A very movie weekend... and I just cried three times

So far this weekend, we've seen three movies. Last night we watched V for Vendetta and Aeon Flux. Both were very good. V was more intriguing, and we'll probably have to own it. I didn't cry lsat night...

Today we watched Eight Below. Though it's still hard to take Paul Walker seriously after the stupid Faster and Furiouser movies, I had to see this movie for the dogs. Now, I went into it knowing that not all of the dogs lived, but that didn't matter much. I cry when animals die, and this movie really tore me up. I'm talkin' tears running down both cheeks, snotty nose--the whole bit. It's a good thing that we didn't see it in the theater. Except for the dogs that died, at least it had a happy ending. Now I'll have to see what I can dig up about the real, un-Hollywoodized story behind the movie.

America's Talent and our cat's killer claws

Somehow, we got sucked into the America's Got Talent show. There are some weird, funny, and genuinely talented people on the show. My gripe with the show will be if they let a singer win. First, there are LOTS of good singers out there. It's a nice talent, but it's also a widely shared one. Second, there are already other shows exclusively for singers. I really hope that someone with a non-singing talent wins. I like the magicians (though they're a little "dime a dozen" too), and especially the acrobat/gymnast groups.

Our little grey cat, Miji, has really sharp claws that she's not afraid to use. Marc has realized this again twice in the past week. A few nights ago, he was holding her when I made a noise in the bathroom. She slashed his hand, right on one of his palm wrinkles. It was pretty bad. Now that it has started to heal, it was inevitable that something else would happen. Tonight, he was holding her on the couch, and she was looking out the window when something spooked her. She slashed the same hand again, but in a different place--plus she got his lip. Darn cat. They're both so skittish. Now we have to wait for Miji to fall asleep so that we can trim her claws. That's the only way we can do it, because otherwise she's a total wiggle worm.

Work has been pretty normal lately. It's still busy, and now we're going to move again. Laura and I will still be sharing an office, but now it'll be bigger. Yea. I still don't have an office phone, and now they're not going to work on it since we're moving again. Bummer.

The Scion goes in tomorrow to get upgrades. The most exciting part will be the satellite radio since it only has a single disc CD player. We've become so spoiled with our satellite radio in the other cars. It makes it really hard to listen to commercials on the regular radio. Such a tough life.

That new car smell

Sorry I've been lazy about my blog lately. The days have been pretty hectic lately--partly because we've spent a lot of time after work at car dealerships. Marc decided that the Rover isn't the best "drive around town" vehicle (duh) and he wants to avoid putting any extra wear and tear on it, considering how easily and expensively things can break on it. So we started looking at cheap, efficient cars. Honda Fit, Nissan Versa, Mazda 3, Scion xB. Then we looked at Civics. Then we looked at and ended up with a Scion tC. It's more than we initially planned on spending for a third car, but isn't that what always happens? It's pretty sweet--silver, auto locks and windows, sunroof, and a hook up for my iPod. It's a zippy little car, and it gets better mileage than the Rover and the Infiniti.

We're preparing for another heat wave with temps in the 100s for the next couple of days. Our power better not go out this time...

Camping recap

Our camping trip was pretty awesome this weekend. We took off from work around 10:00 and were on the road by 11:00. After some awesome corndogs as a quicky lunch, we got to the site and hung out for the rest of the afternoon. The Xterra club rented out a cool, defunct, old ski lodge. There was tons of room inside the lodge, but we all set up tents or slept in trucks outside. The inside had a wood stove that we didn't use (Charlie was there with tons of wood for the fire outside), and there was a huge built-in wooden bar. We made good use of that.

I didn't count how many trucks there were, but probably about 20 altogether. Really great group of people. We met some new club members and saw a few that we haven't seen in awhile. I drank half of my cherry jolly rancher martinis on Friday and got a good buzz going, but I started too early. I can't maintain a steady level of drinking without falling asleep, so I sobered up when I ate dinner. Boo.

On Saturday, we went with ToyMan on a new run. It was very scenic, a little technical, and lots of fun. A bunch of other people went on a run Mike led to Funny Rocks and Moon Rocks. We've done that so many times though (and that's where the Rover died last time) that it was cool to do something different.

I drank the rest of my jolly ranchers Saturday night. Nothing too exciting came from that. Ian's kids ran around with mullet wigs on. Mike backed Tony's trunk into a tree. Three people with guitars got a good jam session going around the campfire. We saw tons of stars on both clear nights. Magnetic "I masturbate," "I have erectile dysfunction," and "I have crabs" bumper stickers made their rounds on several trucks (including Claus's all the way back to Canada). All in all, a great trip.

When we got back to town, we took showers and went to Ben's for some more pool time. Stupidly, I thought that 4:00 was too late to worry about sunscreen. My stomach, back, and neck are paying for that today. Darnit. It was a nice weekend, especially since I didn't worry about work at all.

Work got artsy today

Today we held our third annual Art Show at work. My officemate Laura was the committee head, so she's been going insane working out all the last minute details this week. We had singers, guitar players, and a bagpiper. Our choir, the Timbertones, messed up a bit on our songs, but it still went well. It's fun to perform for people. There were lots of photography displays, some drawings, costumes, quilts, jewelry, woodworking, and paintings. Marc's photography was the best. I might be a bit biased though. We also gave away a crapload of raffle prizes. That's always fun. Marc and I won a cool picnic kit (which we're using for our camping trip this weekend), a huge outdoor thermometer, and a big body pillow. Fun day!

Tomorrow I'm leaving work around 10:00 so that we can take off on our camping trip up in Naches, WA. It should be a nice weekend. We haven't gotten much camping in since everything happened with Grandpa. I'll have a full report on Sunday--hopefully there will be something funny to tell as a result of the consumption of our cherry jolly rancher martinis...

Nigerian scam artist strikes but is foiled by my awesome skills

I think I wrote about the portable DVD player I won at a work conference in Boston. I finally decided that we really would never use it, so I put it up on ebay last week. The auction ended yesterday. Until about 2 hours before it ended, everything was going just fine. Then, even though I said in the auction details that I would only ship to the U.S., someone in the UK started bidding and had the top bid. Seconds before the auction ended, someone in Malaysia put in an outrageous bid and won. WTF? So here's a DVD player that retails for $300 and sells on ebay for around $200. Ms. Malaysia "bought" it for $405. Brand new user ID. 0 feedback rating. Goody...

Within minutes of the auction end, I send a message to the Malaysian and ask for a U.S. address to ship to and tell her that if she doesn't have a U.S. address I can't sell it to her. She sends me an e-mail to tell me that she's in America (yeah, right), her husband is in Nigeria, and she wants me to buy some Dolce and Gabbana cologne and a card to ship with the DVD player for her husband's birthday. Uh huh, sure. And to compensate me for my troubles, she will pay me an extra $150 to cover the costs of these extra items and shipping.

It gets better.

I get a spoofed PayPal e-mail that says something along the lines of, "The money has been deducted from Ms. Malaysian's account but we'll hold it until we get a shipping confirmation from you; then we'll give you the money." That's not how PayPal works. F-ers. The e-mail was a horrible fake. It didn't even look like a PayPal e-mail. In the meantime, I look at the auction and send a second-chance offer to the top U.S. bidder (skipping the schmoe in the UK), and she accepts. At least I sold the thing. I sent another message to Ms. Malaysia to let her know that she's not getting the DVD player and that I've forwarded the fake e-mail to PayPal for investigation. A little later, I get another better spoofed PayPal e-mail offering me an extra $200, but I still can't get it until I give them proof of shipment. I report that one to PayPal, too, and tell Ms. Malaysia yet again that she's not getting the thing no matter how much she offers. She stops sending messages. She deletes her ebay account. I report the unpaid item, get my final value fee returned, and all is good.

But wait, there's more.

Today I get a message from ebay saying that a user that bid on my auction was actually an account that was hacked and that the transactions with that user should be canceled. The user was the UK person, my real next highest bidder, who I thankfully skipped when I made the second-chance offer. What an ordeal.

The moral of the story: don't trust anyone who's offering you an absurd amount of money for an auction when there are conditions like having to buy additional stuff for them and ship it to some foreign country.

This ended up being a long story. It certainly livened things up in my electronic world these past couple of days.

Tomorrow is our company art show. The "Timbertones" choir that I'm in is performing a couple of songs, and Marc is displaying some photography. Plus, he won the program cover contest with his picture of Newspaper Rock. Unfortunately, my recorder quartet can't perform this year because two of the members don't work at Timberline anymore. Boo. Oh well. We'll probably play down at Saturday Market this summer, which should be fun.

Grandpa's official farewell

Grandpa's funeral was this morning. Everything went very well. The flowers were beautiful, the family and friends were wonderful, the ceremony was thoughtful, and the reception was perfect. That's a lot of adjectives. It was really great seeing so many family members and friends gathered together to celebrate a great man's life.

Not that I've been to a ton of them, but funerals always remind me about how important it is to appreciate the lives we have and the people we love. Sieze the day. Hug the important people in your life. Try to live without regrets. Now I'll turn off the cheesiness and return you to your regular programming.

It's official--Marc and I are nerd twins

Marc has had several problems with his laptop in the past year or so. After a horrible experience with the Geek Squad at Best Buy and a computer that they never fixed even after multiple attempts, we found out that the computer is part of a class action lawsuit. It heats up too much and shuts down. It's so hot that you can't even keep it in your lap. Couple that with my 1 percent free space hard drive and similar heating/shut down issues that have cropped up with my laptop lately, and we decided that it was time for something new.

So Marc went shopping today and got a sweet Compaq V3000. Then I went shopping with him later and got the same one. Yes, we look dorky sitting on the couch with matching laptops. But it's also cute in a weird way. And we didn't buy them from Best Buy this time, because as far as I'm concerned, any big purchase isn't a best buy from those jerks--at least at our local store. It's kind of a pain having to reconfigure and reinstall everything on a new computer, but it's fun.

I got a good tip from Laura in my previous blog's comment that gave me a good idea for something to talk about. She recommended a sheet set that I'll definitely try out. That reminds me of how obsessive we've become with our bedding. It makes sense to transform the place where you spend a third of your life and that is vital to your heath into the most comfortable place it can be. We have a pretty good mattress from when we moved into the house four (wow!!) years ago. We've since topped it with a featherbed, king size sheets (on a queen mattress--so we don't fight over them as much anymore), and a king size luxury down comforter. That comforter might be the best deal I ever found. Originally over $600, it was half off plus an additional 10 percent off. Score. We used to use flannel sheets, but then I discovered something new. Modal, which is actually made from beechwood trees, just like Laura's suggestion. We got ours at Linens 'n' Things, but I think they have them at Bed Bath and Beyond, too. We liked them so much that we even bought some for our guest bed to pamper the occasional friend that stays for the weekend. If you're looking for new sheets, check these and Laura's recommendation out.

Thanks, Benny!

Our friend Ben did an awesome thing a couple weeks ago. He moved into an apartment. The apartment, of course, has a pool. Marc and I spent Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday at Ben's--and the pool. It's so nice to just lay in the sun, and I'm actually getting a little bit of a tan. We also accomplished something big when we convinced Ben he should replace the 27" TV he had with a sweet 37" LCD. And to get a Bose sound system. And an AC unit. Go Ben!

Other than a lot of good junk food and some movies we watched (Annapolis--decent; Kiss Kiss Bang Bang--awesome!) the weekend was pretty uneventful. Marc ran a couple of errands to tie up the last strings for grandpa's funeral on Tuesday, and today we put together some picture boards to display.

My tip of the week: If you have a toaster oven and like fresh-baked cookies, get the ready-to-bake cookie dough from Tollhouse or Pillsbury or whatever, and just make 2-3 at a time in the toaster oven. We love this way of always having yummy cookies! And on that note, as the scent of the ones we're baking right now wafts into the room, I'm out of here!

Goodbye, Grandpa

After 16 days at home in hospice care without food or water, Grandpa passed away today. Technically my grandpa-in-law, he was a great, caring man who took me in as part of the family from the moment that he met me. He always bent over backwards for everyone, and he would have done anything to help anyone. The world is a worse place to not have him in it anymore. I'm sure he's having a blast with Grandma now, though. We'll miss you, and we'll always love you, Grandpa!

Click it

We saw Click yesterday with Steve and Andrea--it's always good to see a movie with them since Andrea has the hook up at the movie theater. The movie was actually really good, though sad towards the end. Good mix of humor and real-lifeness. (Yes, I'm making up words.) I recommend it.

Something's wrong with our luck with getting good service at restaurants lately. After the fiasco at Rose's a few weeks ago where the manager we asked to talk to told us, "I'm not good with names, but I remember faces, so if you come back in, maybe I can give you a free piece of cake," we've avoided that restaurant. After the movie last night, we tried going to Macaroni Grill for happy hour. We sat at a table in the nearly empty bar for 10 minutes without anyone acknowledging that we were there--except the bartender just looking at us. Ridiculous. So we went to Stanford's, which was fine for awhile. Our waitress told us about her guest stardom on a Seinfeld episode and some voiceover work that she's doing for some local TV and radio ads, but after our food was brought out, she didn't stop by for nearly 20 minutes (during which time, Steve and I ran out of drinks). I had to get up and go to the bar to order another round. That shouldn't happen, should it? I hope we're not just being crotchety.

Today, we spent some time tidying up the house since cleaning has taken a complete back burner lately with everything going on with Grandpa. Marc returned some stuff at REI (bye bye stinky feet from those Keen sandals), and he tried out some really weird Mion sandals. Marc discovered a bees' nest inside our grill (we haven't used it in a LONG time) and went on a killing spree. I don't know why bees would want to live in our boring, deck- and barkdust-covered backyard, but they do. We met up with Slimey and Chris later for dinner and several rounds of Cranium Ziggity.

I'm not exactly sure what our plans are for tomorrow. Ben should be back in town, so we might do something with him. Otherwise, we'll head back over to Chris and Slimey's for some BBQ action. Our across-the-street neighbors always buy "less than legal" fireworks, so we should get a nice little fireworks show from the comfort of our front yard.

On a completely different subject... Do all cats like to have their backs/butts scratched or spanked? Ours sure do. It's funny when we scratch Manga right above her tail, she likes it so much that she licks us. Cats are funny.

Shopping spree

I don't remember exactly when capris came into fashion existance. I know I was in college--maybe it was about 8-9 years ago. I was vehemently against them, as I usually am with fads. (I have this same mentality with TV shows too--I refused to watch X-Files or Friends when they were still being produced, for example.) Anyway, back to clothes. I thought capris looked stupid, and I was pretty sure that they would be "out" again in a year or so. I wasn't gonna waste my money. But they didn't go away, and then they started growing on me. I gave in, and now, a few years later, my summer wardrobe includes lots of capris and very few pairs of shorts (that fit anymore).

Until today.

So all of that was just leading up to my grand announcement that I now have several pairs of shorts that I will actually wear and that are appropriate to wear to work. This really is quite an accomplishment because I'm really picky about shorts. Yea for me!

We hung out with Aaron and Robyn tonight. We played Settlers, and team Mosiman came out ahead. We have this funny agreement where, if one of us is close to winning and the other isn't (or if we're all just tired of playing and want the game to end sooner), Marc and I team up and help one of us win. My brother Tom would probably walk out on us if we ever played like that around him. Ha!

Robyn's about 19 weeks along in her pregnancy now. They find out on Wednesday what the sex is of their twins. I'm excited for them! They'll really get to have fun with the name game once they know what they're having.

I'm not sure why, but Marc thought it would be good for me to blog about the corn dog he ate for dinner tonight. So, there, I just did. Are you happy, honey?

Officially, I have Monday off from work, but I'm not sure whether I'll take it off. We'll have to see how things go with Grandpa (who is still hanging on). I at least have to go in and get my stuff unpacked in my new office. Hope you all have a great, safe weekend and 4th!