I didn't get many pictures of myself alone, and I'm kinda weird about putting other people's pictures online without their permission, so I don't want to post any group shots.
Here's a pic of me at my desk: And here's a video of me riding Kathy's minibike--wait--I mean, here's a video of me floating around like the ghost that I am:
For the record, I have no intention of ever wearing that costume again. It it now fresh in my mind how uncomfortable it is to wear a strapless bra all day long and how itchy wearing that cheap makeup is. Okay, if I ever go work for another company and I'm even remotely close to being this same size, I may have to bring this costume back. But since I intend to stay where I am, and now everyone there has seen this costume on me twice, consider it retired.
Now here's a conundrum for you to contemplate: How is it that a 2.75 mile commute from work to my house can suck up 15 minutes of time? At least 2 miles of that is on roads with 40-45 MPH speed limits. In the morning, I can make it to work and hear just one song. I wish the "commute" home were just as quick.
I got my old wedding dress out. It was still in the bag I put it in last year after Halloween. I sprayed it with Febreze. It's a little big on me now, but I think it'll work out fine. I'll post pics tomorrow...
Last year I put on an awesome show on Halloween at work as a corpse bride. Just my luck, though--there was no contest or anything. Bummer. This year my department is at offering some prizes, so I'm going to be the corpse bride again. Yeah, it's unoriginal, but it's a kickass costume so I don't care. Look back in a few days for a picture or two of me all freaked out!
If you know me, you know I don't really cook. Marc is the chef of the house. Most of the time we're both too lazy to make anything exciting though. This is why we're very fortunate to have friends like Chris and Slimey who do cook and, perhaps more importantly, enjoy inviting us over to partake. Tonight we went over there for one of Slimey's new dishes--coconut chicken with papaya salsa, Thai rice, and salad with his homemade bleu cheese dressing. AWESOME.
When we were over there on Friday night, we played the new game that Mike and Diane gave me for my birthday, Redneck Life, with Slimey and his oldest kid, Charles (or Mini-Chuck as Marc calls him). Last weekend, I'd started a game with Mike and Diane, but we didn't get too far, so this was our first full game. It's pretty brainless (unless you're the banker), and it's a lot of fun. I recommend it for anyone's game collection; it's a nice break from the more strategic games we usually play. Plus, the creators have both Oregon and Kentucky connections. It's like the game was made for me.
Last night we went to Jess and Craig's place for a soiree. Jess cooked up a big assortment of dips--Reuben, spinach artichoke, chili cheese, 7-layer Mexican. Most of the party attendees brought change for poker, so we got a game of Texas Hold 'Em going. I actually won a few good hands! I quit while I was ahead ($10--yeah!). Good times! I was going to attach a picture to break up all of this text I've been writing, but the couple of pictures we took didn't turn out well. And Marc didn't take advantage of getting photographic proof of me wearing a skirt.
On my way to work this morning, the moon was just above the horizon, and it was HUGE. I mean HUGE. Plus, it looked like it was almost full. I wished I had a camera with me to snap a few shots. I was telling Marc about it this afternoon, and then they started talking about the moon on the news. Turns out it's closer to Earth right now than it usually is, so it's especially large. If you haven't seen it lately, be sure to check it out.
This is sad. I'm on my third attempt at writing something here today. I started with crap about the weather. After I deleted that, I tried writing about my week at work so far. But who cares? I don't have anything funny to report. Don Johnson hasn't made any more appearances that I'm aware of. Nobody's arriving at my blog in search of putooties or some other strange thing. Marc hasn't surprised me with anything else. So what can I say? I'm still running. We haven't seen any good movies. Work is busy. There's really nothing new. If anyone reading this has any exciting news, please leave a comment so I can live vicariously.
Marc has outdone himself. Two years ago, I got conned into a surprise party for my 28th birthday under the guise of our friends wanting a demonstration of our Dyson vacuum. Yeah, let me tell you how awesome it is having pictures taken of me walking into a room full of friends toting a vacuum cleaner. Anyway, since I'd kind of whined before that party about not ever having a surprise party thrown for me, I expected that was my one for my lifetime.
Well...
On Thursday, Marc told me that my gift wouldn't be here until Saturday. That's fine. I could wait. I "knew" I was getting my steak dinner on Saturday, so I'd just wait for my gift and my dinner. We didn't do anything on Friday evening. Saturday, I got up early (for a weekend, anyway) and went to Laura's for the Great Exchange. We dug through piles of clothing for a couple of hours, but I had strict instructions from Marc to be home by 12:30 for a surprise of some sort. I got home at 12:20 with my bag of new/exchanged clothing, and Marc led me upstairs to the bedroom. I had no idea what to expect. When we entered the room, I saw a suitcase on the bed, half full with Marc's stuff. He told me to pack for the night--something nice to wear to dinner, and nothing special for Sunday. He told me that the first stop would be at the Portland Spa for a facial. Yay!
So, I packed a few things and headed back downstairs. I asked if Marc was getting something done at the spa, too. His response? "Maybe.........maybe not." I told him that he better because he deserved it. The appointment was at 1:30, so we left around 1:00. When we walked in, Marc told the two ladies at the desk my name. One of them stood up and asked the two of us to follow her back. The other asked, "Is he getting a service, too?"--which I thought was kind of strange because they ought to have a good idea of who's doing what, considering that they only have 4 rooms to book at a time.
We followed lady 1 back to the waiting room, and as she opened the door, I registered that there were already several people sitting in the room. Again, this was weird because there are only a few rooms, so at most, only 4 people should have an appointment at any one time. As I stepped into the room, it was even weirder for me to realize that I *knew* all of the people in the room! It was Mike, Diane, Andy, and Jo--all the way from the Seattle/Tacoma area! Surprise for me! Turns out, the other girls were scheduled for massages while I got my facial; the guys walked down the street for some grub while we enjoyed our pampering.
Next surprise was our hotel for the night--The Hotel Vintage Plaza. Marc and I shared a townhouse (2-story) suite with Mike and Diane; Andy and Jo got their own room. After we started to get settled in, there was a knock on the door. A hotel employee brought in a cake for me. Mike and Diane got it from a "bakery" up in Seattle. It was cause for much laughter! We walked down to Pioneer Place to do some shopping. I scored a couple of cool shirts from Guess. Then we came back to get dressed for my steak dinner.
I knew we had reservations for 7:15. I didn't know where. We were right next door to a steakhouse, so I was guessing... but I was wrong. We turned the opposite way out the front door of the hotel and started walking down the street. I noticed Typhoon and pointed it out because I didn't know there was a location there. Marc and everyone paused as I continued walking past it, and Marc said something like, "Change of plans. We're having dinner here." I was thoroughly confused. Typhoon is Thai food--not steak. What's going on? As we waited to be seated, Marc explained that he'd already made these reservations before I said I wanted a steak dinner, and promised we'd get steak another time. Okay, whatever! I'm easy!
The hostess showed us the way back, and I started noticing other familiar faces... a bunch of people from work, PNWX, other random friends... holy crap!! It was another surprise party!! How many people actually fall victim to 2 surprise parties in 3 years--and are honestly surprised? Well, I'm one. Maybe there are others, but I bet there aren't many. In all, there were 22 of us there for dinner. It was awesome! After more than a month of planning, coordinating, and threatening people to keep their mouths shut, Marc had pulled it off. And he claims that this is it--no more surprises. We'll see... though at this point, I'm going to start suspecting it every year. Haha!
Now, my big problem is that I've never pulled off something so spectacular for Marc. I have a few years before his next milestone to plan something fabulous, though. That should give me plenty of time to think of something good.
Lots of people sang to me at separate times this year--Marc's grandpa sang to me yesterday, Marc sang to me this morning, and my mom and Marc's mom sang to me tonight. Marc decorated the downstairs with streamers and balloons for me to find this morning. My team at work brought me balloons. Marc showed up at work with flowers. I found out that Marc has some kind of surprise planned for Saturday, so I'm looking forward to that and the steak dinner that will follow that evening.
I think the funniest thing I heard today was when my coworker Jason told us all what the worst part of turning 30 is. You have to check a different age group box on surveys now. Haha! It's so true though--instead of being in the 20-29 group, all of a sudden, I'm in the 30-39 group. At least I'm at the bottom of the range, though!
To everyone who sympathized with me, put up with me, and/or helped make this a great birthday for me, thank you. :)
I've refrained from whining too much about tomorrow. I'm turning 30. It literally almost makes me want to cry. Logically, this doesn't make any sense--and I know it. But no matter how many times I tell myself or Marc tells me that my age really doesn't matter, it still doesn't help. So... no matter how much I hate it, I'm done living my 20s.
Logan and Zachary will turn 1 on Tuesday; their birthday party was yesterday. In true Rose fashion, the party was great, the food was yummy, and the details were funny--especially the cakes. The controllers were the boys' cakes. You can kinda make out in the picture that they have their names on them.
And of course, an obligatory feeding frenzy pic:
I know quite a few people with October birthdays. Marc's mom was the 13th. The twins on the 16th. Erin on the 17th. Me on the 18th. Gill on the 24th. Happy birthday everyone!
Being a fan and alumna of the University of Kentucky has rarely been a reason to be a football fan--I was really only interested in the tailgating before the games. Until yesterday. I'm so far removed from most of the news about UK sports that I have to rely on something spectacular happening so that it gets posted on the Comcast home page and I have a chance of seeing it when I start up Firefox. Last night I caught a mention of Kentucky in one of the headlines and was amazed to find out as I read further that they toppled #1 LSU in a triple overtime game. I'm just hoping this doesn't mean that the basketball team will suck this year. I don't know if the universe will continue to exist if UK pulls off both a good football and basketball team in a single year.
All this reminds me of a football game when I was a student when a bunch of people tore the goalposts down after UK won. (I can't remember who we beat...) Anyway, one of the uprights ended up at the frat house where I always hung out, and they cut it up into pieces for a bunch of people. I still have a chunk of it. How many people can claim that they have a piece of a college football goalpost?
I have a few regular visitors to this blog that I'm aware of, but it's interesting to see who stumbles on this page of mine at random. Today when I checked to see which search engine queries brought a random soul here, I found a surprising entry. Evidently, if you search Google for "putooties," this blog comes up as the seventh result, thanks to my reference to people freezing their putooties off a couple weeks ago. (Nevermind that, according to Google, the preferred spelling is "patooties;" though I don't have my dictionary handy to confirm, I'm sticking with the idea that this is a completely made-up word and therefore it cannot have a right or wrong spelling. My rationale is that putootie normally follows the word "cutey" and should have the same vowel to create the same sound in the rhyme.) I'm hoping that by having this post with the word putooties in it several more times, I can increase my putootie (or should that be putooty?) relevance for Google and come up higher the next time somebody searches for putooties.
In other news, my entire week at work has been consumed with interviewing to fill Laura's position. Now that I have a really good idea about what the "right" answers are to behavioral questions, I will be totally prepared for an interview myself if I--heaven forbid--ever have to interview for a job again.
My mom always has some funny story about my nephew Mason. This kid is a genius. Seriously. Here's the latest on Mason "The Brain."
Mason is 6 years old. My brother and his family moved to Alabama awhile back, and Mason was completely bored and unchallenged in school. They home-schooled him for a year then got him into a private school this year. He had his first spelling test a few weeks ago. It consisted of 3-letter words like "cat" and "dog." There were two "bonus" words at the end with 4 letters. At the bottom of his paper, he wrote this: "Here's a word for you. Photosynthesis." And he followed it with a drawing of a sun shining on a plant.
Tonight we played in a poker tournament at Phil's place. Out of the 8 people, I tied for 4th. Marc came in 3rd. I was bummed I didn't beat all the boys, but I'm not too disappointed considering I haven't really played a lot of poker since college. After that we went to a very smoky bar. It's been a long time since I've been someplace where smoking is still allowed, and I'm reminded of why I hate such places. I feel like I just smoked a pack myself, and everything on me reeks now. I hate smoky, stinky hair. There was a karaoke section in the bar--with a whopping 3 people sitting in there. We got to witness an awesome rendition of Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi. The singer was getting way into it, but he wasn't very good. If there hadn't been so much smoke and if I hadn't been so tired already, I would have been all over finally participating in karaoke myself. One of these days...
Now, as you can tell by the timestamp on this post, it's way past my bedtime--especially for a Friday night. Nighty night!
Laura and I did lunch today. Her birthday is the 18th of September; mine's the 18th of October (same year, even). Today was the halfway point between our birthdays, so we got together for some eating pleasure at Chipotle. I love Chipotle. There was a time when Marc and I would start going into withdrawal if we didn't have it at least once a week. We rarely eat it anymore though, so this was exciting for me.
This evening, Marc and I enjoyed massages. Let me tell you how knotted up my shoulders are. Here goes: My shoulders are really knotted up. We've been getting massages about once a week for the past month, and I think my shoulders are worse every time. I don't know what to blame it on except the busyness of work lately. I'm not going to call it stress because I feel like I'm handling things just fine. I don't worry about things. I don't lay awake at night. I just want to get everything done, and I think the pure tension of it all keeps building up. Next Sunday we're going to do a 2-hour massage. That oughta help big time.
I was driving home for lunch this morning when I saw the signs announcing utility work ahead with a lane closure. I was on the two-lane road that borders our neighborhood. I slowed down. I saw the huge utility truck blocking my entire lane and the worker with the big stop sign standing just my side of the center line. I stopped several dozen feet back to let the opposing traffic finish passing. Then, Mr. Road Worker flips his sign around to the "Slow" side and points fervently and repeatedly to the other lane for me to drive in. Really? No, really, is that where I'm supposed to drive now? You mean I can't just stay in my lane and try to drive right over top of the humongous utility truck that's right in front of me? Okay, I'll drive in the other lane. Sheesh.
