Author Archives: Bevin

As you probably know by now, I’m back in WA. Cali was a lot of fun, even though I didn’t get to hang out with my Aunt Mae, just my Aunt Diny and Uncle Gary.

When they got back to Seattle from their Alaskan cruise I snagged a ride down with them, but instead of staying ovenight somewhere on the way down as planned, we jiao made a go of it and got back at around 2:30am. Oof!

The rest of the week was nice though. I got to see baby Evan! He was adorable, as expected. He seemed to like me enough which was encouraging. It was a lot of fun to see Kristen and Karley although I fear that I have little in common with either of them. For one I don’t hve a newborn, and for two I’m not much of a “party girl” so going out to bars with Karley is pretty much out.

Regardless, it’s nice to see them again. Karley didn’t seem much interested in hanging out with me, as evidenced by the fact that she wasn’t busy Tues-Thurs and yet she stayed in Davis (an hour away) instead of at her parents. Dunno, seemed odd is all.

Either way they took me to this great place in downtown Placerville called Sweetie Pie’s for breakfast one day. Mmm. I had crepes stuffed with ricotta and cottage cheese, topped off with berries of all sorts and cream cheese type stuff. Right afterwards my Aunt and I walked over to the knitting shop downtown so I could get some sock yarn and needles… I didn’t have the needles I needed to start on my armwarmers.

So I started out this post on Josh’s iPhone but Safari was crashing a lot that day so I didn’t really get much of it done.  It’s a few days later, and I’ll try to finish up this post if I can.

While in Cali my Aunt and Uncle did have things that they had to do… like my Aunt had to go back to work at the middle school, and my Uncle volunteers now that he’s retired.  So most of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I just stayed at the house while they went off and did random things.  One or two of the days I went to Starbucks with my Uncle once he got home, which was fun considering the hot weather.  Apparently he’s addicted to raspberry mochas.

I did make two batches of cookies during the course of the week though.  Josh was kind enough to relate to me the recipes I’m used to using, so that was a big help.  The first time ’round I made peanut butter cookies, but didn’t realize that the sticks of butter my Aunt had were only 4oz. sticks, not the normal 8oz.  You can guess what happened.

They turned out okay though.  I also made some Cinnamon Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Walnut cookies… those turned out really well.  We only baked some of them; I left the rest of them in the freezer for her to bake some other time.

One morning we had “dutch babies” or something similar for breakfast.  We cut up some peaches and microwaved them with cinnamon, butter, and brown sugar for a bit.  Then we put them on some popover looking things that my Aunt baked in the oven.  No idea what the recipe was for that, but boy was it yummy.

Friday was Karley’s birthday, so Kristen and Karley were scheduled to come over.  My Uncle had a farewell party to attend in the morning, so my Aunt and I went with him and met Karley at the outlet mall while we were waiting for him (I didn’t buy anything).  Before we’d left, Kristen arrived but didn’t know we’d be going out of the house, so she didn’t have anything like a stroller for Evan.  She ended up staying at the house.

Once we got back Kristen handed Evan off to her dad and the four of us girls went off to see Harry Potter (again for me).  That was fun!

Uhh, I can’t really think of anything else that went on.  At one point during the week for dinner we had In-N-Out burger, which I just absolutely have to have every time I’m in Cali.

That’s all I have for this post.

Josh and I are out driving around doing a few errands like getting fish a heater and Josh a passport. Can you guess how I’m posting this?

Mwahahaha.

I’m off to California.  Well, technically I’m off to Whidbey Island, and when my Aunt and Uncle leave for Cali on Sunday I’m going to ride down with them, then next Sunday I’ll fly back.  That’s the plan at least… so I won’t really be communicating during the next week, unless it’s on my cell phone.  Feel free to call me on my cell.

Woo!

So last night Lisa, Allison and I went off to eat at Il Bistro in downtown Seattle.  It was really fun!  They were nice enough to pick me up and since there were 3 of us in the van we were able to use the carpool lane on 520.

The only disappointing part was that I’d made us a reservation for 8pm, but when we got there (after wandering around Pike Place Market because were early) we were told that they were about 45mins behind!  And on a Thursday night!  At first we were worried that we’d have to slip him a $20 or something, but he was so apologetic that we tended to believe him.

The service certainly wasn’t slow despite the fact that they were running late in any case.

I can’t talk much more about it now, but I will after next week.  Allison took some pictures while we were there, so I’ll post those later.

Does anyone here listen to Rush?  Well, I can’t say that I do, but apparently the ICS at the U. Village Apple Store, Mary, has two tickets to see Rush at the White River Amphitheater to see Rush.  And also apparently she got close to begging Josh to go with her, because she didn’t have anyone to go with.  She offered to pick him up, drop him off, and his ticket was free.

I had to actually try and convince Josh to go, because he was really hesitating about it.  I figured that Mary is a good 5-7yrs. older than him and married for christ’s sake, so it’s not like I have anything to worry about.  Besides, he talks to her every day whether at work or at home, so Josh going to one concert with her is the least of my problems (supposing I had any).

So there you have it.  Josh is going to a Rush concert.  Woo!

It’s a plugin that Josh kindly installed for me last night.  Mainly I started having a large spam problem, which wasn’t really visible to anyone reading the blog seeing as unless you’ve posted before and been approved, the comments are always stuck in moderation leaving me to delete them.  It became a problem when the spam bots got a grip on it and I got over 40 spam messages in the course of one day.  That’s a lot of e-mails!

Certainly something that I don’t want to deal with.  So I found a solution.  Josh really liked the idea when I found it awhile back, we just didn’t get around to using it.

So, from now on when you want to leave a comment you’re going to see a box with some wonky words in it (like the ones you see when you buy tickets through Ticketmaster).  Actually, you’ll see exactly two wonky words.  One to verify that you’re a real person and not a spam bot (computers can’t read letters if they’re all swirly-like), and one to actually tell the computer what the word actually is that it’s displaying.  Let me explain, in brief.

reCAPTCHA helps digitize books from the Internet Archive, and any time the computer can’t figure out a word, it adds it to a reCAPTCHA that it displays for someone like you who’s commenting on my blog, so when you type out that word plus the “security” word, you’re helping put books online!

I dunno, it seems cool to me.  You should most definitely take a look at this Learn More page about reCAPTCHA.

My laptop battery is on its last legs.  Maybe even its last toe.

I opened up the laptop here at Tully’s knowing that it had a full battery (the light indicator back at the apt. was green when I unplugged it to put it in the bag) and surprise, surprise… I click on the battery icon to see how much life I have left and it says:

15mins.

BAH.  So very disappointing.  In the time it took me to open a webpage to agree to Tully’s Terms and Conditions, open another page and log onto WordPress and get this far in the post it has gone from 15mins to telling me I have 10.

So very sad.  I just hope that I can get to a power outlet soon (there are people sitting in the chairs in front of it.

Whoop, I just got the “You are now running on reserve battery power” message.  I’ve got to go.

Plans this week have been very fluid and ever-changing, but I finally have some pinned down.

Initially Lisa and Allison were going to join Josh and I at the Harry Potter premiere.  Well, we were going the first day it was released at least.  Josh’s friend Brian wanted to get a whole group going.  Unfortunately, Brian has since canceled, but the rest of us still want to go.  The new plan is to go on Saturday sometime when both Lisa and Allison can make it.

Since then I’ve found out that my Aunt Diny and Uncle Gary from California will be visiting this Friday night.  They’re driving up from Cali to go on an Alaskan Cruise, so they’re staying with my parents on the island the night before they leave.  Since I haven’t seen them in awhile I want to be there to say hi.  It turns out that my mom is going to take Thursday off, giving me a window to ride home with my dad and provide him with a carpool buddy.  Then Saturday I can ride with him again while he drops them off in Seattle, and he’ll take me to Bellevue.

The best part?  My Aunt and Uncle will be stopping by yet again after they get back from the cruise (to pick up their car) and I can give them the baby blanket that I’ve knit for Kristen.  Finally.  They’ll take it down to her… I think I’ll write her a letter of some sort and attach it.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on this weekend for me.  As of this moment at least.  This afternoon I have to put 3 BookMooch books in the mail.

But right now this laptop is really warming up my lap, so I’m going to leave Tully’s and contemplate lunch.  Mmm, lunch.

So, Josh and I got a fish! As you can see from the subject of this post, his name is Mervyn. I suppose I should explain his name though…

He’s quite pretty, and being a betta he’s aggressive. Well, mostly anyway. I was trying to steer us away from naming him “Fish” (Josh’s choice), so we were brainstorming when we watched the movie Robin Hood: Men In Tights. Watching that movie reminded me of the character Sheriff of Rottingham, who shares personality traits with our fish. He’s aggressive but also takes pride in his appearance, but unfortunately isn’t that good at what he does. Sounded like our fish! And to top it all off, his first name is made fun of in the movie (“Mervyn, do you take… wait, you name is Mervyn? -snicker-“) which quickly endeared me to it. So it was decided: his first name is Mervyn.

The thing is, we also liked the name Olaf, just because it was the name of a character in the movie Clerks. Jay and Silent Bob were pulling this girls chain by saying their friend “Olaf” was from Russia and sang in a Metal band… it’s a good scene. But since we liked Mervyn as much as we did, we decided to give him a last name of Olaf, but adding the “sen” to mean “son of Olaf”. So Mervyn Olafsen. Josh then had the great idea to take a knock at mafia goons who always looked tough but had some pansy nickname, or the WWE wrestlers who always had their nickname in quotes between their first and last name. After seeing his stellar attempt to great a bubble nest, we decided on Bubbles. With the quotes of course.

So there he is. I changed his water a few days ago, gave him a new (better plant), and he’s been maintaining the best bubble nest I’ve seen out of him yet. We’re very proud of him. If you’re over at the apartment, make sure to have us put a mirror next to the bowl and show you his “tough” poses. They’re really cute.

Yeah, I know, it’s a real exciting subject for a post, but I still haven’t written about that night.

Basically the day started and Josh and I still didn’t know what we were doing.  I arrived back from Lisa and Allison’s around 4pm, and knew that Lisa planned on going with her sister and her boyfriend to Gasworks Park to watch the fireworks above the Space Needle.  Once back home, Josh and I were trying to decide what to do and eventually I said that I wanted to go to the island.  It turns out that we’ve had this 4th of July party with Laura & Gordon every year practically since I was born, and I haven’t missed one in 19 years.  After realizing that, I kind of wanted to make it to 20.  I know Josh wasn’t that interested in driving all the way up to the island, but he’s sweet enough to do it for me.

So we drove up to the island and miraculously there was no line to get on the ferry whatsoever.  That made us happy.  We went up to Freeland and everyone was already there (including Laura’s brother, who was there for the week).  Nicky was absent but Austin was there, along with Josh, me, my mom and dad, and Laura & Gordon.  Caren had other plans.

The get-together leading up to the actual fireworks was pretty uneventful.  Gordon had already set all of them up (he wires them together in their field and then runs the wire to a control board with on/off switches near where we sit), so we didn’t need to help him with that.  The food was already cooked, so we just kind of sat around and talked while munching on all the food.

Not much else went on, although the “adults” made a bunch of jokes about how we’d all been going for 19yrs. and how I already knew to find the drinks in the cooler hidden under all the wine and beer, heh.  Not much else went on… my dad and Gordon have been going to the Indian reservation in Anacortes every year to get their fireworks, and for the last 10yrs. or so they’ve been going to the same booth at the reservation, getting better and better deals every year.  This year they got the large smoke bombs yet again, which was fun… we went through a good chunk of those before it really got dark.

One of the reasons I decided to come up to the island (other than to keep up the silly tradition) was because my dad claimed that this would be “the best 4th ever”.  It wasn’t.  The fireworks 2 (or 3?) years ago were better, but I think that just had to do with order and the awesome finale cake.  But they were nice this year… I just hope Josh wasn’t too bored, heh.

The only sucky part of about the whole evening was leaving the island.  See, it takes about 20mins to get from their house in Freeland to the ferry, so Josh and I left at about 10:50pm to catch an 11:30pm boat.  Well, we got to the ferry and while there wasn’t a “line” per se, the whole of the Clinton dock was full.  And anyone that lives on the island, or has since the dock was remodeled, knows that the last two lanes on the dock never make it onto the boat.

We ended up being the first car in lane one, and because it was so hard to squish the last two lanes onto the boat, we didn’t make it.  Which means we had to catch the 12:30am boat instead.  Bah!  We were already tired, so we ended up taking a nap on the dock and again on the ferry.  I think we got home to Bellevue at around 1:45am.  Bad for Josh because he had to be at work at 7am… needles to say he was a bit tired that day.

That was pretty much our 4th.  I’ll post more updates on what’s been happing since then.