What Would Jen Do

Archive for the ‘birthday’ Category

So back to my birthday.   Aside from the whole crazy drunk driver situation, it was a very good birthday.

The day of my birthday I ate free twice at two local places owned by the same guy. He actually owns three restaurants and you can hit all three for the birthday trifecta but I couldn’t swing breakfast on a workday.   I also got me some red velvet cake at lunchtime.  note to self, when you bring red velvet cake home make sure it gets its own box.  otherwise it tastes like the mini hamburger you also put in the box.

The hot stone massage I got was just ok.  Not sure if it was the massage therapist, the actual hot stone massage or the fact that it probably would have been better in winter, but i think i’ll pass on another one.   It did make me pretty tired tho.

Friday i made my husband go to golden corral at like 2:30pm. but it was so awesome, I ate everything in sight.   twice.

Saturday we went out for dinner to  a tiny little place in the middle of downtown.   It’s (pulled from their site) a charming re-creation of a neighborhood French bistro, but with a BYO twist.  the food there is TO DIE FOR.   I brought home the rest of my chocolate caramel tarte.  (it got its own box)

and then there was the zombie portrait. I know that’s not for everyone, but I really love it and it’s an original. It’s about 16×9 and i can’t wait to get a frame this weekend.

For as much TV as I watch, I am almost always continually a season behind on say 30% of my shows. This is so I can watch as many as I want in a row on DVD without having to wait for a new one to start up next week.  some new shows i don’t even bother to watch, just put them straight into save in my netflix dvd queue.    Lots of major networks only let you watch the last 5 on line and that’s a pain in the ass if you aren’t up to date.  ok so now that i’ve given you a lesson in the best way to utilize your time watching TV, my actual point was that I was actually 2 years behind on The City.  Which is actually the entirety of the show.   This is the show I watch on the treadmill.   Unfortunately I am almost done with it, and I have no idea when season 3 starts.    And my actual real point was that if you watch that show, which you probably don’t. I want Kelly Cutrone to be my real life friend.

Because she said this

really … who gives a f**k about her opinion? No, she’s dead! She is f**king dead! Because I’m gonna f**king come up like a shark underneath a glass bottom boat and f**king whip the s**t out of her.”

This is my favorite wedding picture.  Minus my moms arm over there.   I have it hung up all over the place and this is the one I put into my wedding announcements.   Since we were only ‘engaged’ a couple of weeks and had a very small wedding, we went straight to announcements with a picture enclosed.

It’s even over there <——- on my sidebar.

It’s no secret that I have a probably slightly unhealthy obsession with zombies.  Not all things zombie, i have my standards.  There are a lot of crap/stupid zombie movies out there.    My favorite ones are Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead (old and new) Land of the Dead and the 28 days/weeks later movies.     I have a large zombie movie collection as well as a zombie fiction (or is it?) book collection.

About a year ago I came across an artist who could do beautiful things with your existing photos.   He hand creates his interpretation of whatever photo you send him.

And this is what my husband got me for my birthday!

zombie wedding

I filled out a police report.
we were on our way to my b-day dinner when this guy cut us off pulling out of a neighborhood street onto the main road in front of us.  we both ended up turning right at the light and he ended up behind us on that street when the lane he chose merged into our lane.   then like out of nowhere he seriously almost rammed us twice from behind, it was like the movies.  like he sped up and then slammed the brakes.  the section of road we were on was down to 25 mph and he probs did about 50.

so we get over a lane because this guy is crazy cakes and now we are in the lane next to him and he’s basically swerving into us.   we pull off the road and call the cops.  as we are talking to them someone else is calling them about the same guy. because they saw him almost hit us and then drive over a median.  so this good Samaritan follows him to a panda express where he parks terribly and gets out of the car with his 7 year old kid!   It’s now a felony if you get a DUI and have a minor in the car with you, you can just expect to go to jail.

while we’re having dinner the cops call us back and ask us to come down and identify the car.   we do.  we see the guy and my husband effing knows the guy.  not like they are best friends or anything, but still.  it’s not like we live in a tiny town.

The driver was ‘impaired’ that’s all I know, but apparently very impaired.

the cop that we were talking to about all of this is the same cop that breathalyzed our friend at his bachelor party earlier this year, just for kicks.  he was working as security at the bowling alley and they got him to breathalyze my friend and the cop even remembered that!

Today is my birthday!!!!

I’m working from home today and my husband cooked me breakfast and brought it up to me at my desk!  HOORAY!  today is off to a great start.

The Philosophy stuff I ordered over the weekend with my b-day gift card finally showed up yesterday.   It was delivered to the wrong house on Tuesday and the tracking showed ‘left at front door’.  just not my front door.   After talking with customer service a few times, the driver was able to backtrack and picked up the package at a house on the next street over.   The cul de sacs off the main neighborhood street have street names with similar letters. this happens all the time.   i think whoever lives at that house should have brought the package over, just like we did last week when we got someone elses package.

my whole birthday revolves around food.    i swear i do not have food issues.   Today we’ll be going out for a birthday dinner, tomorrow another birthday dinner at my beloved Golden Corral. and then Saturday dinner out again, but Saturday is more of a belated anniversary dinner since there were circumstances on our actual anniversary and dinner never happened.   Cold Stone also sent me a coupon for free ice cream for my bday, and Borders books sent me one for free coffee or tea.

If I’m feeling productive i’m going to try and make a chocolate cake from scratch for myself as well.    I’m not very good baking cakes and could use the practice.

I’ve also taken tomorrow off from work and will be getting a hot stone massage in the afternoon.   I can’t wait.

I’m really feeling like August is going to be a good month for me, and not just because it’s my birth month.  Even tho it’s hotter than crap outside and that usually makes me lethargic, I’ve gotten back a level of energy that I definitely didn’t have in July.   I’m taking advantage of that energy and have gotten back on my treadmill, which was all but abandoned last month.   My lungs do not agree with running for really any period of time, thanks to childhood asthma that made a comeback last year.  It’s worse in humid weather and inhalers and/or meds don’t really help much, so i don’t bother.  I can live with it the way it is and jog for very short periods of time.

anyway, my point is, i’m taking advantage of my new found energies and putting them towards something productive.  I really love walking and the 4 months a year i can walk outside, i do.   I got the treadmill specifically for the hot weather months.  And probably to the surprise of everyone, it didn’t become a clothes rack.   Like I said, I watch TV whilst on the treadmill and that really helps pass the time.   otherwise walking indoors is rather boring.

i’m also dedicating August to doing new, fun, interesting things or things that make me happy.

Strange side note here, my big dog often lays on the couch or bed or chair with his head hanging off and this makes his nose drain.   Just right now his nose drained right onto my shoes!! GROSS.

Example:

The yellowish color on the photo is from taking this picture in the dark with no flash.  He was sleeping on New Years Eve, apparently worn out from all the partying he did.

My friend Cat (go visit her) and I signed up for Bountiful Baskets this weekend.   that’s where you pay for a basket of half fruits and half vegs that is locally grown.

From their website:  Each week different items will be in the Bountiful Basket! We base the basket contents on what is in season, high quality, good value, and local. We generally have 6 fruit items & 6 vegetable items. We focus on what would be well received in our homes, and the extensive surveys we’ve done with participants over the past 5 years to know what families eat.

Cat and I are splitting the first basket for a few reasons.   Neither of us has done this before and we’re both too scared to go alone.  The closest one to our houses that had this going on at the time I wanted to go (i’m bossy like that) only had one basket left and also i have heard/seen that you get a crapload of stuff in these baskets and we weren’t sure if it would be too much for one household.   so we’re feeling it out this weekend to see what it’s like.

Happy birth month to me!!  My birthday is the 12th of this month and even tho I’m so excited that it’s my birth month, I don’t actually care about celebrating my b-day with a party.    I pretty much use it as an excuse to take a day off of work at eat at The Golden Corral.   I am a huge fan of buffets.   My husband does not share my fascination with them and seems to especially hate the Corral.  But I get to go there on my birthday and I basically count down the days until I get to go.   If you hit a buffet like this at just the right time, you’ll pay lunch prices but get the dinner menu.   I’m just sayin’…..

This year I am also treating myself to a hot stone massage. The spa I go to and have a membership at, offers deep discounts on upgrades like this  to their members.  I’ve never had a hot stone massage before and am not really sure what to expect. But people that have had them rave about them.   I also just remembered that I won a gift card to my spa for being the first person to answer a Sex and the City question on their twitter.  So the upgrade is technically free.     here was the question: who said- I’m homeless! I’ll be a bag lady! A Fendi bag lady, but a bag lady!!   The answer is Carrie!   Watching TV came in handy.

Today is my baby girls 9th birthday.   They grow up so fast.

I’m not that fond of the 2nd picture, but I just wanted to show her cute little gray face.   she’s got gray eyebrows now that are actually very expressive.  Fortunately for us she acts like a puppy.  She’s hearty stock and there’s no stopping her.

I also became an aunt today.  I don’t have any brothers or sisters of my own so I will have to rely on my husbands family to produce nieces and nephews.   This is one big disadvantage to being an only child.   But I’d say that being an only has a lot of advantages too.   For instance, all the presents under the tree were always for me.

I gave myself a blister that’s transformed into a callus on my hand from too much carpet cleaning.   intervention?

Last night my DVR/Cable box went ‘clunk clunk dead’.  if you know me you know this is basically the end of my world.  fortunately for me it was nearly bedtime and I still had a fully functional TV and DVR upstairs.   After work I ran to the cable store and got a new DVR.   And a fancy new remote because I wore out the fast forward on the old one.

Day two of this awesome migraine I have.

I think every weekend should be mandatory three days.  There are so many things going on right now that i’ve forgotten what a proper weekend is like.  Yesterday we had the termites taken care of.  It took about 4 hours and it looked like a pretty easy process. It was just one guy who drilled holes about every 6 inches inside the garage and around the house.  then he filled them with poison and sealed them up and he was done.

Today we get to put the garage back together which is actually pretty exciting for me because i’ve been itching to organize and clean up that garage.    I’m going thru another phase where ‘omg i have to try and fix and clean and make things nice around here’, so the garage being such a big project should be enough to satisfy me for a while.

I think next we’re going to call around and get some people out for estimates on painting this house.  I sure they’d prefer doing that before summer.

Last night I had to get dressed in clothes that are not pajamas and go out in public with real live people.   Icey thinks it’s important for me to get out of the house once in a while and talk to people who are not my dogs.   Pffffft.    We went out to dinner for his little bro’s birthday and while it was nice to see everyone that showed up (Hi Erich) I was bummed that a lot of the people I would have liked to see on my one night out a month, couldn’t make it.

the scorpions do not like us this week.  we had a pretty good year so far, only finding two all year and in the past week we’ve found another 2 alive and 1 shell.   the latest was a very tiny one and those are the worst as they’re young and go rouge with the stinging.    the shell leads me to believe that there’s another live one wandering around.   what a way to end the summer.

Portland was great, at least the parts of it that i saw.   Their public transportation makes sense and I was able to take a train all the way from the airport to the hotel, basically door to door.    everything was nice, the weather, the food, the beer, the people.   there was only one srs crazy person on the train and we happened to be on a car with two transit officers who herded him out.  he was ANGRY and smelled bad.   like really really bad, like i have never smelled anyone who stunk that bad before.   

being on my own that week prior wasn’t bad at all.  as it turns out, Icey being gone for a week feels almost exactly like he’s at home.   we still ‘talked’ on gmail and he called a couple of times but since we’re both very solitary people it wasn’t that big of a difference. the dogs were kind of bratty about it the first few days but they did see me leave with him and then come home without him and whenever i do that they get sad and then insist on running out into the garage to look for him.

we went to a surprise birthday party over the weekend.    some of us felt a little disappointed by the actual SURPRISE part of it.   it ended up coming out as more of a SURPRISE????  as if this was a new concept and we weren’t sure how to do it and we ended up not shouting it so much as saying it in our normal inside voices.    the birthday girl did a keg stand later, so it’s a safe bet she had a good time.

OH MY GOD all my tv shows are starting back up this month and my DVR’s are on some srs overdrive.   my new guilty pleasure for the year is melrose place.  

I have another random week of vacation planned in october.  the last time i did that (and the first time) was in April and it was probably one of the best weeks ever.    I thought for sure that by the end of it i would be stir crazy but it had the opposite effect on me and was very calming.    I’m really looking forward to it and October cannot get here fast enough.

sure, they look happy but don’t let that fool you.

i pulled that mattress off of the trundle bed and on to the floor for the dude.   that mattress was carried over next to the bed so that he could sleep next to us, we think he wants his own mattress now.

sure the cabin looks cute, on the surface.   Aside from being Adobe themed , pretty much the exact opposite of what I like.   i also think cabins are made from wood, but that’s just me.

i’ll spare you the pics of inside those cabinets.  the orange rafter in the above pic just to the left of the rug hanging on the wall is where mr. mouse was running around.   i’ll spare you the pics of the rafters.

good news, the owner apologized profusely, said if we ever decided to come back, which he assumes we won’t, we’ll get a free night.