The One Where My God Daughter Grew Up...

So my bestest friend of 17 years (holy shit that's a long time) moved to Oklahoma in January of this year and with her went my God Daughter, Kaley Ann. Kaley is and probably will be the closest thing I ever have to a child. I cared for her a lot the first 2 years of her life so we have an extremely special bond. She spent a lot of time with me over the years growing up as well. Kristin did very well with her as a single mommy and worked very hard to get where she is. Kaley is now 11 years old.... 12 in September. Well this is their first trip back into town and they will be here for a month. I'm looking forward to spending some time with them.

I was informed this AM that my 11-YEAR OLD GOD DAUGHTER HAD HER FIRST KISS! *falls down* WTF!!! I thought I'd get a few more years! (Kurt you may want to look into home schooling Em and Maddy, shelter them, it's okay, I swear). Apparently "Miss I'm not as sneaky as I thought I was" was at the public pool and this boy she has liked for a long time, Donivan, was there as well. Kristin and Chris were driving by and Kristin noticed them, then her daughter and THAT BOY lean in to give each other a quick peck. Kristin said she went crazy a little. It made her pretty sad, later once she calmed down, that her baby girl was growing up so fast and I have to say I feel the same way. After all these talks she'd had and all these things Kaley had become apart of, she thought she was leading her on the right path. Kristin's fear is that she will end up pregnant at an early age and I can't say I blame her. The cycle of that happening statisically is pretty high and seeing as how they live in smalltown, USA with nothing else to do... well you see where I'm going.

I look forward to seeing where this goes, apparently he left for IOWA while she is out her in CA but I might have to suggest Kristin get some IM spy software because that kid is on IM a lot and I don't think Kristin realizes just how much.

*shudders* stinky boys

One Year Later...

So through some very swirling, life altering, mind expanding events, here I am a year later living with Alix from Boston, MA. We reside in a cute little 2 bd, 2 b apartment in a middle class area.

I am a partner to a very nurturing girl who loves me with all of her heart. She takes better care of me than I could have ever imagined. She drags her butt outta bed every morning to make me breakfast and pack my lunch. We love to collaborate in the kitchen on dinners and that is SO much fun. She gives me so many hugs in a day I never have to ask for one. We get addicted to the same games, shows and hobbies. She is so reassuring that I am left with no other choice but to believe I Really CAN Do Anything. I've been able to see how talented she is and even help her bring out a side I don't think she even realized she had.

I am grateful for her and may I break a toe if I'm ever unappreciative of the many things she does for me daily and the gifts she bestowes upon my soul.

I love you Alix. Happy Anniversary :)

A few things from the past week.

So right now I kinda feel like Lois Lane sitting at her old wooden desk on a brother typewriter, trying to hunt and peck to type out some words for the Daily Planet. Sitting there with some weight of wonder on my shoulders. It's kinda surreal. I have a lot of good news but it is all shadowed by the loss of our little kitten kid.

I need to share though, it makes moving on a little easier even if I don't really want to. So I've decided I will summarize the past weekend and couple of days at home.

Saturday evening at the newest of galleries downtown I had submitted a few pieces which I had mentioned in a previous blog. One piece of source was in reference to Moby Dick. This piece which I called "Road Trip." Was actually of one of my very good friends mother who passed last year. When she first showed me the pic I knew I wanted to try it. I needed a challenge and more importantly I thought Courtney would love it. So I didn't have it ready for her birthday but I thought I could have it ready for the America show. It's a picture of her mom in a car parked near the beach... road tripping is pretty American if you ask me. So as I walked in the gallery I was pretty nervous and she wasn't there yet. It was actually about 30 minutes before they came. They walked in and we all chatted and I sat there with my heart fluttering. After a bit her and Patty walked around and then she was standing there... starring at it. She turned around with a huge smile and I finally felt relief. She loved it, to which I handed her the actual pic and we hugged and told her that was her late birthday present. *throws hands up Yay*

I also entered two photographs from Fenway park. My favoritey one, the one I've also put on a platter at Color Me Mine, I blew up and framed in black and white. And GET THIS... it got Viewers Favorite... by one vote :) *claps, YAY for me* People were even talking about it behind me... yikes!

The comic show was also the same night and Alix had some cute little pics in there. We stopped by there first to look around and I took pics of her stuff up on the walls since she had to work. There was some pretty cool stuff up there. I'll be posting pics soon but I'm at work right now and the camera is at home :)

Monday night we pretty much sat at home and I loved on Polly. You can tell the kid is not used to being alone. She follows us everywhere, has to know what we're doing, eating, grabbing, etc. I let her eat some ice cream and popcorn with me, then she passed out in my arms... it was nice.

Last night I wanted to focus on something else so Alix and I spent a couple hours drafting a Multi-Cache based on the game Clue. It was pretty fun and it will take a lot of work but we think it will be worth it once it's done. A classic, who done-it in Bakersfield. We made up characters, weapons and places in Bakersfield it could have occurred.

Not much else really, just trudging through this week... seeing as how our 1 year anniversary is this weekend :) So what's going on in your world?

Ashling Born 2007ish - July 14th 2008

Today we had to put Miss Ashling to sleep. She has always been small and kinda sickly and we noticed that she had been getting worse. Sadly, yesterday I noticed she could hardly walk. Alix took her in and the diagnosis was bad... either Feline Leukemia or AIDS to which either only gave her a few short months to live. Basically, her living would be for our benefit not hers. We are living with the notion that she got spoiled and spent her last days with a loving family since he said that she was most likely born this way and no one caught it until now. We fostered her in her dying days and I can't see how that is a bad. She could have spent her last days stuck living in cages till someone finally saw what we did this past week. So for that I am grateful that we got to meet and love such a sweet little kat.

Polly will miss her a lot but (as tears stream down my face) I know I'm pretty devasted...

*enjoy chasing mice in the fields little one, you can run free like you couldn't here anymore...*

Moby Dick

A timeless classic..blah blah blah. You know the story, boy gets a boat, boy goes finishing, boy gets made to look like an ass in front of his friends because big fish gets away and flips boy the bird, boy will die to get revenge on the fish. You hear it every day, sometimes twice. Yes... this is me... being funny. *chuckles* Laugh already, geez, tough crowd.

Anyway, it's a timeless analogy used to describe difficult times or personal challenges in ones life. A particular painting was this very thing for me. I'm not sure what to think of it but maybe I've been starring at it too long for the past couple of weeks. I've taken pictures of my process with it but I won't blog that till after the opening on Saturday. If you want to see them before I blog them, then you'll have to get off your ass and go to the "Amercia the Beautiful" opening at the Underground Gallery & Studio on 19Th street. 5-8pm I have 3 in this show: painting on canvas and 2 photos. I'm pretty excited to see them amongst other artists. I also dropped 2 for Alix and then another 2 at the Comic Show at The Empty Space. Opening is also Saturday, 4-7pm I will be at both for a little while, flying solo, as sadly, the girl works till close that night. I want to take pics of our stuff hanging so she can at least see where her stuff is on the walls of each gallery. I'm pretty proud of her. :)

My fear is I suck and that's okay as long as it makes me happy and I am pretty damn happy. *shrugs* so I'm just going with it :) Hope to see you there...

4 Day Weekend the Hard Way

So I thought I was excited for my 3 day weekend. When in reality, I didn't enjoy my 4 day weekend very much :( Don't get me wrong, Friday was great... Saturday was fine but Sunday and Monday weren't so nice to me.

I have some kind of stomach bug. Food nor water want to go in or stay in. I slept like 18+ hours and continued to be tired. I am at work today but I still don't feel 100%. I'm more like 79%. I'm hoping for a dramatic increase tomorrow. Somewhere in the range of 90% would be great but I'm not putting any money on it. I'm just glad I've survived the day in general.

Off to finish putting stuff together for the art drops tonight :)

I'm like the Hockey Family, are you like the Hockey Family, I'm like the Hockey Family.

So I went to visit the girl at the bookstore today with some of our friends. Denise and Jenn have and at times, still work there so of course they have their favorite books. Denise has that kids section laid out. She was determined to show me this one book in particular because she said it reminded her of me and how she hopes to be one day.

I wasn't sure how to interpret that. *grins*

It opens up with Baby Hockey, Baby Hockey is holding a red balloon and it goes something like this;

'I have a red balloon, do you have a red balloon, I have a red balloon.' Turn the page and it shows the big red balloon popping. Baby Hockey is looking at the string he is left holding. Next page shows baby Hockey again proudly holding the string and saying 'I have a string, do you have a string, I have a string.'

So the entire book is of each of the Hockey Family Members and something they have and something happens to it and they still find some kind of positive out of it. I was pretty pleased that Denise thought of me when she read this book and that she hoped to be that way some day.

That was a pretty nice compliment *smiles*

The One Where the Year is Half Over

*throws confetti* Can you believe 1/2 of 2008 is officially over today? We are sailing through another year. Have you completed any of your New Years Resolutions? Do you even remember them? *giggles*

Today is a good segway into the rest of the year. There is still time, plenty of time, to get to some of those forgotten resolutions. My art isn't coming along as fast as I like but you can't rush it. The more I plan to get it done, the farther away from it I want to be. I'm still getting to it, just not in the fashion I had imagined.

From my eyes I can see that life isn't worth a lick of salt if you can't share it with the one your heart desires. I'm excited to wake up each day to see what is in store for us. Even if that means we sit on the couch watching Blue Dragon or Law & Order sharing a bowl of rainbow sherbet and laughing at the antics of our kittenkids. Don't waste your days waiting for something that isn't going to come... people won't change from what they are comfortable with and know... I'm glad I became uncomfortable and don't fear the unknown. I'm stronger than I thought and that is something I can be proud of.

There was a time I thought I'd hold regrets with my decisions, I guess my only true regret is not being more honest with myself sooner. *shrugs* but that is that and this is now and I love me some now :)

So in looking back on my "half yearly" mark. I'm pretty fucking great. *big smiles*

What about you?

The One Where I Sold my 1st Piece of Art.

Hmm. I got a txt yesterday afternoon saying, "did you know your little red piece sold at the Museum?" To which I sadly put the phone to my side and some tears slid down my cheeks. Alix ran to me to see what was the matter and while she was very proud of me and telling me how it's a good thing, I stood there and cried a little. Why you ask? A few reasons.

Just one of those emotional days and I didn't have a pic of it to remember it by. I know that may sound weird but I want an artistic journal of my work and I just thought these 2 pieces would come home so I could photograph them. Also, this was a close up of the inside of a lily I took at the L.A. Arboretum on one of my trips before you lived here. I remember studying it and thinking how such a small thing could be so intricate and beautiful. I remember you telling me to do anything I wanted and just enjoy being me. Fast forward to a few months ago and I remember you telling me how much you liked this picture because the section I picked out reminded you of a heart. I thought it was my way of capturing how good you made my heart feel. This piece was apart of both of us... and in that instant of a txt, it's gone. Someone bought it and it wasn't coming home and the idea of that made me sad.

So even though it's a little sad, it's a pretty good feeling to know that someone liked something I did enough to spend their money on it.

Geocaching Baby Style

This morning we met Sara and Georgia at Hart Park to do some geocaches. How exciting to make some new caching buddies. So we parked the cars and decided to walk to 3 within a fairly small radius. The first one was a bust, as we walk up Alix spots the lid to a container on the ground. Okay, that can't be good. As we study the area we can see where it should have been. Very cool idea for a film canister hide. So we did a good deed and replaced it with a log. Georgia got to learn the joys of a squeaky little duck but she was pretty interested in holding moms GPS. Off to #2, it too was MIA but the strip of metal that had been hiding it was bent back to completely expose the nitch where it should have been hiding and if we replaced every one that was muggled we'd never get to cache. So on to #3 which had eluded many. We come up to an area and Sara was first to go down the embankment to check out the base of a tree. I took the other side but tracking instincts told me that where my foot slid and pushed up leaves and such, others would have done the same, so it wasn't on that side. We studied the tree, Sara decided to climb it and THERE it was. She reached to grab it, we signed it and headed back to the cars. Passed on some puzzle caches and parked for our next 2 finds. Pretty sneaky little places. Did a park and grab in a soccer park where we got to enjoy the sprinklers, it was starting to get pretty hot. Headed to CALM, grabbed another by a dead cat... eww. Then took a few wrong turns, ended up at a cache we hadn't planned on but Little Miss Georgia fell a sleep so mom sat out on this one. We grabbed it quick and called it a day. It was almost noon and we were wiped out. Staying up till 2:am wasn't our best idea.

Oh well, we had a super great time walking around the park and meeting 2 new caching friends. Hope to do it again soon but can't wait till the weather cools down.

Time or Lack There of...

It still amazes me after all these years of turtle meetings, softball schedules, family events, birthdays, holidays, work and being social in general that it still takes acts of the Universe to have to schedule time to do nothing. Weird.

As a kid all you want to do is go go go. As an adult I apparently haven't changed my 9 year old mentality much. Now I'm not complaining at all, it just makes me sit back in awe on occasion with all that I have in the upcoming weeks. I'm not necessarily referring to actual upcoming weeks but the neverending upcoming weeks. I guess I'm lucky though. Some people never get the chance to experience life with so many wonderful people surrounding them. Sadly, they only keep a few people around them because it's safe. Who wants to live in the safety of bubble wrap? I know it's fun to play in but come on, broaden yourself and what better way than to surround yourself with new minds. I really do love meeting new people. They bring something to my growth as a person and I love the idea of that.

Tomorrow I get to grow a little more... enter TimidVenus and Little Georgia Jane :)

The One Where My World Got A Little Bigger.

So last Friday night I was out to dinner with my lovely other half. We were having quite a nice evening out, celebrating our anniversary and one anothers company as we so often do. We had decided on P.F. Changs for dinner. She had never been and they have so many good offerings, we thought it would be fun to go there. After some yummy potstickers, sesame cucumbers and some other yummy things, the waitress brought us our check with our fortune cookies. Here is where my world changed...

Alix handed me my cookie and looked at me. She said here is your fortune. So I was waiting for her to grab hers. She looked at me and said very cutely, "I can't pick my own fortune, it has to be given to me." She explained that one can not choose their own fortune, that's being selfish, someone should offer it to you. I smiled, this made complete sense. No wonder so many of my fortunes never worked out quite right. So now I look forward to the next time I can give someone some fortune :)

The One Where I Have A Lot to Do!

Okay so the last blog was a total fluke. Had I paid attention to the upcoming week, I would have realized there is so much going on! I try not to live by a calendar anymore, well months at a time anyway. My PDA has been retired except for paperless caching, which I freakin' love! I can basically get by with just looking, Monday morning, at what's going on for the week. Funny thing is, we have bunco, an art drop, a geocaching contest and a very cool girls birthday.

Okay so we backed out on bunco, with the drop starting tomorrow (and I still don't have any finished pieces, just 3 in process) we are spending the better part of our time, sketching and painting. Yesterday I started about 6:00pm and we stopped right before 11:00pm (she started before I got home at 5!)

Then the phone call came... the geocaching hunt for Saturday is basically cancelled since there are only 2 teams! Well shit, that sucks. Although being in the sun for 6 hours definitely has it's downfall, it still would have been fun. So that now completely frees up Saturday and we don't have to leave Courtney's bash Friday night early, so that rocks. We'll most likely go caching anyway in the morning, it's been awhile since we've grabbed any and 150 isn't going to hit itself. There are a lot in the Hart Park area so we may try to tackle that.

Tonight we go hang in the cave for a bit to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY COURTNEY! Then back to painting. I have to say once I started painting it seemed to go by much quicker and is making me a little more excited to finish :) I'm definitely relearning patience. I'm so out of practice that I've gone back to Art 101 and I'm using the grid method, it's a wonderous thing really. And no matter what anyone tells you, rulers are your friends.

So that's that. I guess I should finish up my work since it's the end of the month and all. :)

The one with the things I like right now:

So there isn't a whole lot going on right now and I'm perfectly okay with that. Alix is starting to work more hours but not so much that we don't get some good alone time in :) The framily is the framily and I love them. My parents are doing well and love me a lot and really care about what's going on in my life and I like that. Art is adventurous and learning the term "starving artist" is quite humbling. So no ranting of sorts just a little list of things I'm really into right now, things that make me happy.

1) Alix - really nothing else needs to be said than that sweet little name... I love you and Happy Anni :)
2) Wiggly Fish Fridays - it's our little dance we do every Friday and although I woke up too late to do it this AM we will for sure do it today at lunch. It's silly and completely us.
3) Framily - these girls in my life are more than amazing. They are so wonderful and I'm so blessed and grateful for everyone. Each girl gives me a different perspective on the world and I love it.
4) Family - The support system here is so strong, it's no wonder I'm as strong as I am.
5) Art - It's a new kinda life, with some new people and new ideas. I like it.
6) Geocaching - Hello nerdy GPS hobby
7) Pizza - So I've always loved pizza but you can't beat double pepperoni and extra sauce mmm
8) Ash & Polly - Our 2 little kittenkids that give us the best free.99 entertainment.
9) Color Me Mine - I may not always paint but it sure is fun to go and hang out with the framily.
10) Travian - The crack village online game I found... thanks a lot myspace :p
11) Wii - Nothing beats watching Star Wars Lego's shatter across the screen with a Wii-mote
12) Music - I always love me some music.
13) Orchids - A beautiful flower, hard to maintain but worth the work.
14) DVR Recordings - Love having our own marathons of Pokemon, Fosters, Blue Dragon and Las Vegas.
15) Sonic - Crapple Rocks (cranberry apple limeades) mmm
16) Turkey Burgers - who knew the gobble gobbles would make such awesome burgers?!
17) Nag Champa Incense - what a wonderful way to inspire ones-self

I'm sure there are much more but these are what I can whip out of my head right now. Have a happy wiggly fish Friday, I know I am :)

The one with some American Inspiration.

Everyone seems to be able to bitch and bitch about this country. (I've had my moments) I guess we tend to forget why we LOVE this country so much. In going with an upcoming theme for an Art Show, I've been presented with the task of showing why I love America. Well hmm, there are so many reasons... now I just need to find a creative way to display it.

Let's see what I can do in the upcoming days and with the 4th so near, it's great timing.

The One Where Everyone Else is Doing It.

*rolls eyes from shear annoyance* I'm tired a little. This may also have something to do with how annoyed I am with this topic. Although it has been building and speaking with some of my truly close friends, they agree so I can't be off base by too much. The topic in question? Gays are allowed to get married today.

This blog should be completely different. It should be about what a wonderful time in life this is, not just for Gay people but for being apart of history in the making and a time when people are opening their eyes for fairness and true equality. The chance for everyone to be married. But it's not, this is my blog and I'm going to rant how annoyed I am with the BBQ style, Sunday afternoon type gathering(slash) circus act this has turned into. *smacks head*

I am a myspace whore, pure and simple. It is a great network to exchange ideas about interesting events that are up and coming, meet people that you share likes with and also stayed informed with things that matter to you in your community. So on the downside, it can be used to bombard you with a topic so so so so so so so so so many times that you get pushed to where I am now.

So I am glad for today for one main reason, I will stop getting bulletin after bulletin about people getting married in a side show kind of way versus making it the truly special *one of a kind* occasion it should be. So when someone asks, "Oh, what's your anniversary?" It won't be such a shocker when 100's, hell 1000's of people can ALL FUCKING ANSWER June 17th. And the reasoning behind it? Because Everyone Can... *sarcastically claps* wow, how special.

I can understand getting excited and going down there to get the marriage license to plan your marriage for a date to be annonced with some meaning for both of you, some time that makes both of your eyes go all misty, that makes sense. Instead of the reasoning being a historic occasion. Not much of a base, in MY opinion. I could really give a flying fuck if you agree with me or not, seeing as how *looks around* this is my blog.

If I didn't see, "Are you planning on getting married June 17th?" "Info about getting married on June 17th" "After we all get married on June 17th" "Do you want to get married tomorrow" over and over, with other variations this wouldn't be so bad. The one that probably started most of this was the "information" one. *holds hand up* Hold up people, you are having a meeting about getting married in a group setting. This really put a kink in my neck. Then plans of having a bbq at someone's house afterwards to celebrate? Like you won a baseball game? Are you for real? I can see having a community wide celebration at a park for the equality we all deserve and have been waiting for but not to celebrate weddings, group style.. oh no, not one more time now. (my framily will chuckle at that part)

The idea, more than anything, just makes me sad. So many people are doing it, "just because" and in a few months the aftermath will occur because this wasn't led in a better manner.

*steps down* I'm done now.

Everyone Falls

I'm not sure why, I'm not sure where it started or how many times I've heard it but I love the idea of it. Depending on your preconceived notions of when you read the title you are about to learn something about yourself very quickly. Did you think: oh no, she has fallen in some way in life or did you think of how I could have fallen in love with someone or something? And HONESTLY thinking of the first thought you had when you read the title you now know if you are an optimist or pessimist in life right now. So maybe you've fallen by the wayside and need to find your way out... on to my blog.

On one hand, one consistently hears of how she "fell in love at first sight." Or how she's "falling in love with her soul mate." This can mean so many different things from one person to the next. Everyone falls in love with someone or something. The hard part sometimes is that people can't distinguish between falling in love to falling in lust. Love is ever-lasting and even when it gets tough you can find your way back up, together. One of the many advantages to having a loving partner. Now falling in lust... well, that's tricky and its course also runs differently from person to person. After the mad-crazy sex, secret encounters and 1st time I've done thats have run their course, the true part of the relationship rears itself. Does that mean lust will ultimately lead to disaster? If you ask me, I say no but that's the optimist in me. There is just that part when you feel yourself falling for someone. And why do they call it falling? Why can't it be swooshing or cracking for someone? Who thought that you had to "fall?" Is it the idea of dropping to your knees, lowering your head and thanking the universe for this gift bestowed before you... the idea that you have to lower yourself to completely give yourself over to this person? Not really sure and I'm not looking for answers. Just seems like the more I talk to people or hear of things going on around me, I wonder what's next.

*wiggles other hand* and then there's this hand. *shakes head*

On the other hand, some people fall. Emotionally is what I'm speaking of here. Sometimes this can be a reflection or type of collateral damage from the above type of falling if the lust does where off sadly. It can also be that time of life when things are changing. Growing pains one might say. Growing up, growing apart, growing toward different goals. The hard part is taking that step to say, this is enough and I need something different. It's almost like saying you lost or you quit and for me, I hate losing... ANYTHING EVER! I have to win, I have to be right, I won't fail... losers fail and I'm not a loser. (I'm not saying that's true for everyone, that's my sick mentality from being such a competitive person but I'm working on it.) I tend to fall really hard when it does finally come to that point. I let it get so far and ignore it for so long that when I finally realize what is happening it literally slaps me in the face and I'm standing there blinking, a lot. I also am very open to these sad/displaced moments now. If I need to feel sad, I embrace it. I'll cry for days on end, alone at work, alone in my car, alone at a park... I'll listen to the saddest music I can find, I'll wear the same clothes day after day. I eat cereal for meals when I choose to eat. I let it consume me. And do you know what happens within a few days... I feel better. I let everything out and I deal with it and I move upward, steadily. Then, when I step back outside with a bright yellow shirt on, some gel in my hair and some body spray that reminds me of the beach, it's like I'm seeing that tree outside my apartment for the first time with all its blooms and watching the leaves sway in the breeze. So when I take that first step, I can't help but smile.

So everyone falls. You're not alone and sometimes... well sometimes you just have to swim in the bad stuff to help you deal and move on to the good stuff. The trick is to not let the bad stuff consume you and stay there or keep going to the exact same place time and time again.

Yep *nods* Everyone Falls...

"You're good for me."



A relative sentence, such as:

Someone looking at a celery stalk as they are about to have a 2' o clock snack.

or

Shopping in the organic section of the grocery and trying to justify some wheat pasta.

or

A friend telling you this after a heart-felt conversation.

I was told this today and it just made me smile a lot, thanks friend. :)

Hives



I'm still not really sure why my skin is so dang sensitive to stuff. Friday night we were set to unload some tables and chairs for a friend at a park for an event Saturday morning. We had some loading fun with a golf cart. Watched a Greek man put his 2 drachma in on how to move the tables on the cart and just had some overall good laughs. I felt myself getting alittle sweaty and my head started itching something fierce. Didn't think much of it till I got back in the truck and I looked at my hands. Hive #1 and #2. When we got back to my parents house (they were in L.A.) I took my shirt off to see them all over my body. :( So I was a little scared because you're never really quite sure where this could go. So I rid myself of clothes and got in the cold cold pool for about 20 minutes. When I got out I was one big hive, they had branched out. Now it was just a matter of waiting it out and within about 2 hours I was basically back to normal and very sleepy face. Our clothes finshed washing and we headed home.



The best I can figure is there was some kind of pesticide on the tables and chairs where they are kept...

So did I mention we were caching on Saturday... oh and Sunday... oh and...



Geocaching is the forefront of anything we do now-a-days. I love it. If gas wasn't so expensive it would be even cheaper. Luckily, when you geocache, you drive slow and you'd be amazed at how little gas you use. Alix and I decided we wanted to grab a cache in the Kern River Canyon that had been posted a month and no one had found. We've been wanting a FTF to find and if we have to drive 23.4 miles to get it, so be it. We decided to do some hiking as well. I haven't been in the canyon in a long time and that's pretty sad because it really is pretty and there are a lot of nice spots to pull off and park.



So we spent a good part of Friday night, drawing up a map and laying out some caches for the day. We wouldn't post any high numbers, this was more of an exploring day. So we set off for the first one... took a bit but we found it! Alix got a true FTF! It was pretty exciting. We took a micro coin and dropped a Snow Coin (it wants to find snow). Then headed to the next one. Wow. This had a terrain rating of 2. LIARS!!! At best 3.5 out of 5. There was a lot of stickers, direct uphills and a lot of misdirections. I've bitched about a climb in Yosemite and that seems like cake compared to this one. I will be the first to admit that I had to give about 1/2 way up, my feet couldn't take it. Alix kept going... and going... and it got to a point we were yelling to keep in contact she was so far away. I rested on a rock and was visited by a snake. BLEAH! I decided to head back down and track her from a dirt "road." I use that term loosely, I have no idea how even a 4x4 could get up there. So about 20 minutes had gone by and she FOUND IT! She said it was sitting on top of some rocks and she felt a little cheated but whatever it was a find. The TB that was suppose to be there wasn't and that sucked. So she came tromping back down and we headed to the car so I could peel off her shoes and pick all the stickers out of her socks... poor kid. She was quite pink but still ready to go. It was pretty warm by this time and we headed back out of the canyon. We grabbed 2 more and I had a bit of a migraine coming on :( it was now after 3 and we had to be at a friends house by 5:30pm so we called it a day.



On a side note, we had some little rubber duckies and I thought it would be fun to throw one down the river. We called him Senor Patito (Mister Little Duck) and down the Kern River he went. We even saw him a little ways down the river, it was kinda fun :)



Saturday night we were gaming with some friends, helped them load up some caches and planned to go caching in the AM. It was great, we were at their house by 9 and had 8 of 9 finds by 12:30pm. That was a little more promising after the 4 we got in 5 hours the day before :) Lots and lots of caching and we love it.



Those were the toughest 4 caches to date...

Always Remember, if I can find it, so can anyone else... and I FOUND IT.





This blog is dedicated to people who think they are being so secretive and getting away with it. Just so you know, you aren't and you are one click away from getting caught. Once it's on the web, it can never be completed erased. It can be copied, saved, tracked, extracted in so many ways, it's simply amazing.... just an email away, remember that.





Just a thought I was having when I was doing a random blog roll and doing some reading...

GeoWoodStock aka Geek Central



Alright, so as most of you know I'm a geocacher. This means I use the governments highly sophiscated sallites to find bouncy balls and lock & lock containers under tumble weeds at dead end roads. It's highly addicting, I don't care what you think. To make matters even dorkier, groups of people hold events *points at self* We will be hosting one June 13th at ??? Can't tell you but if you sign up at http://www.geocaching.com/ it's loaded up in there :) coordinates and all. AND to be Mega Dorky they even have Mega Events which means that over 500 people will attend. Just so happens that Geowoodstock VI was in Wheatland, CA over Memorial weekend.



Alix and I took the plunge and made the trek. We cached on our way up there, we cached there and all the way home. So basically a 4 hour drive home, took 7 hours but whatever, it was AWESOME! There were vendors from everywhere, selling some pretty cool stuff. We had a pretty tight budget but we were able to pick up a few select items.



They had raffles, games, poker, bingo, hunts, food, TB exchanges and geocoin swaps. The big thing I wanted to do was the TB exchange. So we drove around Bakersfield and wiped out a lot of bugs and coins to take up there and then bring a bunch of new ones back into town. I took 15 up and brought 30 home :) There were so many, I wanted to take my only 30 gallon tub worth but restrained. We traded for some cool coins and found some caches unlike we have around here. It's funny how hides change from city to city.



You saw all kinds of nerdy, geeky, dorky people. IT WAS GREAT. We even almost got run over by some other cachers. We were trying to beat them to a First to Find. They were hilarious! We met a lot of really fun people overall. One of the TB's I launched was Fillmore from Cars and turns out there is a working size Fillmore that is a discoverable TB! I took some pics of mine and the real one. If you look super close above the driver side door, you can see a little spec? That is my Fillmore!



Saturday night after the event, we went back to the hotel around 7:00pm with the intention of logging finds, coins and TB's then loading the GPSr's and heading out for some night caching. Turns out it took us till midnight to log everything and we were wiped out! So we went to bed and slept in, then got up, loaded the car and cached around town till it was time to head home. Crazy stuff.

When good dogs go bad.

Meet Mako. Oh yeah, he looks sweet and precious but this dog has a secret. He's a drinker. Yep, you read that right, this dog can put down Bud Light like a college student at a Frat Party. *cracks up*

Courtney woke up this morning to Mako drunk. Apparently he had pulled some beers off the stove, the bottles broke and he licked himself to a drunken sleep. *shakes head*

Qrt said the funniest thing: "Who would of ever thought that I would have to lock up the liquor from the dog?" *falls down laughing*

The Better Wal-Mart

This was a little building that was on the farm at Geowoodstock. Apparently they have a really big pumpkin patch during the Halloween season. I wish it wasn't so far, I'd love to pile up in the car and come visit during the "boo" holiday.

Hey look... Polly is in my pocket... *looks around. She's Polly Pocket *CRACKS UP*

GeoCatching in the night time... like really night from 1:am on.



So my cute little friend Courtney has a tendency to hear things how she wants to hear them. From the 1st mention of Geocaching she chose to hear/call it Geocatching. Now if you were to combine the idea of Geocaching and Pokemon, she basically has it right. You gotta catch 'em all! *chuckles*



So after a full day of Fondue and Art, we met at Color Me Mine like we so often do on Saturday nights to work on some pieces. Like most conversations of late, we got onto Geocatching. Sidebar: We basically all call it "Catching" now End Sidebar. So most of the girls were hungry and were planning a Tour de French Toast at IHOP. I got the okay to go geocaching, so we decided to go home and load some "catches" while the girls toured some syrup. So around midnight the girls showed up, 5 of us loaded up in the car and we were off. This was Courtney's 1st time out. There was one near the house that Jenn and Denise needed so we went there first. Courtney was ready, we got to the park and started walking toward the back of the park. There just happened to be a party going on right where the cache was. Well on the other side of the fence. So Courtney walked right in there near the fence and used the flashlight and found it rather quickly hanging off the tree. We exchanged some stuff and moved along... oh yeah, she was hooked. But first we had to go back to the apartment because she forgot to use the potty before we left... silly kid. Then we headed back out to Free Liberty *smacks head*

I have been catching for about 2 years and have found myself in some weird situations but I have yet EVER had THIS happen to me. So the misfit band that is our Framily heads to the coordinates. We are brought on to a sidewalk and lead to a fence, lightpole and some misc. trees and bushes. Swell. We start investigating and are looking for a good 20 minutes when it is noticed that 2 locks are on the gate but one is on the side that doesn't open. I walk over and lift the lock up to see that someone hollowed out the lock and stuck a nano magnet cache in it. EUREKA! So we unwind the riboon size log, log it and I place it back in the cache and head to replace it. Just as we turn to walk back to the car, here comes Bakersfield's finest... oh yeah, the police with their big ass bright spotlights asking what we're doing. So I explain we're playing a game and even walk the officer over to show him the cache. He replied well that's definitely not what I thought you were doing. He was thinking more along the lines of graffiti or drugs. I said, nope just geeky gps games. So they let us on our way. *phew* How weird was that, I just got busted by the po-po for being a geek!

Once in the car we started making jokes about the whole thing and Miss Courtney busts out with "yeah excuse me while I pull the spray paint out of my vagina." *insert us dying laughing here* I mean I get it but that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the night. After a couple, Courtney caught on pretty fast and she was the first one in the bushes every time *no lesbian pun intended* We ended up 6 of 8 for the night and rolled back in about 3:00am OH WHAT A NIGHT!

Always a great time out with the Framily... welcome to the obsessive world of Geocatching Courtney, may your finds run high and your lamp post skirts run higher. *giggles*

Fondue-tazma & Art Day

Oh the things our Framily come up with. My dear sweet friend Patty has been wanting to do a Fondue-Fantazma for weeks and we finally settled on this past Saturday to do it. One snaffu in our plan was Jenn-fer had to "watch" over the gallery so she wouldn't be able to participate... or we just move the party to the gallery. So we all brought stuffs: fruits, vegetables, cookies, breads, cheeses, meats to dip in Chocolate, Caramel and Cheese mmmmm. That was super yummy in the tumbly. There are some art shows coming up and some of us wanted to work on some pieces for it. I just wasn't in the complete mood, I'd had a long morning and was just enjoying the company of the Framily. Darla had fun sketching Courtney and Patty although Courtney has been deemed the worst model ever since she can't keep still :) It was a great way to spend a day that's for sure.

It's always these simple days surrounded by the ones you love that make you happy to be living life. I couldn't imagine doing anything like this a couple years ago. It's pretty neat how my life is unfolding right in front of me.

Space and not MySpace well sorta but not the... Nevermind just read my blog.

Okay so the house has been seriously neglected. We've been busy and busy and busy and tired and oh yeah, really tired. So today was the day where we had absolutely nothing planned so all day long I have been looking forward to cleaning up and cleaning out. Just so happens that friends of a friend are having a yard sale so we made one of those piles too and so now everything has a place woohoo... so here are the befores and afters of the madness.


Before...


After.... YAY *CLAPS*

Before...

After.... YAY *CLAPS*

Before...

AFTER... ALL DONE :)

*deep sigh of relief* I like all this space now, it feels so big in here. Now I just need to do normal cleaning stuff and it's all done but this... ahh this... makes it so much nicer.

Off to bed.

Alix used to draw me stick figure pics to cheer me up when we lived apart. She was trying to come up with stuff for the watermarks show and went back to her "stick" roots. This is the bestest most wonderfulest piece of art in my eyes :) I LOVE THESE PICS!

So with the Watermarks II Show coming right around the corner, I decided what better way to come up with ideas then to just write them on the wall.

Working it out...

Suddenly time has disappeared. Days come and go, the sun rises and sets all in one blink. I thought I had it. I thought it was getting easier. Balance was right in my grasp and now, well now it seems oh so far away again. It's not a bad thing, it makes me laugh a little. The non-smiley part is in regards to my friends. I haven't had the chance to spend some real time with some of them and it's starting to take its toll. I miss them dearly, they are more than just friends. I'm not sure how to classify them, maybe this is Courtney's real chance to make up a word but they are in a special class of their own. I love the feel I get from each of them and I'm definitely lacking from a few. I'm hoping this gets fixed soon.

Just feeling a little sad in my heart, a tad toward the bottom right side and just wanted to share.

Nite Nite...

Hey? Who took my weekend!?

So it all started Friday evening. Most of you know one of my major geeky hobbies is Geocaching (www.geocaching.com). I have now got the girl hooked along with a few of our friends :) oops One of the funniest motto's is: I use Billion Dollar satillites to find tupperware in the woods. What's your hobby? Friday was an unoffical meeting of some local cachers at a pizza place. It was pretty fun and we met some really awesome people. This is going to turn into a monthly thing and it's pretty cool to be on the ground floor of this group. I'll be setting up a yahoo group/meetup soon :)

Saturday, the girl and I decided to take an "us" day and take a drive up to the Tulare Outlets. However, the side part of this trip was a caching day! YAY!!! We loaded up 33 caches into the GPS's, printed out the log sheets, grabbed our SWAG, flashlights, etc., etc., etc. 21 caches northbound and 12 southbound. We got kind of a late start but were on our way and EUREKA! found our 1st one of the day. It's always nice to find the first one on a list. #2 was just as easy, as was #3, then we accidentally drove past a couple cause we missed the off ramps, found a couple, then we couldn't find 1...2... geez 3! By this time it's getting pretty warm and we haven't eatn in 5 hours and I feel a migraine coming! OH NO!!! We call it quits on the last 6ish and go to eat. We inhaled sodas and food, I was 2 pills in and the girl is so very patient and loving, it helps so much in "mind over matter" of willing the pain away. We tried for one right after food but we were just done... for now. We went ahead and did some shopping. I found what I needed for mom and we were on flip flop hunts for ourselves. Got a few things for the kittenbabies, got me some ice cream which did wonders for me :) Walked around a little more, took our time and as the sun went down, I was feeling better, so was she and we were ready to try a few more. We were at 9 finds for the day and we needed 11 to get to 50 finds overall. Headed toward one but ants kept us from digging in those bushes. Loaded the next one but crows can fly over curbs and fences, we can't (took some wrong turns) so we tried again and FINALLY found this one no problem. The next one... got it and this continued on. It was dark and some of the areas weren't smart to pull off so we would skip them but any gas station find or rest stop was ours :) So we pulled near some grapevines and that was our last find of the night to give us a total of 17 finds for the day putting us at 56 overall. It was a really awesome day and so so SOO much fun. We rolled back into town about 11:30pm, showered, played with the kittens and crashed out for the night.

Sunday we woke up pretty tired but I still needed to figure out what desserts I was going to make for Mother's Day. I finally settled on a Strawberry Lime Cake and Alix made Lemon Cheesecake bars... mmm. They both came out really good and were a hit. I also made an Asian Chive dip with some cucumbers, one of my favs. It was a pretty nice day, I bought some wrong sizes for my mom but overall she loved everything and is looking forward to going shopping now that she has some returns to do :)

When we came home last night, it was kinda hard for me to believe that the whole weekend was gone already. Sheesh that was super fast. That's okay, I'm ready to work for the weekend again!

Compose Email

To: Shaylynn
Subject: Some questions about the Photo

So this is my new email but not really. My very super great friend Shay hit me up online this AM to fix a picture for her. I have a lot of questions and she is sometimes not the bestest at answering emails but has told me time and again she reads my blog to keep up with my life. So me being the smart ass I am thought it would be funny to write the email that would sit in her inbox in my blog instead. I'm sure I'll get some kind of "har har" out of her for doing this. So Shay here is your email for all to see :) I'll even put the photo in here so you all can see what we're talking about. I'm all about sharing, afterall, sharing is caring *giggles*

Shay,

Alright so I have a few questions about this and since you're so touch and go on Trillian, I figured an email (blog) would be a better way to go and then you can IM with the info.

1. Did you say you did that in iPhoto?

2. Do you want this printed out for an actual album or is this for something online or both?

3. If you want it printed, what size, what finish? matte or glossy?

4. Did you get the border/frame from iPhoto or from somewhere online?

5. If you're having it printed, did you want multiple copies?

Okay, that's what I have for now, I can't guarentee anything but you know what a damn perfectionist I am so even if I can't do it, I will find someone who can. Although I'm sure my most brillant other half can do it so you have no worries.

As far as Yosemite goes in the fall, can you give me 3 or 4 weekends in August/September that work for you both for camping. We will bring bikes this time :) and maybe we can get a little further on that trail now that you both know what it's all about, just remember from the bridge, it gets worse as far as elevation gain but I want to try it eventually. Also, we'll bring a back up bottle of schnapps for Kate. Secretly I hope she gets bored again and drinks the bottle by herself, that was pretty funny. Alright, I'll catch up with you some more soon. I have to get back to watching movies at work. Hug all the cats for me and I'll post pics of little sister soon, she is a puff ball of entertainment and Ash likes her, so we're good. Miss you both... me :)



This mystery white triangle showed up in the pic and is tormenting her, so she asked me to fix it. I offered to put a sticker on it.

The Fabulous-Not so Fabulous-But Wait! Fabulous Friday Once Again.

Today started out like most Fridays, wake up, a little wiggly fish in the kitchen with my girl, off to work and then whatever we have planned for the evening. Always a great day, I mean, afterall, it is Friday. Work started out fine, got in, ran my samples and THEN my phone restarted itself and this means a new geocache was posted YAY So Alix and I decided to grab the cache and some lunch at Checkers since it was near by and we love us some Checkers.

Got to the cache, met a fellow cacher and since she was vertically challenged we co-grabbed that one. So we missed the FTF but still got another find under our belts. So off to Checkers... and then it started. I went to pay and my Debit card was MIA. Weird... must be in my car. Wasn't there... so Alix said she'd look in all my shorts and any place it might be. No luck. I tore my car apart, nothing. The last time I remember using it was at Sonic yesterday. So it took a few times but I called and they had it! *phew* I had finished all my samples but I didn't like that my card was way over there and in drives my boss... with more samples. That makes it hard to leave early and I really needed to leave early because I had a lot of stuff to get together for the new gallery and pack up two kittens who were going to their new home :) So my boss was nice enough to let me leave early to get my card which would work out great so I could have some time to put stuff up at the gallery. I get half way home and realize I left my phone at work so now I'm annoyed again because I'm going to have to go back...

I walk in the homestead to 4 kittens covered in poop waiting for a bath but we're having trouble with our water AGAIN. So I help clean them up and time is just ticking away. I just start packing up my car when I wanted to be at the gallery. I still had to shower and go back to work to get my phone... *sigh* Just one of the weird little afternoons. So I get to the gallery at 10 after 5, started to bring stuff in and talk to people. There was some really cool art up and it's going to look awesome once it's full. If you missed it, we'll be there againt the 1st Friday of June :)

I go to walk out and here comes my very good friend Denise and she immediately gave me a hug. I simply said, "I need that more than you know friend." She said she could tell and offered to walk with me so I could explain what was up and said she had a story for me as well. So I was just trying to detox the ucky stuff out and move on because it was over and now it was fun time at the gallery time. We even walked down to this little cafe and she bought me a coke, some yummy chips and a piece of cinnamon cake. mmm I'm always so thankful for the care from my friends.

When I walked back in, my very good friends Courtney & Patty were there. And it's always interesting to see just how well my friends know me and know something is wrong. I got lots of big hugs and it's so cleansing. It's like they counter the uckiness out and I'm sooooooo thankful for that. Now Miss SuperSmellGoodAlot Patty was awesome. I'm thankful that Courtney shares her and her wonderful hugs. She had the best scents when I hugged her, they linger in her hair and on her person and just made my heart smile inside. AND because I got to hug her so long, some of it stayed on me, so every so often I would catch little drifts throughout the night and it made me think of my very good friend and I couldn't help but smile. Thank you girls for always making me smile.

Within an hour I was back to good and it was so fun to see Jenn in her spotlight. I got some of my stuff hung up, met with an old high school classmate, took lots of pictures and just had an overall awesome time. I'm looking forward to hanging out around there more :)

*close curtain on the 1st eve of the Undergound Gallery*

Friday Again?

So here we are again to another fabulous Friday in Bakovillelandpatchfield. Call it what you will but it's home and as long as she is with me, I could care less where we live. We make our own adventures and home is what you make of it and right now my home is amazing :)

Today is First Friday. What is that you ask? I'm glad you're so curious. Today is the First Friday of the month. So in the Art District of above said citytown local artists gather their wares and display them for all to see along the sidewalks. We visit, we mingle, we admire one anothers works and just have an overall good time. Tonight begins a new venture, however, The Underground Gallery & Art Studio has its offical opening tonight. AND to make it even cooler? My HB is the solo opening artist. *claps* YAY Jennifer!

I will have a few things up in the Gallery as I rented a little loft space as did Alix. I get to hang some stuff today and I'm pretty excited. I will also have a few things out on the sidewalk as well :) I need to get my camera stuff out, I want to take lots of pics of it all, maybe make a scrapbook page for every month, might be kinda cool... the start of the beginning of...??? I'm not sure exactly but it is what it is and I look forward to it.

So if you don't have anything to do come visit us at 1525 19th Street, we'll be around somewhere... see you there!

Story of 4 whittle kittenbabies.

Well this is common year after year. Mama kittie at work has kittens, I take them and find them homes. This year isn't any different but in one way... we have 4 kittenbabies. Usually I get 1 or 2. We found 2 last Friday and then yesterday I was in the billing office and heard another one and by one, I guess I meant 2. So we have 2 girls and 2 boys. Plus our Ashling makes a very full 2 bedroom apartment. Alix is loving it... well she was loving the 2 but 4 may take its toll if we don't find some relief soon. I will get a full family shot soon.

They're a bunch of cuties, that's for sure.

Yep that makes 3 but wait underneath is another one for a total of 4 baby kittens.

Oh yeah its spring again... this is little brother (right) and little sister (left). Oh geez.

Work, work and not so much work!

Very exciting but I'm almost all done with my work. I should finish tomorrow for the MONTH! Oh yeah, you read that right, I'll finish with 4 days to spare. I rock a little bit. :) Alright, stop distracting me, I have work to finish!

This is what happens when a clown hits a cop car...

Really? They had to put caution tape around the clown.

Who knew? oh she did.

So yesterday was pretty rough for me. I woke up with some not so good pains in my body, I was so very tired. I didn't sleep well at all and any sleep I did get found me in nightmare status. So I was pouty, tired and VERY undecisive. I don't like feeling this way but once in awhile, everyone gets like this. Poor Alix, she had no idea what hit and I was in full Narny Mode.

I just tried to sit on the couch and zone out, it's my best defense. I wanted to go to bed at 6:15pm. We ended up at the store because I couldn't decide on food, it was pretty funny now that I look back at it.

But the really interesting part? Alix made the most accurate description of why I was so "down." The night before we had some friends over for an "Art Day" because there is a show coming up called Fragments (hence the pic of the 2 pieces below). We all stayed up late painting, coloring and just overall creating. It was quite an "artistic high" and a really awesome time. I had trouble going to sleep and definitely staying a sleep. So yesterday was the result of me coming down off the art high.

Made perfect sense and I hadn't even gotten that far in my thinking. Truly amazing how much that girl gets me... I'm 10 times luckier for it and love it so much. :)

Fragment Art by me :)

Courtney
Qrt
Qrtknee
Ginger

This is one person and the same. She is a super fabulous girl and now that she is in my life, I can't imagine her not in it. A very cool girl with a lot to offer the world, I'm lucky she stepped onto my path in life as my friend. *waves* Hi Friend, I made this just for you because I know you need to smile at this very moment.

Last night we were at Color Me Mine, a typical Saturday night for the girls and I was informed that my good friend Courtney does in fact read my blog, hoping to "make the cut" so to speak. So I thought I should write this and dedicate it all to her.

Hope it's everything you hoped and dreamed Qrt :)

In this edition:

*Pitching Lessons
*Suprise for Dinner
*Geocaching

So Monday was my first official paid pitching lesson. My boss gave my number to a guy who wanted to get his daughter some lessons. So I pull up to the house and WOW. It's ginormous. I notice on the back of his truck he has a Root Beer King sticker on it. MMmm, I love me some RBK. Sadly, it is all the way on the other side of town so I tend to forget about it.

Anyway, I walk in and see one of the tallest 10 yr. olds since my God-Daughter. Very nice family. So she starts to throw. Thankfully her bad habits aren't the worst habits one can have. So I watch her for a few pitches before I start to interject. Her foot is by far the worst but with constant reminders, it's fairly simple to fix. Dad was enjoying the way she was focusing while I was there. She is tall and lengthy and that definitely works to her advantage. She throws pretty hard and fairly accurate for not having an "real" training.

Dad seems happy, she seemed to enjoy it and dad would like me twice a week for awhile. YAY! I like her she seems pretty quiet and shy but I'm hoping to bring it out of her.

Lesson #2
Wednesday was the 2nd meeting and I got to hear how she pitched the day before in her game. She hit a batter, walked some girls AND THEN struck out 3 :) woohoo She also got hit by the other pitcher but I told her that was how life worked sometimes, you get hit and you hit people that's how the world stays fair. She laughed at that and said, "yeah that makes sense I guess." Fun kid, I like her and can't wait to see how she evolves in the next couple of weeks. The creme de la creme was the way she ended the lesson... I told her, "okay last pitch, if you have your foot turned, finish with your hand up and throw a strike." So the next pitch... was her last pitch. Okay I was impressed usually it takes at least 5, she did it right on call. NICE!

Dad has requested me for 2 days again next week. I am A-OKAY with that and right now the money definitely is big help and super appreciated. It's nice to do something you love and make money doing it.

*sidebar: so when I walked in for the 2nd lesson, I noticed the menus on the table. HE does own Root Beer King! Very cool :)

So in talking with my boss about yummy food, we tend to do this a lot at work, he happened to mention that he ate at a Checkers the night before by his house! WELL HELLO! The girl loves Ralley's/Checkers and I almost exploded with excitement at the idea of being able to take her there. Since we were geocaching in the park that evening I thought grabbing some Checkers and eating at the park would be nice, then we could walk off dinner :) So we headed across town and I saw it first and then she saw it and got all giddy like a little kid. We decided to get 2 meals and split them so we could have a little variety. The fries, as always, rocked and we happily ate our food at the park. YAY for suprises!

So the girl decided she wanted to find some geocaches and since the evenings have been so nice we decided to go out Tuesday night and find a few. She got the GPS working on the Big Rig finally, loaded it up and I printed out a few sheets from work and off we went to Riverwalk after finishing our super yummy dinner. So I thought it best to head toward one I have already found so I could help lead her. It can be tough when you have no idea what you're looking for. She looked around and got really close but she looked at me with a sad face and said, "I can't find it." So I had sat down to make sure it was still there and I couldn't see it anymore from the first time I had found it. She had bent down at one point and should have looked right at it and didn't see it. So when she had given up, I walked over and put my hand where it should have been and pulled it out. She said, "I LOOKED there!" It was hidden by some bars where she just happened to bend down but at least now she got the idea. So we logged it and moved on to the next one.

We got fairly close and I had a pretty good idea based on the title and she was catching on really fast and saw it from where we were standing. Logged it and moved on. She found the next 2 as well. She liked it and was having fun but we were all done. I'm glad she enjoys it like I do. So we got home and she even logged them and moved the geocoin around. I love how fast she catches on to things. We'll probably go out again this weekend for a bit.

So that's the past 3 days basically... good times, good times. There was also a game of Ticket to Ride Europe in there with our friend Denise on Monday night. She rocked that game too. Tonight is Pirates Cove :)

Tax Day - Already?

So I guess I should file my state tax now. Afterall, today is tax day. I want my $36.00 and it won't appear out of no where. I kept forgetting to file the state tax and so today at lunch I did it. I filed my federal back in February electronically and it was free. However, if I wanted to file state it was going to cost me $30.00... so you can see why I didn't pay to do it. So now in 6-8 weeks we'll get a nice $36.00 surprise in the bank :) *waves little flag* YAY

What we finished from the: "List o' things to do."

So here is how our weekend went and what we accomplished:

*Finished the apartment. YAY (well as much as we could until we get to IKEA) :)
*Oops, where is that PDA again?
*Shipped the coins! And made a little bank :)
*Definitely added more items. YAY
*Came up with questions, ideas and met to see what June7th has in store for us.
*Got the bag together... but not till lunch on Monday.
*Laundry-check
*Nun Chucks-check
*Pineapple upside down cake AJ style-check (mmm it was very tastey)
*Sadly no Lego Ass Kicking
*No time to cache either :(

So not too bad, didn't get to 4 of the items listed but 2 of them were funzie type stuff so we did pretty good. Spent a lot of time getting organized, looking around online and marveling at how much people will spend on Ebay. Overall it was another great weekend and its nice not having to spend it in airports or with countdowns anymore. There was a part of me that thought I might miss that but HELLS NO! Having her here is way better than even I imagined. I am one lucky girl. :)

List o' things to do.

I have a lot to do over the next couple of days so I want to make a list. So for this entry, you get to see what I'm going to accomplish.

*Finish the apartment - that madness has got to get done now.
*Update my PDA - time to get reorganized again
*Ship Ebay items sold - YAY
*Add more items to be sold - YAY
*Come up with list of questions for the "Nessa Project"
*Get a bag together for pitching lessons
*Laundry
*Get Nun Chucks
*Make the pineapple upside cake AJ Style
*Kick some Star Wars Lego Ass!
*Geocache! YAY for treasure hunting.

K... good for now. We'll see mom and dad too and who knows what else, maybe Color Me Mine it? The world is our oyster :)

Let the Lessons Begin

So I'm beginning a new venture in life: private pitching lessons. I'm pretty excited and nervous all at the same time. My phone rang last night about 8:30pm and it was a dad who got my number from my boss inquiring about lessons. Um.. okay sure. So we discussed it and I will be giving my first paid lesson next Wednesday. Cool. I also have a D.A. who is interested in getting his daughter started as well... oh la la.

After I got off the phone I told Alix that I was going to do my best to keep Mondays and Fridays free because that makes it tough to vacation and these can be life commitments. Not 30 minutes later and my phone rings again, he asks very nicely if there is any way I can stop by Monday to look at her before her game on Tuesday... alright. I'm not very good at saying no, ask Alix.

Okay, so after this, I'm going to try really, really, really, really, REALLY hard to not schedule on Mondays... no really I mean it. We're not going on vacation this weekend so I got a free pass. :)

Beef-a-Roni Flavored Zipper

Now you may think there is some weird story behind the above title but it is what it is. I was eating beef-a-roni at work and you know how you always try to hurry and get the spoon in your mouth before it drips on your shirt? Well I did that very thing and instead of getting a stain on my zipper hoodie it landed right on the zipper. No stain, no running to the bathroom to soak my shirt. Just got a napkin and wiped it right off the metal.

I felt this was blogworthy simply because that's a one in a million shot and I found it funny.

Ash had a hard morning of playing and decided to take a nap with Picachu and Piplup.

Judgey McJudgerton

A word that can be just as bad as an "F" bomb depending on who's being called upon or "judged" as the case may be. I'll be the first one to admit some of my actions weren't the brightest of sorts but I learned from them and really life is about lessons and oh what a lesson it was. But when it really came down to it, I handled my business and moved on from there. I made me disect myself and really look at where I had been but more importantly where I wanted to go and what I needed to do to get there.

Now I never expected everyone to agree or understand what I did but when it comes down to it, I'm the one who has to look at myself every morning and I didn't like what I saw anymore. A lot of people made judgments about me and that's okay. Even my ex was the judge, jury and executioner and I don't blame her at all. Emotional pain is way worse than physical pain and anyone who says otherwise is a liar liar pants on fire. I've come a long way in the past months and I love the way life is leading me or maybe I'm leading my life, either way, it's what I've always wanted, I just didn't know it before.

So without too much blah blah blah's of boring details a couple things happened in the past 2 days. One of which I never expected but regardless was very nice to hear. My ex forgave me and finally understands what I was going through and why I needed to move on without her. Her actual words, I never asked for it or prompted or EVER expected that to happen but it did. We've known each other since I was 12/she was 11 and now 19 years later here we are. I'm not exactly sure where "that" is but it is what it is and I never need an answer to a question or a statement because at some point it will or won't present itself and I'm okay with whichever way the universe directs me.

The second thing was she came to me for help because with so many years shelved, I know her. She gets so lost sometimes and when she gets lost in the unknown, that is hard for her to handle because she is a scentific thinker and needs clear cut answers. I always tried to explain the "other side" of the world to try to evolve her thinking but ultimately that is our biggest difference. She just needed a starting point and was hoping I could help her. I see her coming to me like an old friend and nothing more... it was nice, well not that she is so lost right now but you know what I mean.

She said, "I finally understand what you were going through." She said a lot of other really nice things. I don't think I deserve or am entitled to them but at least she sees so much of what I was lacking, wanting and needing.

I hope she takes today to really look around and enjoy a leaf for what it is, a thing of beauty and growth from our own mother nature and not the science of it or what its latin name is... if you pull what you know and release all of it to let all the things of new enter, you just enlightened, not only your mind, but your soul and not many people get to experience that in life.

I do not admire what she is about to go through. I will admire how she comes out in the end. My advice to her was to dig in as deep as possible and then work upwards. You have to or you'll never be ready to move ahead positively. I got to some really deep, darke points but I knew I needed to. I wanted to get as rock bottom as possible. I needed to look at every part of me and fix what I didn't like so I could really be me... a silly, serious, fun, loud, quiet, wiggly, social, smiley, artistic, creative girl who just wants to experience life. Not so much planning, not so by the book, not on a calendar, just the old "fly by night" girl I used to be.
I'm lucky for what I have and I appreciate every bit of it...


So the moral of this blog is be careful who you judge or make such a rash decision about. You could very well find yourself in that very same predicament down the line and if you've alienated everyone you know because of your "judging" ways, who are you going to turn to for help?

These are funny measuring spoons... I want them.