Not Enough Days in the Weekend

and not enough hours in the day! We spent almost the whole day cleaning the house today. One thing that you can count on during a house renovation is the dust. Don't ask me why by the end of the week there is ALWAYS a layer of dust everywhere, no matter what they did that week. There just is. So we dusted everywhere, and vacuumed the whole house again. Can you say "two more weeks"??? We'll be so glad when it's done! Yesterday we didn't really get any time to ourselves, since Mike and the tile guys were here for 12 hours working. Today was taken up with cleaning. I'm ready for another weekend day to relax, but tomorrow is already Monday so I have to go to work. I've been lacking sleep lately, but I think I made up for it last night and this morning. I got up at 7:30 after about 7.5 -8 hours of sleep. After a couple of Eggo waffles, I fell asleep on the couch and the next thing I knew, I woke up and it was 11:45am! But I don't regret it at all, because I SO needed more sleep. We went to Tofu House in Kearny Mesa for lunch. It is awesome Korean food! Here is Todd with all the side dishes, including pickled radishes, cucumbers, and kimchi. Here I am with my bowl of BBQ beef and mushroom tofu. Todd's meal was called "Hot Stone Meat Party", which I found funny and yummy at the same time. I was so inspired by the other Digi Darers in this week's Digi Dare #135. We are scrapping about our defining moments, and I was SO incredibly blown-away by the journaling on the layouts by my Dare teammates! The layouts and journaling touched pieces of my heart and I can relate to some of them as well. Please go check it out and join us this week! Here's my layout for the dare. It is about the day we moved to San Diego. Full credits at the Dare site or here.

Cavserday

Todd is watching Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Division finals game with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic right now. On the days that the Cavs play, we've been calling it "Cavserday". It doesn't look good right now for the Cavs though. If they don't win this game, the Orlando Magic will go to the Finals against the L.A. Lakers. :( Even though today was Saturday (or "Cavserday"), Mike and his crew came and worked all day tiling the kitchen floor, the floors in the other two bathrooms, and the shower. And putting grout in. They worked a 12 hour day! Such hard work.

One Step Forward

Turned out that yesterday one of the floor tile guys, Ruben, had an emergency with his daughter and both him and Ian had to leave because they carpool. So I can understand why there was hardly any progress made on the flooring yesterday. Today Ruben, Ian, Gino, and Mike all came and lots of progress was made. They finished the flooring in the downstairs bathroom, but the toilet had to wait until tomorrow to get put back in so that the floor could set. Yes, they're working on Saturday! They also did the rest of the kitchen backsplash, the part above the cooktop. An overall view, plus you can see the kitchen tile flooring too (although it's not polished and sealed yet).

What Were They Thinking?

Today we came home from work and marveled at the total lack of progress in the remodel. Two guys showed up at 7:30 am this morning to tile. I have no idea how long they were at the house, because I went to work. But they didn't get very much done, and I'm pissed. Not necessarily at the fact that they made so little progress. But that they left the downstairs bathroom floor tile half-done. The owner of the tile install company, Mike, had told me yesterday that if they do the floors in the 2nd and 3rd bathrooms, they would take out the toilet, do the floors, and put the toilet back IN THE SAME DAY. I came home to find the floor only half done, and the toilet still OUT. I was SO upset. What the hell were they thinking??? Not only that, but they haven't even STARTED on the kitchen floor, which they were supposed to do today too. I am complaining big time to Mike tomorrow morning as soon as he gets here. I'm very unhappy. This is the third time I've been this unhappy since the remodeling started. I'm the most upset when people use my bathroom, or when I'm without an extra toilet (like today), or when they disregard our house and make an extra mess. I am really unhappy today. My photo today is of a group lunch we had for our coworker Sue, who is taking advantage of an early retirement program at my work. She has one more week of work and then she will be enjoying the retiree life! I'm so jealous. I've got like, 20 more years to go.

Backsplash

I took the day off from work today so that I can stay home to consult on the kitchen backsplash. Mike, Gino, and Salvador came around 8:30am this morning to "float" the shower (basically put a big layer of concrete in) and put the kitchen and bathroom backsplash in. They brought all the tiles with them, and a ton of equipment! The work was loud and there was a lot of banging and dropping of things. I'm not sure what that was all about, but I tried not to panic. The reason I had to stay home was because I had to decide where the bigger beige square tiles go. The look we were going for was "random". Todd came home and inspected my design, and approved. Whew, that's good, because I'm not sure it would have been easy to change stuff around. The reason the wall to the right of Todd in the photo is bare is because they brought the wrong tiles. They were the right shapes (versailles), but the colors were wrong. So those tiles will be in on Friday. The tiles still need to be grouted tomorrow. And tomorrow they're putting in the kitchen floor and the flooring in the downstairs bathroom. There is toilet take-out and put-back involved. Ew! I'm not sure why they couldn't bring our new toilets to put them in, but whatever. I asked and they said they wanted to do it this way. The house got very dirty today because the concrete stuff is nasty. They protected the flooring but of course there's still dirt lying around. We didn't bother to clean up though, because the job is not done and they'll be back tomorrow, Friday, and even Saturday. But today was a lot of progress and we're really excited about it! Todd went to urgent care at lunch today, because his eyes have been red for three days now, and he thought he had an infection. Turned out he has viral conjunctivitus, or a form of pink eye. I dunno how he got it! The only kid we've hung out with lately is Andon. Do adults just get pink eye for no reason??? As a coincidence, the head of urgent care, Dr. Smith, was the one seeing Todd. Todd asked him about the illiotibial band injury from running, and he asked the right doctor! Dr. Smith used to run sub-three hour marathons (that's really fast!) and knows all about marathon training and injuries. They talked about it and he referred Todd to a sports medicine doctor to get checked out. I finished my Week 19 and 20 layouts for Project 365. My layout is inspired by one of the papers called Tutti Frutti in the Basic Grey Lime Rickey line. I just love Basic Grey papers! (But not enough to paper scrap regularly, LOL!) I drew the wavy grid myself and used the Magic Wand Tool in Photoshop to select each wavy square to cut the paper/photo in that shape. Week 19 Week 20

The Pizza Box Has Landed

on our new countertops! Tonight we ate pizza while watching the Cavs game (they lost in overtime, sniff sniff). Todd insisted on putting the pizza box on the new kitchen countertop, because he could. :p A few more looks: The countertop material is quartz, by the way. It is non-porous and impervious to water, moisture, and bacteria. And twice as hard as granite, without the radon emission. The main reason we chose it is because it is incredibly strong and you don't have to seal it regularly, like you do with granite. In fact, it is virtually maintenance-free, which is how we like it! The counters also made their appearance in the master bath: We picked a color that reminded us of sand, like at the beach. Although the lighting in this photo is kind of poor, so I'm not sure you can see that. So after a long week of idle days, we finally got countertops. Did I mention that I can't wait for this remodel to be over? It feels like a Monday, even though it's Tuesday. I almost forgot to mention that this week's Digi Dare is up! Come scrap why you like to spend time online, and get a coupon and a chance to win some awesome GC's from our sponsors! You can see each side of the two-pager bigger at the Dare site, or here and here.

Happy Happens

here. In San Diego. I guess there really is such a thing as a "sunny disposition", according to our convention & visitors bureau. My fair city has spent a good $8 million on its new tourism campaign, and the catch-phrase is "Happy Happens". After seeing this video, I've decided that *I* personally need to vacation locally and engage in some of these fun activities this summer. Especially the street go-carts, because that just looks like SO much fun! And I love that skateboarding dog, so cute! He also wake-boards at the beach. (Click on the HQ button to see it in high quality.) This collage is just too fun! I found it at here. In an effort to keep supporting the local economy, we sacrificed ourselves and ate cupcakes today. I saw on the local news channel on Friday evening that there is a new cupcake place in town called "Cupcake Love". I thought perhaps we needed to go and check it out, you know, to make sure it's okay for everyone. I declare them okay. Better than okay. Now go get your own! I hope you've had a wonderful Memorial Day today (for those in the U.S.A.). Todd found a treat for you. He loves big band music, and found that you can download all the recordings by the Airmen of Note (the premier jazz ensemble of the United States Air Force) for free online here! That is just awesome! Oh, if you read my blog through a reader, click on over and check out the remodeled blog. It was time for a change!

Kickin' It

Today was another fab day of relaxing and kickin' it. I haven't had this much unscheduled time for a while... probably since the remodeling started. In the morning we drove to McDonald's for breakfast. It's a once-in-a-while big treat for me. I got a sausage and egg McMuffin (no cheese), and a large caramel iced coffee to share with Todd. He only likes the sweet syrupy bottom of the drink. Once that's depleted, he stops drinking it, LOL. I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up around the house. I vacuumed the whole house, including the stairs, which always makes me all sweaty because I have to carry the vacuum up each step. Todd measured and cut out drawer liners for the two guest bathrooms and lined all the drawers and cabinets. We went to a quick lunch at Wendy's, then went to Staples to get some more of my all-time favorite pen, the Pentel EnerGel, in all colors. This pens writes so smoothly, it never skips. And it dries pretty fast. I just love them for writing in my journals and making my lists. After Staples we went to Borders and hung out for two hours. We hadn't been there in months and it was so fun to read through some of my favorite magazines. I get a lot of inspiration from Photoshop Creative magazine. The tutorials in there are awesome and I always learn so much. Around 6 pm we arrived at AJ & Meera's house for a Cleveland Cavaliers basketball viewing party. They were playing the 3rd game of the NBA Eastern Conference finals against Orlando Magic. Meera made roasted pork loin, which was fantastic! She also made these rice balls filled with a salty, sour plum filling, which she learned from her Japanese grandmother. We brought a chocolate torte cake from Trader Joe's, which Todd was excited to eat. There were no photos of me or Meera. I think the boys should step it up and take some photos of us, don't you think? The whole evening was so fun, except that the Cavs lost. :( Game four is Tuesday night and we hope they do better!

Mystery Is Solved

regarding how our credit card number was stolen. We recently received a letter in the U.S. Mail from Batteries.com, telling us that between 2/25/2009 and 4/9/2009, some individual(s) hacked into the server belonging to Batteries.com, which resulted in unauthorized exposure of their customers' names, addresses, and credit card information. They have offered us free credit monitoring for two years with Experian, which we will take them up on. I checked our records in Quicken, and indeed we used that particular credit card to make two purchases from Batteries.com in 2007. Many times people don't know how their credit card number is stolen. We are fortunate that this mystery is solved. I feel some closure regarding the incident, especially since now we understand that it happened due to their server being hacked. This kind of thing doesn't just happen when your credit card data is being transmitted over the internet when you purchase things. The data is stored on a server and hackers look for weaknesses into the servers. I'm glad Batteries.com came clean about it (although it is required in the state of CA), and I'm glad to receive the two years of credit monitoring for free. I slept in until 9:00am today! I am a light sleeper, so it's a very rare treat for me to sleep-in. We had lunch at Zocalo, a new Latin restaurant that I've been meaning to try out. Todd had flautas and I had a soft-shelled crab sandwich. Both entrees were good, so we will be back there some time. In the afternoon we cleaned the house and did some laundry. Then we went to run at Miramar Lake. I ran five miles around the lake in 54:36. Todd was only able to run about 1.5 miles, then his illiotibial band started hurting and he had to walk back. I'm sad he's still injured. Hopefully with some more rest, stretching, and massaging, he will be better. Some photos from Miramar Lake:

Hella Good

I had a big dose of spontaneous fun tonight! Erecca, my friend from work, asked me if I wanted to go to the No Doubt concert with her. Her friend couldn't go in the last minute because her mom was sick and in the hospital. Of course I felt bad for her friend. But of course I said yes! I've never seen No Doubt in concert before and who am I to turn it down. :) Besides, this was their first tour together in a few years, since Gwen Stefani's solo albums. It's good to see them back together! We left around 7pm from my house. There was traffic on and off down the I-15. We missed the junction with 805-south, so we were on the 5-south all the way down in National City and fast approaching Mexico... we got worried and turned around and went back and found the 805. Driving into Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre had the usual two miles of stop and go traffic, since there is only one way into the venue. We got in and Paramour was finishing up their set. The line to the ladies facilities was extremely long, so we waited a while until it was short. Then we went for it. I just got into a stall when I heard screaming, then "Spiderwebs". We got back into our seats in time for the end of "Spiderwebs". I've never been to a concert in which I stood up the whole time. But nobody around me sat down, and I wanted to see! Gwen Stefani and the boys didn't disappoint. They were high energy and fun. The set was high in style and lighting was great. They wore matching clothes in the first half. Gwen changed into a different outfit for the second half. The people were dancing up and down and really enjoying themselves. Todd gave me two cookies to bring and I shared one with Erecca. The set list:

• Spiderwebs
• Hella Good
• Underneath It All
• Excuse Me Mr.
• Ex-Girlfriend
• End It On This
• Simple Kind of Life
• Bathwater
• Guns of Navarone
• New
• Hey Baby
• Running
• Different People
• Don’t Speak
• It’s My Life
• Just A Girl
• Rock Steady
• Stand and Deliver
• Sunday Morning

I got home right before midnight. What a spontaneously fun night! It's been a while since I've had this much unplanned fun. :p

Sunny and 75

I think it was a few degrees warmer than 75 today, but my favorite weather is sunny and 75 degrees, which we do get quite a lot of here in San Diego. Speaking of my favorites, or stuff I love, I made this layout yesterday about the stuff I love right now. Full credits here. I got the inspiration from several people. I saw this layout by Lynnette about her April faves. She's doing one layout a month documenting her favorites of the month. I thought, what a fab idea! And also, I've been reading Tracey and Heather's blogs, and they have a regular edition called "Stuff I Like", which...well... I like! I took Todd out to dinner tonight at Outback Steakhouse, because he saved us $527 in our remodeling. We got the invoice for the tiles and he noticed it was wrong. They were charging us $6.40 per sq. ft. for this one tile, when the price quoted on the phone was $5.10 per sq. ft. He had written it down, so he knew the $6.40 was wrong. Because of his diligence, we didn't just sign off on the invoice and told them to change it. It saved us $527 because we will have a lot of tile in the bathroom! Here is Todd with his food. Here I am with my food.

Dinner with Sally

Tonight I took Sally out to Busalacchis for dinner for her birthday. I had never been there before but had always heard good things about it. I had purchased a Restaurant.com gift certificate for Busalacchis way back in September but had forgotten to use it. Restaurant.com is a discount dining certificate consolidator. Basically, you pay like $10 for the $25 gift certificate, with the stipulation that you order two entrees. It's a good deal if you can find restaurants you like or want to try out in their list. We shared a fried calamari appetizer, which was delicious! We also shared a spinach, avocado, walnut, pear, and goat cheese salad, but I forgot to take a photo of it because I dug in right away! :) Then Sally had the Lunetti (half-moon mushroom pasta, sage, lemon zest, artichokes and cheese): And I had the Linguini alle Vongole (clams, garlic, olive oil, and a touch of white wine): It was really really good. They had great garlic bread that came with the meal. I'm going to take Todd there sometime! We skipped dessert because we were both full. I say rain check for next time, hee hee. I had such a fun girls-only time with Sally. You know you have a great friend when the conversation is easy and you never have to think of the next thing to say. I was pleasantly surprised when Tracey pointed out to me today that some of my Project 365 layouts were featured on Yin's blog. Yin had asked me a while ago and I had forgotten about it. I really love Yin's Project 365 templates (all her templates in fact), because the photos are arranged for you already, with shadows even, AND the journaling placement is already in the template. So all you have to do is embellish it and make it your own. It makes scrapping my weekly P365 pages very easy and stress-free.

Turtle Sitting

We went over to our friend's house today to turtle-sit for them while they are away. The turtles got excited when they saw food coming! Well, Todd actually fed them fully yesterday, so today was only a snack. Shh... We also took the opportunity to use their fully-functioning kitchen and made a turkey potato soup for dinner. They finished staining our cabinets today. The doors and drawer fronts still need to be brought back, but here it is. This is a cinnamon-colored stain on maple wood. Todd really loves it. I think it's a little dark. But it's "his" kitchen, so I'm very happy that he loves it. :p

Label Love

I don't often post about things, because I try to make my memories about more important things in life, such as people and experiences. But one thing I do love is labels. Labels make me FEEL organized, even if in reality I'm really not that organized. It is the *possibility* of being organized that makes me excited about my labels. :) I received this Brother P-Touch PT-2430 PC today from Amazon. It connects to your computer via USB port, but there is no software involved. Well, unless you want to do more complicated things like print labels from an Excel spreadsheet. Then you have to install the software that comes with it. Within five minutes of opening the box, I printed the labels you see in the picture. It truly was plug-and-play! The biggest draw for me was that you can use any fonts installed on your PC, plus you can use your computer keyboard to type your labels instead of keying the words into the weird little typepad like other labelers. BTW, the fonts above are Kristen ITC and CK Marissa (the same font that I use to journal on my photos). I'm such a dork, I know, but I'm excited about my new labeler! On the remodeling front... today they stained the cabinets. Well, supposedly they did. The color doesn't seem quite the shade we picked, but they're not done yet, so I'll reserve judgment until tomorrow. It feels like a lot of "hurry up and wait" lately regarding the remodeling. It seems big things only happen every two weeks, then we just wait around. I went to the gym after work tonight. I've been going twice a week for about four weeks now, doing the weights. I am encouraged, because I've noticed lately that my upper arms jiggle less. Less arm jiggling is good. :p I keep forgetting to bring it up, but last week The Daily Digi featured The Digi Dares twice! I got to pick my favorite Dare layout I've made, and answered a couple of questions. You can read it here and here. I made a page this weekend that I'm really excited about. I've been into the artsy look lately and tried my hand at it using all Little Dreamer Designs stuff. Full credits and explanation of technique here.

The Picnic Table Philosophy

The other day Todd told me that his company created a Chris Rubino Memorial Award, in honor of the spirit of Chris, Todd's work friend who died in a car crash earlier this year. The spirit of the award is that Chris always liked to try new things, so the award would go to someone who tries new things at work, even if they don't work out. The story they told as an example is that Chris and Kim always traveled with a portable picnic table in their car. When they drove around the city and discovered a neat place, they would go get some food and then have a spontaneous picnic there. I liked the story and I'm now dubbing it "The Picnic Table Philosophy". It's different than trying new things. To me, it's more like they had the spirit of spontaneity, and enjoyed life's every moment. Couldn't we all be a little more that? Today Todd and I didn't have any plans, so we went to Burger Lounge in La Jolla for lunch. After all, we haven't been in a few weeks, it was time! We shared a hamburger, french fries, and a salad. It was incredibly yummy and quite a treat. I can finally show you my page about my mom that I did last week on Mother's Day. It is for the current Digi Dare #133. I really loved this dare. It is to finish the sentence "All I really need to know I learned..." Come scrap with us and link us up to your page in the comments at the Dare site, and you will get a 25% off coupon for Designs by Lili, plus a chance to win $40 in GC from our four sponsors this month! My page for the Dare (credits here).