Category Archives: Photos

The Bachelorette Weekend

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To sum up my weekend in Memphis: Yes, I did indeed score a load of trashy underpants. And some not-so-trashy. In fact, I got some really nice stuff that I might actually wear on a day-to-day basis, which is great. For those of you hoping for pictures of my new lingerie, keep dreaming. However, we did take a few pictures at the bachelorette party, which I’ve posted. There isn’t anything too incriminating in there, thank god.

As for the rest of the weekend, it was both good and bad. I love my friends, and it’s always good to get a chance to see them. And unlike when I was there at New Year’s, I felt like I really got to spend a lot of time with everyone. Kris now has two puppies (well, one belongs to her roommate, my friend Carrie), and they were adorable. Plus I got to meet Kris’s new 7-month-old nephew, which was fun. However, I have some not-so-happy memories associated with Memphis, so there are definitely some mixed feelings there. When we went out to the same places that we went to in college, and I ran into the same people that I used to run into when I was in college, it’s sort of depressing. Like the guy who was the bartender that one of my friends used to have a crush on, and he’s still a bartender in the exact same bar that he’s worked at since 1998. Or the roommate of a guy I used to date, who still hangs out at the same places, 6 years later. Hmm, yeah. The main thing I learned is to watch out for those nostalgic trips down memory lane, you might stumble into a pothole or two.

So I came home yesterday, slept for something like 11 hours, and now I’m at work today. And my car is allegedly fixed, for the bargain price of only $600. Whee! Hmph.

One other thing: everyone send encouraging words/thoughts to Dave, who is now approaching the 48-hour mark without a cigarette. Yay!! I’m so proud of him. Stay strong, babe. 🙂

change is good, right?

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This year, 2005, has been pretty amazing for me so far. I moved in with Dave. I turned 29 – my last official year in my 20’s. I got engaged, which is something that I think most people (including myself) thought I would most likely never do. I started planning my wedding – yet another thing I never quite saw myself doing. And then today, I got offered a job with the Biggest Software Company in the Free World, who I’ve wanted to work for since before I moved to Washington four years ago – and which just happens to be about a 30% raise from my current salary. Holy crap! And it’s only February. What on earth do you have in store for me, 2005? It’s simultaneously exciting and scary, because with all of this great stuff happening, I keep waiting for something bad to happen so things will even out. The universe has to have some sort of balance, doesn’t it? Or is this the payoff for a whole bunch of bad years past? It’s sort of strange to be elated and worried at the same time. I suppose I just need to relax and go with it, but let’s face it, how many of us humans are really all that adaptable to change? I put myself only a slight notch above my cat on that scale – I won’t lick myself bald when my routine gets thrown off, but it frazzles me nonetheless.

Totally switching gears: I got the pictures from our trip to Sun Mountain this past weekend posted online. There’s a whole other drama going on right now about how we’ve had no heat or hot water since we got back from our trip on Sunday afternoon, but that should hopefully be resolved within the next hour or two, so we’ll just leave that story alone.

P.S. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, our wedding date got changed. We really wanted to have it in this one place, which wasn’t available on May 7th. So now we’re getting married on Sunday, May 15th. Still less than 3 months to go!

all by myself

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Dave’s company has an office in Massachusetts, and he has to go there for a couple of days this week for some work-related thing. This only happens a couple of times a year, it’s not exactly the extensive travel requirements of my current job. So I dropped him off at the airport yesterday, and he’ll be back home on Wednesday. And for some unexplainable reason, I got totally freaked at the idea of staying here by myself. I mean, I’ve lived alone for the better part of the last 6 years, but I’ve always been in an apartment. There is something about living out in the country, and knowing that if I were to scream for help, there’s not even a remote chance that anyone would hear me. Also, the house is really big, so if I were upstairs in the bedroom, someone could break in the house and I wouldn’t necessarily hear them. So even though it’s somewhat irrational, I got kind of spooked. Before Dave left, I made him hang up the curtains in the living room (which we had taken down when we painted). There’s a huge bay window in there, and at nighttime, you can see inside from the street, which didn’t sit too well with me. There’s also a sliding glass door that leads to the backyard, but that doesn’t freak me out as much – I think because there’s two huge floodlights there, so if a crazy man with an axe comes running out of the woods toward the house, I’ll see him and have a chance to get a head start out the front door.

Speaking of the woods behind the house, yesterday when I got back from the airport, this was in the backyard. Shortly thereafter, one of her friends showed up. (It’s a bad photo, so I labeled it.) They’re really cute, but they confuse the hell out of the cats. Particularly Beaumont, who can’t seem to decide if they’re just super-huge mice that he should be hunting, or if he should run back in the house where it’s safe. He did get pretty close before deciding to vacate the premises, though.

Anyway, back to my spooked-out self, Dave pointed out that with 2 cars in the driveway and a light or two turned on, no one would be stupid enough to try to break in. So last night I left several lights on throughout the house, took 2 over-the-counter sleep aids (ahh, Tylenol PM, how do I love thee?), set the sleep timer on the TV to drown out any mysterious noises that I might hear while I was trying to fall asleep, and managed to sleep soundly through the whole night. So I think I’ll be fine if I stick with that routine. One night down, two nights to go.

The Vegas Recap

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The trip to Las Vegas was fun. I just got the pictures online, so feel free to check those out, along with the ones from my birthday, which I also posted today. Here’s the blow-by-blow:

Thursday afternoon: Flew to Vegas. Relatively uneventful flight. Checked in at the Golden Nugget, which is one of the older casinos in Las Vegas (it’s downtown, not on the strip). We ate dinner at the casino, and went to bed early.

Friday: My all-day meeting. Ho-hum, boring work stuff. Dave and I met up in the hotel room that evening (he had a great time playing slots all afternoon), changed clothes and went to my company’s dinner/event thing. Which was, of course, at a bowling alley. The perk was that this time, there was an open bar. Which would’ve been great, except that I felt sick after my first drink (I’m still not sure why), and Dave already had a headache, so we were there for less than an hour total.

Saturday: We went to check out the Strip. See photos. We had lunch at the New York, New York, and then stopped at some random little bar on the strip for a strawberry daiquiri, which I had been craving ever since we arrived. We walked a few more blocks to the Paris, which I didn’t realize was owned by the Hiltons, and probably has some affiliation with that skank ho daughter of theirs. Around the time we got there, I got sicker than I have been in recent memory. I still don’t know what happened, if it was the daiquiri or the food we had for lunch, but my stomach was in knots. I’ll spare you all the gruesome details, suffice it to say that I thought I was going to have to go to the emergency room, but we decided to just go back to the hotel so I could lie down for a while and see if that helped. I almost fainted while we waited in line for a taxi; Dave got us out of the line and sat me down until the cold sweats passed and I stopped seeing spots. We finally got back to the hotel, and I sent Dave out of the room so I could be miserable on my own. (I don’t like witnesses to be present when I’m violently ill.)

Three hours later, I was fine. I went down to the casino floor to find Dave – he had won $180 on the penny slot machines. (After all was said and done, I think he lost $20 total, but he played the damn things for about 8 hours over the weekend, so he did pretty well.) We went to dinner because after my little… um, unintended purge, I was suddenly hungry. Then we crashed for the night.

Sunday: We learned the hard way that everyone and their grandma flies to Vegas for the weekend, and they all fly back home on Sunday. The airport was insane. I haven’t seen security lines like that since the time I tried to fly less than a week after 9/11. We thought we had allowed plenty of time, but it turns out we were sadly mistaken. We finally got through the security line at exactly the time our plane was supposed to be leaving. We speed-walked to the gate, figuring that we were probably going to have to go standby on the next flight, but hoping that maybe our plane was delayed. And what do you know, they were still boarding the flight when we got there. Hooray! So we made it, just barely.

Then we came home, ate Thai leftovers for dinner, and watched “Surreal Life,” “Strange Love” and “Celebrity Fit Club” on VH-1. (For the record, I hate “Celebrity Fit Club” because I think it’s cruel and mean-spirited, but I can’t stop watching it.)

new pics

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I forgot to mention in my insanely long post yesterday, I’ve added photos to the Thanksgiving album, and a whole bunch are now in my Christmas album. Feel free to browse, and take in all of the holiday festiveness! (Yes, I’m being sarcastic… I’m not even sure if “festiveness” is a word.)

My friend Opie (don’t worry, that’s a nickname) is here from Nashville for a job interview. He’s getting his Ph.D. in psychology and has to do a one-year internship, so he’s checking out a couple of places here; and of course, since he’s still in school, he’s completely broke, so I’m letting him crash on my futon. Which is no big deal, really, he’s an old friend and it’s been good to have some time to catch up with him. I just feel bad that I haven’t taken him sightseeing around Seattle at all, because I’ve been so tired from our trip. And he’s leaving tomorrow. Oh well, if he ends up with a job here, I’m sure I’ll see him a lot more often.

Not much else going on. Dave’s coming over to meet Opie tonight and we’ll go to dinner. Should be fun.

another rainy Monday

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I tried to write something last week, but it appears that Blogger has been having problems. Hmm. Ok, the recap. My company’s Christmas party was on Wednesday night – it was at a bowling alley. Apparently our regional director is a bit of a bowling fanatic, which is why we seem to do this at most company functions. Kind of strange. After the last time I bowled with my co-workers and won the “Least Graceful Bowler” award, I decided to sit this one out. So Dave and I enjoyed our free drink tickets and mingled with a few of my co-workers. (The ones that I know, anyway.) Thursday night was Dave’s company Christmas party, which was quite a different scene. It was a sit-down dinner at a very posh seafood restaurant. Not quite the same vibe as the bowling alley. I had a lot more fun at Dave’s party. Plus, his company’s Redmond office is a lot smaller than mine, so he actually knew everyone there. (Unlike mine, where it was more like, “Umm, I think I met that guy once, but I can’t remember his name…”) And the food was a lot better.

The weekend was good, very relaxing. I can’t think of anything particularly notable that we did, except that yesterday we did some Christmas shopping. It appeared that Dave had no idea what to get me for Christmas, so I dragged him around Nordstrom’s and pointed out a hundred or so different things that I liked, so he can get one or two and know that I’ll be happy. I was all excited when I woke up this morning because I realized that I was done with all of my Christmas shopping, and then I realized that I forgot one person: myself. My mom sent me a check with which to buy my own Christmas presents, and I haven’t used it yet. We do this every year; she usually gets me one or two small surprise gifts, but as a general rule, she doesn’t try to pick out clothes for me because it always ends in disaster. (I’m not saying that my mom doesn’t have taste. It’s just that she doesn’t necessarily know what I like. At all.)

I’m in the process of changing and updating pictures, I know I’m long overdue. I’ve changed the name of the Newport Beach photos to just California 2004 because all of our vacation photos are in there now. I’ve also added the ones from the Humane Society Walk, and from Thanksgiving. (Actually, they’re all photos from the weekend before Thanksgiving. I haven’t gotten the actual Thanksgiving photos from my mom yet.)

exploding sheep trucks

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I got the pictures from our trip to Atlanta posted – it seems kind of strange to have all of these happy smiling photos for a trip that was, overall, anything but happy. But my family’s get-togethers are always pretty fun, no matter how shitty the reason for the get-together may be. And there are some really good pictures in there, which is why I wanted them online.

So, this week had an interesting side-note. On Tuesday morning, Scott called and asked what I was doing on Wednesday night. I didn’t have anything scheduled, and he told me to leave it open, but it was a surprise and he wouldn’t tell me what it was. So Wednesday night, I meet up with Scott & Ted and we start walking toward some unknown venue for some unknown event. Turns out that Robin Williams was playing at the Showbox in Seattle, apparently trying out new material in small clubs. Somehow, Scott managed to get tickets, which is amazing when you consider how big an act Robin Williams is, and how small a venue the Showbox is (I believe the sign at the door said max capacity was in the 900 range). The show was really funny – except for the stupid bi-atch sitting next to me who I swear NEVER shut up for the entire show because she talked to her boyfriend the whole damn time. Even after the woman in front of me turned around and asked her to please keep it down because her talking was kind of distracting, she still kept on yakking. I wanted to punch her in her big peroxide-blonde head.

Oh, for those of you who are wondering, that subject line relates to a story that Dave told me earlier this week. A guy on his way to a local fair crashed his truck, with a trailer full of sheep, on the hill on Dave’s street. The truck caught on fire – the guy got out & was ok, but the sheep were slightly singed. Not hurt, though. The neighbors all rounded up the sheep, and apparently there were chunks of slightly burnt wool scattered all over the road. It’s one of those stories that wouldn’t be funny if anyone (or the sheep) had been seriously hurt, but because everyone got out ok, I thought it was hilarious. And I think “Exploding Sheep Trucks” would make an AWESOME name for a band.

Anyway, this afternoon marks the beginning of Bumbershoot, which is a huge 4-day music festival here in Seattle. Dave and I are going this evening, and I just got a phone call from Krissy and she apparently wants to tag along, which should be interesting.