i might play hooky on thursday

is that how you spell hooky? hookie? hookie? hmm. I am too lazy to check. :)

I have a list that is ever-growing of things to do--things I'm behind on--so if I can just fit in a few hours of personal work I might be able to accomplish more. Maybe? maybe.

I had intended to share some pictures with you, but brills me, I failed to download them. le sigh. I really wish I had Hermoine's time turner. Or could be like Michael Keaton in Multiplicity. Or could accomplish things at super human speed.

more soon.

more from colorado...

this is day two. where we slept in, hung out with the kitties and I helped tonya make invitations for her sister's baby shower. and played mario kart. I really want a wii. I don't know when it would get used, but I want one. Matt and I talked about getting us one for Christmas. with the wii fit, of course!

after that we swung by the liquor store (for beer that Matt and I took home!) and went to manitou springs. we had been planning to ride the cog railroad up Pike's Peak, but ALL the seats were taken on ALL the trains. and honestly? I'm really thankful it panned out how it did!

so, I took pictures of manitou springs

and then we saw these birds. and an arcade, and had our photos taken in the booth. it was SNUG in there.

and then we talked around some more--I LOVE these open windows. as a matter of fact, I took some pictures of them and said "aaaaand now I have my pictures of colorado!" and I love all the benches painted brightly. and the flowers.

Matt and George were troopers. Tonya and I went in quite a few stores and saw pretty things like these! We spent a lot of time in a jewelry/crystal shop where I didn't take any pictures but I DID get a turquoise ring, a turquoise bracelet, some beads, a piece of fluorite for my mom and some agate bookends (that I have yet to photograph)

then we saw this super-colorful kissing bench. of course we HAD to sit on it. and it seemed just right for arm wrestling--though after a moment of matt going easy on me and working hard I realized my only defense was biting. matt=not pleased. ha! but look how MEAN and SERIOUS he looks! harumph.

after that we went to have FONDUE! I've had fondue three times ever. The first time I LOVED it. It was when Betsy was my Valentine. And it was YUM! The next time was on a date--and the cheese part was good and the chocolate part was okay, but I hated the meat part. I told him I didn't like mushrooms, but he insisted on that sauce. and one of the parts in the chocolate was something I didn't like, and again, he insisted. so yeah. But this? This was DELISH.

the indoor light was kinda crappy though. and in that pic with tonya? I'm all red 'cause I'd almost fallen on the floor while trying to lean away for the picture--ha!

so anyway, we decided to just do the cheese and chocolate this time. and I was quite pleased that they brought me some blue cheese crumbles--no one else liked blue cheese but I had a hankering. just a dab on some bread was plenty. :)

on the walk back to our car I saw this love-o-meter guide to romance thingie and knew we HAD to play. In the interest of my personal safety I won't give full disclosure, but I WILL say that we stood there for a while wondering why the machine wasn't doing anything before someone thought to pull out the coin holder we'd pushed in--and then it went. so, matt was forced to go first--and he got "blah." that picture where I'm turning around? yep, that's when *I* landed on "blah" too! and then george went--he's harmless. but know what? we made tonya go, and SHE is harmless too!

btw: Matt is SO proud of himself for taking that picture right as I whipped my hair around. :)

who knew, huh?

and here is matt at the del taco. we definitely needed this picture. we'd be talking about food and where to eat and suggest, say, olive garden, lonestar steakhouse or cracker barrel, and matt would say "or del taco!!" seriously. for FOUR meals this came up. hence:

and this is what we came home to. little tinka is cuddly and I missed my kitties, okay? and it's a nice view of my new watch.

one more day of colorado left to share!

in the meantime...

so, I'm working on finishing the edits of my trip to colorado. and I'll get there. but right now? I want to show you something that happened while we were in manitou.

we are walking around town, seeing the sights, all that good stuff, and it has become time to use the facilities. by the time I'm done taking some pictures the boys are done and tonya is already in the ladies room--this is one of the few public facilities in the area, so, yeah. we weren't all synced up or anything. :)

so, I hand matt my camera, do my business and then this happens:

I think my favorites are the upper right and lower left corners. he's such a meanie sometimes. and the BEST part? as we were looking through them after he said "I'm sorry the door was already so far open before I started shooting--I didn't want to be the creepy guy taking pictures of ladies while they exited the bathroom. well, I mean, unless it was you."

and that's the man I love folks.

le sigh.

wednesday, wednesday, wednesday. -or- matt really wants this on a tshirt.

oh, are my high school reunion pics going to be fodder for WBW or what? :)

that said...I'm not giving you a high school pic today. I'm giving you something EVEN better.

are you ready?

In this picture I am 5 going on six. This is in Arizona. Our team was called the Thundercats. My mom made the banner, I'll have to find a picture of it for you. I had a crush on a guy named Dallas, who was also our forward. Anna was on the team too, and at this point in our life we looked SOSOSO alike. My mom would do our hair differently (but the same way every time) because it was the only way the coach could tell us apart.

And I will never forget this--at five I felt like I was smarter than my coach. Yes, really. So, while evvvvvveryone else was practing their kicks or throwing in the ball or playing out scenarios, my coach had Anna and me go up and down and up and down and up and down the field dribbling the ball, passing it back and forth and back and forth. Seriously, this is ALL we would do.

and honestly, when we'd stop arguing we got pretty good at it. story of our lives. but anyway.

so: why did I feel smarter than my coach? because he was sooooo sure that if Anna or I got the ball and started taking it up the field like we had practiced, he was certain that people would be so stunned by how alike we looked that it would confuse them and we could score.

granted, twins weren't as prevalent then. we were the only ones in our whole league. [by comparison, matt had parts of four sets of twins, altogether, on the two soccer teams he coached last year] but seriously? A bunch of 5 year olds lose their cool and concentration because of a pair of twins? Well, let's just say I thought that was pretty dumb. But I never told him, don't worry. :)

anyhoodle. when I found this picture last week Matt said "I really want to see THAT on a tshirt!" It was funny and cute. The end. :)

reunion madness: part one. the part where I skipped most of the reunion festivities.

Right. Hi. It's Monday. I am sleepy. We got in at 130, I fell asleep around 230 and woke up at 735. It has been a joyous day, for sure. Highlight was definitely lunch with Courtney, but other than that, I've been in a hectic-crazy-bizarre-annoying-fun-strange-fantastic-little-sleep weekend haze.

friday night after our [minor but totally annoying] flight delay we ran some errands, bought some presents and I rolled out to Syd's bachelorette. My poor little point and shoot just really isn't interested in working anymore, so I only got a couple of pictures since the flash wouldn't go off, and none of them are truly blog-worthy.

but I went to THREE places in t-town I'd never visited before: dalesandro's, pink and leons. also: message to ladies everywhere: when you go to a bachelorette party and go to dinner, someone should pick up the bride's meal. and ideally, drinks too. seriously. I feel like I end up doing this a lot. (sometimes I think someone else would've picked it up if I hadnt' done it first. this time that was NOT the case)

on the plus side though--so I'm chit-chatting with Holly and one of the three Melissas (and there were only seven of us, I know, right?) and we realize we have some Kevin-Bacon-y connections. And we've both been to Camp Egan. And I begin to tell her the story about Jesus and the chair. Melissa's eyes are kind of wide, and finally she's like "holy cow, I was THERE."

We both had the same traumatic experience.
We both were wondering if we were the only gals who thought this was alarming.
And yeah.

small world. and yeesh.

oh and you know what I do have pictures. syd's free shot after dinner, and the free champagne we got at pink! it was kind of, as jackie would put it, awesomesauce. the rest of the bar was kind of "eh." but the free champagne was great!



so, after dinner and pink we go to gray snail where the boys meet us. Matt had gone to hang with Syd's fiance, and it was like 1215 and I HAD to make an appearance at the happy hour or I never would have lived it down.

After the boys showed up, guesssssss what? THE ENTIRE bachelorette party rolls out to Leon's, where my classmates are. (they started at McNellie's but one of them wanted to meet up with a girl who was at Leon's) So I balanced having two of my best friends, my boyfriend and a bunch of people I hadn't seen in ten years. It was kind of awesome. Syd is amazing, folks.

Anyhoo. That's it for Friday. Except for the part where it was 141am and they turned on all of the lights in the bar and started SHOUTING for us to chug our drinks and get the hell out. What a brilliant end to the evening. ;)

i just saved myself twenty bucks.

plus tax. plus fees. plus whatever else mumbo jumbo happens when you rent a car.

so: here's the skinny.

I rent cars A LOT. I go to Oklahoma, I visit my family and I rent a car. I have only opted not to rent a car ONCE, and I borrowed my Granny's car, and bless her heart but I was afraid for my life as one headlight malfunctioned so I had to always use my brights, the rear passenger window is now a plastic bag and one of the doors didn't open.

The car is technically safe. It is fine for my Granny who rarely, rarely drives and who NEVER drives at night. Not so much for me.

Well, so when Matt and I travel anywhere he does most of the driving. You might argue he's a better driver, but if you want to play the who-has-more-tickets-game, he definitely has like a 500% increase over me. And one of mine was for a stop sign!

But anyway, he drives. And I like it. And that causes problems with rentals because they only want one person to drive, and they charge you somewhere between $9.99 and $15.99 per day to add another driver. Plus taxes. Plus fees. Plus everything.

Some of 'em max out after like 4 days ($15.99 a day, maximum of $55 total to add a driver...) but some keep going, and going and going.

Know what though? I just called the lot of 'em. Thr!fty. Enterpr!se. Doll@r. and Hert2. I hadn't gotten to Budget. But Enterpr!se? They add spouses to rentals for FREE.

and you know who counts too? Domestic partners, what, what! Matt and I qualify for that, so we will totally be renting enterprise! I am quite pleased at this new development, yes I am. Over my lifetime these few calls may save me THOUSANDS of dollars! YAY!

that is all. thank you, enterpr!se!

wbw--more from high school

um, my reunion is this weekend. I'm supposed to be helping with the slideshow. I meant to start doing this earlier. I might go buy a scanner tonight. I'm using Matt's old one, and after going to the nice Epson site and finding (and installing) the driver online, I scan a photo like so:

-hit the "scan to web" button [the process is the same with the scan to email or copy button as well]
-say "open in picasa!"
-say "cancel" the scan thingie that pops up (it scans the whole flat bed, not jsut the area of interest)
-go to the menu bar in the import tool and say "twain 5"
-wait while it scans
-tell it where to save the pic (and I have to tell it the new folder each time, it doesn't go there by default the next time)
-close the import tool
-load a new photo.

begin at top.

can't do more than one at a time. I need, oh, sixty more scanned in order to create an animoto video. and I'm going to need to scan things for class I bet. so perhaps I should just go shell out. it's a shame to HAVE a scanner that FUNCTIONS but still not be able to use it in anything resembling an efficient manner.

but anyhoo.

two pics:

1. this is me and SJG. this must be when we're seniors because I'm pretty sure we were not speaking all of our sophomore and most of our junior year. god, that was when we got banned for life from using the dictionary in Dudley's AP European History class. We once had an argument [during class while we were supposed to be working] about what the word "oppression" meant, the nuances between the definition implied in our book and in the two dictionaries, and I think there might've been something about whether or not European women were oppressed--it is oppression if it is your culture? who are we to say.

I'm pretty sure we were both on the same side. I'm pretty sure our teacher was trying his best not to laugh hysterically as his two juniors waxed philosophical on oppression in the 1700s or whatever. And I'm pretty sure it's making me giggle now, too.



2. this is me, randi, amber and whitney. this is at the after-graduation party. while attending this shindig I was hypnotized and sang amy grant songs in front of my entire class. yep. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen Amber or Whitney since that day. Well, maybe Amber once or twice that summer. But not Whitney. And then we all went to different places--Randi went OSU and is now a mom of 2 and living in texas, Amber got married and has had 4 kids (or is it 5? I can't recall, I hear from Melissa so I forget!) and is living in Utah, and Whitney has had 4 and is a preacher's wife. And here I am all liberal and stuff. My, my. It is crazy crazy how people change with time!



I'm excited about leavin' on friday for t-town! I hope it gets here quickly!