Not a passing fad!

I promise, posting is not a fad I was into that has now passed! This laptop thing is just really throwing me off my posting game! (and, no, I'm not even going to link back to the laptop story, because I am so. darn. mad. about. the. whole. thing.)

Thanksgiving was great at the convent, as always. There were 18 of us this year, including my in-laws who flew in from Pittsburgh. We picked them up at the airport then the four of us headed to the Villa to visit Grandmom.

Unfortunately, Grandmom wasn't feeling well at all. We only stayed about 15 minutes to visit with her.

Then off to the convent, immediately digging into all the goodies Aunt Jo had put out for us. It wasn't long until the other Aunts and Uncles and cousins started joining us (including 92 year old Aunt Mary... 92! And when I asked her what she wanted to drink, she said, "A little of whatever you've got." And I said, "We have a lot, why don't you give me a suggestion?" and she said, "Oh, some wine would be nice." LOVED IT!)

Great visiting, great food. But my favorite part came while everyone was cleaning up and my three year old niece, Samantha, wanted to explore the convent. Having pretty much grown up around convents (a lot of holidays like Thanksgiving, vacationing at the beach, and even spending weeks of my summer at another Aunt's convent when I was in junior high), I knew that this was essentially a right of passage for Samantha.

I mean, convents are big. And dark. And creaky.

Very, very scary.

So she wanted to see what was up the big stairs. I took her by the hand, and - being girls - we tiptoed up the stairs to the second floor. Then tiptoed down the second floor, peaking in each room, whispering, stopping to listen, tiptoeing some more.

To... another set of stairs! Up that one, too! And there was a front and a back set of stairs, so then it was up one, down another, back up that one, and down the first!

We even found a cubby on a sort-of fourth floor, where we sat in the almost darkness and whispered, just for the sake of whispering!

She was so fascinated by all the doors, and being so brave to push them open into the darkness! It definitely was my favorite part of the day!

Squished

Not sure if you can tell from these pictures, but this is a staton wagon with THREE golden retrievers in the back. They are all squished together, with their bums back against the back window. They can't move around, and are just swaying into each other!
Happy Tanksgiving!

A full week!

Thanks, Vi, for the kick in the pants.

I can't believe it's been a full week since I last posted. The reason is mainly because of the previously-mentioned dropped laptop. Took it to one computer repair shop, and they got it to turn on. With some help, I even got some documents retrieved off of it.

But then it stopped working again.

So I took it to a new repair shop. And even though I told them I dropped it, and it made a clicking noise, they thought perhaps it was a software problem. This sounded ludicrous to me, but they are the experts, and low and behold, when I got to their shop, they had it working again.

Until I took it home, turned it off, and... wait for it... it wouldn't turn on again.

So now it's back at that repair shop, with instructions for them to, at a minimum, get all the documents off the hard drive and save them externally. They are looking at the hard drive again, insisting that they ran tests and it's fine. But I think I'm going to tell them to swap the hard drive regardless of what their diagnostic tests say. At this point, it's new hard drive or new computer.

Sigh.

I never quite realized how much I used my laptop. I'm an early bird, so I'm in the office by 7:30 a.m. each morning. This generally means I burn out and need a break by 4:30 p.m. I usually leave, go work out, make and clean up from dinner, then sit down for at least another hour doing work and personal e-mails or Web surfing or posting.

We have a computer at home, but it's in the Man Room (silly if you thought this was a shared office!), so Mike's on it most of the time. Especially now that the first part of the CPA exam is tomorrow.

Which just leaves the time I'm in the office. And, goodness, I would never use work time for personal things like posting or searching the Web! (oh, please! I just said I checked work e-mail at home, right?)

No, the real thing holding me back is that I'm now borrowing a colleague's laptop. And these things have cookies, you know! And not of the Oreo variety! Plus, it's just been an unusually busy week for this time of year.

All of that to say... sorry I haven't posted!

(And here you all thought it was maybe because I had actually turned 30 and maybe forgot how to use this Internet thing!)

I drove myself down to Raleigh last Friday to spend the weekend with Terry's and Tim's families. I figured I had already subjected all my friends to celebrating my birthday, and Mike was in hard-core study mode for the CPA test. So why not take myself down to Raleigh, where:
1. No one had yet celebrated my birthday
and
2. I would walk into an already-existing celebration - my brother's!

Hey, Terry's used to me stealing his birthdays. Been doin' it for 30 years now!

I spent the last night of my twenties with an 8 year old, 6 year old, 4 year old, 2.5 year old, and 1.5 year old. Didn't even pack my going-out jeans!

I had a blast seeing all the kids. This is a big "duh" statement, but it was amazing the difference in quality of the time I got to spend with them this weekend instead of in the summer at the beach (see here, here, here and many other posts around those!). In the summer I was one of a bunch of adults, and none of the adults were nearly as exciting as cousins or even babysitters.

But last weekend, I was IT. And we all know how much I love being the center of attention!

Okay, that's enough rambling for the kick in the pants to post. I have more stories from this past weekend, but really do need to get back to work now!

Laptop

I am once again without a laptop.

I may or may not have... um... dropped it on the kitchen table.

But only, like, 8 inches! I swear! (In fact, the guy at the repair shop turned it all around and said, "I can't even tell which side you dropped it on." It was that light of a drop!)

Low and behold, though, laptops are not meant to be dropped, even 8 inches.

It's still going through some diagnostic tests, and I am not-so-patiently waiting to hear the damage.

I hate being without my laptop! It's got all my STUFF on it! It's got my favorite Web sites, my passwords, my music, my pictures!

Am I getting any sympathy here? Or are you so-called "friends" going to admonish me for dropping a brand, spankin' new laptop?

Because - sigh - I'm doing that enough for all of us.

:-(

Try to top this party!

There is no way the actual day that I turn 30 can top this past Saturday! What an incredible, incredible blast I had!

The party really started weeks ago, with many of you indulging my talking and talking and talking about it. Then last week with the blind wine tasting. Friday night I'm sure I bored Debbie and Keith to death over dinner. And those two also got the worst of it trying to distract me while the caterers were setting up and I was waiting for all the guests!

But I'll only bore YOU with an almost minute by minute of Saturday!

In the spirit of my "Not Too Early For Me" friends, I wanted to start the celebration with a birthday athletic event. So I signed Keith and I (poor Keith) up for a 10K on the Quantico Marine Corps Base.

We ran it in 55 minutes and four seconds, and our pace never went above an 8 minute 59 second mile! I think the average pace was just around 8 minutes and 43 seconds a mile.

Here's us after the race:


Home, gathered up Debbie and Melissa and we went for some primping. Nails, hair, and lots of Twilight talk (okay, okay, so Melissa has read Twilight!).

Meanwhile, Mike and Keith moved some furniture in preparation for the party (let's not anyone dwell on how much I felt like I was ordering Debbie and Keith around this weekend!). Not much later, the caterers arrived!

This was the nail-biting part when I was bouncing off the walls with nothing to do but sit and wait! In the meantime, the caterers got the house party-ready:

And the festivities began!

Me and Melissa

The food spread

Mike giving a party toast

Me and Kristi

Me, Debbie and Keith

The party was everything I wanted it to be! Just perfect! All our closest friends were able to join us, and my sister in law Kelly was even able to be there! The caterers were out of this world - so attentive and friendly and full of personality. The food was incredible, and the wine flowed and flowed and flowed!

The party ended around 11:45 p.m. or so, and the after-party began:

I don't remember the last time I saw 3 a.m., and heaven knows I don't remember much of what happened between midnight and stumbling to bed! I did open a few presents that our friends had brought, including this perfect jogging shirt from Jenelle:

There are a lot more photos in a slide show to the right of this post, so check them all out! Please comment if you were there!

Up (with a hang over!) by about 8:30 a.m., breakfast for everyone that stayed over, lots of rehashing our favorite parts! I am so, so incredibly happy with how the party turned out! It's exactly what I wanted!

This 30-thing is great!

Par-tay!

Oh, what a party!

I can only turn 30 once, because I'm not sure I can handle another party like that!

Much more tomorrow, when I can upload the photos, and see straight!

Hot teenage vampires

Lest you think there is a cultural phenomenon out there that I'm not following, it's about time I wrote a Twilight post.

I'm not sure I can compose an original post about an adult female's unnatural obsession with teenage vampire love stories (afterall, I couldn't do it better than this one ). But since even Melissa got into the game with a Twilight post today (and I'm going to make the bet she hasn't even read the books!), I thought it about time for me.


I was introduced to the series earlier this summer (so, yes, a bit late, but still before the movie!) (OMG. OMG, OMG, OMG. I haven't actually watched the trailer until just now when I went looking for that link. Just watch the trailer. Then you'll so totally get it.).


I read (or, more accurately, listened to on CD) the four books in quick succession. I'm actually almost done with the last one. Unbeknownst to me, I gave the disks back to Debbie without copying the last disk! Surely the books couldn't end in the middle of a HUGE standoff between good and evil!?!?!

The story is about a normal teenage girl, Bella, who falls in love with a "vegetarian" vampire, Edward (he doesn't drink human blood, just animal blood). Danger and love and lust and disaster ensue.


Add in that Bella's best friend also happens to be a warewolf (the sworn ememies of vampires, natch) and the fact that he is madly in love with Bella himself, and, well, it's just D.R.A.M.A.


I am uploading the elusive last disk right now to my computer and then ipod. I may or may not get any work done today because I may or may not decide that instead of doing any editing or expense reports or writing, I'm going to close my eyes, turn on the CD and dream about sweet, sensitive and oh-so-manly Edward. (Sigh)

Pre-partying

Saturday night gave a whole new meaning to pre-partying!

(Thank goodness Sarah doesn't read this blog, because I used that joke about, oh, six times on Saturday. I don't think it got better with age.)

That afternoon, Mike and I went to Total Wine and Beverage to buy the wine for the party next Saturday. I thought we had already made the decision on what white and red to buy, but then when we got to the store, Mike changed his mind. We roamed for a while, debating this one or that one, or this one or that one.

We thought we'd settled again, and when we asked for help to get cases down from the shelves, the helpful salesman recommended another of each varietal we might want to try.

This put Mike in even less certainty about our (now second) choices.

So we left the three cases of wine at the store, and instead bought five bottles. We decided we'd take them home and taste them that night, then decide which was our favorites.

Of course, with five bottles of wine to drink, we couldn't do the tasting all on our own! We called Sarah, Gregg, David and Lauren, and being the true friends that they are, they agreed to come over and help us out in our time of need.

And me being me, we couldn't just give tastes and make a decision. Oh, no. We needed blind tasting.

Sarah even suggested taking notes, a great idea to use the "Tasting Notes" booklet Debbie sent! We went through all the wines, then went through them again, then back and forth to keep tasting 3 against 1, and 4 against 5.

It was a large amount to drink between the five of us (Gregg was the smart one and didn't partake). We started talking loud, moving from room to room, telling the same jokes over and over... what a blast!

We even got the "I'm really, really smart" complex thanks to the wine. Here's Mike describing to David how to read the grape varietal by the color.

The night's damage:

We did some roll-playing after Mike dropped the bomb that he was considering purchasing a handgun (everyone feel free to bring this up and talk him out of it), all in retaliation for me admitting that I had actually already seen Ratatouli without him.

Gregg suggested he consider a taser instead, then worked the angle that as a form of house protection, the gun doesn't cut it. This I thought was great, until he said that instead, a knife would do.

Here's Gregg showing David that he can run at him with a knife faster than David could pull a gun.

After getting the boys back into the kitchen, we took votes on all the wines, read our intellegible commentary, and finally had some winners!

The best part is that the white wine selected has something really cool about it: it's actually the house white at The Inn at Little Washington.

Party time has officially started!

It's my party...

After much fuss and discussion and complaining, I've got the birthday party planned!

(And even though this is very, very much a joint birthday party, let's just say, for the sake of ease in writing, that it's MY birthday party. Really, it means nothing. Clearly this is a birthday party for both of us - even though only one of us wants it - and both our opinions counted equally in the matter. Really.)

The party is at the house next week, and we did scale back from the full-on, invite all our relatives from afar idea that we had in the summer. (Sorry family. We'll see you at Thanksgiving and Christmas!) (Of course, you're all more than welcome. It just changed shape a bunch, so I didn't think you'd want to make the trip!)

So, at the house. I'll take full responsibility for the pouting, which led to the hiring of a caterer. About that, I'm psyched! As you all know, I tend to be a bit, um, well, obsessive.

And as much as I'd like to say that I would be calm and relaxed and cool and collected, I'd really just be worrying about whether anyone needed drinks, or if there was enough food, or whether people were eating, and goodness this is a lot of clean up...

It's going to be fabulous, and I am quite looking forward to it...to say the very least!

Vi's visit, part II

Vi was back to visit last night, with boyfriend Robin in tow. Robin lives in Australia (where he's originally from) now, but they met when he spent a few months in Indonesia.

We had a great time last night, never getting tired of Robin's descriptions of what's different about America. Like the food - huge portions, Cracker Barrel considering "potatoes" to be the vegetable, and did I mention the huge portions?

They are touring DC today, and I hope to join them either this afternoon or tomorrow. Then to a Wizards game tomorrow night (Robin's first professional basketball game). I'm so excited that I've gotten to see so much of Vi!

Things a girl should know

Did you know that a full bed and a double bed are not actually the same thing?

I didn't.

Oops.

A little over a week ago I got into a tizzy over the sheets and comforters on the beds in the two guest bedrooms. For a long, long time I've wanted to repaint and really decorate these rooms. But for one reason or another, we just keep putting it off. So they have egg shell walls and mismatched lamps and pictures from college, and basically don't look like a grown up's house.

Add insult to injury, and I noticed when Vi stayed last that the sun had bleached a section of the comforter in our main guest bedroom.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Something needed to be done immediately. Forget waiting until Mike finally lets me redo the rooms. This demanded action. Even of the "buy it without telling him about it" kind. We're talking emergency here - lots of visitors in the upcoming month, all of whom I desperately want to impress. (and would impress, should I be able to redecorate the rooms, but I'll settle for new sheets and bedspreads)

That night I went to Macys on a mission to buy. Just buy. No comparison shopping, no seeing if other stores had different designs. I was leaving Macys with new sheets.

And while I was at it, the top floor guest bedroom had on it a just-awful set of sheets. Old, old, old. Don't even get me started on how atrocious that room is. It's easier to put out of my mind because I barely ever go on that floor, expect when I need to get a suit case out of the attic.

Ok, so that's actually, like, every other week. But still.

On the shopping trip I'm quite sucessful and walk out of Macys with two beds-in-a-bag. Not the best things in the world because I'm still holding out hope on the redo and I don't want to be boxed into designing around these. I imagined these beds-in-a-bag as more like a bandaid than surgery. A temporary fix.

Washed sheets for what seemed like two days straight. Needed to cave and ask Mike's help getting the bed skirts on, but he was surprisingly supportive of the change. (He did, of course, want to keep the old sets, "just in case," but I just raised and eyebrow and dumped them in the trash.)

Last night I tackeled setting up the top floor's bed, and discovered that I had bought a bed-in-a-bag for a "full" bed.

And that, evidently, I have a "double" bed.

There's a difference? I don't remember this. I don't remember having to care that much when I bought these sheets after college to put on the bed in the first place.

But, alas, they don't fit.

And of course I had already thrown away the "bag" of "bed-in-a-bag" (I needed something to put the old sheets in, afterall!) and washed everything. And cut the tags off the shams.

Oops.

Lesson #1 - when buying new sheets check they fit the bed before throwing them in the laundry.

The good news is, this was a super inexpensive bed-in-a-bag, on discontinued sale and such. So it wasn't a huge waste. And I can salvage the comforter at least. It's a little small, but it'll work until I can redo the room.

Or until I walk up there a few more times to get a suit case and can't stand it anymore.

Or until Melissa stays in two weeks and says, "Mo. No."

Since I expect the aforementioned (I'm sorry - I know I use this word way too much on this blog! But it just might be my favorite word. Right after heteroscatasticity. But that's a different post.) visitors next week, that means this weekend I'm on a mission to find double sheets that match the new bed spread.

At least the main guest room turned out nice. And in one of those great twists, Vi will be back tonight to stay with us, and will be the first to try them out!

My pumpkins!

Remember the pumpkins I told you about buying a few weeks ago? It seems I'm not the only one who thinks anything pumpkin - bread, soup, muffins, lattes - are delicious.

So do the squirrels in my neighborhood.

While I was in Dallas last week, one or two squirrels decided to help themselves to a little snack.

This big pumpkin was a bit dense, and they had better luck with these little ones:

The pumpkins are on our front landscaping, directly in the line of view of Goldie when she lays by the door and looks out the window (which is, basically, all day while we're at work). The squirrels had been at it for a few days, including over the weekend, when Mike was home to observe them in action.

How'd he know to look out the window when they were there to see them helping themselves to dinner?

Because Goldie, evidently, as going freakin' nuts.

Barking and jumping and generally salivating at the squirrels oh-so-close, yet oh-so-far away.

Mike proceeds to watch this all weekend. He said it happened a number of times.

He tells me this when I get home on Sunday. As we pull up, the aforementioned squirrel was at it. Don't ask me why he didn't remove the pumpkin so that 1.) our neighbors wouldn't think us trashy for having a half-eaten pumpkin in their landscaping or 2.) to save the dog from a heart attack.

In happier news, I got my glass table-top today! Yippee! There was some confusion with the glass company on getting it ordered (we thought they had our credit card to charge, they didn't, we kept asking them to call our cell phones to schedule the molding and then delivery, they kept leaving messages on our home phone asking if they could come that afternoon...). But, it's here now, and it's gorgeous!


And I voted, blah, blah, blah. No need for political discourse here, I like you all too much.

Birthday bike ride

What a day! I've been in Dallas for a few days for work (sorry for not blogging more!). I stayed the weekend to join Barbara, Scott and Keith on Barbara's birthday bike ride. The three of them are big cyclists, and each year on their birthdays they bike their age.

Barbara graciously put off her birthday ride until I would be down for work, so we geared up for it today.

And when I say geared up, I really geared up. Thanks wholly to Debbie and Keith. They rented me a bike and outfitted me for the ride:

I was extremely nervous. The whole reason I fell in with this group is because I'm as unnaturally competitive as each of them are! I'm not a biker, and even though I think I'm in pretty good cardio shape, biking is a whole new set of muscles. I was embarrassed this morning at how nervous I was!

The good news was that the route we were taking was around a lake. Each loop was about 9 miles, so you could really bail out at the car at any point.

But last night, as the five of us shared several bottles of Conundrum, we decided since we were halfway between Barbara's birthday and my birthday, we'd just do MY birthday age - 30 miles.

That made me feel a whole bunch better, although I was still quite nervous this morning!

Can you tell?

The first loop the boys took it easy on us, and we went at a pretty slow (slow for them, manageable for me) pace. My legs and rear were fine (the rear due largely in part to the aforementioned -padded- gear). But my back and arms and hands were feeling it.

We did a quick banana and water break, and then off for the second lap. This time the boys got into a conversation between the two of them, and they were OFF. Barbara fell behind them, and I was WAY behind her. We had also moved from the park path to the road and this new route had a few more hills, and more cars.

I had my first (and thankfully only) bloodshed on this loop. We had to make a few really sharp turns to keep up on the route (we're talking almost 90 degrees here), and during one of them I rode off the sidewalk. Stayed on the bike, though! Rode the grass for a few seconds, then turned to get back up on the sidewalk. That didn't exactly work out the way I expected, one foot came off the pedals, and I almost spilled completely off.

I have no idea how I actually stayed on the bike, but I did! Banged my right leg against the pedal, and scratched it a little, but not bad at all.

Okay, it actually was a little worse than this picture implies. (At least, as bad as it needs to be to get your sympathy.)

In the process of my almost-fall, Keith was riding behind me and saw the whole thing. Since he's a cyclist, he has the special shoes that clip into his pedals. He saw me almost fall, and started to unclip his shoes to jump off because he was sure I was headed to the ground. Of course in that process, he almost fell off his bike, too.

Finished the second lap, and against my better judgement, I started the third.

There were a few points along that third lap that I really didn't think I'd finish! There may or may not have been several screamed f-bombs (Totally warranted - Keith and I went up this big hill, and I struggled so much. On the way down, a car passed us, and as we were starting to enjoy the downhill momentum, the car STOPS as it approaches a stop sign. Another car was coming in the opposite direction, so from our speeding down the hill we had to come to almost a complete stop.)

This is also the point at which I may or may not have become a little bit, um, cranky. I was unsteady on the bike, and couldn't fathom that others may not be. So when Scott and Keith thought it perfectly acceptable to ride really close side-by-side to talk, I really, really didn't want them to. So, I, well, told them. Quite loudly. And repeatedly.

But we finally finished the 30! There was no way I could have done another lap! The backside was still okay, but my back and shoulders and arms and oh my goodness. It's not natural to be on a bike that long!

Do we look exhausted?

And since we burned, like, 4,500 calories, I'm sure, we headed to an old haunt of Scott and Keith's - Barbec's diner. Where I indulged in an egg and bacon and cheese quesadilla, plus Barbec's "famous" beer biscuits. It just might have been the best meal of my life.

Back to the hotel, and a nap.

Maybe tomorrow after the soreness starts to lessen, I'll remember why I'm friends with these people.