Author Archives: Bevin

Yep, I’m fully aware that I haven’t updated the blog in awhile with anything meaningful.  Honestly I just haven’t been in the mood.  When I’m at Tully’s mooching their free wifi (like I am now) I can quickly get into a blogging mood, partially because I run out of things to do on the internet quickly enough.

Right now I’m enjoying my usual drink, the iced grande vanilla latté.  Mmm.

Uhh, so the other night (Tuesday night) I spent with Lisa and Allison in their house in Greenlake.  It’s quite cute!  The plan was to have a Harry Potter marathon to prepare for the latest movie that’s out in theaters next week.  Allison was going to pick up her sister from the airport, swing by and get me, then we’d head to the island where Lisa already was and go to Allison’s grandparents house to watch the movies in their “home theater room”.

Either way, plans changed and we couldn’t go to Greenbank, yet Megan (Allison’s sis) still needed to get home, so I opted to tag along and just go to the island with them.  I had also agreed to let Chester The Dog outside for my mom when I talked to her that morning so that she wouldn’t have to take a separate car from my dad and leave early to do it herself.  When we did get down the hill towards the ferry the line was all the way up the hill!  Who would have thought that so many people actually wanted to go to the Assembly Of God-sponsored Freeland Fireworks on the 3rd.

So, plans had to change again.  This time we were all going to walk onto the ferry where Allison and Megan would have to take the transit to Greenbank while I went to let out the dog.  Of course, things being as they are in my life, I arrive home to let him out and my sister is home!  Not only is she home, but she’s not leaving the house until 5:30pm.  Apparently she told my mom that she wouldn’t see my mom until really late that night, not that she wouldn’t be home until really late that night.

It worked out okay though, because Allison didn’t get back to the south end of the island until much later, so it was pretty nice to be able to hang out with Caren for a few hours and all that.  I ended up transferring a bunch of music onto her MacBook from my iPod, something she seemed really grateful for.

Again plans kind of changed on us as the afternoon wore on… it turned out that Lisa hadn’t left the island yet either, so instead of walking down to the ferry to meet Allison for the 5:30pm boat to go to Greenlake, Lisa came and picked me up at 6pm and her and I set off.

Once we got to the house we had a lot of fun.  I’d spent most of that morning baking Oatmeal-Cinnamon-Chocolate Chip-Walnut cookies which I brought over town; everybody loved them.  Woo!  The recipe is from a book Lisa gave me for my birthday, which was great.  So at the house we basically ate cookies, hung out with Jesse and John (Jon?), and watched the 2nd Harry Potter movie.  Everyone seemed to know the first one well enough and I’d just watched it with Josh the other night anyway, so it worked out.

I got a little tour of the house which was very cute and old-looking… good times there.  Both Lisa and Allison’s rooms are adorable, so that’s a lot of fun.  Oh!  And we went to dinner.  I feel bad about that because I think it was more a me thing and the fact that I was a guest who was hungry… I’m not sure though.  I didn’t get the impression that neither Lisa or Allison were that famished.  Either way we walked down to the lake and ate at Duke’s chowder joint.  We got some crab/cheese dip appetizer and I had a crab club sandwich.  The best part of my meal was the sweet potato fries (and ranch!  I didn’t even have to ask!) that came with it.  The sandwich itself was a bit… sweet for my liking.  There wasn’t a balancer or something sour or tart or anything.  Just a bunch of mushy sweet, which I don’t generally like in my sandwiches.  But the crab part of it was quite delicious.

Once we got back from dinner and had watched the movie it was pretty late and Allison needed to get to bed for her hike yesterday morning at 9am.  But, that doesn’t mean we didn’t spend at least a little bit of time reminiscing about “old times” (mostly primary school and middle school days).  That was a lot of fun.

Since Allison had to leave in the morning, I said goodbye to her and then Lisa and I just kind of chilled and talked for a bit before heading back to Bellevue.  She said that she’d like to try those breakfast sandwiches at Specialty’s Bakery that I keep raving about, which was a nice surprise.  So, we drove back to Bellevue and went to the mall, where we had the sandwiches and went to Illuminations.  Speaking of the candle store, I ended up getting another candle there (the kind that are normally $22 in the frosted glass jar) for $10, plus two frosted glass lamp shades that you can put on any of their frosted glass candles (so cute and awesome for only $3!).

But moving on, we engaged in yet another activity that afternoon before finally heading to the studio.  We stopped by the Apple Store so that I could show Lisa the JeasusPhone (iPhone).  Surprisingly there were two free phones to play with on the table, so we made a bee-line and started playing away.  It was my first time actually touching one, so that was quite the fun experience.  The best part for me I think was the realization that my fingers were much smaller than I thought.  See, all the online bloggers who have had one for awhile now say that one of the hard parts to get used to is the virtual keyboard… the keys are pretty tiny, which Apple tries to fix with some cool recognition software.  But one of the reasons that it has been such a bother to them is (I think) because they’re all men who have much bigger hands than I do.  It didn’t occur to me that I’d have as little of a problem as I did with typing.  It was a breeze and that “learning curve” didn’t seem to apply to me as long as I followed Apple’s advice to, “use the Force.”  Heh.

So very fun.  I’ll update later on how the 4th went.  And what am I up to now?  In 15mins I’m going to walk to Bellevue Square and hang out with Josh when he’s on his lunch break and maybe play with the phone a bit more.  Maybe send my mom an e-mail from it.  -squeak!-

Regarding my plethora of readers…

Do you have a phrase or set of phrases that you feel should make a comeback, or that people just don’t say often enough, despite their existence in our language today?  Talking with some friends the other night we decided that the phrase “mark my words” should be incorporated into our everyday conversation when appropriate.

Leave a comment to say what phrases you would like to hear again.

Oh, and a word for the wise:

Do not, I repeat do not try the new Orange Mocha at Starbucks.

Stay away. Evil itself created the drink, so buying one means you don’t support the troops. </sarcasm>

Bellevue Square. Specifically the Tully’s coffee shop upstairs (woohoo for free internet).

I got up today a few minutes after Josh left for work and started getting ready to go outdoors for once (heh). I had a couple of things to do today:

• Mail out two BookMooch books
• Get my necklace cleaned at the jewelry store here at Bellevue Square (where Josh bought it)
• Eat lunch with Josh
• Have coffee

Of course, not necessarily in that order. I’ve done everything on the list other than get my necklace cleaned; Josh says that I have to remain in the store while they do it (it should take about 5mins).

It started sprinkling soon after I left the apartment, so it’s a good thing that I’m from Washington and used to this kind of thing. -grin- Mailing the books was pretty uneventful.

As soon as I arrived at the mall I meandered my way upstairs to Tully’s and order an iced coffee. And just my luck, as soon as I got it I received a call from Josh saying that he’s ready to take his lunch break (it could have been anywhere from 11am-3pm). Things worked out okay in the end though because I didn’t end up finishing my coffee by the time we were done with lunch, hence the fact that I’m back at Tully’s mooching their internet connection.

We went to Red Robin for lunch (Josh is going to get paid a boatload of overtime this week) and I had my usual guacamole burger. Mmm. Mostly we spent the lunch talking about the iPhone, and anything going on at the Apple store that he could tell me.

Speaking of that, while I haven’t seen it myself I hear their NDA agreement is scary. Although I suppose that it certainly isn’t a good one if it isn’t. Either way, Josh started getting internal information that he couldn’t talk about and told me that he appreciated that I didn’t bug him about it, because apparently a co-worker of his was having trouble with “family member(s)” being a little too persistent with their questions. -grin- I mean, it’d be cool to know and obviously he can trust me but when they threaten to take your soul and sell it to the devil if you talk, I’m not going to push it you know?

Either way, Josh has been nice about it. Seeing the line outside the store is kind of exciting actually. They set up the ropes to allow people to stand in line sometime last night, so I imagine that the people in line that are actually in the mall got there pretty early, considering.

Speaking of Josh and today: He got to work at 7am and plans to be there until 9pm tonight. If he can nab a ride home from someone that gets off at 10pm he’ll be home then. So I have a lot of nothing to do this afternoon after I get back, other than look at iPhone coverage of course. And watch TV-Links.

One of the things that I’ve been doing this week is keeping abreast of all iPhone-related news via a couple of websites: tuaw and MacRumors. One of the things both sites have posted is (dun dun DUN!):

From tuaw: Our sister site Engadget reported that Apple was holding an all hands meeting helmed by Steve Jobs today. It would seem Steve wanted to talk iPhone (and who doesn’t). Imagine the gleeful reaction he was given when he announced that all Apple employees (our source says both part time and full-time employees) that have been with Apple for over a year will receive a free 8 gig iPhone by the end of July.

BAH! Did you read that? So exciting! I means that Josh will probably get one, seeing as he’s a full-time employee and has obviously worked there more than a year. This is just what they’re reporting from some kind of “source”, so we can’t rely on it too much, but man. And not just the 4GB version, but the 8GB! -grin-

Enough about the phone.

I’m listing to a great group at the moment: t r y ^ d. It’s a group of people that collaborate and create music together online… they live all over the country and have never met in person. And the music is really good. Check them out at Jamendo.

Oh, so I had lunch with my dad yesterday. I’d talked to him the day before about doing lunch this week and he suggested that since he had to come to work early yesterday that we go to Denny’s of all places. Well, of course it turned out that he didn’t call me until lunch time, so we went to Fat Burger instead. Apparently his Chinese co-workers refuse to eat there, so he doesn’t really get a chance to go. Lunch was pretty good, and we got a chocolate shake. Mmm.

The day before that (Wednesday) I’d tried my hand at making a new kind of cookie. Imagine that. I forget what they were called, but they were those shortbread cookies with jam on top of it in the center. I’d planned on using the “mango sauce” (which is really jam) that we got at Trader Joe’s, but after I’d made the cookie dough I discovered that the mango sauce was moldy! How did that get past us? Either way, I had to switch to marionberry which was a pretty good substitute.

If you’ve ever seen the pizza cutters that IKEA sells, then you know that the end of the handle is very big and rounded… a perfect replacement for your thumb when making indentations in cookies for jam. I found that I’d get a more uniform indentation when using that. Fun times.

Point is, I took some to my dad to give to his co-workers when I went to lunch with him, but alas, apparently jam is not one of those ones that likes to listen to advice, because it got all squishy in the box and the cookies got sticky. Oh well, they still should have been yummy.

Not much else going on, so I think I’ll leave this entry as it is. I considered being snarky and creating an iPhone category for this post, but I’ll be nice and spare you all.

Anyone recognize the quote?  Anyone?   Bonus points if you do.

As many of you might know already, we’re coming up to iDay (which is this Friday, the 29th).  All this week is gearing up for that day, with companies and magazines and inside sources releasing more and more information as time goes on.

The “Jesus Phone” (as most bloggers have been calling it) is probably one of the most anticipated products of the year, even if you’re just interested in seeing whether the thing is any good.  I am one of the unfortunate ones who is flat-out obsessed with the device; it kind of goes hand in hand with Apple geekdom.  Part of my problem stems from the information that I will not be getting one myself (for a very long time) unless I or someone else comes into a sudden amount of money; an unlikely scenario.

As it were, I’m liable to talk about it incessantly until I can get my grimy paws on one myself to play with.  The Apple store is set to be pretty busy in the coming days after the release, so it’ll be at least two weeks before I calm down.  -grin-  Lisa and Allison already got a taste of it today while we were eating at Baja Fresh.

Speaking of today, I called Allison this afternoon and Allison invited me to go to IKEA with her and Lisa, since they were going to get a few things for their new house rental and driving by Bellevue anyway… you get the picture.   The trip was a lot of fun (from my perspective at least), I just hope it was as fun for them as it was me.

Not much else happened today… I managed to hand off the boatload of cookies to my dad when I met him and my mom this morning, and he seemed pretty happy with the amount.  I made two whole batches of cookies; one was Cinnamon Oatmeal Raisin Walnut, and the other Lemon Drop or some thing.  It’s basically a lemon cake cookie with a lemon glaze on top.  Mmm.

One of the things I did pick up at IKEA today was a second cookie sheet for the oven.  I spent most of the late afternoon and all night last night baking cookies because I couldn’t bake two sheets of them at once; it’s terribly aggravating.  I also picked up a zester… I realized that I needed one when I couldn’t add the lemon zest to the lemon cookies for the second time and the normal cheese grater didn’t work worth a damn.  All in all I spent less than $10 on myself there, a nice eventuality if I say so myself.

I did pick up two lamps for my mom as well though… I ended up calling her to ask her if she wanted another one of the type she’d bought previously.  She went for two: one to replace the one my dad broke, and an extra one.  Woo!

Oh, right, and this morning when I met my mom and dad to hand off the cookies, my mom and I went to Specialty’s Bakery at Bellevue Square and had coffee/breakfast.  That was a lot of fun.  I found out that my mom is going to Oregon from Wednesday to Friday to hang with some pseudo-friend of hers at a spa in eastern Oregon.

This entry is long enough and not much else is going on.  Josh and I are watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.  I’ll post later when I have more to update.

Yesterday was spent… cleaning!  Well, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as you might think.  Josh and I drove up to the island yesterday and spent most of the day helping out my mom clean out the basement as it still has a lot to be cleaned.  We didn’t get there until around noon because we did the whole “up late” thing the previous night, but it worked out well.

Lunch on the island wasn’t that exciting… we had leftover sausages from last week when we were there.  After lunch my mom decided that she needed some stuff from the store, so Josh and I offered to take Chester The Dog out on a walk up to the store to get what she needed.  The weather was quite nice, if not a bit warm.  The breeze was helpful though; so helpful in fact, that Josh had some trouble keeping his kilt down!  Mwahahaha.

We cleared out a big portion of the back room and sorted a lot of stuff that was garbage and donate-able.  The only thing that annoyed me a bit is the fact that I go to thrift stores a lot, so in theory I would be a good judge of the stuff they sell and would take, right?  Well, there were many times where something my mom didn’t want was thrown away for no good reason.  Sure, we don’t personally need the stuff, but the least you could do was put it in the donate pile and have it do some good.  I got a little incensed at one point when we found a perfectly good hair straightener that my mom wanted to toss.  I said to her, “why don’t you donate it?” and she just said “nah” and threw it away.  I said that I might want it, seeing as I’d like to get one soon anyway, and she responded with, “you don’t want that, it’s not the ceramic kind!”  I asked her when she was going to spend the $100+ to buy me the ceramic kind if it was so important that I choose that over this cheap-o one, but she just scoffed.  Which was kind of my point: we/I can’t afford it, so this is what I have to work with.  Even Josh piped in and said, “what do you need a hair straightener for?”  Sigh.  Does anyone else understand that they do in fact make a difference?

Eh, it’s just annoying.  That was really the only donate-able item that I would have kept for myself, everything else was just perfectly good thrift store crap.  At least the basement is cleared out a good deal more though.  Woo for that!

For dinner my dad barbecued burgers that my mom made, and those were particularly yummy.  There was enough burger meat that each of us actually got two patties…mmm.

Not much else went on yesterday on the island, other than the fact that we found our old deck of Mille Bourne (or however you spell it) and played a game before Josh and I caught the 9:30pm ferry.

On the ferry on the way home we played Meteos on our Nintendo DS, which was tons of fun.  Apparently Josh is pretty used to dumbing himself down (because he’s so good at things like this, ha) and forgot that he could play at full bore without me getting annoyed with him.  Of course that meant that I was schooled pretty hardcore, but that’s okay, I still love him.  -grin-

One of the other things we brought back from the island with us is a nice glass chess set.  My sister got it as a gift at one point but of course she doesn’t care a lick, hence our nice acquisition.  We debated awhile about bringing it with us to the apartment, because we really don’t have any room for it, but Josh really does like to play and I’d like the chance to practice, so we went for it.  There was a condition though: Josh is good enough that he didn’t want to bring it only to have me refuse to play with him because I got too annoyed at him winning all the time.  Haha.  I told him it wouldn’t be a problem, because how else am I supposed to learn, right?

Anyway, I might rant about something later in the blog if I feel like it, but for now I’m going to end this entry.  Lisa and Allison should be mostly moved into their new place now in Greenlake, so that’s pretty exciting!  I can’t wait to check it out.

Yep, I’m off to see Lewis Black with my mom.  Why?  Because of a weird set of circumstances.

First off, Josh was set to go and hang out with his friend Brian today, who’s back in the area from Spokane.  I couldn’t figure out whether I should go or not, because he was giving me ambiguous answers to all of my questions.  Josh said he likes having me there, and that Brian doesn’t mind if I come, and that it’s totally cool… but he wouldn’t tell me whether he wanted me there or not.  I felt like if I’d gone I’d be butting in somehow.

Their sort-of plan was to go and eat at The Cheesecake Factory here in Bellevue, then maybe see a movie at Lincoln Square Cinemas, which is a really nice theater, also in Bellevue.  Turns out that Josh had to pick Brian up in Sammamish, so he’d be gone an hour doing that, giving me time to think over whether I wanted to go or not, heh.

While I’m trying to decide I call my mom to see how things are going on the island today.  They’re supposed to be packing up my uncle’s stuff so they can move it tomorrow to his new apartment with the truck they’ve rented.  Anyway, while I’m talking to her I tell her what’s going on with me and she suggests that her and my dad meet me for dinner instead, on their way to Lewis Black.  But once they start talking about it, they realize that there isn’t much time for them to get ready before they have to catch a boat to come over here.   I mention to my mom that we certainly don’t have to do dinner and that I should probably get over the whole I-don’t-know-if-I-should-go thing, so they should just go along with their plans.

Well, my mom still tries to figure out if they have enough time, when someone drives down the street that my mom mistakes for my uncle.  He’s supposed to already be on the island so that they can pack up his stuff so it’s ready to load onto the truck tomorrow, but he’s late.  Turns out that it wasn’t him, and my parents slowly start to realize that there isn’t much time to get all the stuff done today that they need to if they have to leave in an hour to go to a show.

Once that conclusion is reached, my mom asks my dad exactly how excited is he to be going to the show, and he responds: not very if it just so happens there are cookies waiting for me in Bellevue on Monday morning.  You can just hear him grinning over the phone… for one, he’s not one to like rushing, and for two he’s not one to like cities, or going into them to see a show where he might have to dress up and the whole ordeal.  So I wasn’t surprised that my dad was willing to trade in his ticket for 2 dozen cookies (oatmeal-raisin or lemon-glaze, apparently).  One of the great things about my dad is that he doesn’t hide things: when he says something, it’s the truth.  If he says that he’d rather avoid the hassle and stay home to help my uncle pack in exchange for some cookies I’m inclined to believe him.

Thus, I got conscripted to go to the show with my mom (not that I mind, at all).  She’s going to catch a 4 or 4:30pm boat over here and we’ll head straight over to Seattle, where we’ll pick up the tickets (at her desk) and then go find a place to eat dinner.  Honestly though, I’m really excited about tonight, though I still feel kind of guilty about my dad not going.  I mean, he says it’s okay, so I believe him, but I also feel bad in case my mom would have rather gone with him.  Eh, we’ll see… I’m sure everything will be fine (she is the one who suggested it, after all).

Now that I’ve written this entry explaining the latest in my life, I should end it and get on with cleaning up the apartment.  I asked Josh if he thought Brian might want to come up and see the new place, and he responded with a “maybe”, so I think it’d be nice of me to try and clean up in case they do come up before I leave or while I’m gone.

Note to self: You should be able to tell by now when Josh is actually going to answer your question, and when he’s going to keep it all in and give you ambiguous answers.  When he doesn’t want to tell you, stop asking, it just annoys you both.

Fact: It’s hard to get me mad.

Fact: When you flake out on me consistently, ignore me, and only acknowledge my presence when you need me, I will get mad.

Fact: Even then it’ll take a few tries before I do anything about it.

Why all that information?  Because I’m mad at someone.  Namely, Kate.  (Ooo!  Who’s surprised?  Not me, that’s for sure!)

Kate called me not this last Sunday, but the Sunday before that (June 10th) to let me know that her dad Doug had suffered a heart attack and had to be taken to the hospital.  Not only that, but he needed emergency triple-bypass surgery Monday morning.  The surgery was set to take 5hrs, and Kate was kind of a mess.

That in itself doesn’t get me mad.  What gets me mad is not letting me know how the surgery went, and how he is.  All week long I was left without an answer.  I’d call once a day, leaving an actual voice mail every other day.  One day I sent her a blunt text message that she should at least text me to let me know how he is doing.  Since Josh’s parents are friends with him, of course we told them, and of course they’ve also been asking me all week whether I’ve heard from her on his condition.

So I’m getting more and more frustrated, when today I happen to log onto my oft-neglected MySpace account to make sure I don’t have any messages (I have MySpace e-mail notifications sent to a spam e-mail address that I check even less often) and, because I’m bored and at Tully’s, decide to check all the “blogs” of all my MySpace friends.  I work my way to Kate’s MySpace page and lo-and-behold, she has a new blog post.  Here is what it said:

Hi all.

My Dad is back home again after having open heart surgery and then having complications. Things didn’t look so good for a bit there, but I am EXTREMELY happy to report he seems to be feeling better now. I know I’ve made plans with people and broken them especially in the last 2-3 weeks, but to all my good friends I appreciate your patience. My schedule is so out of whack right now and I’m trying to staighten it back out, but I need naps so often, and I’ve been under the weather, so it’s hard to know when I’ll be awake and asleep. I am discontented by this. I would never have used the word “flakey” to describe myself before, but lately I haven’t been keeping my word as I usually do. I feel awful. I am not intending to hurt anyone with my actions, and I feel as though I’ve fallen victim to myself.

In the next week I’m making a serious effort to at least go back to the schedule I’ve been on since Dec. It’s not great, but at least it’s predictable. Your continued patience is appreciated for the next little bit while I work out my own shit. Really. It has nothing to do with any of you. Again I apologize, and I still love all of you… Ok… Most of you… 😉

Is it not obvious to most of us that this is an extremely tacky way to update someone on their father’s triple-bypass surgery?  I couldn’t believe it when I read the post.  I don’t talk to her for a week, and just as I’m getting really annoyed I find out that the day before she’d updated her MySpace page on the subject.  I always tell her when I talk about stuff on her Myspace page that I almost never go there, or use it for anything… so it shouldn’t be the preferred way of communication.  Especially since I’m online on IM almost all day, I’m always checking my e-mail, and my cell phone doesn’t leave my side.  Her cell phone doesn’t leave her side either.

So, what do I do?  I write her an interesting comment in response to her blog post, which I’ll show you here:

Girlfriend are you serious?  You’re letting me know via MySpace?  I don’t CHECK this site often enough for it to be a reliable method of communication… everyone over here in WA is WORRIED about him.  When did I talk to you last?  A week ago?  The whole time Josh and I (including Thom and Teena) have been stewing wondering whether he’s okay.  A text message would have been nice.  Or even an e-mail.

I know you’ve had a rough time of it lately, but the least you could have done was let me know how things worked out.  I’m glad I know now, but if I hadn’t logged on to MySpace today to check on something it could have been a week before I saw that.

I don’t mean to sound quite as scathing as I’m sure I sound here, that’s one of the side effects of communicating through text rather than speaking to someone directly, but if it’s okay to announce your dad’s status here then I figure it’s okay to vent my frustration here as well.

There isn’t a point in calling me now to tell me how he is… I already know.  Call if you genuinely want to talk to me.

So, that’s my gripe for the day.  We’ll see what Kate does about this message… Josh is convinced that she’ll call, apologize, then promptly forget about the whole thing.  We shall see.

One thing I didn’t mention during my birthday post was what I got from Josh’s family.  I suppose I should use this as an opportunity to talk about how Sunday went in general.

It was Father’s Day, his mom’s birthday, and Jon’s graduation party all in one, so naturally Josh and I weren’t exactly jumping to attend.  The whole family was set to be there, and it looked like it was going to be a long day.

Luckily it turned out that Josh already had a gift for his dad which he’d forgotten about: an Airport Express.  For Jon we eventually decided (Sunday morning mind you) that we should get him Mario Kart for the DS, since he’d been borrowing Ashley’s lately… it’d be a fun game for both of them.  For his mom though it was a whole different story.  He was going to get her a Home Depot gift card to encourage everyone to get working on the new fence gate they’d promised her last year… maybe she could use the card to buy the hardware for it or something.  So off we went to Home Depot, partly to buy her a card and partly to look and see if they had any good kilt-friendly belts there like we’d heard.

Once we got there though I kind of insisted that we check out their garden department and see if there was a nice flower/plant that we could get her instead of a gift card.  Josh was dubious but I had us look around anyway.  Then I saw them: fuscias!  Those hanging plants are always pretty, and camp has a lot of nice places to hang them.  I relayed my idea to Josh and he remembered that she used to always get fuscia plants for Mother’s Day or her b-day or something, but gradually they’d stopped doing it.  We decided that it was an excellent idea, and picked the bushiest one we could find.  It was great because it had big flowers, was hot pink and white, and only had some that were fully open, so lots more were to come.  She ended up really liking the gift.

The rest of the day went fairly smoothly.  We got there an hour early because Josh wasn’t sure of the time things were supposed to start.   The food was good (burgers, pasta salad, veggies), and Josh and I both brought our Nintendo DS’, so that after Jon opened his gift we could all play together.

For my b-day gift I got a full size sheet/comforter set.  It kind of has a Hawaiian look to it, with Hawaiian-style flowers all over it in turquoise, hot pink, lime green, and bright orange.  It’s pretty fun, and will be useful to swap out with the one we have.

The Saturday I talked about in the last entry where I went to lunch with my friends and we helped clean the basement was my family’s Father’s Day celebration, since Josh and I couldn’t make it on Sunday.  For my dad we all pitched in (though Josh and I went and got it) for a Half Price Books gift card totaling $50, and Josh and I sprung for a Kakuro puzzle book, seeing as it’s my dad’s new thing after he’s done hundreds of Sudoku puzzles and is really good and burned out on ’em.

He’s been using the book a lot, and I’m sure he’s really happy to have the Half Price Books card, so that went really well.

Oh, and we barbecued for dinner on that Saturday… we had a Copper River Salmon which was delicious, plus some sausages that we also excellent with mustard.

Woo for Father’s Day, anti-woo for not having time to yourself all weekend.

I haven’t yet updated the blog on how my birthday went with Josh, or the subsequent birthday lunch with Lisa and Allison.

When my birthday rolled around, as I’ve mentioned before I went out to have breakfast with my parents and came back to watch Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. Since Josh had to work that day we just planned on having dinner somewhere and that was about it. The only hard part of the day was seeing my b-day gifts in the apartment and wondering what they were.

We went to dinner at Maggiano’s at Lincoln Square… it was actually quite good. I had kind of dressed up for the occasion wearing one of my skirts and some of my Chanel Chance perfume, and Josh was wearing his kilt and a dress shirt. For the appetizer we picked one off of the Make-A-Wish menu, which was toasted garlic bread baguette with goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes, basil, and a balsamic vinaigrette all over it. Mmm.

For dinner Josh had a seafood linguine type thing which was excellent, while I had a lobster ravioli with lobster cream sauce. You heard that right, and oh boy was it delicious. Dessert was even more exciting… the featured dessert on the Make-A-Wish menu was a berry tiramisu. Now, I love tiramisu in general, but it’s particularly rich, so seeing a berry version was quite intriguing to say the least. The portion turned out to be gigantic (which was great since we were sharing), and had blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries inside it. It really made the whole dessert much more light. Of course on the side was a light berry sauce and a pile of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Yum!

After we finished dinner Josh asked me if there was anything else that I wanted to do, and since there weren’t any good movies playing at Lincoln Square I suggested that we head over to the mall and wander around. I kind of wanted to look at dresses, just because it’s fun and because it’ll be officially summer soon. Of course, after a bit of wandering around I find something that I really liked and showed it to Josh… he thought it was really cute as well! And since it was my birthday… Josh was a sweetheart and bought it for me. -grin-

Once we’d finished dress shopping Josh asked if we could go and look at the men’s section to check out some button-up shirts. He’d always been interested in wearing them with his kilt, but never really thought that they would look right; consequently I spent a good 20mins convincing him to even try one on, and that they’d look fine. Once he did though, he actually started to like them a bit more and realize that the length of the shirts wouldn’t look that bad. Then of course we found two shirts on sale that are a dark grey-blue. Very nice. I even convinced him to buy a size that fit him! He’s so used to buying the XL size because he doesn’t want a tight shirt, but I was of the opinion that they looked a bit too “baggy”, so we’ll see how he likes the smaller size in the long run.

Once we’d picked out the shirts we just headed back to the apartment to open my gifts. Here’s what I got:

• Nintendo DS Lite (White)
• Wolfenstein (GBA game playable on the DS)
• Our already-owned copy of Mario Kart

Josh went to all the Game Stop stores in the area and couldn’t find a used or new copy of Mario Kart, so he figured that the next best thing would be to give our copy to me so that I could wipe it and start from the beginning again, entering my name in the card and all that. I did end up asking him if he’d checked Toys ‘R’ Us, since they often have a surplus of that kind of thing (gamers don’t usually think to check there), and he admitted that he hadn’t thought of that. So when an hour later he says to me, “I’ll be right back” and leaves the apartment, I could already imagine what he was doing.

Turns out I was right, and he shows up a few minutes later with Mario Kart in hand. We’ve been playing together ever since… thanks honey! (It’s so much more fun when you each have a copy of the game since you’re not restricted to playing on certain courses).

So all in all I had a really nice birthday. Since we’d (Lisa, Josh and I) had taken Allison out for dinner on her birthday, we’d kind of agreed that we’d all go out to lunch/dinner again since my birthday was coming up. We ended up waiting until the end of the week so that Lisa could be there, and went to Pickles deli on the island in Clinton. It’s a new joint at Ken’s Korner that my sister said was really good. It was.

Josh and I were already on the island that day helping my parents clean out the basement a bit and sort through all the massive piles of junk that are down there. I had a few personal goals, or reasons for helping out. For one, I didn’t want anything of mine to be thrown away that I didn’t already want tossed, and for two I wanted to find some of the stuff that I didn’t want tossed… it’s a huge mess down there. We managed to go through all the clothing and I ended up with a big black garbage bag full of clothes that we’d stuffed downstairs during the remodel that I hadn’t been able to find again. The only problem with this is that I have now effectively doubled the clothing that I have at the apartment and I’m already bursting at the seams… it’s still sitting in its black garbage bag.

My mom also managed to find the big fishbowl she kept Hank her betta fish in, something I’ve had my eye on for awhile. Since our apartment is so small, I figured that it’d be fun to have a betta fish but didn’t want to buy all the “equipment” over again when I knew it was sitting somewhere in that basement.

Apparently it was a good thing that Josh and I offered to help, because my mom was genuinely overwhelmed with the project. She was kind of like a deer-in-the-headlights about the whole affair, and it took a few minutes to convince her that the “orders” I was giving her should be followed through just so that we could get started somewhere. It all worked out in the end, and now she’s on a cleaning spree down there and I hear she’s cleaned up maybe a 1/5th of it herself already. Woo!

So that was our project for the day… we planned to be there for the day and steal away just to have lunch with Lisa and Allison. Unfortunately that took longer than expected, because it’d been awhile since we’d all been together… so lunch took and hour, then we went to Langley and went to Tricia’s mom’s yard sale so Allison could find some art for her Philly apartment (I found some wax beads to put in bowls with wicks and use as candles, along with a Mardi Gras mask and some lavender oil). Then it was off to Good Cheer to check out the thrift store items, and then to Mike’s Place to get some ice cream.

At Good Cheer it was fun, because I found another sweater to rip out for just $3 (from the gap, pastel green and very soft), and we found some really cute old books for Allison to get. One was Latin For Beginners from the 1909, and the other was a little thin spelling book for 1st-3rd graders, made in 1895-ish. So very cute… I told Allison that she almost had to get it seeing as she was going for an Education degree. She thought it was wonderful.

At Mike’s Place I got some blackberry ice cream and Allison was kind enough to buy mine for me.

The only “bad” thing about the day was that I felt bad for Josh while we were gallivanting around. On the one hand I wanted to give my friends some time just to hang out with me, because I’m always with Josh these days… I kind of got very, very subtle clues sometimes that it’d be nice. On the other hand I always want Josh to be there, and I don’t want him to feel bad because he “can’t come”. It was okay in the end, but he did have to wait around for a very long time for us so I hope to make it up to him this weekend by having a somewhat-impromptu “Josh Day”.

That’s kind of the update for my birthday activities. Fun times all around. I talked to my mom about coming back to the island this Sunday to help out more with the basement, but that would mean we’d be there two weekends in a row (along with not really having a day off on the weekend) so I don’t want to push the issue with Josh. I want to give him a nice day off whenever he wants it, you know?

Right now I’m typing this at Tully’s across the street from the apartment with a grande iced vanilla latté to enjoy, along with a blueberry muffin. Mmm… muffins.