Joshua and Bevin

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.

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.