New fridge!

Out with the old beige fridge that growls like a wherewolf, in with the quiet, new steel. It was delivered in the hottest day if the year. 105 degrees and humid. I'm thinking about climbing inside the new fridge.

Lazy days

The weather has been perfect lately and all the frat boys and sorority chicks who think they own the pool must have been too hungover to show up before 1 p.m. I had a peaceful hour in the sun before they showed up with their beer, bikinis and loud music. I'm grateful for the little things. And I've got a nice base tan going for pooltime with the nieces and nephews soon!

Flowers!

These werr a surprise from my coworkers today. So nice to be appreciated.

These cookies...

...should be illegal. Peanutbutter with peanut butter chips dipped in chocolate! The recipe called for stacking two cookies together with a layer of peanutbutter frosting, but that seemed excessive. Or maybe I was just afraid the Sugar Police would arrest me.

Marvelous Memorial Day!

I worked the 4 a.m. shift on Monday, which meant a full day to enjoy amazing weather. Went hiking. Didn't run over any tractors on the way.  Enjoyed my first Charlotte slurpee (welcome to the south 7 Eleven)! Successful day all around.

Important Updates

1. I replaced the carpet in my living room/kitchen/hallway with a lovely, durable cherry-looking laminate. Looks great and SO much easier to clean. Carpet is icky.

2. Charlotte's spring weather has been unbelievably nice.  But now the bugs are here and Southern bugs drive me nuts. I've cleaned every inch of my condo and still I have a new crop of tiny flying buts (gnats? fruit flies?) to contend with daily. It's becoming an obsession - the rolled up magazine is always nearby and I'm very, very good and smashing these little guys between my bare hands. Don't even get me started on the crawling bugs that somehow get into my place. And slugs! These small little black slugs keep popping up in my bedroom. I'm shivering in disgust as I write this and praying fervently that the bugs will die off as the weather gets hotter.  Please, oh please.

3. A new season of The Bachelorette is on and the first few episodes take place in Charlotte, so I'm already watching it religiously for the sake of local pride. You should too - so you can see what my town looks like! It's full of hunky guys who sit around giant mansions all day drinking and dreaming of little blonde women who will take them on dates to exotic islands. Reality TV is the real deal, folks!

4. My high school class is having its 20-year reunion this summer. I won't be able to go, but I feel like the reunion is well underway with everyone posting high school pictures on Facebook. Horrifying on many levels . . . not the least of which is the fact that my hair is every bit as ridiculous-looking today as it was in 1992. I was promised (by the wise world) that bad hair was simply an adolescent phase!

5. For an excellent speller with a larger-than-average vocabulary, I am terrible at Words With Friends. That's a very addicting version of Scrabble you can play with your friends on phones and tablets. I recently got a fun little tablet and entered the Words With Friends universe expecting to thoroughly wallop any and all opponents based on my track record with word board games. But for some reason, I can't seem to beat ANYONE at Words With Friends. People are beating me with 54 point words with Q and Z and X that I've never heard of, never heard used in any context or seen in any book or newspaper. I'm beginning to think there's a secret cheaters app for Words With Friends I've not learned about yet. . .

Feels like going home

It's been 10 years since I left the Bay Area, but it still feels a little like home. I went for a visit last week to see an old friend get married and see others I haven't spoken with face-to-face in years.

First I stopped in Fresno to see my dear friend Camie, meet her cute kids and chat with her cool husband and watch the most amazing live bird show I've ever seen (at the Fresno Zoo of all places!)

Rode in a 35-seat prop plane from Fresno to San Francisco. The propeller made this crazy shadow effect when I snapped a photo out the window. It always makes me happy to see mountain ranges. The South is just trees, trees and more trees (plus bugs). 

My day in San Francisco was one of the most sunny and warm I've ever experienced. Typically it's chilly and overcast in SF. I got a sunburn. Here's the Bay Bridge - less famous than the Golden Gate, but still majestic enough to make my heart flutter.

Took off my shoes and walked along the beach to the Golden Gate bridge.

Good old Kurt just about to get married! 

The ceremony was a full Catholic mass in the Santa Clara University Mission. Really lovely. I had the honor of doing one of the readings . . . verses from Genesis. "Be fertile and multpily."

Kurt and Carmen and me with some really bad hair.