Happy Halloween

Don and I have a quaint Halloween planned. Nothing can top a DeMille or a Page Halloween Party (two of our friends up north who both host awesome Halloween Parties with elaborate decorations and even better company) so we are not even going to try. Our gaming group is getting together tonight for what else but gaming. Camille is making her spooktacular ravioli lasagna. I ordered "Freaks" from Netflix - a 1930's horror classic cast with authentic circus people. Maybe we will get around to watching it. I'm curious to see if we get any tricker treaters. I don't expect that many. I'm hoping to get home early enough to take Seumas for a walk in his "costume" - his little brown trench coat. I don't have a costume for Cordy but maybe I will throw her little pink sweater on or something.

Happy Halloween!

Icky Sicky

Now that I am finally starting to feel better (not that this lingering cough is ever going to go away) poor Don has come down with a Virus of a different kind - the stomach flu. There is nothing quite so pitiful as hearing your partner lose their lunch from the next room. Heart wrenching :( The doctor happily confirmed that it was not a life threatening illness and ordered Don home to a day of bed rest. So I am happy that he is at home resting rather than trying to work through it. Still no word on when they will get the go ahead to start moving their shop but one thing's for sure... it won't be today. Looks like it's another week of Chicken Noodle soup for our house.

Top 10 things I am looking forward to about being well

Since I got back from Oregon, I have had a nasty cold. Let this be a lesson to all of you to always take your Airborn before flying. I remembered the Dramamine but I knew I was forgetting something. Anyway, I am finally starting feel like I'm on my way to recovery and I can't wait until this thing is completely gone. The way I have been coughing up a storm, some might mistake me for the beloved Demonhunters RPG character - The Tuberculotic Zombie Pirate.

And here are the Top 10 things I am looking forward to about being well:

1. Being able to breath.
2. Regaining my sense of smell.
3. Being able to wear appropriately weathered clothing (instead of a fleece jacket in the midst of a heat wave.)
4. Not having to go to the bathroom every ten minutes from drinking so much water.
5. Being able to work out and walk my dogs (poor kids, they are ticking time bombs of hyperactivity).
6. Sleeping in the same bed as my husband again (I have been sleeping in the spare bedroom so that I can sprawl and cough and fever sweat without bothering his sleep patterns and hopefully spare him of this dreadful disease.)
7. Having the energy to do the daily chores - cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping.
8. Making a trip to the farmer's market and planning some good healthy meals - I am reading "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral" right now and it's inspired me to make an effort to support local farmers.
9. Being able to think clearly once the hazy fog is gone from my stuffy head.
10. And finally, being able to do something other than sit around and watch t.v. all day.

Erasure

Don and I tried to download the 335 pictures from my camera to my computer last night only to find that the card was corrupt and we lost all but about 15 of the pictures. Gone from our digital memory are all of the pictures I took of Seumas after his surgery, our girls' weekend to wine country, and my trip home to Oregon with all of my pictures of my little niece Amber. I guess I will just have to rely on other people to take pictures and send them to me.

It's Halloween ... in my dreams

The spooky Halloween holiday is fast approaching. I haven't thought about costumes or anything like that. I will have to see what I can throw together with what I have in my house. I don't feel like putting too much into it. But apparently I'm thinking about Halloween on some level because last night I had the following interesting dream...

I was still at home here in Eugene. But my friend Courtney's house (right around the corner from my parents) had somehow turned into a haunted house. Not the fake kind but a real live haunted house and somehow in order to save the world, I had to go inside and defeat the house. So along with about 30 other people, we entered willingly, some out of a sense of duty and some naively looking for a cheap Halloween thrill. We were all locked inside in haunted house fashion. Of course on the inside, it was not the familiar house of my best childhood girlfriend but a gigantic manshion with winding staircases and endless hallways with room after room. I banded together with a couple of other people for safety and we were going through the house with relative ease unlocking clues and doing quite well. But then as haunted houses are so good at doing, the house managed to separate us. As one girl entered through the door to the next room the house shut the door behind her and locked us out. By the time got the door open it was a completely different room and she was gone. Instead we were attacked by two ghouls (which for the most part looked like ordinary human beings with dark makeup under their eyes). I defended the party by picking up the one guy and swinging him around by his ankles and smashing his head against the wall over and over agin. Even in my dream I remember thinking, 'Wow. This does not make sense scientifically. With how much bigger and taller he is then me I should not be strong enough or tall enough to do this. Either I must have super strength right now from my adrenaline being up or ghouls must way a lot less than real humans do.' So I killed the first ghoul and then tried to do the exact same thing to the second but for some reason her head would not break. I think I must have woken up shortly after that because that is the last thing I remember.

Home Sweet Home

Here I am in Eugene for a quick three day weekend trip. Arrived around 2:00 a.m. on Friday night (after two hours of flight delays). And I fly back to LA tomorrow evening. I am so glad to be home. It has been wonderful to see my family. My niece is just adorable. She is talking now which makes her 1000 times more interesting and I was already quite fond of her. Some of my favorite sayings for the weekend have included the following:

Standing in line at the food court in the mall, Amber says to random woman waiting behind us, "Hi Lady. Me Amber."

In the car with Mommy on the way to Grandma's house to see Aunt Cindy...
Terri: "Do you remember Aunt Cindy?"
Amber: "Want to see Seumas."

At the grocery store with Grandma and Aunt Cindy, Amber spots some Care Bear Stickers:
Amber points: "Care Bear Stickers Grandma!"Grandma hands stickers to Amber. Amber examines stickers and says, "Care Bears look sleepy." Cradles "sleepy" stickers to her cheek.

I met up with my good friend Summer on Saturday night. She gave me a fabulous haircut and then we went out to the bars. We had a very good time but I was irresponsible and mixed my alcohols (lots of them). I paid severly for it this morning and my hangover took me out most of the day which was a bummer considering my time here is short. But Terri and Matt are talking about trying to take a trip out to see us in January or February if they can work it out with their vacation time at work. So I'm really hoping they can make it work! I will be sad to go back to LA, but at the same time I miss my husband so I'm also looking forward to it.

Neighborhood Watch Puppy

We have an issue with our mail carrier. She leaves the front gate open. This to me does not seem like proper mail carrier etiquette. If someone's front gate is closed when you enter it, I think the common courtesy would be to close it again when you leave. Most of the time it is not a major issue since Don and I close it again every night when we get home from work before we let the dogs out.

But this last Saturday she got us. I let the dogs out the back door in the middle of the day and a few minutes later I hear Seumas barking. I go out in the back yard and I can still hear him barking but I don't see him. So I go around to the front yard and the darn gate is open. I can hear Seumas barking down the street. So I yell at Don, and bolt down the street in my fluffy winter socks (afterall it was only 65 degrees out). I come around the corner to find Seumas there in the middle of the road barking his head off. He has two cars completely stopped and he won't let them by. Luckily the drivers are both laughing their heads off instead of making tire tracks out of him. It was terribly dangerous and I'm definitely upset with our irresponsible mail person, but I still can't help but laugh at that hilarious site of Seumas taking on two full sized cars and claiming the entire block as our property on which he was not about to let them trespass. It looks like Seumas may have been neutered but he definitely has not lost his balls.

Cordy was a good girl and stayed in the yard where she barked safely behind the open gate.

Robbed!

This has been an interesting Monday morning. I arrived to work to discover that our building had been robbed over the weekend. I work in a three story building which is owned by the owner of our company. The finance department (that's me and Steve) are on the ground floor along with the auction salespeople (Michael and Rob) and our IT person (Val). The second floor is accounting, reception, marketing and all of the VP types who I actually don't really know what they do but they have big names on their door and look important. The third floor is rented out to a real estate company. So this morning, it appears that the ground floor (my floor) had been robbed over the weekend. Michael, Rob, and Val all had their computers stolen. For some reason they left mine and Steve's alone. Thank you Robber! Other than the missing computers, you could not tell anyone had even been here. No sign of forced entry and they did not trash the place. Kind of wondering if that disgruntled receptionist they fired last week has been back for revenge?

So Val, Michael and Rob are all trying to find some way to be productive this morning without a computer. Needless to say it's kind of difficult to make sales calls when you don't have any of your contact lists that were on your hard drive, nor any internet access to look up new information. And how exactly does an IT person do IT without a computer? Luckily, Steve and I were unaffected. So I can still process my credits, do my documents, and most importantly, blog about how we got robbed this morning.

Inspirational Savings

When it comes to saving money and exercising a little fiscal discipline, Don and I tend to follow the pattern of a crash dieter. We will be really good for a few of weeks, and then go on a splurge and undo a lot of the work we did to get ahead. Cursed credit cards! Well, the saga continues in our personal goal for paying off the credit card debt we took on to finance our sudden move.

The truth is we are making a decent income. We have enough money to pay the bills with a decent chunk left to spend, save, or apply towards our debt as we see fit. Which sometimes makes it difficult to stay on track. It's hard to put off buying something you want when you CAN afford it but really should be spending your money on something else. Especially if it falls into the category of something you can convince yourself that you NEED or that it is an INVESTMENT. Like new bras, new hiking shoes, celebrating with friends you haven't seen in a long time at a fancy restaurant or a trip to wine country. O.K. None of those things constitute a NECESSITY, but you also have to live your life a little. I guess good fiscal management is like a healthy diet and lifestyle where you have to allow yourself a treat here and there without going overboard. And the more you can pinch pennies here or there on daily basis, the faster you are going to reach your goals.

So, as a tool for helping me to reach my goal of getting our credit cards paid off (once again - seems like every time you pay it off, something else comes up), I decided to start a journal this morning. We had some cute little message pad tablets in our office supplies that are the perfect size to carry around in your purse. I titled my new journal "My Little Booklet of Inspirational Savings,"and I'm going to carry it around with me during the day to write down all of the ways that I succeed in saving money on a daily basis. For me, this is a very good motivator. I am a person who loves to see my own progress in written form. When Don and I did our Premarital Counseling tests and scored really high, we both said that we understood that the test results were not the be all end all predictor of the quality of marriage that we were going to have, but we were still really excited to get a good grade!

I am hoping that the process of writing down my little successes will help me to be motivated to keep on track and will also bring more consciousness and thoughtfulness to how I spend money. If this turns out to work really well then maybe I will have to start one for my diet and exercise too!

So far I have written down the following, "today I saved money by ..."

1. Eating groceries on hand for lunch and breakfast instead of going out.
2. Lowered electricity bill by going around the house first thing this morning and turning off all the lights that Don left on when he went to work.
3. Bought the cheapest DVD player I could find at Target ($30!) to replace the broken one by my treadmill, instead of one with lots of cool options.
4. Picked up a large bag of cheap dog food while I was at Target, thus saving on overall cost and saving on gas by turning one errand into two.
5. Did not use the airconditioner in my car or my house today.
6. Did not go around accelerating or speeding and wasting gas on my commute.
7. Will eat leftovers for dinner before they go bad.
8. Planned two more dinners this week using grocery items we already have in the cupboards.

Makeover

I've been thinking about updating my blog for a while to a fresh new look... but Camille beat me to it! Of course, this time I went with the shades of light blue. It is both my favorite color to wear and also reminds me of all the rain you all are getting while I walk my dogs in the sunshine. :)

Happy :)

Last night we hosted Matt's Birthday BBQ at our house. Since we have such a nice space for entertaining that can accommodate a lot of people Matt and Camille asked if they could have it at our place instead of their very lovely, but somewhat more crowded apartment. And of course we said, "Of course!"

We grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, bratwursts, and corn. Also, we got to meet a lot of Matt's friends from AFI that we haven't met yet. It was a really pleasant crowd and all seemed to have a good time. The two comments we got all night which I don't think I will ever get tired of hearing were, "I love your house," and "I love your dogs." As always, Cordy and Seumas charmed the pants off of everyone. I love my life.

After a week long schedule of fun and celebration, today we start to wind down as Jeff, Tina, Brie and Steve get ready to fly out this evening. Our final planned event of this weekend is Brunch at Matt and Camille's on their Rooftop Sun Porch (the eight of us). Camille is making a brunch casserole, I will assemble my favorite fruit salad (golden delicious apples, strawberries, and blueberries with lemon yogurt dressing from scratch), and there is talk of Mimosas. Got to get ready to go now. Those Mimosas are calling my name!

Reminiscings

Some of my favorite reminiscings from last night...

Tina's story about her spunky three year old daughter who, when told recently, "I don't like your attitude right now little girl!" responded with, "Well, fine Mommy. Which attitude would you like then? This one (hands on hips emphatically)? Or this one (hands shrug in the air - whatever!?)?"

Jeremy's story about the bachelor party tattoo in Vegas, the messages he left for Katy asking her if it was o.k., his decision to get one anyway after he couldn't get ahold of her, and the "unwelcome" welcome home he got from the entire bachelorette party.

The time that Steve packed away three quarters of a leftover chicken and rice casserole in the time that it took Matt to go upstairs and change his clothes and come down to find Camille with her a gaping expression on her face. Is that humanly possible??????!!!!!!!!!!

And finally.......

Question: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Answer: A Fish.

Surprise!

So, if you haven't been keeping track, this is the year that Don and I and a good majority of our friends all turn 30 years old. And it started last night with the first one of the year - Matt's 30th Birthday. Welcome to your 4th decade Matt! Well, Camille being the lovely wife that she is, has been planning a very grand surprise for Matt for this most special occasion for several months now. Matt was forwarned that there would be a surprise for his birthday, but he had no idea what that surprise was going to be. He had some guesses and wishful ideas of what it might be but Camille, with all of her might, managed to keep it in and never spoiled the secret. The two things that Matt did know was that there was a dinner planned for Friday night and a BBQ planned for Saturday, so whatever the surprise was going to be, he thought it most likely to show up on one of those nights. But for his actual birthday, Thursday, October 4th we were going to celebrate the day by doing two of the things Matt loves most, eating Camille's fabulous ravioli lasagna for dinner and GAMING!

So Matt and Camille arrive around 5:30 last night like any other Thursday night gaming night. I serenade Matt with a solo rendition of Happy Birthday and a large vanilla burning candle. I told him that since I didn't have 30 candles he would have to settle for one 30 pound candle. I explain that Don is running a little late from his meeting in Ontario and that I haven't heard from Jeremy and Katy yet but I'm sure they're on their way. It's all good though because that will give us time to start dinner and get the gaming room ready so that we can dive right in when everyone gets here.

And here comes the good part... Matt goes to set his bag in the gaming room and is surprised to see that Jeremy and Katy are already here sitting at the gaming table. Only Jeremy and Katy are four people instead of two people. Only Jeremy and Katy are not Jeremy and Katy at all but four of our dearest Washington friends flown in this morning to celebrate this milestone in Matt's life - Jeff, Tina, Steve and Brie! This realization prompts the chain link reaction of a stumbling motion backwards into the wall accompanied by a "What the f**k?!", followed by shouts of "SURPRISE!", much laughter, many cheers, and huge big bear hugs. And Tina caught it all on video with her camera.

We had a very fun evening of reminiscing about old memories, catching up on new memories, and getting old friends acquainted with new friends. Matt was glowing for the entire evening and declared it "the best birthday he has ever had." Our hopes and prayers for Matt's 30th is that his best birthday ever turns into his best year ever which turns into his best decade ever. Happy Birthday Matt :)

What's in a Name?

Inspired by Jenny and Camille. Thanks girls.

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car), Kitty Dodge

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie), Mint Chocolate Chip No Bake

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name), C-Mes (Same as Camille's!!!!!!!!)

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal), Teal Dachshund

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born), Jo Eugene

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first), Mesci

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink), The Sky Blue White Russian

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers), Johnny John

9. STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy), Vanilla Chocolate Cherry

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names ), Jean Earl

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter), Goewey Glasgow

12. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower). Advent Blossom

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”) Grapefruit Dressy Pants

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree), Luna Dogwood

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”), The Dog Training Cloudbreak Tour

That was way more fun than I thought it would be.

Hiking

I joined a hiking club on meetup.com. It's really a great thing. They plan all of the hikes, give you the stats such as level of difficulty, how long, elevation gain, etc. They tell you a time and a place to meet and send you directions. All you have to do is RSVP and show up. So I am excited about this new hobby. On Saturday Don and I went to REI to get new hiking boots. One pair of hiking boots alone can be a spendy item, but two pairs really adds up! It reminds me of the time in Bellingham when we went out and bought our bicycles. I hope we get more use out of these. Ever since I took my girls trip to wine country the other weekend, I've awakened an interest to start getting out and exploring more of this new region that we live in. I can't think of a better way to do it than through hiking.