Happy Halloween!

Halloween has been pretty fun this year. Yesterday for our mutual activity at church we had a Halloween party. It was really fun. The adults got way more into the dressing up than the youth. We had pizza and candy and lots of games. I dressed up as Judge Judy and Angelo was a pirate. Tonight we just stayed home and watched Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi channel. It's awesome. It's about real ghost hunters that go to haunted places and try to record the paranormal activity in the place. It was really creepy. We got totally into it! We'll see if we sleep tonight. The cats had a great night too. We're sick people.

Halloween Party with the Youth

One of those tag things for Camilla

What I was doing ten years ago:
I was a freshman at BYU. I lived in T Hall at Deseret Towers and was generally wreaking havoc in the dorms. My roommate and I were pretty popular because we both had computers and also had a little TV in our room. We made lots of friends. :) We did lots of crazy things and had a lot of fun that year. I also had a boyfriend back in San Diego who was investigating the Church. He got baptized in January (4 years later we got married!) I came home that Halloween to hang out with said boyfriend. We went to a haunted house down at the church on Halloween. I actually was doing pretty well in school this first semester at college. I was taking all kinds of different classes because I had no idea what I wanted to do. I loved BYU and have so many fond memories of that place.

What I was doing five years ago:
I had been married for a year and had just quite my crappy job and was looking for another one. During my time in between jobs I redecorated and repainted a bunch of rooms in my house. I don't know how I afforded that! You gotta love IKEA and Trading Spaces. In November I started my job as the receptionist for the San Diego Film Commission. Two years after that I got promoted to Director of Administration and have been doing that for almost 3 years now! That is weird. Time has flown by.

What I was doing a year ago:
We had just gotten back from our trip to Italy where we got to visit some of Angelo's family and see all kinds of great stuff. We also had just adopted a little kitten who we named Otto. I also went to my first Stampin' Up party at Jen's house and that's when all the scrapbooking chaos began!

Five places I'd rather be:
1. I'm pretty happy where I am.
2. The green hills of Ireland.
3. Florence, Italy.
4. Relaxing on a beach in Hawaii.
5. Asleep in my bed. I love to sleep.

What would I do with 100 million dollars:
1. Buy a house that has a really nice whirlpool tub in the master bathroom.
2. Take all my family on a trip.
3. Take a trip by myself to recover from the trip with my family. :)
4. Buy everyone a house or car or something that they'd want.
5. Give $100 bills to random people on the street.

Favorite 5 shows:
1. The Office
2. America's Next Top Model
3. Grey's Anatomy
4. Survivor
5. I love all the CSI shows. If they had CSI: Barstow I would probably watch it.

My 5 favorite snacks:
1. Fruit leather
2. Apples
3. Nuts
4. Chocolate covered nuts
5. Chips (but I don't eat them very often because I can't stop once I start.)

Five people to tag:
All those to the right under "favorite blogs."

Good Morning Body Slam

Thursday night I fell asleep on the couch after scrapbook night. Instead of waking up to an alarm the next morning I awoke to a cat slamming into my face. I was fast asleep when suddenly my face was met with the side of my cat's body at full running velocity. My cats were chasing one another and unfortunately I was laying on the race track. Otto was racing across the couch and used my body for traction and my face as a traffic barrier. Have you ever been kicked in face with a soccer ball? Well that's also what it feels like to have a cat slam into your face. He apparently slammed sideways on to my face and then leaped over the couch to continue running. I woke up screaming. I ended up with a bruise over my left eye and a tiny scratch on my right eyelid. I also got some scratches on my chest and ankle. After the initial shock it was actually quite funny. I keep visualizing it (since I didn't see any of it, only felt it) and it keeps making me laugh. It is apparently much safer to sleep in a bed then on the couch at my house.
Can't we all share the couch? It is for sitting and sleeping - not racing!

Fun with grocery receipts

Doesn't this receipt tell a great story? It is from last Monday...
That's right milk and anti-diarrhea medicine. Isn't that glorious? So as San Diego County was burning down around us I had developed some sort of mean flu bug. The bug came on fast and all the fluid in my body left even faster. It was coming out both ends. (How can any other sentence say so much in so few words?) My backside had turned into a faucet. (Ok, maybe that one says a little more than the previous.) Anyway, Angelo went to the store and got those two precious items because we weren't sure if my illness had been caused by bad milk and I was in need of some medicine STAT! Isn't it embarrassing when you throw your one or two items on the grocery store conveyor belt and you know the checker is judging you? It's always bad when you have to run to the store for emergency goods. I usually feel like I have to buy some sort of token item just to try to disguise the embarrassing item on the conveyor belt. Last time I had to run to the store for emergency medicine I had to get some Gas-X and I think I grabbed some salad dressing just so the trip didn't feel like it was made in vain. I mean you can't just buy Gas-X on it's own - besides who does enjoy a nice salad after the gas has passed?

Happy Birthday Locksley

So many birthdays this month! Today was my nephew Locksley's birthday! Actually to him it was yesterday because right now he is living in Dubai and it is actually tomorrow for him when it is today for us - get it? Anyway, he turned 12! He is a cutie pie!

He loves skateboarding.
We miss you Locksley and we love you! Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my big brother Jim!

So today is my brother Jim's birthday! Instead of eating cake like any normal person would be doing he is out fighting the San Diego fires! He is an engineer for the San Diego Fire Department. Both my dad and grandpa are retired San Diego firefighters also. I guess he doesn't need no stinkin' candles, he's got honest to goodness flames for his birthday! I'm sure this was a birthday he won't soon forget. He is a wonderful brother. He was a teenager by the time I was born but I still have lots of fond memories with him. Like the time he told me that he had brought a great white shark home from work and put in our pool. (This was after he had taken me and little sister to see one of the Jaws movies of course.) At the time he worked at the Sea World Marina so this was completely plausible to a seven year old child. I don't think I ever went in our pool again without checking thoroughly for sharks. (I am 28 and still check. I'm scarred for life.) Or how about the time he told me that he could magically make me two dollars out of my one dollar bill? When I gave my dollar to him he ripped it in half and then gave me back the two pieces. (I think I was like six or something so I immediately burst into tears so to quiet me down I think I really did get two "new" dollars.) Or how about what he did for me at my wedding...

He bleached his hair blond so that everyone could tell he was my brother. Isn't that sweet?


Here he is at our reception as Billy Bob. (The billy bob teeth got around quite a bit actually.)

In all seriousness though he has been a wonderful brother. It is pretty cool having a brother that will take you to Disneyland for your birthday or just down to the 7-11 for slurpees and twizzlers. I don't think I would have been the same without ya! We love you!

Trash Digger

So in all the mayhem of cleaning out our junk I have misplaced a big check that I never took to the bank. I just remembered this last night and feverishly began tearing through stuff to try and find it. Unfortunately, there are not very many paper stacks anymore! So I am looking everywhere. Today after church I had to go through our recycling bin just in case it got tossed out with all the papers I have thrown out in the last few days. So against my better judgement I am posting a picture of me that Angelo took whilst I was rummaging through the trash. Oh the things one will do for money...
My favorite part about this horrible picture our my "old lady" knee high which I chose not to take off but instead had pushed down to my ankles after church! How attractive! (I woke up too late to shave my legs ok.) By the way I didn't find the check - dang it.

I'm a Keeper.

The last few weeks Angelo and I have been trying to clean out our house. We had a big pile go to the Goodwill last week. One of the problems we have is that we moved into a house that wasn't completely empty (it was Angelo's grandparent's house) and so our stuff had been stack on someone else's stuff. Slowly we have been able to get rid of this other "stuff" but that still leaves our own "stuff" to go through. If I didn't know it before, I know now that I am definitely a keeper. I am not referring to how lucky Angelo is to have me as his wife but as in how I like to hold on to things from the past. At least I am very organized in how I keep this stuff. I am not messy and you wouldn't really know how much stuff I have kept except for if you looked under the beds and in the closets at all the Rubbermaid containers we have that contains this old "stuff." So it's like organized chaos. Over the last two weeks I have gone through about 5 big containers. I had kept about every card anyone has ever given me. I also have a ton of old notes from friends in high school. I had a whole forest's worth of old school papers from elementary school and high school. I also have an ailment called "maybe I can use it someday." When I was a kid I could not get rid of stuffed animals because somehow I thought that animal would think it wasn't important anymore. To this day, I still can throw out any dolls or stuffed animals, I can donate them and let someone else throw them out but I just can't do it. It has been somewhat therapeutic to toss a lot of this stuff. Don't get me wrong, I still have about three tubs that I can't let go of but I have been able to recycle lots of stuff which feels good.

Italy Scrapbook!

So like I said a few posts ago I am so excited to have almost finished my scrapbook from our Italy trip. Here are some of the pages:

These are pictures from our Hotel in Rome.

This is at the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica.

More from St. Peter's.

The Ponte Vecchio in Florence.

The Duomo in Florence. Even when you are standing in front of this place it looks like a painting.

Us in Torino with Angelo's cousins.

We got to visit the coast and swim in the Mediterranean.

Happy Birthday my dear, sweet Angelo!

Today is Angelo's birthday! Yippee! Happy Birthday Angelo! In honor of this momentous day I have written you some birthday haikus:

Birthday Ode to Angelo

It is your birthday

twenty-nine, you are so fine

hunk of burnin' love.

Ode to an Old Angelo

Before you know you'll

be grumpy old man shouting

"Get off my lawn!"

Here is a picture of what his co-workers did to his desk today in honor of his birth:

(Yes, sitting in the chair is a cardboard cut out of Angelo from another event. Notice Cardboard Angelo is missing an arm. Cardboard Angelo is a wild man.)

I love you my Angelo!

Tower of Terror Part III

Ok this is way too good not to share. I just received the following email from our building management:

Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 3:00 PM
To: Building Tenants
Subject: Loud Elevator Noise

Dear Tenants:

After lunch today, there was a loud “boom” noise from the elevators. Just to squash any rumors, here is what happened:

Elevator 5 was being worked on to complete some maintenance for the new modernization. The car went up a few floor and hit a safety barrier, causing the loud noise and a technician to tweak his back. No one was seriously injured and everything is ok.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail or call the management office. Thank you.

Yeah I have a freaking question - why are our elevators so possessed??? See? I am not making this elevator stuff up. I did hear a loud bang but I didn't think it was the elevators. Geez!

Eavesdropping

Cell phones are great. I know sometimes they are annoying when people are talking on them when they are in line or in public but sometimes they provide tons of entertainment to those of us who are just standing around with nothing to do but listen to someone else's asinine (ha-ha!) conversations. Here's a gem that I heard while standing in line at the post office this afternoon.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Are you listening to yourself - say that to yourself so you can hear how dumb that sounds - "I am going on my first pilgrimage to Africa with a tongue ring." Why did you do that? How long have you had that? You're 15 you don't know what you are talking about." (From a 30ish African American woman.)

My favorite word of the week...

This week I have been using the word asinine a lot. (It's been one of those weeks.)

asi·nine
adjective
of or like an ass; esp., having qualities regarded as characteristic of asses; stupid, silly, obstinate, etc.

I think we should use it in a sentence: "That is an asinine idea you moron!"

My Boss

I have the funniest boss in the world. She has lots of "isms" which we appropriately call Cathyisms. She is constantly getting expressions wrong like instead of saying he was like "a bull in a china shop" she'll say, "he was like a bull in a china cabinet." She is always saying funny stuff. Yesterday we got threatened by a high up government employee over a stupid situation. Anyway, when she was telling the staff about this threat (which she knew was an empty threat) she goes, "You shouldn't pull out your gun if you're not going to shoot!" She cracks me up. Here is a picture of me and Cathy from a few years back when I dressed up as her for Halloween. I got the staff to each dress up like her and she was quite surprised. I was "Casual Friday Cathy."

I know it looks like I am killing her with my huge boobs. Here I am at her desk. Everyone was impressed with my impersonation of her.

No wonder my butt's so big...

My boss loves to feed her staff. She brings in sandwiches, donuts, cookies, and tons of other food. So this afternoon this appeared on my desk:

It is the last pie of pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream. I even got the pie tin crumbs! My boss is one of the sweetest people I know but she is making me fat!

Deaf in the left

I had a mild cold this last week which luckily past pretty quickly. The only problem is that my left ear has been plugged up over the last few days and it is really hard to hear. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this. The disadvantages: I have to concentrate really hard whenever anyone is talking to me and I always use the phone on my left ear so I have had to change ears which was weird. I never even noticed that I always use my left ear to use the phone. The advantages: I can't hear my husband telling me to pick up my shoes from the other room and getting to use the phrase, "Come again?" when I didn't hear what someone said.

RIP Kevin Costner

So last night I watched the movie The Guardian. It was about the coast guard and stars Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Costner. What's the deal with freakin' Kevin Costner - he dies in all his movies! Sorry didn't mean to give anything away there because I am sure everyone reading this was just about to watch The Guardian. Well I blew it for you. He dies and becomes a sea ghost at the end! Is Kevin Costner the go to dead guy? I can hear the pitch now: "So I got a great script here, the protagonist dies and all his lines should be delivered in the same monotonous tone. Do you know if Kevin Costner is available?" Kevin Costner dies in 52% of his movies. (Please note that this percentage is not from any statistical data but a random number I pulled out of my head which sounded about right to me.) It isn't ever a surprise when he dies. What would be a surprise is if he actually lived through the whole movie. Notice the movie tagline: "How do you decide who lives or who dies?" You don't have to decide. Kevin Costner is in this movie. He'll die.

Conference and Scrapbooking

This weekend was so awesome! It was General Conference which means I get to watch church on TV! It was such a relaxing weekend. No church responsibilities and we got to hear from the prophet. So cool. I also did a bunch of scrapbooking! My Italy scrapbook is almost finished. I only have 3 more pages to do! It will be 56 page long when I'm done. I was a scrapbooking machine all weekend. I will post some pictures of some of the pages later today. My sweet husband took the camera to work today so I can't do it now.

Smeared again!

So I had the honor of getting another pap smear today! I went in this morning to get the results of my blood test for my physical (which was fine by the way) and I asked how my other pap smear had gone and Nurse Nancy looked for a long time at my chart. That's never good. So she looks up at me and says that the tester couldn't get enough of a cell sample to do the test. She goes, "You want to do another one right now?" Well obviously the answer to that is, "Of course I do!" I woke up this morning thinking, "Gee, what would really make my day? Another pap smear! But I just had one two weeks ago - what are the odds I could get another one of those?" So I got another one. It was kinda funny cause the whole time she was talking smack about the technician who tests the stuff and how he is incompetent and must be bitter because he has to test pap smears all day. I hope I am this lucky all day long!

Happy Birthday Nikki

Today is Nikki's Birthday! She is 15! How did that happen??? She is a great girl and we love her tons! Here she is giving grandpa one of her death grip hugs!

Update: Tower of Terror Part II

So I had to ride the elevator up to the building management office on the 22nd floor today. On the ride up there were some Spanish speaking people in the elevator and as the elevator rushed up to their floor they shouted in Spanish, "Whoa, get me off this demon machine!" (I don't speak Spanish so I can only guess what they were saying but I think I got the jest of it.) On my way back down to 15 the elevator didn't stop and proceeded all the way down to floor 1. So I pushed 15 again and the elevator went flying up to floor 25. (Like Toad's Wild Ride fast!) Then it flew back down and stopped at 16. 16 is good enough for me. I can walk 1 flight of stairs.

Monday, Bloody Monday

So I had to go get some blood drawn today. I normally don't have a problem with blood. The only problem that I have with it is when it is outside the veins, arteries, and body in general. When it is inside the body doing it's job I'm fine with it. In fact I am quite a fan of blood and all the hard work it does. Once it escapes the body in mass quantities I am done. I'm ok with scrapes and small cuts and stuff like that but once it starts to drip I get real woozy. I refuse to give blood at blood drives because of my disdain for the sight of blood. I usually claim to have visited a malaria infested country in the last three months whenever the topic of a blood drive comes up. I especially don't like blood in containers. My fingers are going a little numb just thinking about it. I learned of my problems with the sight of blood a long time ago when I had to get my blood drawn in high school. I made the mistake of looking at the blood filled viles after the nurse was finished and my eye sight narrowed and everything went white. I didn't completely pass out but I almost did. I had to lay down and my ears were buzzing. Passing out is no good. The only time I have ever really passed out was at my first BYU football game when I was a freshman in college. I hadn't eaten anything that day (which is kinda funny because the only thing I did the rest of that year was eat) and it was really hot in the stadium. As I was walking around I knew I was going down because everything was going white and I had to grab onto one of the bars as I went down for the count. Go Cougars! A friend was with me at the time and I came to rather quickly but it is not an experience that I want to repeat. Anyway, today's blood drawing experience wasn't bad at all. I got the gay nurse which really helped things along. He was really funny and made fun of the odors (read as: fart smell) coming from the hallway. (There were a lot of old people in the office too. Nothing against old people but they are kinda gassy.) He sprayed a bunch of flower scented air freshener into the hallway and did a sweeping butterfly movement with his arms. He was great. So he asked me what arm I wanted to get the blood from and I answered that I didn't care. (Are people normally picky as to which arm to use??? I don't think it's right to favor one side of the body over the other. I am for equal opportunity.) I said that all I wanted was to see no part of this procedure. He laughed and set a stuffed monkey (not a REAL stuffed monkey, one of those beanie baby ones) next the window. He said to just look at the monkey. I complied immediately. I didn't want to see any of the prep work or instruments, nothing. I don't like the look of needles not because of pain but mostly just for the fact that they are responsible for the blood coming out. After the blood was drawn the nurse asked me to hold the gauze over my little needle prick. My head did not move from its position only my right arm. It took me a couple of tries to find the gauze on my arm which made the nurse laugh a little. Once he removed the gauze he made me look at my arm to see all the damage the needle had done. I did with apprehension. It was fine though. No blood! I didn't even get woozy. Thank goodness. This weekend Angelo asked me how much blood they were taking. I answered, "all of it." For all I know that could have been true but for some reason I don't think they did.

New Bloggers!

So Jen has convince the rest of the BOGS to start blogs. (She actually physically started Nicole's for her. Don't mess with Jen! Especially not in the Target parking lot.) Yay! Now there are new blogs for me to check - I love blogs! Checking blogs has even cut down on my potty breaks at work. The BOGS are the "Balls Out Girls." We get together at least once a month to scrapbook together. Melinda actually coined the term one night when she was describing how "extreme" she was getting with her scrapping! :) We just had a BOG session last Thursday night. Usually they last really late but this last one only went till about 12:30am. That's nothing. Once we went to a hotel so that we could scrapbook all night long - we made it to 4 am. Check out Nicole's blog for pictures from that night.

Tower of Terror Part II

So today as I was walking past our lobby at work to get to my office, a student filmmaker was telling the receptionist that the elevator wouldn't stop on the 15th floor (that's our floor). I giggled all the way to my office. The elevators strike again!

Happy Birthday Tommy

Today is my nephew Tommy's birthday! He turns 14! He is such a cutie! He does a great Donald Duck impression!