in over a year - that's sad. I will never know what happened in my life in 2010! Maybe I'll go back and try to do one highlight from each month. The reason I'm blogging now is because I am working on coming up with a goal list - something along the lines of 101 things in 1000 days... except for mine won't be 1000 days. It will be about a year and a half I believe. One of the items is going to be blog 100 times. 1 down, 99 to go. I expect my first few entries will be sort of awkward but then hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things!

House

So the very last day our house was on the market was the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. Our contract with our realtor was up and we decided not to renew... it was on the market for a year and nothing was happening. That day, we were headed to Geoff's aunt and uncle's house for wine tasting and a BBQ. I made the bed and straightened up a bit, and Geoff laughed at me while I did it. "Why are you bothering? No one has looked at the house in months." I thought, well, yeah, but it's Labor Day weekend and a nice day, someone might come out. And it's the last day we'll have to make our bed for a loooong time!

Someone DID call and want to look at our house that day, which we laughed about and then didn't think anything of. We made plans to schedule a fence replacement that week and our realtor called about taking down the sign and lockbox. But then on Tuesday... we got a call that the people that looked at our house LIKED it... so much that they wanted to make an offer. They looked at 18 houses over the weekend and ours was the only one they had any real interst in, and were confused and disappointed that it had disappeared from the MLS. They had originally planned to make an offer on Wednesday, but the whole expired listing thing threw that off. So they came back Thursday to look at it a second time. On Friday they made an offer, and by Saturday they accepted our counter off. Sunday they came a third time so they could show their daughter (who is 8) the house. 2 months later, it seems like it all happened very quickly, but Geoff and I were "cautiously optimistic" throughout the entire week so it went by veerrryy slowly.

They still had to have their inspection and all of that, so I remained cautiously optimistic and didn't start packing or anything. But the inspection was okay and their repair requests were reasonable. So the last week of September we started packing and planning. We always knew that if we sold our house, we'd live in the RV, so we started arranging for that. We found an RV park we could stay in, arranged for doggy daycare for the dogs, and got ourselves a storage unit. Everything really fell into place perfectly - we hadn't gone to schedule the fence repair yet, we had already ordered some things for RV "upgrades" (like additional storage and little things to better use our space - originally just for camping trips!), and who knows what else.

We moved Saturday, October 17, closed Monday, October 19, and went to Chicago/Northwestern for my 5th year college reunion Wednesday, October 21. It was CRAZY for 2 or 3 weeks there getting everything all finalized, but we're back and have been in the camper for exactly a week now. We both are really loving it. The park where we're staying is really nice and it's in a great location. So that's one piece of big news... we've sold our house and are living in the camper. The only horrible thing is the speed limit in the park - "walking speed". Do you know how hard it is to drive "walking speed"? A friend who came to visit stalled his car trying to drive so slowly! Ha...

A fun night

Tonight Geoff is out, so the dogs and I went for a 2.5 mile walk, which is the farthest Roxy has ever gone – she did GREAT! The longest she has done before this is just one mile, so it was significantly more. It’s been kinda rainy the last couple of days so they’ve been cooped up, so I figured they could handle it. Another dog upset Jax at the beginning of our walk and he kind of grumbled the whole way through. Weird, and very unlike him. Maybe he was mad we were walking and not running – but Roxy can’t run, at least not very far. Anyway, she just trotted along and was quiet, and Jax was a puffer, but it was a lot of fun overall. I was happy to see Roxy have so much fun. Then we chatted with our neighbors for a bit – they LOVE our dogs… and then we came inside. I had to make a phone call so I gave them a bone – a real treat. They get a bone every night but always in their crate. The only other time they get a bone is like on a Saturday morning when we want to sleep in… we let them out to potty about 6 or 7, and then leave them out of their crate on the floor of our room with a bone. Anyway, so they still have their bones and they are just chompin away… well Roxy is. Jax is sleeping/resting. But they are quiet and happy. I cleaned the kitchen & downstairs bathroom, swept, and mopped, all while they just chilled. I can’t really clean upstairs without taking them upstairs, so I’ll just wait until Geoff gets home. But definitely my kind of night!

Update...

DOGS
The dogs are doing great! We take them to the dog park regularily and they love it - they are learning more and more about how to interact with other doggies and humans. I taught Jax to high five yesterday (his newest skill), and they're both great about "crate", "off", "sit", "bed". They're not always great about "come" or "stay". They're a lot of fun... Jax is an excellent running partner. Roxy is too short to do much running, but she thinks she can so I take her occasionally. They get more well behaved every day.

HOOD TO COAST
Hood to Coast was a blast as always. :-) We had a great time and everyone had a lot of fun. Christine, Patrick, and Kathleen all flew in so it was a little hectic getting everyone from the airport, hosting a team dinner, and then starting the race the next morning, but we worked it all out. I had a couple of blisters and my calves are STILL a bit tight, but it's definitely always a highlight of the year.

DALLAS
We went to Dallas for about 5 days the weekend before Hood to Coast to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday! We had fun at the party and hanging out in Dallas... not so fun was the very early morning runs to train for Hood to Coast. We also went out to a nice dinner with my parents and sister to celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary.

CHICAGO
We're going to Chicago for my 5th year college reunion / homecoming next month. I CAN'T WAIT. Geoff's never been and I haven't been in 5 years (yes... I can't believe it's been that long), so it's going to be extra special!

COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Has started! My favorite time of the year! Blankets, laziness, and football... what more could you ask for?

CAMPING
Lots of camping coming up! We camped with Geoff's brother and parents in early August when Trevor was in town for a week, and we'll be camping the next 3 weekends in a row. We're doing a quick weekend trip with Geoff's mom this weekend, then going to the coast with my coworker and her family and friends next weekend, and then we're going to try an overnight backpacking trip with the doggies the next weekend! It will be interesting to see how they do, especially Roxy and her tiny legs. Since she's still a puppy, she can't carry anything yet (her bones/joints aren't fully developed), but Jax can!! We'll take one week off from camping, and then we're camping again the second weekend of October - again at the coast. And I'm going CRABBING!!! That's right, me on a crab boat. Look for the footage on Deadliest Catch. ;-)

Those are most of the highlights... a few projects in the works as well... once those get going I'll post about them too!

Happy Labor Day everyone!

Part 3 of 3: My weird dream (now dreamS)

So here's the original dream (at least as much as I can remember over a month later):

Geoff and I had stolen something from Verizon for my father-in-law Gary. I don't know what it was, but we had each stolen separate things. We were sleeping one night and I woke up about 4 AM and thought "we have GOT to hide the evidence!" I wanted to burn it, but I couldn't - because I think we actually NEEDED the "evidence" for Gary. Geoff's was already hidden, but for some reason I couldn't hide mine in his place. The only place I could think of was under the mattress, but I kept thinking "that's the first place they'll look!"

I was still pondering where to hide it when there was a knock on our door. A man had arrived with two dogs, each in individual crates. I don't know what breeds they were but they were about the size of our dogs (this dream happened a couple of weeks after we got our dogs). He said that they were from the shelter and desperately needed to be adopted. So Geoff and I were looking at them and playing with them and thinking about adopting them when I realized "OH NO!!!! HE IS FROM VERIZON!!!! HE'S COME TO GET US!!!" So I said "c'mon Geoff, we gotta get outta here" - but then I just ran out. I didn't wait for him or our dogs or anything. I started running down our cul-de-sac towards where it turns off on the main road, when all of the sudden Melissa (who is a girl I knew in college, but was never close friends with and haven't spoken to in years - so random!) comes screaming around the corner in a pizza delivery car and says "GET IN!!!!!!!" and so I hop in her car. She flips a u-turn and goes flying out of the neighborhood. WHEW!!! Finally relief!!

But then a few minutes into the car ride, I realize Melissa works for Verizon too!!! So when we're at a stop light, I jump out of the car and roll towards safety. I start running away, when all of the sudden Grandma Katie (Gary's mother!) comes up in her car and tells me to get in. If you can't trust Grandma Katie, who CAN you trust? So I get in, and she drives off... and I wake up.

The end!

Now for a couple of funny dreams this week:

About 5 AM yesterday morning (this wasn't a dream, I was awake for this):
Me: Geoff, wake up, what time do we have to leave?
Geoff: Leave for what?
Me: To go to the mountain!
Geoff: Why are we going to the mountain?
Me: To run Hood to Coast!
Geoff: We already ran Hood to Coast.
Me: No we didn’t!
Geoff: Yes, we did.
Me: Are you sure?
Geoff: Yes. It’s Thursday, September 3rd.
Me: Are you sure?
Geoff: Yes.
Me: Okay, good.

Middle of last night (this was a dream):
Me: Geoff, wake up!
Geoff: What, why?
Me: Jax is out of his crate! How did he get out? Oh no! The crate door is still closed! JAX IS MAGIC!!!!!

When our alarms were going off this morning:
We hit snooze a couple of times each on our alarms, and we listen to different radio stations, so our room is interesting in the morning (why two people who get up at the same time have two seperate alarms I will never know) - it goes off with Christian music one minute, then 3 minutes later death metal (or whatever it is Geoff listens to), then 4 minutes later Christian music, then 3 minutes later death metal, etc. This goes on an obnoxiously long time, and yet neither of us care!

Right before the first alarm this morning, I had a dream that both Geoff and I lost our jobs. Then when the alarms went off, I thought "oh no!! we lost our jobs! we have to find new ones!" and then I'd fall back asleep. Then the alarm would go off and I'd think "oh no!! we lost our jobs! we have to find new ones!" and then fall back asleep... and so on. That was interesting.

Part 2 of 3: The case of the missing wine!

The night before the last time we went camping (yes... almost a month ago... remember when I was supposed to write this entry?) I couldn't find my wine.

I like to go wine tasting, and I like to buy wine - MORE than I actually drink wine at home. I can't help it! These friendly Oregon winemakers and their sweet stories... I have to buy it! Anyway, so a couple of years ago I bought a second wine rack because I had too much wine. I used it for a while, and then decided that I didn't need it anymore so I gave it to Goodwill. Then came the Astoria Crab, Seafood, and Wine Festival... then Memorial Day wine tasting - yup, more wine buying. So at home I have my wine rack, plus a box of wine, plus one of those little reusable bags with six slots for wine bottles. That was all sitting next to my wine rack.

Then we got the dogs - the night before they were being delivered (gosh they sound like a UPS package!) Geoff and I were "dogproofing" the house and we moved the box of wine up to the office and the reusable bag... well... somewhere. I THOUGHT we moved it to the office.

So we were packing up to go camping and I was looking for the bag of wine because it had a specific bottle I wanted to take with me. It wasn't in the office... and it wasn't in the dining room, which is the other place I thought we might have put it. I searched the ENTIRE house. I was going crazy... who LOSES wine? That's just weird. It's not like keys or a remote... it's WINE. I searched and searched... then I thought "well gosh... maybe we left it in the camper the last time we went? yeah... that must be it." So I gave up and went to bed.

For a few minutes. Then I realized "NO, it's not in the camper. The last time we went camping was 3 days after we got the dogs and I know I didn't take any wine on that trip. Guess again." So I got out of bed and went downstairs... and on the way down I had an epiphany - the wine was in the closet under the stairs where we keep the Christmas decorations and the vacuum cleaner. I have no idea how I remembered or WHY I thought it was a good idea to put it there in the first place - but I went straight there, and sure enough, there it was. I went back upstairs saying "I FOUND THE WINE!!!!!"

And thus the case of the missing wine was resolved!

Blog 1 of 3: The men in the elevator

Since we're camping and I have some time, and because my sister pointed out that I haven't blogged in 22 days, here is the first in a series of 3 funny stories from this week:

Overheard in the elevator...

Man 1: So how old is your kid?
Man 2: I don't know.
Man 1: Uh... you don't know?
Man 2: Well, he's like 25 or something. My wife keeps track of that.

HAHAHAHA. Good one. Then they went on.

Man 1: Oh I know what you mean... I think mine are 19 and 21.
Man 2: You still got them at home?
Man 1: Just one.
Man 2: Yeah, I got one and a half at home.

Then the elevator ride ended and that was all I heard. The end.

(somehow this didn't translate very well to a blog... it was much funnier at the time. I hope the next two are funnier)

Doggies

Soooooo we got some doggies. I don't remember how, but I started looking at petfinder.com a few weeks ago, just for fun. Then as I did it more, we thought, hey, we really could get a dog! So we went to a few adoption events this weekend and found one that was great. But it's super clingy so they wanted a household that would adopt 2 dogs or already had one at home, so it wouldn't feel so alone. Since we'll be gone all day anyway, there are other advantages to having them at home, like the fact that they'll have each other to keep each other company during the day. That is the VERY BRIEF summary of how we came to adopt 2 doggies! They were delivered to us last night. Here is something Geoff wrote about our first night together (but first, pictures):

Roxy

Jax

It went pretty well!!! The lady was a little late getting to our house. She had to deal a little with Roxy. Turns out, she hasn’t been spayed yet. I have to take her to the doctor today so that we can get her spayed.

Initial introductions went well. In a complete switch from what we saw on Sunday, Roxy was acting like a complete spaz while Jax was much more calm. Roxy was jumping all over Jax, so we got her some toys to play with. Holy cow. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. We had brought the beds down for them to see, and Roxy, with the toy in her mouth, did a full on nose dive into both beds. She would then get up, which is work because she has short little legs, run around the house and at full tilt do it again. We filled out the rest of the paperwork, paid the lady, and she left.

Jax really took that hard. He seems to be VERY nervous in new situations, and around new people. We would walk into a room that he was in, and he would sprint out of it. If a loud noise, like the A/C coming on, happened he would jump and run around a little bit. Eventually, Kelly got onto the floor with him and let him sniff her and figure out what is going on. We went outside later that night so that they could go to the bathroom, and he sat down, Kelly sat next to him and started petting. He seemed to enjoy this and started to calm down some. We went upstairs later, and he decided that he wanted to start sitting in Kelly’s lap. He was still very skittish around me though. But I had to try and restrain Roxy anyway. Eventually it was time for bed. We managed to get Jax into his crate with no real problem. Roxy though, is a pain in the butt. Eventually, we decided to just leave her out of the crate and let her sleep on the floor. Since she always wants to be around Jax, we put a bed next to him, and then put a bed next to me, since she seems to like me. She finally collapsed around 11, and started to fall asleep.

We went to bed around 11:30. Roxy was near the corner of the bed on Kelly’s side. At 2:30, Kelly woke me up. “The dog is chewing on something!” I turned on the light, and the Roxy had moved to the other corner, near my feet. She was licking her paws or something. So I went back to sleep. When I woke up, the dog had moved alongside me, next to the bed, and next to her bed. It was kinda funny.

We took them outside to go to the bathroom this morning, and fed Jax (Roxy can’t have food because of the surgery). Roxy was all over the place already, so we took them for a quick walk down the block and back a couple of times to tire them out. It didn’t really do anything. I get the feeling that if we want to tire them out, we are gonna need to do some major running and playing. Fortunately, we are training for hood to coast, so that will help. We gave Jax a Kong when he got into the crate. He seemed a little disinterested in it, but was happy to get in more so to get away from the ever playing Roxy. Then, I managed to get Roxy most of the way into the crate with my hand, and then scooted her in the rest of the way with my foot. Hopefully with food and crate training, she will realize that it is not a bad place to be. We put a Nylabone in there, as well as a squeaky pig that she seems to like. Hopefully that will keep her entertained enough until I pick her up.

They are at home now. Hanging out. We are going to take Jax to Petsmart later today to look at baby gates for keeping them contained during the day. Should be interesting…

Jake is 5!

My beloved Jeep Liberty, Jake the Jeep, turns 5 years old today! He came to me with 107 miles 5 years ago and had ~50,700 miles on him this morning when we drove him to work. I really thought there was a blog post with pictures of him with me from 5 years ago today, but when I looked there was just a comment that I FINALLY got the Jeep (it had been a couple of weeks since we first went to the dealer to get the Jeep). I know I have those pictures at home, so maybe I will post a picture of Jake then and Jake now. Like you care.

Since I had graduated from college the month before I got him, I was eligible for all sorts of special incentive programs from dealers. I paid 1% below invoice and got a 5 year zero interest loan - that was Jeep's "recent college grad" program at the time. Not a bad deal. So many times over the years I've been tempted to pay off the stupid loan, but it just didn't make any sense because it was 0%. I finally caved late last week and did it - it wasn't *technically* due until the 27th but I couldn't wait. It was only about 2 weeks early, and now Jake is all mine!! (okay, ours. :) Jake was just MY first car that I bought brand new all by myself, so I'm a little more possessive about him) Now hopefully Chrysler (Fiat???) sends the title. :-)

Geoff gave Jake the BEST birthday present ever yesterday - we took him through the car wash, and then Geoff gave him his first wax! He also vacuumed him out, cleaned all of the inside of the windows, used leather cleaner/protector (I do that every couple of weeks), and cleaned all of the dash & other surfaces. Geoff claims he hasn't looked this good since the day I picked him up all the showroom floor. That may be true... he's a little rough around the edges now, but I love him even more than I did on that fateful day 5 years ago.

Okay I'm done being a spaz about my car.

I can't resist...

I just can't resist a couple of good ones from CNN today:

"Although prices may fall further, low mortgage rates and President Obama's $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit make current prices attractive, especially in heavily-beaten down areas, such as California, Arizona, Nevada and California." (courtesy of Patrick)

and from the frontpage blurb right now:

"Apple fans in the U.S. and seven other countries lined up this morning to be among the first to get their hands on the new iPhone 3GS, billed as the fastest, most feature-laden iPhone yet."

No, really, CNN? I thought they would slow it down and remove features for the latest release.

Classic.

A trip down memory lane!

I just cleaned out my basket of old purses and wallets to take them to Goodwill. I thought I was just going to have to sort through the purses and wallets themselves to determine which ones to give away and which to keep, but then I realized there was stuff INSIDE of them. A lot of stuff. So I cleaned them all out (most of the purses and all of the wallets are going to Goodwill), then realized how blog-worthy this was. Here's a list of the highlights of what I found, followed by a picture of my junk!

- $7 in bills, plus about $1 in change
- 2 high school student IDs
- 11 pens
- what I’m pretty sure is my first ever Max ticket, dated 7-5-2003
- 8 lipsticks / lip-glosses/chapsticks
- Numerous feminine hygiene products
- A mouse
- Lots of movie tickets, the oldest one dating 12-6-2003 (Bad Santa)
- 1 AA battery
- A necklace
- 2 hair clips
- 2 hair ties
- A checkbook
- 2 CDs
- 5 moist toilettes
- A coupon for Chevy’s
- A Beer Garden ticket from Senior Week in college
- An ipod clip/holder thing
- Gum (weird, because I haven’t chewed gum in years)
- A warning I got from a kind Indiana State Trooper on 1/1/2002 coming back from Campus Crusade for Christ’s Christmas Conference in Indianapolis (excessive speed, but it doesn’t say how fast I was going. It was the first time I’d ever been pulled over and I cried. I have only been pulled over once since then and I didn’t get a ticket then either, but at least I didn’t cry that time! The second time I didn’t get a cool written warning like this one)
- Silica Gel
- A toothpick
- My keychain from college, including my good ole Dominick’s Fresh Values card (which I’ve probably had since high school). Cool thing about that card is it works at Safeway too!
- My Order of the Engineer ring I got when I graduated from college and became an engineer

Speech

This morning I was emailing my family about how it bugs me when people don't say words correctly - like my coworker Cindy who says "supposively" instead of supposedly. Or this other woman I know who says "ridicalous" instead of ridiculous.

A few minutes ago, Cindy came over to my desk with a piece of paper with the word "motorcycle" written on it and asked how I say that word. I said "motorcycle." She then told me about someone else who says "motorsickle." Naturally, I said to her "YOU SAY SUPPOSIVELY!!!!" :)

That led us to our other coworker's desk where we launched into a conversation about who says what how. My coworker said "well I say bag weird"... but that's just because she's from Wisconsin and has that long A sound that so many Minnesotan/Wisconsinite folk have (where it almost sounds like they are saying beg instead of bag). So that didn't count - that's an accent rather than a true mispronunciation. But I mentioned my dad says "oll" instead of oil, and my other coworker's husband says "ung-en" instead of onion. Several other things came up too! Interesting.

(Haha - blogger corrected my spelling of Minnesotan and Wisconsinite. I love that those words are in the Blogger dictionary!)

Livin' in a digital world...

Last night Geoff brought in the mail like he always does. We were going through it and he said "here's something from Comcast wanting us to switch our cable and internet to them." I responded "oh just delete it." What?!!? Delete it?! Yeah, I meant recycle it.

Then this morning Geoff's alarm clock went off, and I feel a tap on my back. HE TRIED TO SNOOZE ME! He realized it quickly and rolled over and snoozed his actual alarm clock.

Ooops. :)

So-So

When I was little I had an imaginary friend So-So. When we moved from Houston to Chicago, we couldn’t take him with us. So he stayed behind and lived in the Houston Galleria. Gaggy (my grandfather) would always tell me about how he saw So-So in the Galleria when he and Mimi (grandmother) went there. He seemed to like the ice skating rink. Then one year So-So got packed away with the giant Galleria Christmas tree, so I only got updates on So-So sightings at Christmastime.

This weekend Geoff's family went to Houston to see my sister-in-law Rebecca graduate from high school! While there was some shuttling to the airport, part of the family was dropped off at the Galleria to kill some time. And GUESS WHAT - they saw So-So! Even though he's packed up with the Christmas tree in some storage room somewhere, he just happened to come out to use the bathroom. And he says hello. Yay!

Another softball story!

I forgot about this one until just now... one of the girls asked me how old I was (for about the millionth time - they seem to be obsessed with how old Geoff and I are). I said "27". She said "you don't seem 27!" I asked her how old "I seem" and she said 38. Thanks a lot, kid! Even SHE seems to think I'm prematurely old. Then she asked how old Geoff was and I said 23. She said "so he's 4 years younger than you!" I said yes, and then she said "isn't the boy supposed to be older?"

Oh, and for reference, these girls are between 7 and 10. The majority of them are in 2nd grade. (including the girl who got busted for singing about boys with their pants unzipped and the girl who thinks I seem 38).

3 things

Here are my three amusing stories:

During softball on Friday (our last game!) two of the girls were playing one of those little clappy hand sing songy rhyme thingies. Great description right? I don't know what they're called, but like Miss Mary Mack. Anyway, moving on. So only one of the two girls is singing, I guess she's teaching the other girl this song. She sings something about kissing a boy, and I kind of raise my eyebrow, but I'm mostly paying attention to the batter that's up. The next thing I hear is something about "and has his pants undone!" and then her mom screams "HANNAH!!! I have talked to you about this song before! If I hear it out of your mouth ONE MORE TIME, I'm washing your mouth out with soap." HAHAHAHAHAHA. Love it!

After softball, I go home and check my email. I have two emails about orders at Amazon.com. I did recently place two orders, one for myself and one for father's day. But I click on these and they are for XBox Live points. I'm like "Geoff, did you order XBox live points?" and he looks at me like I'm crazy. Then the email immediately after those two is one from Amazon saying they've detected suspicious activity and have therefore cancelled my account. WOW! Within half an hour, they figured out that something wasn't right. Very impressed, Amazon. They have already processed it on their end, so they recommend calling my credit card company (an obvious next step), so I do. Before I do that though, I check my online account balance which doesn't show these Amazon transactions and also take a moment to fret about the Amex people yelling at me for storing my Amex info in my Amazon account. So I call Amex and the nicest young chap answers the phone. He says immediately "oh yes, I see them right here" and tells me the dollar amounts of MY Amazon transactions. I tell them those are legit, and he looks and says that he can see the XBox Live ones coming in but that they're not actually here yet. He says no problem, just keep an eye on my online statement and when I see them, there is a button to click to dispute a charge. YAY! I don't have to talk to actual people anymore. Then I ask him if I need a new card or anything, and he says "well, your stuff was just stored in your Amazon account, right?" I say "yes, stupidly". He says "oh no no no, that's actually very safe! No problem, and you don't need a new card because they don't display your card number on your account". YAY! I hate getting new cards. End of phone call.

Saturday I check my statement because stuff usually posts the second day, but I see nothing - hmm, maybe Amazon or Amex were able to get rid of it somehow. Then I check Sunday, and sure enough, $49.99 times 2 transactions. Dang. So I use the dispute charge option and fill out a couple of little forms, and I'm done within 10 minutes. It says it will be 6 - 8 weeks to resolve but they try to get it done within a month. Oh well, at least it's only $100.

Monday morning - two $49.99 credits on my Amex bill!!! SWEET - way to go Amex AND Amazon. Amazon for figuring out something was weird and putting a stop to it right away and Amex for crediting me so quickly and making it so very painless. The only problem I had then was that I could no longer track my two orders on Amazon since they cancelled my account, but mine came yesterday and I assume my dad's probably did too. YIPPEE! Three cheers for fantastic customer service!

My last story is a VENT. We listen to 105.1 The Buzz in Portland, and they do this movie guessing game where the host thinks of a movie and people call in and guess yes or no questions to figure out the movie. After the guesser's yes or no question is answered, he or she has one chance to guess the movie. It's a pretty entertaining game, but I get SO ANNOYED at these fools who ONLY have a guess that corresponds to an answer in the affirmative to their questions! Here's an example of how it goes:
Guesser: "Is Tom Hanks in it?"
Host: "No"
Guesser: "Ohhh.... okay.... thanks, bye"
Host: "Did you have a guess about the movie?"
Host: "Well I thought it was Castaway...."

Okay people. OBVIOUSLY you thought it was something that had Tom Hanks in it. But considering there are like a gazillion movies in existence and there is a 99.99999999999% chance that the answer to your question will be no, especially towards the beginning of the game, HAVE ANOTHER ANSWER!! Surely you can think of SOME movie that doesn't have Tom Hanks in it. I realize it may take you a second to think of, which is why you should be prepared. ANY other movie will do, and having A guess will give you higher odds of getting the right answer than having no guess and looking like a ninny! UGH. It's just unbelievable how person after person calls in and doesn't have a guess besides the guess the corresponds with an answer in the affirmative to his or her question!

Yesterday we knew that the movie wasn't a comedy although some people think it's very funny, there was no blind guy in the movie, and it wasn't made in 2009 (although when that person asked the question, he said "is it recent?" and they said "define recent" and he said "this year" and they said not this year... leading one to believe it was made in the last couple of years). We probably had some other clues too but I was too busy yelling at the radio to pay attention. Finally some guy calls in and says "is Hayden Christensen in it?" and they say yes, so he guesses "Jumper" which is correct. But I'm willing to bet that if they'd said no he would have awkwardly said "oh.... well I thought it was Jumper...." just like every other fool that calls in.

Anyway, I actually LIKE the game, it's pretty fun to try to figure out what the movie is (even though I've seen approximately fourteen movies in my life), which is why I listen to it, but ARGH!!!! People of Portland: have another answer.

Golden Girls

I KINDA remember Golden Girls growing up - my mom watched it so I'm sure my sister and I did occasionally too. I have a stronger memory of the spin-off Empty Nest. I know for sure I used to watch that. There was another spin-off, Nurses, which sounds familiar and I'm sure I watched it, but don't really remember.

Flash to 2005 - I don't rememeber if it was summer or Christmas, but I suspect it was Christmas because I don't think I went home that summer. My mom and sister were watching a ton of Golden Girls and Golden Palace. I'd never heard of Golden Palace before then, but apparently it was yet another spin-off developed with Dorothy wanted to leave the show. I know this because my mom told me at the time and also because I recently read the wiki for both Golden Girls and Golden Palace. My Golden Girls knowledge has gone up exponentially in the past week. (also this is how I know that it was 2005 that Golden Palace was on, the wiki informed me that was the first time since 1993 that Golden Palace was seen on American TV)

Side note: my grandmother had a friend who was a splitting image of Dorothy. I always called her Dorothy but that wasn't her real name. I have no idea what her name was, although my mom would know.

Back to the story. Anyway, so I was somewhat familiar with the Golden Girls. I had definitely seen them growing up and a few times in syndication, but that's about it. Last week I was feeling like watching some TV and Geoff was doing something else. That's a VERY rare phenomenon, so I took the opportunity and flipped through channels. I saw the Golden Girls was on, so I turned it on. It just so happened a new episode was starting, so I burst (loudly) into the theme song. Geoff was in the room and he looked up and was like "what ARE you singing??" Then the actual show came on and it was SO funny!! I don't remember it being that funny, and I kept laughing. YES, I laughed during a TV show. Those ladies are hilarious. So then Geoff was even more in awe that something was making me laugh (TV and movies usually don't make me laugh. It's very awkward when everyone else is cracking up and I'm sitting there all stoic-like). So then he started watching too and laughed right along with me.

I was talking to my sister the other day and she was watching Golden Girls too - turns out my mom bought a couple of the seasons on DVD and sent some to my sister. I guess we're a Golden Girls loving family.

Since it was so much fun to watch, I set the DVR to record Golden Girls. Last night while Geoff was in the shower, I turned on an episode. He happened to turn off the shower right about when the theme song started, so he could hear it. I, of course, was singing at the top of my lungs, and halfway through the theme song (right around "and if you threw a party") he burst into song WITH me!!!! I couldn't stop laughing... apparently I sang it enough times that he learned the words. He then watched the entire episode with me, which was his first full Golden Girls episode. I gave him the low-down on all of the characters - Rose is the wingnut, Blanche is the man-lover, and Sophia is hilarious and Dorothy's mom. He was like "what about Dorothy?" I was like I dunno, she's just Dorothy. There's not much to say about her. And I filled him in on the little details like Rose being from St. Olaf, Minnesota and ALWAYS having stories about "back in St. Olaf"...

Good times, good times. Gotta go, gotta watch some Golden Girls! ;-)