busy week

Yesterday went to work and got lots done, so that was cool. After work we went to Miramar Lake to run/rollerblade. Now that the lake goes all the way around for 5 miles, I always feel like I HAVE to go 5 miles. Because what are ya gonna do after you already run 2.5 miles, halfway around??? If you turn around, it's 5 miles. If you keep going, it's 5 miles. You're pretty much stuck with 5 miles! LOL! So I ran the 5 miles. Afterwards we went to In-N-Out Burger and made the calories come back. So yummy though. Today I found out at work that I have to start working on the 2008 budgets already. How fun. Todd and I worked virtual. So, for lunch, we went to Round Table Pizza for the free buffet. Yes, FREE! They handed us coupons at work for a free lunch buffet, as long as you purchase a drink. Later tonight we're bringing dinner to our friends Mike & Barbara. That should be a good time. Yesterday Tara Whitney showed some photos of our photo shoot on her blog here. Read other people's comments below, they're hilarious! I've been studying up the manual for our Canon PowerShot S2 IS. I'm going to try to shoot some photos in manual mode soon. I have no pictures or scrap pages to show today. Because I've been working. Yea, you know, the stuff I do that has to do with numbers that people actually pay me to do?

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Fav things for today

A couple of funnies first. Yesterday we went grocery shopping with Dad. Todd got two packages of fresh green beans, and promptly put them into someone else's shopping cart. I told him, "That's not our cart!" and moved them into our cart. The two of us just stood there laughing for a while, like goons. Then my dad said, "You two can find humor in anything". It's true! Then, we separated our groceries from my dad's and we checked out first. Then we waited for my dad to check out, and in the mean time, Todd was putting dad's grocery bags into our joint cart. The cashier thought Todd was stealing my dad's groceries! That was super-funny and the three of us laughed for minutes after that, like goons again.

Some of my favorite things today:

• Endangered Species dark chocolates. My friend Minnie introduced me to them and I especially love the Dark Chocolate with Deep Forest Mint. Very yummy and now you can get them at TARGET! I just discovered this on Saturday!
• New notebooks and pens at Back to School sales. I know, I'm not going back to school, but that doesn't mean I can't take advantage of the sales. I have a soft spot for notebooks and pens.
• My new arm band for running with my iPod Nano. I had one but it was too big for my small arms and kept slipping off. This one fits.
• New Bon Jovi CD Lost Highway
• The Belgian hot chocolate at Belgium Frie. Can't wait for cooler weather!
• Free Photoshop actions by Natasha Whiteley. If you have Photoshop you can download these for free and play with them. These are the results with this Kauai vacation photo. Pretty cool huh?
  

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How can August be almost over?

This summer has flown by so fast! Where did the time go?

This week I went to cardio class after work at our work gym. We have a "new" instructor, Carmen. She's actually not new to us. She used to teach us two years ago, before she moved to Arizona. She's moved back, and in the meantime our previous instructor Linda could no longer teach us due to scheduling conflicts with her real job, so Carmen came back. Carmen kicks our butts! She's in her mid to late forties, stocky, but she a little combustible package of energy and just keeps going and going! All my workout buddies agree that when Carmen used to teach us, our bodies were more toned. So looking forward to the hard work and results, I guess. Ha ha.

Our photo proofs from Tara Whitney finally came back! We're so happy with the photos! Lots of them turned out awesome, in our opinion. Here's a link to our client gallery if you're interested. If you like them or have favorite ones, please leave a comment here on my blog or email me. Would love to hear which ones are your favorites. Our favs are #7, 13, 18, 25, and 33. There are lots of other good ones, but if I had to pick only 5, those are them.

Last night Todd played with Kim Divine at Hot Java Cafe. I'll post pics when I've had a chance to go over them.

I scrapped a few more pages this week. The first three are pics from when we went to hang out in Del Mar for lunch. The 4th page is from our Kauai trip in '03.

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Dog days of August

This might have been the warmest weekend this year for San Diego! Don't get me wrong, high 80's is still quite comfy compared to the rest of you out there, but it's hot relatively for SD. We had to turn the A/C on for about 4 hours each day, maybe more if we're in the house all afternoon. Usually by 7 pm we can turn off the A/C and open the windows though. The water temperature at the beach reached 77 degrees! Someone said that hasn't happened here in over 30 years. Yikes.

Let's see... let's step back a few days. Todd played music with Kim Divine at Lestat's last Wednesday night. He saw pirates there. Seriously, these people were dressed up like pirates, with swords and everything. Weird goth people always hang out at Lestat's. One of them even said they "hate blonde people" right in front of Todd! After Todd came home we saw our DVR of "So You Think You Can Dance". We'd been watching it all season and wanted to see the finale. I'm glad Sabra won cuz I was rooting for her, even though I like Danny and Neil too.

Thursday evening we went to the Taste of Encinitas with our good friends AJ & Meera. I'd have to say that this "Taste Of" wasn't as good as the Taste of Gaslamp or the Taste of Hillcrest. The food was pretty normal and nothing spectacular. But it was fun to walk around, hang out with friends, and people-watch.

Friday night we went to dinner at Little Tokyo's. I had a sushi combo meal with tempura shrimp and veggies, and Todd had a chicken salad. Then we went and hung out at Borders for a while.

Sat. morning we went running in Encinitas. We ran about 3 miles and it was totally hot and humid (for San Diego). Afterwards we ate brunch at Beach City Cafe, our favorite. They tried to skimp me on the potatoes so Todd asked for more. ;-p Then we came home and did some chores and watched some pre-season football. We went to dinner at Taste of Scheschuan in Hillcrest and it was yummy. We had never gone there for dinner before, but had a taste at the Taste of Hillcrest. I had House Panfried Noodles and Todd had fried cod. Then, we went to the coolest little theatre in Mission Hills called Cinema Under the Stars. We saw "North by Northwest" with Cary Grant there. The whole experience was really cool and I'd do it again. The only problem is that it's very small, so it sells out very fast. When we went to buy the tickets at 6 pm, they only had 12 tickets left! And the movie didn't even start until 8:30 pm!

Sunday afternoon we went to Todd's boss John's house in Escondido for a BBQ. They had Rotisserie Affair cater the party. They had a HUGE rotisserie there filled with chickens and pork loins. It was yummy and we had fun hanging out with Todd's coworkers. Todd make homemade Chewy Chocolate-Cherry Cookies and it was a big hit. Recipe is below if you wanna try it out yourself.

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Between 60 and 80

I know I'm blessed. I've been watching the weather reports lately and know that everywhere else is having a heat wave. Or heavy rain. Or tornadoes. Or floods. Where I live the day time average highs are between 60 in the winter and 80 in the summer. I have nothing to complain about. I love the weather here and it's worth every penny we pay to live here! :-)

Let's see... after we last talked, I've done the following:

• Went to up visit my dad Friday night. Sat. morning Todd & I went for a walk around the neighborhood and coaxed Rocky the dog to put his face over the fence and say hi to us. Rocky is so cute. Then we had lunch with Dad at Yi Tao Long, followed by Taiwanese shaved ice. Yum! Then we hung out at Dad's until he had to go to a wedding at 3 pm. We left and went to Super Walmart, where Todd stocked up on popcorn. Then we headed to the shopping mall at Dos Lagos. It's brand-new, but it' looked bigger from the freeway. It actually wasn't that big. It was so hot out there too! We ended up going from air-conditioned store to store, and finally bought some chocolate covered caramels at Rocky Mountain Chocolate and then left. Had quick dinner at Chick-Fil-A and then went home.
• On Sunday we ran 3.1 miles just around our own neighborhood. We also went to Del Mar for lunch at the Pacifica Breeze. There were lots of cute dogs there, because the outdoor dining allowed dogs, so I ended up looking at all the dogs. I had a Japanese clam chowder, which had shiitaki mushrooms in it, and a Greek salad. Todd had fish tacos. After that we had a chai smoothie at Java Kai.
  
  
• Yesterday we left work early and went to Sea World for their night time shows. We've been wanting to do that but we didn't want to go on the weekends due to the huge summer tourist crowds. It was still crowded last night though. We went to see the sea otters first. I had seen the rescued baby sea otter on the TV news, and wondered if we would get to see her at all. Lo and behold, there was a sign to the baby sea otter nursery! We followed it and saw the baby otter! I was so excited and stayed there and watched her for a long time. We also went to the Manatee exhibit, where I saw the huge manatees swim around. This was the most active I had ever seen them. Usually they just float around the water and they don't move much, but last night they swam around the tank quite a bit. We saw the Pets Rule show and the Shamu Rocks show (only at night). We also purchased two toy sharks, which I've been playing with quite a bit! It was really fun.
  

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Herding cats

I had a dream last night that I was trying to herd like 8 cats from one place to another, and none of them were listening to me. They just went wherever they wanted and ignored me. So then I concentrated on one cat and got him to come to get petted. Then I found the cats all under the couch peeking their little heads out at me! It was strange. Ever heard of the expression, "it was like trying to herd cats"?

So, because of my dream, I googled "herding cats" and found this commercial on youtube.




I scrapped this a few days ago.

{Black background paper and alphas by Gina Cabrera; swirl brush by Anna Aspnes; star brushes downloaded from Brusheezy; scalloped frame by Kate Teague; doodled flowers by Ann Langpap; font is Stamp Act Jumbled}

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Digi hoarder

I've been hoarding dig-scrapping products for two weeks now. I plan to do lots of scrapping after the hoarding phase. Especially after we get our pictures from Tara Whitney! So excited for that! Let's see, what have we been up to?

• Last Saturday 7/28 we drove up to LA to see my dad. It was his birthday, so we took him out to lunch at a fabulous Chinese restaurant on Azusa Ave called Earthen. We had to wait about 20 minutes to get seated due to the popularity and small size of the restaurant. We ordered green onion pancakes, beef noodle soup, a cold salad dish with julianned veggies, shrimps, abalone, sea cucumber, etc., mongolian beef, and something else I can't remember. It was all yummy.
• Then later that day, we went to Drew and Jade's house. They had a potluck/BBQ in honor of Dad's birthday. It was really fun. They also ordered a really yummy birthday cake from a Chinese bakery.
• Dad got to open his birthday gifts from us. We got him a button-up shirt, some slacks, and some tan Sperry Top-Sider shoes.
• Last Sunday 7/29 we left Dad's house and drove down the 15 to Temecula to AJ & Meera's baby shower at AJ's mom Marilyn's house. Her home was gorgeous, and she had yummy Filipino food catered. I had lots of lumpia. :-) We played pool, and some of the kids went out into the pool too. Meera was VERY surprised and it was fun to meet her family, finally!
• I went to cardio workout at the gym at work twice last week.
• Then Friday night 8/3 we had Brandon and Priscilla over for dinner. Todd cooked a summer pasta salad with grilled chicken, green beans, red peppers, penne, etc. And a side-dish of balsamic-butter asparagus. For dessert we had Haggen Das chocolate covered ice cream bars. Brandon & Priscilla were so funny and we were so entertained!
• On Saturday Todd and I went running in Cardiff/Encinitas. Then we got a raspberry almond pastry at Seaside Market (so yummy!). Then pizza at Bon Jiorno's. Then we did some house work (not so fun). After that we ate some leftovers and went to Carmel Mountain. We looked around Michaels (didn't buy anything), then got a blueberry pomegranate iced blended from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Then we headed to Hot Java Cafe and listened to Aaron Bowen sing. Then we came home and watched "Flushed Away" on DVD. (Cartoon about mice.)
• Yesterday we had lunch at Chili's, then we stopped by World Market. They have such cute notebooks (full of monkeys!) and wrapping papers there. Then we stopped by the Sprint store to see what the deals are on new phones, because our 2-year contract has expired. We compared prices and got a better deal on their internet site, so we went home to order it. Unfortunately, we kept getting errors on their website. No matter what we could not order the phones online and get the web special prices. Todd spent 2 hours on the phone with Sprint and got nowhere (sad), so he went back to the store and got the phones there. So now I have a new pink phone.

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