...

I feel like I need a new entry, but I'm not sure about what. I am so busy I can't even think of anything of interest. Perhaps this: My cat is going to be boarded at the vet while we're on vacation. I'm a little worried for her and feel sorry that she has to spend so much time in a cage. Of interest? That we'll be spending slightly more on our cats' lodging during this time than we will on ourselves most nights.

I went to California. Here are some pictures.

I was sent to a conference in San Jose last week, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. [All pictures can be enlarged by clicking or opening in a new tab.]

This is the pool at our hotel, which was the probably the nicest hotel I'll ever stay at in my life. The pool was saltwater and on the roof.




Here's my delegate table, which was great. We had a lot of Table 20 Spirit! And I really loved being a delegate.



Here's a group of [mostly] Bethel folk deep in a discussion about mythology and the Bible. I had so much fun with the other young alums.


At the end of the week, we all traveled to San Francisco for some touristy things. One of those was Alcatraz, which is inhabited by many seagulls. This mama seagull was feeding its babies. Feeding them another bird. Our youth pastor said, "That was their brother."


This gelato place in Chinatown had the most interesting flavors I'd ever encountered, including ginger root, toro (the meat the comes from the belly area of a tuna), avocado (pictured here), and Budweiser beer (sign pictured here). I really wanted to sample the Budweiser, but my "tact over truth" personality took over and I decided I didn't want to get any disapproving looks from the person right behind me.


A street in Chinatown, including a branch of my bank, Bank of the West. Too bad I didn't get the whole Chinese name in the photo. Now I won't be able to find my bank when I go to China.











Picked these dudes up in Chinatown.



















Good job, TSA. This is a display at the SF airport, most likely about items prohibited on airplanes. Not that I would know for sure because the display wasn't at all labeled. Items were just haphazardly thrown in as far as I can tell. Notice the dust marks indicating more items used to be in here. Upside down brochures. And if I were going to take poison on an airplane, that's exactly the kind of container I'd put it in. One that's clearly labeled "poison."








The thing I most wish I had a picture of and would have taken a picture of had we not been en route to a public transportation connection and had I not been pushing a stroller was a sign in front of a restaurant in Chinatown that read, "Special Shat in Chicken!"

Planning guide

A couple weeks ago when I was looking through the Yellow Pages for bridal shops, I came across this guide for planning a wedding. I thought, "Hey, this might come in handy." And then I saw the guide started at twelve months before the wedding. I only ever had about 3.5 months. So I thought I'd chart our progress. Of course, some of the unchecked items are unnecessary, so it's like they're checked. [click on the picture for a larger view]

Kristine...

This is just for you! Sorry it's not much, though.

Sunny California is indeed sunny AND California. Who wudda thought. I can't believe I just typed "wudda."

Well, I didn't find internet access intending to post to my blog, so I really have nothing prepared to say, and judging by what I've written so far, I should have stopped a long time ago.

In need of some marketing help?

At Wal-Mart I walked past a rack (haha – you'll see later...) of training bras. One of the available brands was "Sweet Nothings." Seriously? As if girls who wear training bras aren't already self-conscious enough about their cup size?

62626

Sorry, just had to commemorate the turning of 26 on 626. Someone told me today that this is considered a Golden Birthday. I always thought that referred to turning 50. Which I did not. Well, Wikipedia supports this Golden Birthday idea – when your age corresponds with the day of the month – and says an alternate name is Champagne Birthday. I like that better. Too bad I didn't know that and drink some champagne. I did have boxed wine that had a little fizz to it, so maybe that's like poor man's champagne. Maybe people wanted to associate that with this phenomenon but Boxed Wine Birthday just didn't have the same ring.

Hmph.

Currently, the other Mennonite colleges do not have me as their biggest fan. (Not that they ever do, but even less so now.)

Throw another...pancake on the Barbie?

I use an online service to keep track of foods/calories eaten and activity/calories burned. It has a database of foods, so even if I don't know nutritional information for everything, I can get a pretty good estimate. I enter search terms and it finds any foods that include those terms. This morning I searched for "Breakfast Bar." The most surprising result was "Breakfast with Barbie." Now, what the heck is that? I googled it and didn't come up with much except for a toy that was a joint venture between a milk processor board and Mattel that features Barbie at a kitchen table with milk, Honey Nut Cheerios, and a newspaper. Back to the online service I use, I clicked on this food known as Breakfast with Barbie to see what the ingredients are. None were listed. But one serving of Breakfast with Barbie is worth 124 calories. Which just serves to further the argument that Barbie is damaging to people's self images. I mean, heck, apparently just being in the presence of Barbie causes you to get fatter! :)

It's true

The Salt-N-Pepa station on Pandora plays the best selection of songs.

WOOF!! WOOF!! WOOF!! WOOF!!

I just spent my afternoon listening to a motivational speaker. WOW.

Know what's gross?

Gross was the other day when I was working out and got to the ab curl station. I used the machine right after a guy I was already annoyed with – annoyed because he kept jumping around from station to station not following a pattern, which more than once caused me to have to not follow a pattern. And I like following patterns. So anyway, I get to the ab curl machine. The guy before me did the regular front curl and then also curls turned 90 degrees in either direction (so his armpit was right on the curl bar thing...I know lots about the actual names of the things I'm trying to talk about here). That in itself didn't annoy me; I do the same thing. But this guy had some super bad B.O.! I got to the ab curl and got the bar adjusted to the height I wanted it to. Being a female, I find it more comfortable to have the bar a bit higher than others might, so the bar was very close to my nose, and all I could smell for the duration of my curls was nasty, nasty B.O. Sickenating! [photo illustration below; too bad you can't really see the expression on my "expertly" inserted face]

Where have I been?

Check out the first headline under "Top Stories."












I saw this yesterday on cnn.com and was all, "Whoa! What?! The Cold War is over?!?! Where have I been?!" Not really, of course. My reaction was more like, "Way to state the obvious..." Upon reading the story, the headline made sense, but it sure was funny out of context.

I'm a walking disaster

I just attempted to put a lid back on a pen (by holding the pen cap still and sliding the pen into it). I missed the lid and got my finger instead. I must have been very serious about putting this pen away because [*slightly graphic detail to follow] when I looked at the pen tip, there was a piece of skin hanging off of it. Gross.

P.S. I have also shut half of my fingers (not all on one hand) in a door or drawer today. Hard.

Dumb.

Yesterday I fell off my bike.

Holy matrimony!

It was a weekend of weddings. I went to both the wettest wedding I've been to and the shortest wedding I've been to (mutually exclusive). Both weddings were outside and with all of the rain we've been getting around here, I was curious to see whether they would actually occur outside.

We were convinced that Saturday's wedding would be at the church instead of outside since it had rained, but when we got to the church, there were no cars in the lot. Out at the farm, I was somewhat worried that my car would get stuck in the mud. I got a kick out of the pastor thanking God in a prayer for the break in the rain providing a window of opportunity for the wedding and then probably five minutes later, it was totally raining. Umbrellas went up throughout the crowd, which of course resulted in blocking some people's views. My dress was pretty wet and my program was pretty soggy before the pastor said he was going to ask us to do something pretty unusual -- to pick up our chairs and take them to the large tent set up about 50 yards away where the wedding would resume. The meal afterward was crazy delicious, and the "cake" was really cool; it was tiered tables of cupcakes.

Sunday's wedding fared better in terms of weather. It was late evening and very beautiful. And it was very down-to-business, lasting less than 15 minutes, I believe. One guest was a bit late and missed the whole thing! I loved the atmosphere in the reception tent because by that time it was pretty dark outside, and the tent was lit with paper lanterns. The dinner was really, really good (as were the beverages). I had so much fun at the reception with a group of friends from high school, including of course the conversation that could be titled, "Remember Mark Smith's girlfriends?" during which I (perhaps a little bit tipsy) blurted out, "Remember the one that looked just like him?"

Oh, plus, bonus! I got to get a [share of a] water buffalo in their name through Heifer International as a wedding gift! And I have had a years-long wish to gift someone with a water buffalo!

Is this something that only happens to women?

Have you ever tried to get the DMV to change the figure in the "Weight" category of your driver's license when you get it renewed? It's been four years since I last renewed mine and it's still good for a few years, but the times I have tried, the conversation has gone something like this:

Me: Can you change the weight?
DMV Lady: Oh, we don't really need to do that.
Me: Well, it's quite a bit different from what's on there.
DMV: How much different?
Me: 1** (which of course, is still not quite at what it should be, but it's getting closer)
DMV: Oh, well, that's not that much different (even though even my fake figure was a good 20-25 lbs more than what's listed). I'll just increase it to 1** (about 10 lbs more than what was listed).
Me: Ok...

I'm surprised I haven't been accused of having a fake I.D. based on weight alone since it's still listed as a number from sometime when I was in high school! Goal: Next time I get my license renewed, not even need to ask that the weight be changed. Halfway there already!

Up in smoke

I was just thinking it will be cool to watch my ticker at the right end up at zero. Except I'll probably miss it like the times I wanted to watch my odometer roll over to 100,000 or 30,000. What will happen when it hits zero? Will the ticker thing blow up into a little puff of smoke like when you remove an application from your Dock on a Mac? I love that little animation and sound. Sometimes I add an application just so I can remove it into a tiny explosion of smoke. Poof.

Change

Today I have new housemates. And while I'm so incredibly socially awkward around people I don't know, I'm excited about the change. Also, we will no longer be an all female household, which is a difference I think will be good.

Ha!

I just had a good chuckle with my co-workers. So I was checking out the NHS website and was thoroughly pleased to find they still offer Hobby Club as a club that meets during some specified period of the school day. Here's the description from the website:

Hobby Club is for those who wish to share their hobbies and promote them to other students. It is a time to share activities and interact with students who have similar hobby interests. Activities may include guest speakers, student presentations, and other gaming and hobby activities.

One year I and my three best friends joined Hobby Club. At least at that time, the way Hobby Club operated is that everyone in the club met in the same room, but you'd break into groups based on your respective "hobbies." My friends and I realized this would be an excellent way to get to spend time together at school basically doing nothing. We told the sponsors we collected stamps and named our sect of Hobby Club "Stamps 4 Life." The ruse was aided by the fact that I had in my younger years been a stamp saver (I wouldn't call myself a legitimate stamp collector since I didn't know anything about collecting stamps), so I would bring in my stamp books, and we'd have them open around us during club time, but we'd just talk the whole time. If a sponsor would come by, we'd tell them we had a good lead on a possible guest speaker. I had totally forgotten about S4L (as we called ourselves for short), and I am so glad I was reminded of it today.

Bonus!

A cd I bought over the weekend came packaged with what are, as far as I can tell, two identical cds. Sweet! Two for the price of one. Except it would be better if they weren't the same cd.