After it's all said and done...

Phew. Well, the birthday weekend extravaganza was delightful. Many friends were in attendance, good times had by all (at least that's what everyone said, so if nothing else they're good liars).

Friday's movie was fun, and Grace and Katie battled rioting people and a man with a sprained ankle whose girlfriend was prepared to go to the mattresses for the seats they were saving at teh bar (for 16 people!). Which is awesome. Bowling was fun, but a future reference should anyone find themselves in this situation. If you go bowling with a group of people you don't know, and one of them is the birthday girl, it is extremely not nice to beat her (because she would have won otherwise) and it's EVEN WORSE to talk trash to everyone you don't know while you're beating them all. Not cool. That's not a good way to get a return invitation to hang out. Moving on....

Special thanks to my good friend Matt who braved the outrageous heat and risked life and limb to cook hamburgers and hot dogs for everyone at Saturday's BBQ....

Also to Jen and Tom who came to celebrate even though they didn't think they'd be able to (and while we're on the subject, what ever happened to Michelle and Steph who said they were coming and never showed?????? hmmm??????) :)

And thanks to everyone else that was there, it really made my birthday special and I had a good time, despite massive amounts of freaking out worrying that I'd run out of food (completely unfounded fear, as it turns out)

Special apologies to everyone who went to Crunchy's later that night and heard me singing karaoke. Everyone who wasn't there but has heard me sing can only imagine what a horrifying thing that was.. :)

And, in other news, I'm happy to report that this time it only took me two trips to get my pictures printed...a vast improvement over getting my Boston pictures printed.

My movie review of Bewitched is this:
A cute movie, it definitely had its funny points, the end was a little bit of a let down, but I think it would be an excellent rental. Jason Schwartzman is hilarious.

Tonight, I'm finally going to see Batman Begins with Sam. He claims it's a fantastic movie, the best of the Batman series, so we'll see. I'll be sure and keep you posted.

It's My Birthday, and I'll Have An Extravaganza If I Want To...

The date: June 24, 2005

The event: It's my birthday! I'm 24! Yay!

My birthday is definitely my favorite day of the summer. Possibly even the whole year, aside from Christmas. Clearly I'm a little obsessive about it (see previous post)

So here's my weekend rundown:

Friday:

Go to work (sadly, but I suppose work is a necessary evil, right?)

Go to a fabulous dinner at Carabba's with my family (and Grace, I've been looking forward to this for a week)

Gather a small collection of people to go see the opening night of Bewitched (yay! A movie!)

After the movie, go with everyone who isn't too tired to a bowling alley and bowl/drink/be merry (you know the drill)

Go to sleep.

Saturday:

Get up early and go to my parents' house to cook 6 loaves of calzone bread, cut up some fruit for my big bowl o' fruit, and otherwise make preparations for...

My BBQ where I will have massive amounts of food and drink and merriment! I'm very excited to have all my best pals together (except for the ones who can't make it) to hang out with me. Of course I'm stressing out and convinced that I'm going to run out of food or drinks or something. Grace keeps trying to assure me that this is not the case and that it'll be fine, but I estimate that by about 2:30pm on Saturday I'll be hyperventilating and thinking that no one will have any fun. :)

Sunday:

Try and pry myself out of bed to clean up anything I leave at my parents' house on Saturday in time for them to return home from Traverse City and then sit in my apartment and recover all day.

Anyway, that's about it for me... everyone have a great weekend!

June is the birthday month

For anyone who does not know this about my family, all three of us kids were born in June. As a child, this was a terrible thing, because we had joint birthday parties and my older brother was a tyrant and always blew out ALL of the birthday candles. Never even left me one. Now he'd probably tell you that's not true, but he's a liar. :)

My little brother's birthday was a few weeks ago, on the 5th. He's 19 now, which really freaks me out. Far too grown up. For me, he's always about 7. Yea, 7. Only not quite that small, because when he was 7 he was small enough to pick up and throw. (yes, throw. he loved it. no matter what he says now)

Today is my older brother's 30th birthday. And when I did my sisterly duty to call and with him a happy birthday I asked how it felt to be 30. "Old" was the answer I got. So then I started thinking, yea he is pretty old. :) Married, a homeowner, a baby on the way, it doesn't get much more grown up than that.

This coming Friday (the 24th) is my birthday. I'll be 24. That's also pretty weird for me. But, in order to combat the weirdness, I'm throwing myself a birthday extravaganza next weekend. Which I'm pretty pumped about.

Anyhow, this is about as deep as I want to get on a Saturday afteroon, now I'm just knitting away, so you can hope for more pictures next week. Tonight: bowling.

How I Fill My Spare Time

This picture is of the shawl I made for Grace out of a really pretty varigated yarn made of silk and wool, and a little jewelry bag i made from a pattern in a book I have. The bag is made from hand dyed cotton. It's also a picture of my kitchen counter, complete with laundry soap and my wine rack (which actually has some wine in it now!)

An up-close view of the stitches on Grace's shawl. This pattern was the bane of my existence and I guarantee this will be the only shawl of its kind ever knit by me. Unless someone can come up with about $500 they're willing to part with to get one. 

This sweater will be a wallaby...which is just a sweater with a pocket in the front for those of you unfamiliar with the terminology. I'm knitting this along with my friend Jessica, who is knitting one for her son. However, I would like to point out that it is highly unfair that hers is about 1/3 the size of mine and we have to be at the same place this Wednesday....I know, I know. I don't have a 2 year old. But still. 

This one is an up-close sample of a sweater I'm knitting for my soon-to-be nephew, Carter. "Soon-to-be" will be sometime in September and I'm so excited to be an aunt!!!! :)  

This is the result of my Intro to Fair Isle class, where I could learn 2 color knitting holding yarn in both hands and following charts and such. I liked it, and now there are so many more interesting things I can do! This is a pillow cover, not to worry, it's not just a big square. 

solitary no more!

Well, it's been a busy week. After living completely and totally by myself since January, Grace finally (officially) moved in on Monday. It's a big change to come home and have someone already there when you're used to being just by yourself, but it's pretty nice, too. For example, yesterday I went home for lunch, and there waiting for me was yummy ravioli and broccoli. Awesome. And for anyone reading this who doesn't already know this about me (and therefore has probably never met me) I love to talk. All the time. And it's way, way more interesting when there's someone else around to answer and ensure that I'm not turning into a crazy person talking to myself all the time. At least, it will delay the inevitable for awhile.

Not only did Grace move in Monday but on Tuesday a visitor came to stay for the week as well. Grace's friend Carlos (originally from Ecuador, but currently living and teaching in North Carolina) is here for a few days. He's hilarious. And while I'm very jealous that currently Carlos and Grace are both enjoying their day at Michigan's Adventure (assuming he managed to get his 'Tom Cruise' haircut before they left) while I'm at work, I'll probably live. Hey, at least I get to go see Mr. and Mrs. Smith tonight. Which will be awesome, I don't care what you say. :) I have very great expectations for this movie.

As a special bonus for you, later today I'll put up pictures of the lovely things I'm currently knitting. :) You'll love it. Don't lie.

Static Cling!

So Friday I'm at work and my boss hands me a small bunch of papers. I pick one of them up, look at it, set it on my desk, turn around and turn back, it's GONE. Completely, 100% vanished out of thin air. So I start FREAKING OUT completely because I needed that piece of paper. I know it can't have gone that far because I'm still sitting in exactly the same chair I was when I received it. So I tear apart my desk searching, go through the entire store looking for it, question everyone currently working there, it's nowhere. By now I'm totally convinced that I'm crazy, I have finally lost my mind, that inevitable moment is here. THEN, I pick up a binder that I had out on my desk around the same time as I last had the paper (I've already picked it up and looked under it twice) . This time, I feel something stuck to the bottom of the binder. You guessed it. The paper I was looking for. Static cling cost me 20 minutes of frantic searching and preparation to pull my hair out. Lousy static cling! Toni and I have dubbed it the silent killer. Anyway, I found it and all was well in the kingdom once again.

And now to prepare for my laundry day at the folks' house.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SAM!!!

My Boston Trip!!

Fun statues of the tortoise and the hare. This is in Copley Square, in front of Copley Church, with the library behind us. There are lots of fun little shops around this area along Newbury Street selling all variety of things that I'll probably never afford. (that's Sacha on the left and me on the right...clearly)

This is the Boston public library, with the Prudential Center in the background, we went to the mall there, it was really nice, complete with Tiffany's (where I saw every single piece of jewelry I could possibly ask for in my life) and the Cheesecake Factory, which we went to for dinner that night. Yum! The weather was so nice all weekend! Much better than in November when it snowed 6 inches in one day. Ahhh...every time I go it gets harder to come back!!!

Down with Meijer!

Alright. I know I said in my last post that this post would include pictures from my trip, and I promise that'll come a little later, but first I must take this opportunity to rant about the apparently impossible task of getting my digital pictures printed. What a fiasco.

First, I went to Walgreens where the lovely machine has its own printer and it automatically prints as it goes and you get your pictures. Instant gratification, I love it. HOWEVER, there was this chick there with like 3 CD's full of pictures jabbering away on her cell phone and the machine froze up trying to print all her pictures. So she restarted it and told me I could go ahead of her. Only the machine froze AGAIN. And this time they had to unplug it and totally restart the whole thing. By now there is yet another lady in line and this chick is still yammering away so I just left rather than deal with it.

My next stop is Meijer, where it turns out they're having a sale, so each print is .24 instead of .29. Lovely. I go through the entire memory card and send off 31 pictures to be printed. The lady working then has me fill out an envelope with my job # from the "self serve" kiosk and the size I got and how many pictures I had. So my envelope says something to the effect of "9592" "4x6" "~31 prints". She then looks at me and says, "they may or may not be done today." I ask her, "if there was a chance they were going to be done today, what time would you recommend I check back?" This appears to greatly offend her and she says in a rude tone of voice, "I shut down at 10. If I don't get to them by then you can't have them until tomorrow."

*Let me just interject here and say that it completely defeats the purpose of the SELF-SERVE kiosk if you cannot, in fact, serve yourself and you still have to wait for someone else to print your photos. *

Fast forward to this afternoon. I decide to pick up said pictures on my lunch hour, only the lady working today can't seem to find them. So she asks her coworker if he may have printed them, and he says, "I printed one order this morning, but there were only 8 pictures." She went to look for them, and there was my name, and lo and behold they were my pictures, but there were only eight. I asked her what happened to my other 23 pictures and she just sort of looked at me blankly, shrugged and asked if I wanted to pay for my pictures there or up front. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!

So, now, after work I will go to a THIRD place and try to print my pictures AGAIN. And, if I still have time tonight I'll load them onto my computer and show a few of them to you.

Cheers!