work stuff

I forgot to mention that yesterday was sort of a big day at work. We had our annual homeschool day, which I sort of created a couple of years ago. It went really, really well. We made a bunch of money, which is pretty helpful. And everyone really seemed to enjoy it, which is good. Always nice when the customers aren't pissed off. I bought subs for lunch for all of the employees that were working the whole day. Then I found out that one of the guides was meeting a friend for lunch and taking the sub home for dinner. That kind of annoyed me. I wasn't buying her damn dinner! And then she had the nerve to say she was going to tack on an extra 10 minutes on her time card to cover the time it took her to clean up. Even though she spent the last 15 minutes of the day talking, when she should have been cleaning up. This is one of the people I did not miss when I was gone.


Also, we interviewed a girl to replace Cathy today. I'm really hopeful that we can hire her. She seems really great, plus we kind of really need someone. The owners finally talked to Cathy and told her she wasn't coming back to the museum, but they phrased it more as they were giving her a promotion and keeping her at the main office, where she's been all summer. On Friday at Claude's (did I mention I went to Claude's on Friday? Cause I did, and it was delicious) she was saying that she was worried she was going to lose her job, since they hadn't mentioned her coming back to the museum. So hopefully she's happy with her new position and everything works out. Eh, what do most of you care? Let's end on a more entertaining note:


I know, not my best effort, but it will have to do.

we be jammin, mon

We were all cultured and shit this weekend. There was a Caribbean Festival by our house, so when Ilya and Mercedes came to hang out we went to check it out. It was fun. There was lots of loud music, including the inevitable Bob Marley and a live steel drum band. There were a lot of dreadlocks and not many white people, as might be expected. We ate a bunch of good food.

We also got to try some authentic Jamaican Kola Champagne. Alfred freaking loved it. It was like a cross between a tutti frutti-flavor and cream soda.

For dessert we had this coconut-sugar concoction. It was surprisingly delicious, considering I'm not much of a fan of coconut. I guess all the sugary buttery goodness it was coated in helped. I'm just realizing that all of our "culture" revolved around food. Sounds about right.

Once we got back home we hit the booze, as usual.

Between all the Caribbean food and the alcohol, we weren't even hungry for dinner. We ended up having a bonfire so we just had some smores instead. Obviously a very healthy day. We made up for it yesterday when we went on our 8 mile walk. We haven't been able to walk for awhile, so we took it sort of easy (easier than our regular 11 miles, anyway). I was a little sore today but not as bad as I thought I would be. It kind of sucked because even though it was low tide, the tide was still higher than usual, so we had to walk higher up on the beach where the sand is softer and harder to walk in. Friggin mother nature.

Also, Mike texted me today to inform me that today is his one year anniversary of getting shot. So, happy anniversary, Mike!

embarassing pictures: Europe edition

Posting that picture of us from our Europe trip back in 2002 the other day made me want to look through all those pictures again. So I did. And, luckily for all of you, I decided to post a bunch tonight. Please enjoy this little trip down memory lane. Obviously no meaningful or memorable shots, or any nice scenery, mainly just us looking goofy. As usual.

First up: Madrid. Apparently I used to get embarassed by Alfred's incessant need for strange pictures. Ok, I still do at times. But he doesn't seem to take them as much these days. Thank God.

Anyway, the most memorable part of our time in Madrid was when we took a nap on our last day there, got up and packed to leave the hotel at about 3pm and got yelled at by the hotel owner for leaving and not paying for that last day. We played dumb and just left. Poor guy. I'd say we did our part in perpetuating the rude American stereotype. Really, it was more ignorance than rudeness on our part. Oh, and there was this really yummy restaurant next to our hotel that we went to a bunch. I especially like the guy on the left side of the picture wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

Next up: Barcelona. I was grumpy and refused to pose for this picture, but Alfred was obviously having a great time.

He also managed to bond with some locals.

We apparently had a special connection with McDonald's while in Marseille. I do remember eating there and at Burger King far too often on that trip overall. Each country had its own special burger. It was a very educational trip.

Ah, Amsterdam. Talk about educational. We learned about 2 very important parts of life there: beer and sex.

No, I don't have pictures of us in any other museum. Well, ok, some from the Anne Frank house. So I guess we learned about religious persecution as well. But nothing else. Really.

And the ever popular Paris. At least this one has a historic landmark in the background.

The more time I spend looking at pictures and working on this post, the more pictures I include. And every time I upload a new one I have to fix all the spacing. I only have this problem with Alfred's computer. Too bad he takes away the work laptop for days on end. He's not home again tonight. He's sort of stalking this girl at the new gym he just started going to. Her name is Amy. I hope she's at least cute.

some random disconnected comments

I'm going to call in my first picture-free post here. Please refer to Monday's post if you're upset about this development.

Bush is on TV right now, talking about how screwed up the economy is. It's a little scary to think that things happening right now may make history books in the future, like the Great Depression. It's scary because of where we are in our lives right now: just starting out, getting ready to start a family, etc. Our lives could be very strongly impacted by this. There was a report on NPR this morning about how with the government taking over such big chunks of the economy (I'm sure there's a more technical way to say that) is making the US so much less financially free, and how Canada is much more free in many ways than the US. Bush just said "God bless." What the hell happened to separation of church and state? Honestly, I don't know if I just never noticed how religious the country/government was, or it's become more so. The whole shoving religion in people's faces really makes me dislike it more and more. I went off on a rant about it once to Alfred. I think he secretly thinks I'm going to hell. Bush is done. Thank God. Ha!

Speaking of Alfred, he came home tonight! This is his first night home in over a week. We get to catch up on some important TV, such as How I Met Your Mother. Ah, I love it. It's a good one so far. I love Neil Patrick Harris. "I caught feelings. I caught feelings bad."

I sort of accidentally finished the Legend of Zelda again. I was on level 9 and stumbled onto the last room, so I killed Gannon (the little bastard) and that was that. I didn't even finish getting all the stuff I was supposed to get in that level. I'm just that damn good, I guess. Gosh, I'm a wienie.

It's too hard to concentrate with a good show on. I missed our regular shows! So I'm out.

workin' gal

I totally planned to photoshop my head onto some farm girl's body, but when you do a google image search for "farm girl" they're all cartoons or sluts. I'm far too classy for that. So instead you get this. I call it Tracy Drinking a Fruity Drink while Looking Rather Fruity Herself. Fourth of July 2006, baby. I swear.

I wanted to wear jeans to work today, so I decided today would be my chore day. There was a bunch of stuff to do outside to get ready for groups, which start next week, so since it was supposed to be cooler out (the high was only in the low 80s) I figured today was as good a day as any. I was mainly planning on doing some cleaning and taking off the canvas roof in the picnic area, which got torn up by tropical storm Fay. As it turned out, it was a good thing I spent most of the day outside, because all 3 of the computers in the office decided to implode, so our computer guy was there all day trying to fix them. He got one working, at the desk with the non-working phone, unfortunately. So I have to use the computer at one desk and the phone at another. Neither of which is my desk. But I digress. Not that my original story had much of a point. Anyway, I ended up spending most of the day outside, getting dirty and sweaty and covered in hay dust, which left me stuffy for the rest of the day. I brought some stuff home to wash, then have to bring it all back and restuff it with hay (they're sacks of hay. Hence the hay dust and restuffing). I also managed to destroy the canvas roof as planned, stepping in multiple piles of wet cement on my quest for a ladder. Luckily most of it came right out of my shoes, and I'll probably hose them off better later this week. I was far too lazy/tired tonight to bother, plus I'm going to wear them to work outside again this week so I figure I'll just mess them up again anyway. Yikes, this is long and pointless. Time for a picture!

Alfred, representing old school. That's from January 2002, baby. Amsterdam. I can't imagine why we were in a Burger King. I've got so many good old pictures I should post someday. I haven't done an embarassing picture day in awhile. By the way, I can't tell if those are the glasses he still wears. Actually I think they're not, because his now have paint chipped off of the frames. Do you think this will embarass him into getting new ones? I'm gonna guess no.

Alfred's birthday weekend

Well, we certainly had an action-packed weekend. Mike came to visit, and of course we celebrated Alfred's birthday. We got things off to a rousing start with a pizza dinner and the obligatory power hour. We now have a regular waitress at the restaurant we've been going to the last few weekends for their 2 for 1 pints of beer. She joined in on betting how many minutes it would be before Ilya started hiccuping (he's a cartoon drunk). Sadly, we all lost, but when Mike's war wound made an appearance, she comped all his beer for the night. Score!

The next morning Alfred got to open his presents, including this gem from Mike:

Now they can be twinsies! We went to breakfast (somehow we didn't make it to the gym), then went shopping to kill some time. World Market was first. We wandered the store awhile, then decided to set a place setting with comically large items so we could pretend to be tiny.

Then, of course, we had to set a ridiculously tiny place setting so we could feel giant:

An employee came over and asked if he could help us while we were gathering our tiny items. I told him no thanks, we were just looking.

Next we hit up Target, where I (accidentally) made fun of a little girl's Halloween costume. Ok, I purposely made fun of the costume, I just didn't realize that it was hanging on someone's cart and that they were 5 feet away from me as I did so. Somehow we managed to accomplish our mission, which was to buy awesome socks to go bowling in:

Then proceeded to go bowling:

After bowling three rounds and each winning once (with yours truly managing to get the high score of the day, after a dismal 59 on the first game) we headed to a liquor store to stock up on some essentials: liquor, beer, and cigars. We bought a 2 for 1 gift set of Kahlua, then went back to the house and proceeded to plow through 1 and 1/2 of the bottles. Then we played with some antique armor.

It was pretty tiring, but luckily we had some coffee with our Kahlua so we were good to go. We headed out for another pizza dinner, and plenty more beer.

The evening proved both fun and educational, as we learned a handy little party trick along the way:

It's much more impressive looking in person.

Sunday was sort of low key: we went out for brunch, Mike checked out a bunch of girls, pretty standard. Then we sat around outside and smoked some cigars, even though it was kind of drizzly and crappy out. Not a good weekend for swimming, unfortunately. Mike headed back to GA that afternoon, and we headed over to Max and Robyn's to watch all but the last minute of the Jaguars game (it got cut off by the dvr, which kind of sucked because it was the best minute of the game, or so we assume). All in all, a good weekend. And I should think that this post should earn me at least a couple of picture-less posts in the future, no?

happy birthday Alfred!!

He's the big 2-9! We don't really have much planned for today, but I imagine drunken revelry will be involved. No time for blogging! Off to celebrate! Happy birthday honey, I'm glad you were born! :)