San Francisco Series: Episode 3b

So on the last episode, we ended with our travelers departing Sacramento and heading back to San Francisco. Two hours, one toll booth, and one bridge later, we returned to the hotel, dropped the MIL off, and changed into warmer clothes. Lance and I headed to Oakland to catch the Oakland A's play the Philadelphia Phillies. We were concerned about the traffic and it looked like we were gonna make it just in the nick of time but suddenly the traffic cleared and we were there! Lance actually clapped his hands, he was so excited. We had more than enough time to buy food, souvenirs, look around, and find our seats.We had pretty good seats for the game. We were behind home plate and were pretty close to the action. We were so close that we had that net/screen thing that stops foul balls from smacking you hard and so close that Lance felt it was necessary to tell me to duck if I saw people around me ducking.

It was a good game for us to go to since Hawaii boys (I almost said "local boys" and then realized that I wasn't cool enough to say "local boys") Kurt Suzuki and Shane Victorino were both playing. I always try to pay attention to Lance's interests and I can watch a lot of his sports now and I enjoy them. I admit, though, paying attention to baseball takes more effort though I admit that going to a major league game is way more interesting and fun than watching it at home. In any case, I was amused by many things during this game, none of which actually had to do with the game (though I was also pleased because this game moved along at a nice pace). Perhaps the most amusing was:

The mess of vendors moving up and down the aisles! They were selling peanuts, churros, pizza, ice cream, soda, candy, and souvenirs. They even had vendors walking around with huge hot chocolate and Starbucks coffee canisters on their back that had a hose connected to it. It was super freezing so I ended up buying a Starbucks coffee from one of them near the end of the game. He got his little hose, pumped the coffee into a cup, gave me cream and sugar, and continued on his merry way. There were a lot of vendors where we were sitting and they all moved super fast. I had a lot of fun watching these vendors but I really was paying attention to the game though my view was blocked a bit at times:

I was also amused but also irritated at times by these obnoxious girls sitting next to me. They drank a lot during the game and got louder and louder as the game progressed. I think one of them may have come in drunk already, though, because she was obnoxious from the beginning and her friends were laughing that she was an alcoholic. They were alternating between cheering on the A's, dissing our section for not being spirited enough, and screaming crap at the Phillies and anyone who might be fans of them. Their highest point was either when they repeatedly screamed "douche bag" at the opposing team or when they yelled at a little eight year old boy who was cheering for the Phillies.The funny thing about this picture was not that a picture of a group of strangers who were obviously sitting right next to me was taken. The funny thing is that Lance was the one who took the picture. After one of the girls' more obnoxious comments, I asked Lance to hand me the camera so that I could take a picture of them. Instead, he told me to wait, scrolled through the pictures already taken, said "Is this what you want?", and handed me the camera with the already taken picture. Ha, ha, I couldn't stop laughing. He knows me so well. All in all, it was a fun evening at the ballpark.

San Francisco Series: Episode 3a

[Note: We did so much on Day 3 that I've broken it up into two parts. The night of our third day will be Episode 3b.]
On day 3 of our San Francisco adventure, we started out our day with a drive out to Fairfield. We were led by Mandy, who assisted me with my navigational responsibilities for the entire trip. She's also helped me out quite a bit here at home, but she's a lot easier to use when someone else is helping her navigate.

To get to Fairfield, we had to cross the Oakland Bay Bridge, which I thought was pretty cool. There's two levels to the bridge and you exit San Francisco on the bottom level and return from the top. We also passed our first toll booth, which amused me to no end. Granted I wasn't as amused by the toll booths as our trip wore on as they can become costly.

After about an hour, we arrived at Fairfield and at one of the most exciting places of the trip for me. Yup, we went to the Jelly Belly factory! Jelly Bellies are my most favorite candy and going to the factory was on my "San Francisco Must Do" list. The tour was really cool but we weren't allowed to take pictures during the tour. They were doing maintenance this day so we didn't get to see them make candy, but we were able to see them build the layers of the bean and see them package them. At the end of the tour, we also got a fairly decent size bag of Jelly Belly beans. The factory also had a store with lots of merchandise and of course their entire line of candy. They even had a sampling bar where you could taste individual flavors. We purchased a lot here for omiyage and bought four pounds of Belly Flops, which were the reject beans that didn't meet the high quality standards of Jelly Belly. They taste the same, but they are either misshapen, too small, too large, or stuck together. Oh, and they also had these really neat Jelly Belly art all over the place that were actually made out of Jelly Bellies. There were a lot of Ronald Reagan pieces, since his love of the Jelly Belly bean helped with their success. His favorite flavor was licorice.After Jelly Belly, we did a geocache (which I found, yea me) and then drove another hour out to Citrus Heights (outside of Sacramento) to visit one of Lance's former colleagues that moved to California after he retired. We got to see their house, which I enjoyed a lot because I like seeing the non-touristy areas of the places we visit. The best part of their house that I was super jealous of was their apple tree. The tree fruits in the fall so there weren't any apples on it, but they said they get a lot of apples when it does fruit. Having an apple tree would definitely be a reason why I'd want to move to the mainland. How cool would it be to be able to pick your own apples and make all the goodness that comes from the apple? Applesauce, apple pie, jam and jellies? Fantastic. They took us to eat lunch at this really fantastic but casual restaurant, Booyah. I had a fabulous portobello mushroom sandwich which I'm going to try and make before I have to return to school. We had to leave to return to the hotel relatively early in the afternoon so that we could make the two hour drive back to drop off the MIL before Lance and I headed out again to the Oakland-Phillies game. We didn't have time to visit a yarn store in Sacramento but that was okay as I was still on a high from the bento excursion the day before.

San Francisco Series: Episode 2

On the second day (and first day that we could really do anything), we woke up bright and early, ate breakfast (our motel provided a complimentary continental breakfast), and headed down to Pier 39 of Fisherman's Wharf. The parking rates here were pretty steep, but we discovered that most parking rates in San Francisco were pretty steep and a lot of the stores didn't have a free parking lot. Anyway, Pier 39 had some pretty cool touristy stores, including The Candy Baron, which was a fantastic candy store that had tons of taffy and some cool old fashioned candy.Pier 39 also some pretty good food (I loved all the fantastic seafood available in San Francisco) and some good views. There was also an area were a bunch of sea lions were just hanging out and that was really cool to see.After a few hours there, we left Pier 39 and went to Japantown. Japantown was one of the places that I was super excited to visit because 1) I like Japanese stuff, and 2) I wanted to buy lots of bento stuff and I had read that Ichiban Kan had a lot of cool, inexpensive stuff. Japantown did not disappoint. There were cool Japanese sculptures, cute signs, and a pagoda:

I ended up purchasing a set of three flower vegetable cutters, which is good because I wanted a smaller set than the one I currently have. I also bought a lot of bento gear from Ichiban Kan, which was as fantastic as I had envisioned. I purchased a couple of bento boxes, some cute chopsticks, chopstick holders, bento straps, food picks, food dividers, sauce bottles, and a tamagoyaki pan. Oh, and facial cleanser to replace the one that I had to mail home. After Japantown, we drove to Daly City to look for a Target because the MIL really wanted to find The Spiderwick Chronicles and it was being released on DVD this day. She decided that it was too expensive and that it would be cheaper to have someone purchase it at home, but I didn't mind the extra drive because Target was right next to Daiso, a Japanese dollar store (well, more like $1.50 store. We went to one when we were in Vancouver and it was humangous and amazing but it was closing right when we got there. I was disappointed then so I was thrilled to discover that there was a Daiso nearby. The Daly City Daiso was no where near as thrilling as the Vancouver one and I was disappointed with the craft selection but I bought more bento stuff here. All in all it was a good day and I was happy because getting some cool bento gear was on my list of things that I really wanted to do while on my trip. And good grief, did I get bento gear:

San Francisco Series: Episode 1

Before our trip, I was all stressed because we had so many things to do before we could even think about packing. As a result, no packing actually occurred until the day before our departure and we were up till the wee hours of the morning the morning of. Our trip began when my dad picked up me, Lance, and M*Bark and took us to his house. We dropped M*Bark and all of her stuff off at my parents house. It was the first time that we've been away since we got her and the house so our anxiety level was a little higher than it usually is before a trip. We then picked up the MIL and went to the airport. Right before we checked our luggage in, I noticed that the MIL had a bottle of water sticking out of her carry on. I told her that she to either throw it away or pack it in her luggage and then we checked the rest of her bag to make sure she didn't have any more forbidden items. Feeling proud of myself for catching the liquid in her bag, we moved quickly through the check in and then went to the security line. We moved through in the security line but were told to wait for someone to come and checkmy backpack. No biggie, my carry on frequently gets checked because of my knitting needles. And so we waited. And waited. And waited. I started to get grouchy. I mean, geez, they were just knitting needles. Finally someone came by to check my bag and as he unzipped my backpack he asked if I had any liquid in it. I answered no because I had been careful when I had packed and I managed to catch the MIL's mistake so obviously I didn't have any liquid myself. Yeah, he found liquid in my bag. I had mistakenly packed my facial cleanser in my carry on. Luckily there was an area next to the security line to mail packages so I was able to mail my cleanser home since it was a brand new bottle of Arbonne. The plane ride was uneventful and it was almost enjoyable. Lance and I watched Juno on my ipod, played 2-player Meteos on our DSes, and I read a bit. I wanted to knit the sock I was working on, but I had dropped a needle early in the flight. The man behind me was nice about picking it up but I didn't want to risk dropping it again. We arrived around 9 pm San Francisco time, used the really cool airport Air Tram to the car rental place, and picked up our car.Lance and I have had really good experiences staying at small motels. The motels generally aren't spectacular and you definitely wouldn't stay at them for the ambiance but we always get really good service and plus they have the added advantage of being relatively inexpensive. So we picked another small motel and we weren't disappointed. The MIL forgot her toothbrush (though she actually did find it later) and the front desk actually provided one for her free of charge. The front desk guy also took the time to provide us with possible food options and recommended us with one that had free delivery and amazing food. Since it was kinda late, we decided to just order food in and settled in. We needed our rest for the rest of our trip. But first, Lance decided to entertain himself a bit:

The Return of the Blog

I know I haven't been very consistent with this blog, with recent blogging 3-4 times a month. But still, even for me, a month and a half between blogs is long. My apologies and I am pleased to announce The Return of the Blog. Well, that is my intention anyway. I'll try, as I really do enjoy blogging. Anyway, here's a brief recap of the past month:

1) Sick. I had a nasty bout of bronchitis in mid-late May that really knocked me down for a bit. I missed a lot of fun stuff during this time, as well as a day and a half of work. Yes, I should've missed more work but the end of the school year is not the best time to miss work. I was lucky, though. My communication aide was with me for one of my sick days at work and she really helped me out by doing some of my therapy for me while I did paperwork. Oh, and I did manage to laugh a bit during this time. I was so sick one day that I lay on the floor in between kids. While I was lying down, my kid walked in, saw me, and exclaimed, "Mrs. XXX, what happened?!?"

2) Parties. We're finally enjoying our house and sharing it with others. For awhile we were having people over every week and it was getting a little tiring. Lance is getting really good at giving the tour, though. And more than once, we were told that our house should be the new party house for the family/department/group.

3) Bentos. I had a lot of fun making bentos near the end of the school year and I'm starting to get some fun bento gear. This bento has fried rice, chinese style chicken, a strawberry, and an egg. Where's the egg, you ask? Ha, ha, the car is the egg. I also have a bottle of salt tucked in for the egg.

4) Hats, hats, and more hats. For some reason, I've been knitting a bunch of hats. It all started with this watermelon hat that I knit for my cousin's baby's first birthday. And then my friend wanted a (regular) hat for her birthday. And then my MIL wanted a hat for our San Francisco trip. And then came the really cool frog hat for Joy's future baby.

5) Vacay. The best part that happened in the last month and a half? The school year ended and I'm on summer vacation. Aww yeah. I still need to go in for meetings and to evaluate kids but that's not very much. Sorry, there's no picture for this one, but I figured there's enough pictures in this post to keep y'all happy.

6) M*Bark's 2nd birthday. M*Bark turned 2 in June. She was sleepy when I took this picture and I just realized how weird she looks in it. Anyway, she plucked the hat off the coffee table the following day and ripped it to shreds.

7) Weddings. We went to two weddings, including the one that Lance was in the party for. Sadly we forgot to take pictures with the happy couples.

8) San Francisco. We went to San Francisco with the MIL and just came home earlier this week. There's no picture for this one because we did so much there and we have so many pictures to share. I'll share our trip in future posts and will begin the "San Francisco Series" within the next few days.

Big Red

Look what just came off the needles! I just finished my mom's birthday blanket and I've affectionately named it "Big Red". It was actually supposed to be her present for last year's birthday but it obviously didn't get finished no where near its due date. Last year I started it a few days before her birthday because my disillusioned mind thought that it would only take a few days to finish. I'm not sure what planet I was living on last year, as the blanket took a year to finish. Okay, okay, I worked on it sporadically and I finished several projects in between, but a blanket can be a hard thing to work on for various reasons: 1) It is humangous so it is not a portable project that I could really work on outside of the house; 2) It is humangous so working on it can make a person hot especially since it's wool and if you work with it on your lap then it's like wearing a wool blanket and who wants to wear a wool blanket when it's hot in Hawaii?; and 3) It is humangous so working just one row on it can be time consuming. Don't feel too sorry for my mom, though. She got a scarf while she was waiting. Anyway, here's another picture of Big Red without the flash. You can see the cables running through it better.

First party

I'm exhausted. Lance is exhausted. We had our families over for Mother's Day last night (and my mom's birthday) and the preparation involved tuckered us out a bit. We've been working like crazy to renovate and clean up the house, but it all paid off because I'm pretty pleased as to how our house looks now. This was our first party here and actually it was our first family party ever since our townhouse was too small to hold everyone. For various reasons, I was worried that we weren't going to have enough food so I made kind of a lot (Lance thought I was crazy), but my family all brought a lot of food so we were all very well fed. It was funny because hosting a family party seemed very adult-like, which my mom realized early in the evening and apparently looking at her adult daughter left her speechless. As I refilled the tray of spinach rolls, my cousin (who's only a year younger than me, for heaven's sakes) teased that I had become one of the "moms" to which I responded with my traditional "bite me." Me, an adult?

The picture was taken last night and is of my popo, dad, uncle, and aunty.

Bento #3

Bento #3: Onigiri with ume, kim chee, edamame, crab cakes (2)

This was today's lunch. I'm sick but I had a hankering for crab cakes because 1) Someone else had frozen crab cakes from Costco on their blog, and 2) I haven't set a date for a housewarming party but I find myself mentally planning the menu. I thought about these crab cakes as one of the pupus, but they came out a little funny when I first made them. I first made them within a few months of getting married and I wasn't as comfortable in the kitchen as I am now so I decided to give them another go. They turned out fantastic and I didn't have to reheat them today. Right before I left the house I thought about taking some of that Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce with them and filled a little sauce bottle at the last minute. There's no picture of the sauce bottle because I packed my lunch last night and didn't leave enough room for it.

My first bentos

A few weeks ago I followed a link on Brandi's blog to Adventures in Bentomaking and I was fascinated with the really cool bentos that were posted and I got it into my head that it would be fun to bring bentos to work. One of the benefits to making and taking bentos to work is that it saves money and is healthier because you don't have to buy lunch. I usually bring home lunch anyway because I'm not a fan of school lunch (and geez, the price went up!) and I don't have enough time to drive down the bloody hill to the nearest food place (which is McDonald's so really not the healthiest choice) so I wouldn't save money or reap any health benefits by bringing a bento to work. However, I would waste a lot of precious sleeping time, as bentos are generally made in the morning. I'm really really not a morning person and I have a hard time getting myself to work on time as it is. So bringing bentos wouldn't save me any money, wouldn't be any healthier for me, and would cost me precious sleeping time. So why was I suddenly obsessed with the idea of bringing bentos to work? Because they were pretty. Yes, that's right. Because they were pretty.

So here I was, obsessed with the idea of bringing bentos, but knowing full well what my limitations are in the morning. And then I discovered Lunch in a Box. I really liked this blog because it was interesting, the writer's pretty good, and I really liked the writer's view on bento. The writer makes bentos for her son but doesn't like spending a lot of time on them. Her bentos are appealing without the time consuming stuff. After reading a few of her entries, I decided that I too could manage to make bentos without killing myself. I've been obsessing about making bentos for weeks now and now that the convention's finally over, I can finally devote some brain power to figuring them out. I took a bento to work twice this week. The first one was sort of an experiment. I wanted to see if I could pack most of the bento the night before because I wasn't exaggerating when I said I wasn't a morning person. It turns out that most of it can be packed the night before so that's really good for me. Anyway, the first bento has onigiri with ume inside and little shoyu hot dogs that my dad made. In the blue silicone cups there's shelled edamame and pickled radish (the one that the Curry House sells). There's also three shrimp shumai, which was the only thing that I had to heat up in the morning. I was really concerned that the onigiri was gonna taste yucky since it spent the night in the fridge, but it was still really good. I think as long as I pack it fresh the night before it'll be okay. The second bento has another onigiri with ume and left over chicken from the oyako donburi I made the night before. I put kim chee in the silicone cup and popped in a couple of grape tomatoes as fillers. I actually packed the whole thing the night before and it was fine when I ate it for lunch.

I'm not planning to bring bento everyday because I do still love sandwiches and leftovers and I don't think I have enough energy to pack a cool lunch everyday, but I'm gonna try and bring them at least once a week. As I said, they're pretty (well, they will be once I get the hang of it) and I really love typical bento food like onigiri and pickled vegetables. And to be honest, sometimes I just need something to look forward to at work. Don't get me wrong, I love my job...most of the time. But sometimes the kids (and sometimes their parents), the other adults, and just the overall nature of my job can get to me. I admit, sometimes lunch is the highlight of my day.

Pau

I'm exhausted. We finally had our convention on Thursday and Friday. It went fairly well and ran fairly smoothly. We had a few minor snags, but it all worked out in the end. And it's the snags that help you learn and we've already started jotting down notes for next year. We had a lot of good feedback from our members, which is rare. We had big plans for this year's convention, but we didn't want to make too many changes too fast. As new chairs and as young chairs, we knew had something to prove to the board and to our members before we started implementing some of the bigger changes. So we made small changes that we think made a big difference. Hopefully now that we have one successful convention under our belt, we won't run into too much resistance from the board next year. Planning the convention wasn't as stressful as I thought it'd be. I had an awesome co-chair who moves a mile a minute, a fantastic committee (who were some my wonderful friends from grad school), and a whole bunch of other people who were just so willing to help. The one damper to the convention was that the person who convinced me and my friend to be the convention chairs was not very, um, pleasant during the convention. She's generally not a pleasant person to begin with and I understand that she may be upset we did so much better than the last two conventions, but it would've been nice to have her support. I understand that I cannot change the person that she is, but I can't help but be a little disappointed. I don't understand why she doesn't get that it reflects well upon her if we do well.

Anyway, my co-chair and I have a few more things to take care to finish up this year's convention. Once we get that stuff done, we're taking a break until the end of April. We'll start working again in May but first we'll have a much deserved break. Now that it's almost done, I don't quite know what to do with myself. The convention has taken so much of my time and energy and now it's over. What to do, what to do. I'm kinda excited. I wish that spring break didn't already happen so that I could really have a break. I ended up working a lot on the convention and on the house and on the wedding, so I didn't have too much of a spring break. That's okay because the break from work was still nice and I did manage to get some breaks in during spring break:

Lance was invited to participate in a boat tour of Pearl Harbor because he school works with a lot of military families. It was cool to see everything from the harbor and I enjoyed going to the Arizona Memorial again. I haven't been there in years. During the break I also:

Went with Lance to our annual trip to the zoo. We went to the Honolulu Zoo on our first date and we return there every year for our anniversary. We also:Went to the Polynesian Cultural Center to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I mentioned last year that I wanted to go to PCC because I only went once when I was young and trust him to remember.

So I didn't just work during my spring break, but there was some other stuff that I wanted to do but didn't get get to. Now that this year's convention's more or less done, here's the list of stuff I have planned to fill up my now free time:
1) Knit (big surprise here).
2) Clean my house. With the renovations and my recent busy-ness, my house is a mess and it's driving me crazy. Must. Clean.
3) Party. We've lived here for a year now and haven't had a house warming party yet because we immediately started working on renovations. I really want to have a house warming party though I don't know when it's gonna be. Maybe I'll have a small barbeque as a test run. Heh, I guess Matt's on the guest list regardless of what kind of party I have. He's a wee bit bitter that he hasn't seen my house yet.

Regardless of what I end up doing, I'm gonna enjoy myself while doing it. I've always been a bit of a work horse but as I stated earlier, I'm trying to live a more stress reduced life. I'm so not good at relaxing, but darnit, I'm gonna try.

April 1

This day used to be one of my favorite days of the year. When I was younger, I was the proud owner of fake bugs, funny glasses, a whoopie cushion, and of course, the good 'ole snake in a can. Ahh, the fun I used to have. My sixth grade teacher was a smart one and she prided herself on being "unfoolable." She was on to my snake can so one day I switched out the snake and put a bag of peanuts in. I offered it to her and of course she declined. So I opened it, ate some peanuts, and walked away. I quietly switched the snake back in and got her to open it later that day. Good times.

In high school, I made up elaborate plans to trick my friends. They always fell for whatever April Fool's Day joke I had cooked up and it got to the point where none of my friends believed anything that came out of my mouth on April 1st. My senior year in high school I actually resorted to playing my April Fool's Day joke on April 2nd.

So what did I do this April 1st? What grand joke did I play on my students/colleagues/husband/dog. Absolutely nothing. I completely forgot about this day. Sadly, it's not the first year that I've forgotten to play a prank. Sure, I've had "fun" with people on other days of the year, but I've been forgetting to celebrate this day for years now. I just get so caught up with life that days like April Fool's Day and St. Patrick's Day and Girl's Day just get forgotten. It's sad. I need to remember to not get so caught up in the everyday stuff and make more time to mess with people...

Finished objects

I love to knit. It's definitely evolved from hobby to obsession. I've really been knitting a lot lately, though a lot of it has been because I was on a deadline. I often knit for other people and I often forget to take pictures of my finished objects before I give them away. I need to get better at taking pictures of them because I put a lot of time into my projects and I'd like to have pictures of them.

My mom and my aunty recently went to Alaska and my mother requested these scarves after she saw me knitting this one during Thanksgiving. I knit the two of them hats when they went to Vegas one winter and my aunty wanted her scarf to match her hat. Her hat was grey so the black/grey/white one is her's and was done out of di.ve yarn. My mom's hat was purpley-pink but she didn't care about matching her hat. She just wanted it pink. The pink one was made with a Debbie Bliss yarn that I think was an alpaca/silk blend. The yarn was really nice to work with, felt great through my fingers, and was delightfully springy. Oh, and the pink scarf was the scarf that M*Bark attacked.

I also finished Lance's socks! Poor guy's been waiting for these socks since August 2006, when he picked out the yarn when we went to Seattle. These socks were such a pain but I don't know why they were so difficult. They weren't any different from the other socks that I have knit but they were the most painful socks ever. I frogged the first one twice and had to rip out parts of it to get it right. All was well after that and I was almost done with the second half of the pair when I started celebrating prematurely. Of course I was punished for being cocky and screwed up. Thankfully I was able to correct my mistake without having to rip out too much, but I tread carefully after that. These socks have been on my needles for so long and they kept being pushed on the side when I had to knit other stuff for other people. I did knit Lance a pair of clogs while he waited for his socks, though. After all the trouble that these socks caused, I totally love the way they finally turned out. I knit them on size 1 needles and I love how tight the stitches are. They fit the best out of all the other socks and they fit both Lance and I perfectly. In fact, these are Lance's socks, but this picture was taken with them on my feet. Although Lance tried them on and let me take a picture of them, he got suspicious (though rightfully so) and grouchy about his feet ending up on my blog.

Renovation Update #4

Spring break is here but it has been a little bit less than restful. Granted, any day not actually at work is bloody fantastic. Anyway, we've been working a lot on our house this break and it occurred to me that although I intended to post a renovation update and never actually did post one. Anyway, from our last update, Lance and I finished the floor in the entryway and laundry room and painted the laundry room yellow. It took longer than expected to paint because we had to also paint the shoe shelf as well. The shelf was previously grey and even though we primed it, it took a few coats for the yellow to really come through. The whole area looks great and I'm starting to feel really great about our house. The best part of it is that the disgusting black plastic is gone and we have a proper entryway. I hated greeting people on the plastic.

We also got new furniture from Inspiration during the big New Year's sale. One of the things that we purchased was a really cool futon couch. The back folds down into a bed and the sides fold up to make a pillow. With the new furniture, we rearranged our living room and now we have a nice seating area for people to converse should we ever get around to having people over. This picture doesn't show it, but we also got rid of the dark curtains covering the patio door and the horrendous curtains covering the picture window. We put up horizontal blinds over the picture window and vertical blinds over the patio door. The whole room looks a lot better and and I love the view, especially if the blinds are already open when I first enter the house.

In addition to our couch, we also bought a new bed and dresser for our bedroom. I love the new bed. It's low enough that when I get up, all I have to do is put my feet on the floor and stand up instead of sliding off, which is what I had to do with our other bed. It also have a nice headboard so sitting up in bed is a lot more comfy. The new bed and dresser also makes our room look cozier, which is good because our master bedroom is fairly large. Oh, and my piano was delivered! I love having the opportunity to play again.

We made a lot of progress on the house during this break, but it's not done yet and I don't want to provide an update/pictures until we do a little more on it. I have the convention coming up in a couple of weeks, though, so it'll be a little while before Renovation Update #5. Here's a hint, though:

Top 12

Yea, American Idol has moved into the Top 12 stage. I mentioned earlier that Lance and I had a bet going and that I was about to lose the first part of it. After the Top 12 was announced, there was a lot of gloating in the house that night and sadly, I wasn't the one doing it. I hate when that happens.

Anyway, I'm moving on and hoping to at least win the second half of the bet. The second half is the most important part anyway, since it means correctly picking the next American Idol. I won the Taylor Hicks year and no one won last year because we did it a little differently and had an elaborate point system for the last half of the wager. Of course the ridiculousness of Sanjaya messed it up and no one won.

Anyway, this year Lance and I both selected two people that we thought could win the whole thing. I have David Archuleta and Jason Castro while Lance has David Cook and Brooke White. I was torn between Jason Castro and Brooke White, but Lance picked Brooke first so the decision became easy. Anyway, wish me luck.

River of Life

I'm exhausted. It's been a crazy couple of days and I think it's only gonna get crazier the closer it gets to April 10th. Between work, weddings, and the convention, it's a busy time of year. It doesn't help that I've had a lot of knitting deadlines lately, either. In fact, I'm running on very little sleep right now and am a little loopier than usual.

With all the craziness, adding the River of Life Mission to my schedule wasn't in my best interest. The complex that my school belongs to is big on character education. I personally feel that although building our kids to be good people is important, ultimately the responsibility for this should lie with the parent. I've always felt this way, even when I was an elementary school student myself. I actually remember coming home in sixth grade and telling my mom what a waste of time "character education" was. Anyway, so we always push the importance of the 6 character traits but some of our teachers felt that we as a faculty did not always demonstrate these desirable characteristics. This led to us going to serve the homeless at the River of Life Mission in Chinatown. And although my current schedule is hectic, I went ahead and signed up.

Serving the homeless is something that I've always wanted to do, but I didn't know how to go about doing it. And to be honest, I cared little about demonstrating good "citizenship" to my students because I felt that my students would be far more affected if their parents were volunteering versus their teachers. A friend of mine questioned the "why" of what we were doing and joked that I must still be in high school trying to get community service hours for a scholarship. I didn't know how to explain to her why I was going. I think I figured it out. Thus far, I've been blessed to never really know hardship and I currently work in a, um, privileged community where my kids' main problem is whether or not their parents will buy them a DS/PSP/cell phone. I wanted to go to feed the homeless just to give something back. The reason was simple: I just wanted to do some good.

It was an amazing experience. The people who run the mission have really managed to create a wonderful, safe place for those unfortunate enough to live on the streets. They distribute clothing and food and provide a safe place for people to take a shower. They even have created a homey, clean, and safe place for women to live and learn so that they can get off the streets. The mission serves three meals a day to their guests. What's more, the mission provides friendship to those in need. Yes, some of the guests are homeless because of drugs, alcohol, and mental illness, but others are just hard working people who are having a difficult time making ends meet. And they are nice people, friendly people. I can't even really explain how amazing the experience was. It's just something that I want to do again and something that I want my own (future) children to do. Of course I want to raise children who do well in life, but I also want to raise children who do good.

Mavid?

Another week as come and gone on American Idol. All four of the contestants who left tonight were mine. Lance is gloating and has annoyingly pointed out that in order for me to not lose (ahem, tie) this stage of our bet, I can't lose anyone next week. In the past couple of years, I've come to some realizations about, well, me. One of these realizations is that I'm a wee bit competitive and much more so when it comes to Lance. I do not want to lose this bet, frankly I don't even want to tie. I want to win outright, though I know at this point the most I can hope for is to tie now and win at the end. [Note: I was playing checkers with one of my third graders on Tuesday and I really wanted to crush him.]

Anyway, as I mentioned, another week of American Idol has come and gone. David Archuleta's still my favorite but there is one thing that has bothered me about him. I figured it out on Tuesday and had a good laugh. His mannerisms when he's not singing reminds me of a friend of mine from school. It's funny because as I was thinking this, Lance said the same thing. This kid could be a younger version of my friend. My friend reads my blog and posting his name is probably the kind of thing that would make him mad. Let's just say that I secretly refer to David Archuleta as Mavid Archuleta.

Birthday fun

I celebrated another birthday two weeks ago and last night I was fortunate enough to celebrate another passing year with my friends. We had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and had a fantastic time karaoking at HMC. I haven't seen too much of my high school friends recently as for some reason life keeps getting in the way so it was great celebrating with them and my work friends. Matt gave me the best gift of the night, though. Brandi was home for an unexpected visit so I got a Brandi surprise for my birthday. :) Lance even agreed to wear the "matching" shirts that we bought last week at Ward after our birthday/Valentine's dinner. There was only a little complaining. For some reason, though, Lance and Brandi both thought that I should've been wearing the Decepticon shirt instead.

American Idol Picks

Before the destruction of my knitting, last night's blog was going to be about American Idol and my Top 6 picks. Anyway, here they are:
1) David Archuleta
2) Jason Castro
3) Michael Johns
4) Alaina Whitaker
5) Amanda Overmyer
6) Ramiele Malubay
Lance and I have a bet going as to who's going to make the Top 12. We both lost a boy and a girl from our lists last night, but I wasn't too attached to the ones that left. Not all of the people on my Top 6 list are on the list that I have with Lance because we choose people in draft format. I also like Danny Noriega, but he didn't make my Top 6 list because he didn't do very well during this week's performance. After last year's abysmal Sanjaya performances, I decided not to formulate my list until after the first week of Top 24 performances. Amanda Overmyer didn't very well either but she still made my list because she's cool and because I don't really have strong preferences when it comes to the girl performers.

M*Bark vs. Yarn

I walked out of the bathroom this morning and discovered that M*Bark had discovered the "secret" yarn hiding place in our bedroom. The scarf that I'm knitting for my mother's upcoming trip to Alaska was spread across the floor, the yarn lying in a tangled mess. Frantic, I picked up my needle and was relieved to see that none of my work had unraveled. As always, I was in a rush to go to work so I scooped the whole thing up and put it in a bag to take with me. I had wanted to work on it during whatever breaks I managed to have during the day, but resigned myself to a day of untangling. It was a fairly busy day so I had to just untangle and rewind in parts and I finally finished in the afternoon. In the picture, you should note three things: 1) Newly wound ball; 2) Needle and needle end, separated from each other and with bite marks; and 3) My arm protecting the whole thing. Why did I have to protect it? Because as I tried to take the picture, M*Bark came by and tried to repeat the whole fiasco:
M*Bark: 1 Yarn: 0

Current Favorite Music

I know I said this before, but I love music. And so I have added a new addition to the sidebar of my blog: Current Favorite Music. I shamelessly stole the idea from Brandi's blog. Matt also stole the idea for his blog so it looks like it's a popular idea. I have a bunch of "favorite" songs, but I decided to limit the list to twelve because the list was getting long. I was thinking about changing it to a "Currently listening to" list instead, though, because most of the songs on my Top 12 list are old so it's gonna take a really great song to knock one of them off the list and I really wanted to make it a list that changes frequently. Hmm...maybe I'll make another list.