Ren Faire this weekend!

Tomorrow we are waking up at an ungodly hour and driving 45 min to our friends' house, and then joining up with them to drive 2.5 hours to where the Ren Faire is, to be there at 9 am when it opens. You know I really want to go somewhere if I agree to wake up at 5 am to go.

It should be so much fun!

It was cold last weekend, for Texas, it got below 70! Like to 65! It was so cold I turned the heat on and put the flannel sheets on the bed. Mmm flannel. They do make it much harder to leave the bed in the morning though, and the Kitten agrees.

But of course it didn't last, and it's back up to 70 today. But it's bright and clear and sunny and breezy and not too hot, and hopefully tomorrow will be the same. And I'll actually get to spend more than 5 minutes outside!

I've been working as many hours as I can to save up time for Christmas, so I haven't really gotten to go outside very much.

And today is Halloween! I think we're going to celebrate by going to bed early. We don't get trick-or-treaters at the apartment, unfortunately.

Happy Halloween anyway!

No Ren Faire this weekend either

So I just found out that I won't be going to Ren Faire this weekend either, and possibly not ever. I thought this weekend was Pirate Weekend, and Boyfriend and I really wanted to go. But for some odd reason, the Ren Faire people chose to have Pirate Weekend on Halloween weekend, and Halloween Weekend the week before Halloween. Neither of had a burning desire to go to Halloween Weekend (especially the weekend before Halloween) and our friends can't go this weekend.

They want to go next weekend, but I have to go to the periodontist tomorrow so he can tell me when he do the graft (I started writing out what that actually entailed, but I got nauseous and dizzy and had to sit with my head down for a minute). I want to do it on a Thursday or Friday so I can take the weekend off to recuperate and feel sorry for myself, but I can't push it too far back because I'd like to be able to talk by the time we go up to the wedding in November. So next weekend was pretty high on my list of when to get it done.

Stupid Ren Faire. I also made Boyfriend cancel some other plans because I thought we were going this weekend, and that's at least the second time I've done that, so I don't think he's very happy. Stupid Faire, stupid lack of gum tissue, stupid lack of memory. Stupid lack of sleep and lack of time to go home and nap.

No sleep for me

Last night I mostly just chilled at home, and went to bed with a book around 11:30. I didn't intend to read that long, but the book was really good (Last Argument of Kings) so I didn't end up turning out the light until about 1:30. The Kitten was curled up next to me and we were drifting off when suddenly there was a Noise. It was a scritching sort of noise that sounded like it came from close to my window, and the Kitten meeped and jumped over me to check it out. I didn't hear it again, but it was exactly the sort of noise a giant (shudder) cockroach would make if it was walking across the wall, I thought.

I grabbed my glasses and turned on the light, but I didn't see anything. The Kitten was still staring fixedly at the wall above my bed, however, her pupils dilated. Maybe from the light, maybe from her predatory instinct to hunt and kill whatever hideous monster we'd heard.

I regretted then having so many things hanging from my walls, all providing spaces for things to hide from the light. I looked (very bravely) behind the wall hanging and curtains, shook out the pillows, even moved the blinds.

Nothing.

But the Kitten was still staring at the wall. I tried staring at the wall for a while,
but nothing suddenly leaped into view the way it does after you stare at a 3D hidden picture long enough. Which is good, because no one should ever make a hidden picture of a giant cockroach 2 feet away from where you were trying to sleep 2 minutes ago.

I debated sleeping on the couch, but was determined not to give in. If I gave the cockroach my bed, it would want my bedroom, and then my bathroom, and then my whole apartment, and then maybe my whole life! Hopefully someone would notice if a giant cockroach came into work one day instead of me, and didn't just think I was trapped in Kafka's head.

So I turned out the light and tried to sleep, but the Kitten was still fascinated by the wall. For the next hour. It made sleeping a bit difficult, so I didn't get very much last night.

I've heard cockroaches don't like the smell of bay leaves, and they don't seem to be poisonous to cats, so I may recarpet my apartment in them.

It could be worse, I guess, I could be living in Papua New Guinea. No, on second thought, I would never live there ever ever ever.

House Season 4 and yay Friday!

We finished watching season 4 of House last night, and I think I could have stopped at season 3. It was an odd season, they got rid of half the characters, but not really, and brought in a whole bunch of new ones and slowly whittled them down til they had almost exactly the same distribution as before. House's doctors went from a cute white woman, a black man and an ethnic white man (Australian) to a cute white woman, an Indian man and an ethnic white man (Jewish).

Last night we watched the last two episode, a two-parter which ended extremely, unnecessarily sadly. It seemed like the writers just wanted to make me cry as much as they could. Luckily my boyfriend didn't mind me sobbing all over his chest over a TV show.

I really like the character House, and the show has been really interesting, but I'm definitely not as motivated to go watch the 5th season now. It could be worse, I guess, they could have ended the season after the first half of the two-parter, as Boyfriend pointed out, but the writers may have been afraid for their lives if they did that.

But it's Friday now, which is awesome! Tonight I'm going to make a Joseph's Trifle to bring to a woman I work with's son's first birthday party tomorrow. Tomorrow we have the party and we may go to a soccer game with some of Boyfriend's coworkers afterwards. Sunday I will be back at work (sigh) making up more comp hours for Christmas. Somewhere in there I'll try to find time to sleep and snuggle with the Kitten.

It's finally cooling off here too, it almost feels like fall! Except without the leaves changing colors or the clear October sky or the crisp feeling in the air like you get in a real state. The humidity is still 90%, but the temperature is down to like 70! I take what I can get.

A morning with the dentist

So I went for my semi-annual teeth cleaning this morning, and I have no cavities! Yay! All that brushing and flossing is working! Except as the hygenist was poking around with her little metal pick, she poked a sensitive spot and said that my gum is receding from one of my teeth in one spot. She had the dentist look come and look at it, and as soon as he saw it he told me I need a graft. I asked what caused it, and he said it might be a reaction to the braces I had taken off a year ago.

So, ick ick ick! I can't even think about what a graft entails. I'm just going to demand to be unconscious for as much of it as I can, including the entire healing process. Just wake me up next spring, really, I'll be fine.

I mean, it's not like I have a lot of extra gum tissue just lying around, where is it going to come from I don't even want to know don't tell me la la la .

And it's not like I can even ask for that much sympathy, my poor mother has had a root canal, a tooth break off at the gum line and two crowns put on this year.

I hate dental work. Although I like having teeth.

Home!

I'm home! And I have power! And the kitten looks as if she may forgive me one of these days, if I keep the treats coming.

I cleaned out five very heavy garbage bags of food from the fridge, and cleaned the inside. It was pretty gross. The plants are back on the balcony and looking, well, not quite dead yet. The wall hanging is back up, my quilt is back on my bed, and I have internet! As you've probably gathered by now.

As soon as my belly is full of soup, I'm going to bed. We left at 2 pm yesterday and got in about 8 am this morning, so we made good time, but he got about 4 hours sleep and I think I got 2 or 3.

Yay for being home! I'm so glad to be here, safe and sound with the cat, and I'm so glad it's still here!

Evacuation

So, since Hurricane Ike is apparently going to roll right over Houston, Boyfriend and Kitten and I evacuated,... to Nebraska. We wanted to be sure to be out of the way, but the hurricane actually looks like it will end up following us here. By then it will be mostly rain though, so we should be good. It looks like there will be a lot of flooding where we we live, but we both live on upper stories and Boyfriend moved his car to outside a friend's house which shouldn't flood too badly. We're keeping an eye on the Weather Channel, but we are extremely glad to be at Boyfriend's parents', safe and warm and full of his mom's meatloaf, which is second only to my own mother's :)

Getting out of Houston was orders of magnitude better than for Rita. We went around most of the city on Highway 6, which was not very crowded at all. We left at 10 am, stopped by our friends' to drop off the car and help them move some plywood around, and then left and were at the border of Texas by about 10 pm. We made pretty good time until shortly after we entered Kansas. It started to rain, and it rained like there was already a hurricane on top of us. Also, apparently the last one to leave Kansas at night turns off the lights, so it was dark, darker than I think I've ever seen. Add that to the fact that reflective paint hasn't made its way there yet, and I could see about 3 of the dashed lines from the median ahead at any time, so we lost our 70 mph average (that was actually the speed limit there). We switched off driving and the one not driving tried to get some sleep, but after straining our eyes for hours neither of us could take it anymore, so we pulled over to a rest stop and got a few hours sleep before we continued.

The Kitten was amazingly good the entire time. She spent most of the trip on the floor behind the passenger seat, and when we checked on her (about every 10 min the entire trip) she meeped at us and butted against out hands.

But almost exactly 24 hours after we left home, we finally made it to Boyfriend's parents' house! Kitten went under the bed at first, but soon emerged to eat and use her litterbox, and when I came to bed she crawled in under the covers with me and we slept for a few hours. It
was a very long journey, but I'm very glad to watch Ike do his damage from a safe haven.

Sister?! Sister!

My little sister has gone home now, and I am back to the work and school round. Her visit was so much fun! We went rock climbing at a gym in Houston, where she scampered up the walls faster than I've seen squirrels climb; stayed up late watching the girlie movies 27 Dresses and P.S. I'm Dead Now (AKA P.S. I Love You, but I like our title better); rescued Stan the tiny gecko from certain death and voyeurism (he tried to watch us pee, but we thwarted his plan!);
went to La Madeline's 3 times in 4 days; bought more bath products than you would think any 5 people might need; and generally bonded very sisterly. It was an awesome visit, and like all visits went by much too quickly.

So, now back to work and school and such. I will write up our San Francisco trip when I get a chance, but in the meantime, if you haven't seen the pictures and want to, let me know. I took enough that if you scroll through them really fast it's like a flipbook video of our 8 day trip!

Boyfriend's Birthday!

Months ago Boyfriend asked me, pretty much joking I think, to make him a Lego cake for his birthday. I agreed, but haven't said anything about it since, hoping he'd forget about it. He did, so was very surprised when he saw his birthday cake!

He liked it so much he refused to cut it! He said he couldn't disturb it, but I had no such qualms.


I got the recipes from my new favorite cooking blog, smittenkitchen. The cake is Chocolate Butter Cake and the icing is Swiss Buttercream, so a lot of butter went into this thing, which of course works out well. The pegs are marshmallows!

Boyfriend brought the leftovers into work and reported that his coworkers were very happy, and he seemed very happy with it last night, so I think it was a success!

Travelogue: San Jose, CA

I now understand why anyone would choose to pay ridiculous amounts of money to live in California. As the plane was landing, the pilot announced that the temperature in San Jose was "a balmy 72 degrees, winds at 10 mph out of the northwest," and my reaction was, "72? What does that mean? Celsius?" It hasn't been 72 in Houston since January, and that was the low! I stepped outside and could breathe, it wasn't like walking into a used sweat sock at all, it was glorious! I ate lunch outside on a patio surrounded by flowers!


Mmm delicious almond apple tart thing with vanilla bean ice cream.


Walking through downtown Mountain View, where I stayed, I was surrounded by flowers, there were mountains in the background (the name of the town isn't sarcasm!) and I found a bookstore with more books than I have! Even counting the 30 boxes still in my parents' basement!

Also, while driving around getting myself throughly lost (it's my hobby, that's why I'm so good at it) I passed a Yahoo building, an AMD building, a Microsoft building, and a Google building! I was hungry at the time I passed the Google building, so I considered sneaking in to try their food, but unfortunately I think it was after lunchtime.

My company put me up at what may be the best hotel I've ever stayed in. The bed was soft and cushy, the bathroom arched and with glass shower doors, and the wireless internet perfect for playing World of Warcraft on for far too many hours.

My favorite part was driving around with the windows down the entire time, with the fresh air in my hair and on my skin. Luckily I'm going back on vacation! And this time I will get to hike and eat in more places and see old friends and meet their families and see the coast, and best of all, Boyfriend will be there to see it with me.