Swine flu near you?

I'm not panicking about the swine flu, but I'd like to be no where near it. I'm weary of being close to the border right now and am stepping up my hand washing and all that jazz. But, I found out this morning that one of our employees just returned from a work conference in Mexico City. I say give the girl 3 days off just to be sure! I'm quite uncomfortable with that! Nope, she's here at work. I'm thinking of emailing her and telling her I will be avoiding her until the end of the week. Maybe I should wear a mask to work to get my point across. Am I crazy to think that's totally irresponsible?

Good ol' Government

I started the process of getting Aaron a green card about a year ago and he and I have been studiously working on it since we were married. Let me tell you, it is no easy task. It is extremely overly complicated and expensive. Many people ask me why I haven't changed my name yet. One government project at a time, please. The things we've had to do are borderline ridiculous, but will obviously be worth it for Aaron to stay in America. I'm not hip on the idea of moving to Canada.
Anyway, yesterday we were scheduled for our initial interview for his permanent residency application (green card). My presence was required as well since I am sponsoring him from our marriage. I've been sweating this interview since we found out about it. We took half a day off work to drive down south (plus I don't want to go NEAR the border right now...) for the interview. It's totally intense to get in the place. Security won't let you in without an appointment and proper ID, they xray you and all your stuff (similar to the airport), and the workers are behind bullet proof glass, etc... Short of the long, we get up to the window only to find out our appointment has been rescheduled, but no one bothered to let us know. Awesome! Of course, our letter clearly stated that if we had missed our appointment, we would most likely have to start the process over. Glad the government is so understanding. Frustrating! I'm so eager to get this process over with!! Grrr. Our next appointment is May 13th. Or so they say. Stay tuned.

And he's back!

If any of you have paid attention to Aaron's hair over the last 6 months (not that I expect you to), you'd have noticed a bit of an evolution taking place. Since we were married, he decided he wanted to grow out his hair and have lustrious surfer hair that he could get out of his eyes with a flip of his head. He started out saying he wanted hair like Aaron Eckhart in Batman: The Dark Knight, so I was all for that. But, that's not what it came to be. Aaron has extremely thick hair with a nice curl to it, so it didn't behave like he anticipated. Not wanting to cut his hard work, he convinced himself that if it grew longer, it would go straight. Being a girl and having fought with my hair for about 20 years, I know this to be a fallacy, but he was determined. After the hike we did two weekends ago, I think he saw the light and realized it was time for a change. All he had to do was say the words and I quickly booked an appointment with my hair girl. We are very happy with the finished product, but thought we would photograph the change for the sake of posterity.


Before:


After:

I rest my case. Two notes: 1. Although the pictures would make you think the hair cut has subdued him, it hasn't. 2. Sorry the first picture looks like a polaroid. I had to crop some of the bare shoulder action he had going on and my computer at work has very limited editing abilities. I like to keep this blog G rated.

Earth Day Fair

We're done with church at noon on Sunday and since our apartment is so small, when the afternoon rolls around, we get a bit stir crazy. I heard there was an Earth Day fair going on at Balboa Park, so we decided to walk around and check it out. Side note: If you haven't been to Balboa Park, make it a must see next time you visit San Diego. It is a great place to just walk around and enjoy being outside. It is one of our favorite things to do. In fact, that was our first date. I could spend multiple posts on the museums, gardens, architecture, history, zoo, yada, yada, yada and still not properly convey it's greatness. This is a picture of us walking into the park on the bridge that crosses the 163. The tall tower on the left is part of the Museum of Man.

Since it was an Earth Day fair I knew we'd see an "interesting" mix of people. That's half the fun! We enjoyed a concert from a local Hari Chrishna ensemble. They were totally jammin and had quite the crowd.

I got the chance to save a seal and make sure it had a heart beat.

Oh, and since it was Sunday, we took a minute to listen to this guy and receive a more interesting dose of the scriptures than what we had that morning at church. Although he looks like he's doing a tribute to Hitler, it wasn't so. At least I don't think it was. He was arguing with some people, so I'm pretty sure he was condeming them to Hell. All in all, a nice sunny afternoon out and about in San Diego.

A Little Hike

Aaron knows I love to hike and recently bought me a book on hikes in San Diego County, so we decided to give one a try this weekend. Cowle's Mountain is a mountain pretty much plopped in the middle of eastern San Diego. I have hiked the front of the mountain (the south side) many, many times, but it's not much of a hike to me because you can be up and back in less than an hour. There are 3 ways to get to the top of this mountain and I had heard the back way (the north eastern approach) was the hardest, so I wanted to give that a try. It wasn't too bad, but it definitely gives you a work out. Below is a picture of what we still had left when we were about half way up. That small dirt road in the top left of the picture was our path.The last 1/4 of the hike is some serious uphill business. I love up hill running and hiking (for some odd reason) and this was a great challenge. Below is a picture of what we were walking up and trying not to slide back down. Our bodies were bent almost completely at a 90 degree angle from the waist up to help balance gravity. What a great workout for your legs!

This was our view from the top. We faced east to take this picture. If you turned around you'd be able to see downtown San Diego, the ocean, Coronado, La Jolla, Mexico, the whole bit. Too bad the sun was shining directly into the camera or I would have taken a picture of that.

Is Aaron's hair not out of control? Granted, we just worked out butts off and were sweating like pigs, so no one cared about how they looked at the moment, but just the sheer volume of his hair amazes me. He's having a mid 20s crisis and not sure what to do with it. Normally it's not so big. I think the wind at the top of the mountain gave it a little lift...

Just Gopher It!

Step 1: Pick up the trash with the Gopher. Look how easy it is! You don't have to bend over!

Step 2: Put trash in bag. No need to dirty your hands by touching the item!

Step 3: Dispose of the trash bag in the proper receptacle and feel good about the difference you've made!

In simplified and cheesified terms, that was my Sunday afternoon. There is an elderly woman in our neighborhood who I see picking up trash each morning when I walk to the trolley station. After seeing that for weeks, it got me thinking, if she can do it, why can't I? Maybe I should have a little neighborhood pride, too. Heaven knows there is plenty of trash to pick up in my neck of the woods. Aaron and I take a Sunday afternoon walk each week anyway, so I might as well do something useful while walking. That is how we came to own "The Gopher". I guess it is on an informercial, so the packaging is super cheesey and features good ol' Billy Mays. It's actually pretty handy and made it nice because I didn't have to touch the garbage. Our walk was a little awkward at first because all the people we passed stared like we were crazy (apparently they don't have community pride, like us), but we got the hang of it. Poor Aaron is such a great sport for humoring me with all my wacky ideas! While we were walking, I asked him if this is what he thought married life would be like and he said, "Not quite".

I had a creativity itch

I scratched it and once again remembered why I chose a profession where creativity is strongly discouraged. I realized after taking the pictures that I didn't actually capture any humans in my photographs, so to prove I have friends, I'll name the body parts below. Jen's hand is on the left and Sandy's stomach and elbows are on the right. We celebrate each holiday together by making something related to the season and then watch The Office and 30 Rock after. A perfect night! Normally we decorate sugar cookies, but we did Easter eggs this round. The finished product is below. I think projects like this will be fun and about 10 minutes into it I lose interest because my ability is so limited. But the girls had some good decorating ideas. I drew a face on one of my eggs and dunked it what was supposed to be purple, but turned out blue with purple stains near the head of my egg. We were trying to decide if it looked like a homicide victim or Gorbachev. It's bottom row, 4th from the left.

The beauty below is my greatest creation. This egg cracked while I was hard boiling it and since the crack was perfectly limited to it's head, I decided to paint it like Humpty Dumpty. Or try. Sorry the photo is so blurry. I'm not that great with cameras.

The Good ol' Days

This weekend I was watching "Where the Heart Is" courtesy of the La Mesa library. (Side note: I LOVE this library. I love the library in general. I borrow so many great movies and books for free! Who doesn't love getting things for free? Plus, it's less than a mile from our house so Aaron and I often walk there and it's in between my two favorite grocery stores. Nevermind the fact that a prostitute tried to solicit Aaron in front of it one night, but that's a story for another time.)

If you've never seen the movie, through a series of unfortunate events, Natalie Portman finds herself 9 months pregnant and secretly living in a Wal Mart at night. During one scene of the movie, it shows the Wal Mart closing at 9pm. I thought to myself, "Wal Marts don't close. They're 24 hours". Aahhh, it dawned on me that this movie is old enough that it was made in the good ol' days when Wal Mart wasn't poised to take over the world and people weren't so obsessed with shopping there that they need to save $0.45 on a pack of batteries at 3am! I miss those days.

Also, if you image google "Wal Mart", you'll see some pretty funny images, like the one below from Business Week magazine. I guess some other people feel like I do...

Is that you, Spencer?

I was watching the film, Dead Poets Society, this weekend and fell in love with it. I'd seen it a long time ago, but now I actually appreciate how wonderful it is. During my viewing, I also discovered something else. A young and cheeky Ethan Hawke looks strikingly similar to my nephew, Spencer! Like, a lot. This isn't the best picture for resemblance, but it was the best I could find online. I came to this conclusion on my own and then when Aaron was watching it, I mentioned it and he was totally blown away by it, too. So, Spencer, you've got a pretty cute mug. I know most of my friends won't see the resemblance cause they probably haven't seen Spencer lately, but family, rent it and watch it and tell me what you think.