change in habits

Our busiest season is coming up at work, so I'm going to be working longer hours and more evenings soon. Which means that I'm not going to be blogging as often during the week anymore. I'll try to blog during the weekends some to make up for it, but we have so many friends and things to do... ha! Once in awhile we do, I guess. This weekend we're going to Orlando, so that will be fun. Last weekend we just sat around and relaxed, though. It was awesome.

Here's a fun picture:

It was taken in one of the tunnels below Alcatraz. When we were out there visiting Rosemary and Greg, we went to buy tickets for the tour, only to find that they were sold out for the day. While we were trying to decide what to do, the park ranger we were talking to asked if we'd like to go on a special tour with him. He and another ranger were giving a special behind the scenes tour to some park rangers from somewhere like Pennsylvania, and asked if we'd like to come along. So we got a super cool tour, and it was free! We got to go in a bunch of cells, and walk around underneath the prison, and go upstairs to where they filmed part of the movie "The Rock." It was really fun. I meant to send that guy a thank you note and never did. I'm so not a Southerner. They write thank you notes for everything.

In other news, I haven't asked anyone to be my friend on facebook since Katherine first signed me up. It's kind of fun to see how many people ask me to be their friend. I don't know how many I have right now, though, and I just signed on yesterday so I can't sign on again so soon. I can't get people's hopes up. It's a little weird though, most of the people I went to high school with who have asked to be my friend were huge losers. That doesn't say much for me!

stress

Work right now is all about stress. Friday was a fairly terrible day. It was incredibly busy, with programs at both museum locations all day long. Plus Kara was sick and had lost her voice, so I had to pick up some of her slack (although she claims it didn't have any impact on her work that day, which makes me worry even more actually). I say it all the time, I should buy a pedometer so that I can see how far I walk on these busy days. Cause I crossed that street about 1000 times, sometimes running instead of walking. It was just pure insanity. And then Kara had the balls to imply today that I wasn't doing my job well enough. I had told her that in general, when there are 5 busses in the parking lot she should come out there and help instead of going inside with the teacher, and today she told me that her groups were taken care of and the bus that had just pulled up was one of my groups, so that's why she walked away. So somehow it ceased to be her job, at that very moment. Ugh. It really irritated me.

One good thing that came out of the busy day was that I wore my snood for the first time. It was a little smaller than would have really been ideal, but I think it went well.

It stayed where it belonged, at least. Now I'm working on a new one, a little larger and with elastic this time. Exciting, no?

Unfortunately this is just the beginning of the work stress. Starting next week, we're going to have 3 programs going at the old location and 4 at the new one. In other words, lots of running across the street. Man, I can't wait.

happy birthday Tony!

Yup, my favorite oldest brother is another year older. He is, in fact, damn old. We lamented the fact that we're old and fucking boring when I called him earlier. It could be worse, though. We could be dead. If he read this, he'd probably like this picture. The rest of us will just have to enjoy it for him. Happy birthday!


We have a new guy at work who has the same first and middle name as Tony. I told him that, and he said "I knew that, because you're my sister." The Tony at work I mean, not the Tony who's actually my brother. In other words, it was kind of weird. Mike met him last week, he pointed out that he looks kind of like Dad. I had noticed the same thing earlier that day. But only when he's wearing a hat. So he looks like my Dad and has the same name as my brother.

We're watching the SNL from a couple of weeks ago, where TV on the Radio performed. Alfred corrected identified the lead singer as the guy in Rachel Getting Married. I just assumed he was being racist. Cause that guy's black. But nope, he was right. It's now official, he's not racist. In case you were curious.

Mike is going to love this title

Apparently the only reason he bothers to come visit is to get mentioned in my blog. So, here's a good one for you, Mike.

He came down Thursday and came right to the museum, since I was still at work for a couple of hours. He brought cannolis, which were really tasty. It was the first cannoli that Kara had ever had. Pretty crazy, eh? Then he went outside and had lots of fun doing museum-ey stuff. He helped make candles.

Sunday we decided to try out the dutch oven in a bonfire. We made peach blackberry cobbler. It turned out ok, but the pan was a giant bitch to clean.

The dutch oven is at the bottom right of the picture here. And that's a big ass fire.

Ok, back to Mike. Sunday he had to change his Hawaii plates for his new Florida ones.



It was a big moment for him. Or not. Whatever.

booze, booze, and more booze

Mike came down to visit Thursday evening, so of course we drank a lot. By now I'm sure you've seen the live blog. That was some good times. Next time anyone thinks about how lame a post is and wants to complain, just remember those posts. Cause they were awesome.

So this post is all about our drunken fun. We all wore our coordinating John Deere t-shirts on Saturday, so we took a formal family portrait.


God, we're adorable. Here's another good one from Sunday night. Our cousin David came down for the evening, and we had to get the obligatory Mike-showing-off-his-wound shot.

And now, a few high quality drunken photos. I had no idea Mike took these. There's like 5 on my camera.

I was smelling the tree. God, it smelled good.

Alfred showing off his fraternity pride.

And now, a progression of our bottle collection over the weekend. Saturday morning:

Saturday evening:

Sunday morning:

Sunday evening:

We had lots and lots of beer. On Saturday evening, after our second power hour, we walked up to Publix for more beer. I wasn't wearing shoes. We evidently decided we needed 4 cases of beer. On the way home, I dropped the one I was carrying, then grabbed it and ran home with it, beer streaming down the front of me. And only 2 bottles broke!

p.s.

You're gonna want to start at the bottom of these posts and work your way up, because they're posted in reverse chronological order. I just typed that completely without typos. I'm awesome.

power hour live blog: the aftermath

Our shot glasses have been approved for future power hours. Ok, from this sentence on I am not going to edit my typos. We just got off the phone with Tony and Cathy and the kids, Ella wants silly string for her birthday burt she isn't going to tell her mom, cause her mom wil freak out! So I'm totally buying her silly strong. her birthday's coming up. That means my blog-aversary is coming up. Woprd. Our pizza is baking, hopefdully it's awesome. It's a rasta pizza plus half a pizza worth of banana peppers. For those who do not know, rasta pizza is pepperoni, green pepper, and pineapple. It's fantastic. Wow, it's awful how many typos I have. HBowever, it's an authentic representation of the fact that I have completed a power, plus half a beer, plus maybe 2 sups of another. Dang, I keep wanting to correct my speelling but I commited to bot fixing it. Mike just said cream.

power hour live blog #7

Power hour: complete! We are, collectively, the man. Alfred is the only one of the 3 of us to have broken the seal. We C*****s have strong bladders. (I have to protect our identities in case of weirdos.)


So, we tried to take a picture that included Mike hanging from the balcony, but Alfred couldn't fit it in the picture, but then I did it in approximately 10 seconds afterwards. But it's ok.

power hour live blog #6

Minute 50! Dang, this has gone so fast. This whole live blogging thing has really made time fly. I had to go inside during this 10 minute segment and put more clothes on. I'm now a full-fledged ninja beneath my clothing. I could kill Mike without even leaving my chair. Dudes, I can still totally type!

power hour live blog #5

Minute 40. I'm sort of freezing right now.

power hour live blog #4

Minute 30. No picture this post, a video link instead. But really, go watch it, it's hilarious.

Here's an unrelated story: last week, I was doing an Indian tour for some group. I made some corny joke, and some kid went "ba boom, ching!" You know, like the snare drum and cymbal that they do at the punchline of a joke. It was freaking awesome! I told the kid he was awesome. When we have kids, I'm totally training them to do things like that. Also, teaching them to play Uno.

power hour live blog #3

We're up to minute 20. "The final countdown" was in there. Ah, GOB. "Damn it feels good to be a gangster" was in this 10 minute segment, too. We were discussing our workout for Sunday morning. This morning Mike and I met at 6:10am on our front porch to exercise together. We ran, did squats, push ups, a bunch of ab stuff. He kicked my ass. I may not going to be able to walk in the morning. It's great.


Stay tuned for minute 30: halfway, bitches!

power hour live blog #2

We just did minute 10. The song was the Alf theme song. On this new CD we have an all-instrumental song at each 10 minute mark so we can keep track of where we are better. I think that will work well for the first third or so of the hour, but towards the end we may lose track of which 10 minute chunk we're in.

Here's an action shot for you: juggling the blog with a shot.


Sirens were blaring just a few minutes ago. Shit's hitting the fan, yo.

power hour live blog

This is gonna be exciting. We're starting a power hour, with our new 3rd power hour CD. But right now, we're waiting for Alfred to get off the phone.

Stay tuned for an exciting evening. Minute 1!

the facebook issue

I actually meant to write about this a couple of weeks ago, since people have been asking me "are you on facebook" and "why aren't you on facebook" and "when are you going to join facebook" for a long time. I was perfectly happy not being on facebook, and had intended to remain that way. Until the treachery of certain people this weekend.

I think the main reason I wasn't too interested in facebook was because of myspace. I had a myspace page, as you all know, although I was late to that party, too. I enjoyed it, once I got around to joining. The finding-people-I-haven't-seen-in-10-years thing was really fun. I also liked stalking people, which you can't really do on facebook. You have to be friends with someone to see their page, which totally defeats the purpose of stalking. And it was fun to be able to change my background, add different graphics and polls to my page, stuff like that. Can't do that on facebook, either. The one thing I do like better about facebook is the whole tagging-photos thing.

As much as I liked myspace, I eventually got tired of it. I haven't signed on in months. And no one's on there anymore anyway, they've all migrated to facebook. But I think the real reason is that I have my blog now. There's no stalking capabilities, but it's my little area. I can change how it looks (speaking of which, I'm thinking I could use a new look here. Thoughts?), talk about what I want, put up pictures, lots of fun stuff. So really, I had no use for facebook. I guess it's fun so far, but we'll see how long it lasts.

some more weekend pics, aka fun with rowdy

Like I was telling Katherine and Katie the other day, I like having busy weekends because it gives me 2 days worth of blog fodder. Yay for one less pointless post!

We had lots of fun with Rowdy. I guess neither of them had ever met him, but they were quite pleased to make his acquaintance. He's a good dog. Actually, we determined this weekend that Rowdy is a she. It'll be tough to make the switch. Old habits die hard. Aw, look at what a good dog Rowdy's being.

Rowdy! Out of the trash!

Down, Rowdy! Get down! Be a good girl!

That's better, Rowdy. Dance with Auntie Katherine. Good dog!

In other news, Katherine is engaged! Congrats to her and Jevon! That's her hand (and ring) on the top right, Katie's is on the left, mine is at the bottom. 2 engaged hoes at once, now it's just a race to the altar.

And finally, a nice beach shot.

If you guys lived in Florida, we could do this all the time!

we had friends

We had a really fun weekend with Katherine and Katie. They got in Friday afternoon, and we immediately got started with the festivities by going to Claude's! After that we got a pitcher of sangria, at which point Alfred joined us, then we went out to dinner and a ghost tour.

Alfred and Katie were all sorts of cynical, but Katherine and I enjoyed the stories at least. She got some pictures of orbs. Whenever I'm on one of those tours I want to dress up and go roam around the back of one of the cemeteries to try to freak people out.

Anyway. Saturday was pretty laid back, we went to get pedicures (without Alfred), which was fun but a little weird. They apparently didn't have 3 chairs in the same room, so Katherine and I were in one room and poor Katie was off by herself. It was still nice to get our toes done though, we all picked nice bright colors. Very tropical.

Sunday we went to the beach, and Alfred got crabs.

Both evenings we spent at home, eating pizza

doing power hours

and on Sunday, playing Uno. Yes, Katie and Katherine have now been exposed to the excitement that is Speed Uno.

It was just really nice, we relaxed, had fun, and just enjoyed the company. It made me miss having lots of friends around.

Aw, so cute. We miss you guys!

sorry

I just realized that it's been days and days since I blogged last. Sorry, dudes. I've been far too busy with friends and drinking and whatnot. So, suck it. Come back tomorrow for some pictures and an action-packed post. :)

free stuff!

It's been like a free stuff bonanza lately. Namely, free food. First, last week I went to Target and redeemed one of my free Dr. Pepper coupons from when they gave away Dr. Pepper for Guns n Roses releasing their CD. I still have one more to redeem, too. It's especially awesome since Dr. Pepper is one of my 2 favorite pops. The other is Coca Cola, because it is delicious and refreshing. It satisfies my umami cravings. I may have been brainwashed by the Coca Cola factory.

Second was the free breakfast Denny's gave out yesterday. Also awesome! I actually went with Kara for lunch, we stopped in a little before noon to put our names on the list, then went to the bank to make deposits, then came back to finish waiting. Total it took about 45 minutes for us to get seated, which I thought was pretty good considering how jammed it was. Then it was actually really fast to get our food, which isn't all that surprising considering they were just making the same thing over and over again. It was good though. The pancakes were nice and fluffy. Plus, since we both just got water, once we were finished the waitress just told us thanks and we were all set. Awesome!

Third, the Chick Fil A that was sort of giving out free food last week is giving out free breakfast items every Wednesday in February. This week was the chicken biscuit, which is my favorite, so I totally had to stop. I had to wait a bit but it was so worth it. I love those little chickeney bitches.

the usual weekend post

I sort of forgot about blogging yesterday. We made some lima bean soup in the slow cooker, and between that and some good TV, I was totally distracted. Oh, and I was knitting. I'm almost done with my snood, I just need to thread some yarn through it like a drawstring and then I'm done. I'm a little knitting fool. Well, some sort of fool, anyway.

We had a fun weekend. Ilya's birthday party was Saturday, we went out to lunch and then back to their house for cake and gifts. They bought an ice cream cake that was so, so delicious. It was espresso ice cream with this really thick chocolate frosting. The best part was they wrote on the cake in pink. Apparently Ilya sounds girly, I guess he gets that a lot on his mail and stuff. Ha! Then we hung out for the rest of the night, went out for some Mexican for dinner, watched some tv, etc. Good times.

I also bought a purse on Saturday morning, which turned out to be too small, and whose zipper I then proceeded to break. Alfred fixed it for me, but it frustrated the hell out of me. I returned it Sunday and got a new one instead, which I am enjoying so far. So that's my purse news.

We ran a bunch of errands Sunday before heading back home, then made some faux chicken wings and cole slaw and watched the super bowl. At some point I was walking down the stairs in my slippers and slipped. Imagine that, slipping in slippers. I was going down the bottom half of the stairs but was still holding onto the top half of the railing, so I caught myself before I fell, but I kind of swung into the wall instead. My shoulder and ribs/side hurt, but I only have a tiny little bruise. It sucks, but at least I didn't really fall.

Ok, I think we're all up to date. Whew!