saturday night bill was in town. after eating turkey meatloaf made by kath's mom, marie (which has allowed us to have meatloaf sammies for lunch the last two days), we decided to go out. we went to the shoe first. beard and i hadn't been there since we left. it's a lot different with the non-smoking and the more lighting.



it was crowded nonetheless and we decided to find a quieter spot.
we headed to the waterfront.



it was quiet. we ordered a pitcher and a vodka blah blah blah for kath and settled in.
soon--there was dan pike, mayor. chattin us up.






it was a nice night...
and now

getting ready for bed.

yeah!

so...
if you remember WAY back in 2006 when my toshiba laptop took a shit, i thought i had lost everything. all my pictures, music, etc.
THEN in late 2007 Angie took me to the electronics market in daegu and a wonderful man there put my 80gig hard drive into a box and MAGIC i had access to all my old stuff.
Immediately upon returning back to our apt in gumi, i plugged in my old hard drive into beards PC and copied all my photos to CD. I had assumed that I couldn't plug it into my mac without losing everything. Beard talked about dreams of networking our computers and la la la. i started downloading music, copying friends cds, etc in korea to make up for my severe lack of music. i forgot about my old hard drive and that was that.
we moved back to WA. i unpacked my old hard drive and we talked about networking again. Beard actually checked out books from the library on how to do so. We still have the books, but no networking.
Today I decided I was going to plug in the hard drive to my mac and see what happened. I expected warnings, weird noises, perhaps sparks. BUT NO! nothing! all my pictures are there and i can open them. all my music is there and i can play it.
IT'S AMAZING.
So, while beard is on the phone with windows help, i'm trying to play down my excitement that I'm able to access my old files.

whoa is me

first ha to myself for my PBdom.
This picture is me after 13+hrs of work. Sure, a little of it was down time, but I WAS still there and still half-assedly working. And that was only like 30 minutes anyway. And yes, 1 hour was piloting a study which is usually a little exciting and fun b/c I get to be on and answer questions and troubleshoot and be cool--all with my co-project manager megan. We're calling GA right now and MAN do some people speak SSSSLLLOOWWW down there. "hold on, hold on, taaaake yooouuurrr tiiiiimmme." Great. An estimated 10 minute survey now takes 20.
Marilyn is back at SBDC that makes me happy b/c now I don't have to work with the forgetful retired cop. She wasn't a cop when younger, she became a senior patrol officer and she's ALL about it. I don't want to go on about her. She was nice and all...
Now we're going to watch stupid ass lost on my computer b/c beard's is acting up. go figure.

full of fish

sunday

me watching beard read his favorite daily reading.

today is a rainy sunday. we're going to canada today to visit kath's uncle in the hospital and eat some delicious sushi and sashimi. yummy yum yum.

snow

it's snowing and pretty hard, too. I might expect this in the midwest or east but up here? COME ON! oh well, gives us an excuse to sit inside and read and watch movies all day.
kath's in vegas (lucky) and we're in charge of hanging out with zoey tonight. this also involves eating whatever kath has in her fridge, i know there is an orange pepper in there somewhere. we've invited the hairs over for dinner and then hopefully some euchre.



last night we went grocery shopping and then watched a couple episodes of lost before making a dinner of tofu, broccoli, onions nad mushrooms. I got everything together and beard took care of the sauce. it was lip smacking good. then we watched even more episodes of lost and went to bed fairly early for a friday.
tomorrow we're going to do a take back our trails 5K walk/run. A couple of weeks ago a woman was running on squalicum trail in the AM and was assaulted. As far as I know the man hasn't been caught. This walk/run is in response to that.

working and reading

I've had to work hard these past couple of days to get caught up on everything from when I was sick. Now that's done, thankfully. I just finished 2 books: The Omnivore's Dilemma and Mummy's Legs. Omnivore's Dilemma is great for anyone who thinks a lot about food. I really liked it. Mummy's Legs is a novel. It was ok.
Beard and I have been watching Lost streaming online. We're on season 2. I don't know about this show. It holds my attention, that's for sure, but some of lines/plots are too much for me and I'll walk away for awhile. I always come back though.
Tomorrow I'm going to a yoga class with Rebecca and then to dinner at Roshni's. Tonight I have to add the ingredients to my Amish Friendship Bread start.

spring things

my NEW BIKE--aka rad rabbit

bike friends

blossoms on our tree

suzie and mikkel's clementine!

I'm IN!!

hello hello
I got into my grad program! woo hoo! My professor called me today to let me know. She said she nominated me for a scholarship, too. We'll see how that goes.

maybe i am die

beard ended last week with a very bad cold. megan and i hung out with him and NOW--we're both sick. she more so than me. i didn't go to sbdc today and was only at arn from 8-1. i'm going to try to go in again tomorrow but only half time i think.
lots of snot and coughing. fever, chills, ugh.

so yeah

i was put on the alternate list. but i'm FIRST on the list. The prof said it's very rare when they do not use the alternate list to fill the slots. so...i wait again. 7 out of 6. yar. oh well. beard's in and we wanted at least one of us to get in so we didn't need a plan b.

afterwork

wooo,
it was a pretty busy day at works today. ARN in the AM was getting training materials together. then SBDC and entering impact survey data, then back to ARN to interview potential new hires.
Tomorrow will be more of the same except I'm going to go over an RFP at ARN on top of hiring stuff.
5 days until I find out if I get into my program! I'm a horrible waiter.
Here's me after work:



On easter we're going to see these people and their spouses:




And we're going to stay at these people's house:
crap, i havent uploaded those pictures yet and all my old pictures are on my external hard drive. well--what are you going to do.

today

pb & j on toast for breaky. yum.
happy it's not raining this AM so riding my bike to work will be more pleasant.
wearing a sweatervest today. not sure how i feel about it but i need to wear something.
listening to npr talk about south by southwest makes me remember a year ago hearing a podcast about south by southwest while i was walking to Pak's apt to teach soon chul.

oicture

just remembered to take a picture.
watching beard rummage around the apt looking for .5 lead. "all we have is .7 lead and .5 pencils" me: that's how we roll.
then he came in the room and said and said,"ah! grr uniball. what was i saying?" leaves the room, i'm giggling. comes back in the room, "i know, we should get networking for dummies."
just read 2 books--the seas by samantha hunt. decent novel, a bit out there. i heard about her from npr. the second, burned alive by souad. about a palestinian woman. both good, both quick reads, one a little and the other very disturbing. waiting for books on hold at the lib. can't remember which ones. thinking of finding a bio of mother theresa.
just read a rant on craigslist about bra-buying. i hear ya, lady. i hear ya.

forgetful

this picture a day thing...not working so well.



gonna make breakfast--broc, b. olive, onion omelette.
garrison keeler is talking about farts. i love it
cargo farts--the ones that deliver a load!
clamping. HA

you tube videos

wait until the end of this one. maybe we need this in Bham.

first blog of the new year-in march

wow. long time since i've blogged.
back in the states now. things here are about the same as when i left. that fact was extremely awe-inspiring. i've been many places, seen so many things and feel changed myself and things here have just been moving on as usual.
perhaps more on that later.
for now, i want to start a picture a day. we'll see if i can keep up. i want to see myself age, now that i'll be 30 this year. i could stop at any time.

Indonesia

Finally on vacation. Test is over. Sitting near/on beach all day long. I dove today for the first time in over a year. Was great. I find myself getting bored/antsy after about 25 minutes and ready to head up. Luckily that was about the time we saw some huge needlefish that held my attention again. The water was warm and there wasn't too much current. We had to swim at the surface to find a place to walk up on the beach--wasn't too excited about that. I'll take a boat any day!
The food is fabulous. We can eat Indonesia food cooked by locals for super cheap--under $3 for the two of us--or eat western food for a little more expensive--between 5-6 bucks. beer is between 1.50 and 1.80 for a big bottle. we're saving money on water (which we both drink a ton of) by refilling our old bottles for 25-30cents. Our bunglow (including breakfast) is 8bucks a night. We have 2 big beds, a ceiling fan, a porch, and our own bathroom--sans hot water.
So far neither of us have had many bug bites, thankfully. and we're supposed to be taking malaria meds but keep forgetting. chickens, ducks, and cats roam freely here but everyone seems to be healthy expect hte cat that pesters us at breakfast. we've named him plague ball.

i can't believe

I'm intentionally returning to a country where this happens. (the people picketing, notice in the picture the young child, not the settlement)
christian values--love your neighbor always gets thrown out the window.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071101/ap_on_re_us/funeral_protests_11;_ylt=Aq5RbhBxU0TUK2ulFgXqINME1vAI

YES

if beard and i ever tie the knot--this is going to be useful!

http://www.byebyeblender.com/

a bridal registry that lets guests give money towards a honeymoon or luxury gifts. PERFECT for people who have been living together for a while and have all the household stuff.