Tuesday, May 30, 2006

No Yoga Today

I was very excited today. I was going to try a yoga class for the first time ever. I have a friend who loves it and says it actually is exercise (I always thought it looked too easy). Last week I found out that they have a yoga class at the fitness center on campus and a day pass is only $5. Most other places I've looked at cost about $12 per class. That's expensive!

So this morning I packed my work-out clothes and carried them with me to my office. At 11:30 I called to make sure the class was being offered, at 11:45 I changed my clothes and walked over there (7 minutes in the hot sun at a fast pace), at 11:58 I paid $5 to get into the fitness center (and made sure to tell the staff person that I was there for the yoga class), grabbed a mat for the class and was sitting on my mat by 12:00noon.

The other girls in the room thought it was strange that the instructor wasn't there and said that she is never late and never cancels a class. At 12:05, one of the staff told us that the class was cancelled. Luckily, he remembered that I had purchased a day pass and gave me a free one day pass for a future visit. I was still so disappointed that I left without working out.

So sad. Maybe next week?

Memorial Weekend 2006

We had a great weekend. Wendy and I went shopping, looked at baby clothes, ate a lot, slept a lot, and had an all around fun and relaxing time.

Here is Wendy and Jeff making me breakfast...


And here are some pictures from the barbeque with our friends on Saturday...

Friday, May 26, 2006

The Weekend Is Almost Here

I'm off work early today so that I can go get Alex out in Riverside. After that, I have to drive all the way back to Pasadena to meet up with everyone, and then we're driving all the way to San Jose. I'm going to be soooo sick of driving by the end of today!

I'm visiting Wendy this weekend and we've got a babeque and shopping planned so far. It should be a fun time. Yeah!

Thursday, May 25, 2006

My Car Is Back!

I've become completely spoiled. Thank goodness I've got my car back.

I drive about 30,000 miles per year, and I fully enjoy all the perks I have on my car - seats that adjust back to my position when I unlock the car, navigation (can't live without it anymore), dual temperature control, heated seats, radio control on stearing wheel, etc.

I love my car.

Jake's New Job

Jake started his new job on Monday. Since then he's stayed late every night working. In fact, last night he didn't get home until 9:45pm. This morning he set his alarm for 5:10am so that he could catch the train and be to work by 7:30am.

I don't think I'm going to be very happy if this keeps up. If he doesn't start to come home at a decent hour, maybe I'll start exercising after work to keep myself busy. I'll give it another couple weeks and see what happens. Life is going to be different if this is the norm from now on.

At least he seems to like his new job so far.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Lunch With Mom

Today I had lunch with my Mom. She actually came to my work, picked me up, and drove us to Carl's Jr. where we had a very nice lunch. I don't get to see her enough anymore. :( I made sure she knows how to log onto my blog so I'm expecting a comment from her. Hint, hint. Mom showed me Wendy's baby shower invitations and I have to admit I'm quite relieved that she's had time to do those. I've got a ton of stuff going on right now, including a paper due on Friday.

Yes, for some reason, I'm supposed to do a written paper for my Math class. I've decided to make a story about going to an island with some friends and having their bunnies escape. Not very likely, but necessary for the premise of the story. Basically, I've created a formula to figure out how many bunnies will be on the island in a couple of years based on number of baby bunnies and how often babies are born.

Anyone have input on how to make the story more funny or more exciting? I did some research on rabbit reproduction and found out that they probably have about 8 bunnies per litter and could actually have a litter every 2 months. With plenty of food, water, and no predators, we could easily have a huge bunny problem.

My formula turns out to be: two multiplied by six to the n power, with n being the reproductive cycle number, each bunny having 10 bunnies (should be 8, but I did most caluclations before doing the research) per litter, and each baby able to have a litter immediately after (not possible, but much easier to figure out that way) . So the two bunnies turn into 12 bunnies, which turns into 72 bunnies, which turns into 432 bunnies and so on.

By my calculations, there could be 4,353,564,672 bunnies after two years. Now that's a lot of bunnies!

Extreme Traffic


I apologize if anyone thinks it was a bad idea to post this picture. It didn't look like anyone was seriously hurt from what was happening around the scene.

We were stuck in a lot of traffic this morning and this turned out to be the reason. The car is on the center divider. By the way, I'm not one of those awful lookiloos who hold up traffic - Jake was driving. Since my car is in the shop, we needed to carpool.

It turned out that something on the engine of my car was cracked and they had to order a part, so it should be fixed by Wednesday. The service person said it probably wasn't something they did for my 15,000 miles service, but I think it's too much of a coincidence.

Monday, May 22, 2006

My Car Was Towed

On Saturday I took my car in for it's 15,000 miles service. On Sunday, my car started jerking and stuttering so that I actually parked and called our 24 hour roadside assistance. They towed my car to the nearest Audi dealer and our friend Alan picked us up and drove us home.

I'm convinced that they screwed something up when the car went in for service, but I'm still waiting to hear what the problem is.

Friday, May 19, 2006

New Profile Photo... Maybe?




What the heck am I doing wrong? I'm trying to post a new profile photo, but it's not working. I've posted a photo (the one above), but it keeps telling me I need to have a .jpg extention, which it does. Anyone have any ideas? I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Pam to the Rescue

Last night I went over to my dad's house because their computer was running slowly. Somehow their SpywareDoctor had been removed from the computer completely. I wonder if there is spyware out there that can do that? Weird. I was quite proud that I was able to help. Of course, I'm only confident in my computer fixing abilities because Jake is just a phone call away.

I realized after showing them my blog (and adding it to their "favorites" link) that I didn't have any pictures of Dad and Susan, so here they are. Susan loves pictures, and especially pictures with Dad.

The tacos and company were great! I need to visit more often.

My Finished Scarf

Hooray! I finished my scarf last night. Kind of bad timing since it's getting hot out but I wore it today anyway. I'm going to start another one immediately. This time I'm going to see if I can figure out how to make one without using a circle. Anyway, just had to show off my scarf making skills.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

When Was the Last Time That I Prayed?

This year the College of Science had something called "Invite Your Advisor To Lunch" and lunch was provided for free to the student and advisor. One of my students, a very nice young man named Darren, asked me if I would like to go. I was very excited and honored that he would take the time and put forth the effort to ask.

Darren has a 3.96 GPA which is the highest GPA in the College of Science this year. The Chair of the CS department told me that Darren is the brightest student he's ever seen at Cal Poly Pomona. Darren has been doing research, writing papers, and doing lots of other impressive things and still manages to be very calm and unstressed. He's a really interesting person.

We went to lunch that day, and before he ate he told me that he was going to take a moment to pray. "Pray?" I thought. Wow, how long has it been since I've prayed? I have to admit I might be hard pressed to find a time within the last year.

At this point I must admit that I have begun to wonder exactly what I believe. I currently believe in God, but I wonder if I would still believe if I really searched for answers. So I think I had decided not to think about it because I don't see any benefit to the possibility that I might convince myself that there is no God.

I've found that I often don't agree with Christians - not about Jesus, how to be saved and things like that, but about what makes someone a bad person and about how we should treat others when they are acting in a way that could be interpreted as unChristian-like behavior. When I see some of the things that people do in the name of Christianity, I don't want to be associated with it. I begin to feel ashamed to think that someone would look at me as a Christian and think that I believe the same things that these other people do.

But getting back to the story, after Darren finished praying I asked him a question. I said "What makes you believe in God?". I asked because I thought that if someone who is intelligent and thoughtful has come up with an answer, maybe that would help me to understand my feelings a little more.

He gave me a short run down on why he believed, including a bit of info on scientific evidence and offered to let me borrow a book which he thought might be useful. He brought me a book and CD yesterday and I'm hoping to have time to look at it this weekend. The book is titled "The Case for Easter". I'm looking forward to reading it, because I'd like to have more information. I'll have to see if I find any answers to my questions.

Monday, May 15, 2006

I Want One!

Who needs a troll doll when you've got hair like this?

This is Hugh Hester.... Can you guess what Dad thought was funny about naming him Hugh? How much is he going to be teased? Poor thing.


Visiting Jake's Family

This weekend I went to Arizona to visit with Jake's family. We stayed at a very nice hotel for only $69 per night since Jake's brother's girlfriend works there. They had a lazy river with rafts so that you can float around; the water will push you without needing to swim. Refer to the name "lazy river". I brought a book and read for about an hour floating along doing nothing. It was wonderful! And soooo relaxing.

Below is a picture of Jeremiah and Josh, Jake's youngest brothers. Behind Jeremiah is his girlfriend Chelsia (can't really see her) and between them is Karen, Josh's girlfriend.


Below is Chuck's (Jake's brother) girlfriend, Jenn, and their daughter McKenna.


Below is Andy, Jake's brother.


Below is Chuck, Jake's brother; McKenna, Chuck's daughter; Hugh, Josh's son; and Jake. The babies were a lot of fun this weekend.

Friday, May 12, 2006

I'm Making a Scarf

My friend bought this device that makes it very easy to create a scarf. She let me borrow one of her hoops (since her package came with four of them) and a roll of yarn.

I've been having lots of fun working on my scarf at night before bed. I'm even considering trying to make a matching hat if I have enough yarn left over.

Next up I'm going to go pick out a color that I really like; maybe somthing different that I'd never find at a regular store.

I'm really enjoying making this scarf. I'll post another picture once it's finished.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

SD Card Reader

Jake bought me a new toy while he was in Florida. Well, actually he bought this for himself and then I stole it from him when I saw it.

This is a a very small SD card reader. It has a slot for a full size SD card like I have for my camera and a mini SD card like I have for my phone.

I love this thing!

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

In the Beginning

For true appreciation of the improvements we made, these are the houses when we first purchased the Pasadena property. Beautiful!

Monday, May 08, 2006

House Pictures

I wanted to show a photo of our new house in Florida and then decided I might as well post a picture of all the houses.

This is a picture of the house we just bought in Florida. It will be green as soon as we get the sprinklers going.

Below is a picture of the front house on our property in Pasadena. We're probably going to sell next week. We wanted to build a front porch, but we might not end up with the time or resources to get it done.

This is the back house on our property in pasadena.

We're still working on a couple of things including painting touch ups like you can see on the fence, but I'd say it's just about time to be done and to move onto the next project.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Alex and Jake


I took this photo about a month ago. This is Jake and Alex, my step son. Alex likes playing video games when he's over. As usual Jake's busy doing something also. Looks like he's paying bills.

Good Things

We finally signed papers for the Florida house, my test today was very easy, it's Friday, and I'm going to a friend's home tonight to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Life is good!

Thursday, May 04, 2006

My Troll Dolls

These are my McDonalds happy meal toys. I kept them for about a week and then gave them to my friend's daughter who thought they could be her Barbie doll's daughters. I even joked with Jake on his birthday and gave him the orange one on the left.

Upon seeing the toy I recently acquired through my last happy meal, Jake said "That's lame, your troll dolls were much better than that thing." He then asked where they were.

Yes, you heard correctly, Jake basically admitted to liking my troll dolls. Not such a macho thing to say. Could he be missing his birthday present?

I Should Be Studying

Yikes,

I've got a test tomorrow that I'm not quite ready for, home documents to sign at 1pm, my second job from 4-7pm and then helping my brother, David, move afterward.

Funny how I'm sitting here blogging instead of getting some studying done. Or maybe I should actually work seeing as how I'm at work and all... Nah....

Some cute pics of a dog I met on the way into work.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Back to the Curtains


It's finally done. My friend suggested this color, and although it's a little bright, at least we'll have a bit of color in our white house. One picture shows the color with flash and one without. Neither are quite right, but I think you can get the idea.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Matt's B-Day

Saturday we went to The Abbey in West Hollywood for Matt's birthday. Matt used to work with Jake at the Inland Empire Utility Agency. Jake and I had lots of fun wrapping his present (a pot for his new home). You can't see it very clearly but we used Christmas wrapping paper, tons of ribbon, bows and paper flowers. It was a masterpiece.




Andy who I just met this weekend is pictured above. He's Matt's new boyfriend and seems very nice. He had to get up the next morning at 4:30am because he's a Police Officer so we had to leave early at about 11pm. We still had fun.


This is Jon, Matt's previous roommate. I hadn't seen him in awhile so it was like a fun reunion.


Pictured above is Emilio and Jake. The three of us went to the Ritz in Pasadena after we left West Hollywood. I like the Ritz.

There is a lady named Kirsten who looks about 70 years old who goes there almost every night. The hotel actually sends a driver to pick her up and reserves the same outdoor table for her every night. She has a pillow for her chair and a chilled bottle of wine and has been doing this for something like 20 years. Kind of interesting to do the same thing every day for that long.