the beautiful palms shade them

nick is a natural, of course

only with the help of someone strong could i even pretend to be good on the rings

having a laugh on the pier

look how disproportionate this woman is. what i'm saying is, they made her fat and the dude is still skinny. unjust!

soap dispensers meet trash receptacle

i have a sad story to relate. these were one of my favorite wedding gifts (bought by myself at no small price with a gift card) and now they must go. why? because the 'stainless steel' is rusting!! does stainless steel normally rust? the soap is not usable once it gets inside these blasted things because it just smells like rust coming out. and then clean hands result in clean rust hands. the smell could drive one nuts. no amount of cleaning or polishing can help them. i am saying adieu tonight and wiping a tear.

new desk!

thanks once again to Adam's parents, we have added to our black furniture collection: a desk. Adam's motivation for studying for the CPA is this desk. let's hope it does the trick.

huntin' ... i mean shootin'

huntin' and shootin' are two different things. on this day we went shootin' with Shannon and Daniel Carver ... Daniel became famous in our eyes when he uttered the phrase "I've never NOT had fun with a gun in my hand" with a happy 10-yr-old-boy grin on his face...then quickly added "except in Iraq, that was different." Daniel is a Marine, yo! and Shannon his loyal gunswife. i think i just made up a new word.

you didn't know California had boonies, did you? PS, Adam really wants a gun now. !

a lonely, quivering branch is not lost on me

isn't this a delicious set of scary branches? sometimes you see these kinds of things on an early morning hunt

Sticklers Unite!

I've taken to reading at stoplights. It's the only way to get through my harrowing (not that harrowing) commute, and now I actually hope, sometimes chant, for a red light. Red! Red! Red! Red means read, green means listen to the same droll on the radio I hear day after day after day...even NPR is getting old. I picked up a delightful read on the way out the other day in place of my other book that...well...how will I ever have the discipline to finish that other book? Let's just say this new read is so fun and SO a sermon I preach in my head everyday at work... No-- a sermon I breathe through flared, smoking nostrils. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss. All you Brits out there know who I'm talking about. Well, stickler Brits. She tolerates punctuation abuse zero! I have been feeling her pain for quite some time, as I have had to edit a certain freelancer's work and let's just say this freelancer has no respect for punctuation, grammar, consistency, flow, spelling, capitalization....you name it. How he makes a living doing this?? Another rant for another time.

But now, for Lynne's words of truth. She refers to punctuation Nazis like herself as weeping friendlessly in caves for the past few years, praying for someone -- anyone -- to write a book about punctuation with a panda on the cover...She says, "...in general the stickler's exquisite sensibilities are assaulted from all sides, causing feelings of panic and isolation..." and "...the sight of the plural 'book's' with an apostrophe will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated. First there is shock. Within seconds, shock gives way to disbelief, disbelief to pain, and pain to anger. Finally (and this is where the analogy breaks down), anger gives way to a righteous urge to perpetrate an act of criminal damage with the aid of a permanent marker."

HA! Hahahah! I laughed wickedly at stoplight #100. I felt like I was getting revenge just reading that thing.

So help me if I have so much as one punctuation error in this post.

my sister had a chinese baby!

we're all wondering the same thing: did she or didn't she adopt a chinese baby? check out more of this cute one at Heather's blog: www.elisonblog.blogspot.com

no more natural

i lasted all of a year and a half with my natural hair color after chopping off all dyed parts in Taiwan. and now! i'm back to dying. it alllll comes with a price. i thought i'd save a few bucks and go to Paul Mitchell The School in San Diego. took an hour to drive there and an hour back. but the whole color and cut? four hours!!!! the student was clueless and i was terrified but it all ended well under the watchful eye of her teacher. so although i saved money my time was not well spent.