Angel Eats, Shoots, and Knits

Carmen, my niece, in all her princess phase is also a big fan of dinosaurs, namely the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Lion Brand Yarn sent me their newsletter with the CUTEST knit dinosaurs.  They look pretty easy and short enough that I won't get bored with them.  I should label myself a "short-attention span knitter." I ordered the yarn for the Tyrannosaurus (which in my opinion is the ugliest one) and the Brachiosaurus which I think is so cute.  I figured they were good to start with.  I'm aiming to give them as Christmas gifts to Carmen and I'll probably make one for our nephew, Benjamin as well.  I can't get over how cute they are!

So the reunion was last weekend and it was a high-falutin' success if I must say so myself.  Really, it turned out way better than we could have expected.  We got about 120 or so people from a graduating class of just under 500.  The committee consisted of me and 4 other people: my two best friends and our class treasurer and class secretary.  The five of us committed our monies early on to help us get started.  The week of the reunion we were worried that we were going to have to put yet more money in.  Thankfully, it didn't come to that.  In fact, we were even able to give ourselves back money that night, not all of what we originally put in mind you, but a good chunk. 

I was really incredibly floored by how much gratitude our classmates showed us that night and the following days.  I guess it helped that the reunion didn't suck.  ;)  To help ourselves, we decided last-minute to do a cash raffle where the winner gets 25% of the pot.  So for $5 you could get two chances to win.  Many people, more than I was expecting, were more than willing to put money in knowing.  To quote one of our classmates, "I love you guys, of course I'll help you out.  Give me $20 worth."  At the end of the night the winner's take was $80.  The winner, bless his heart, gave us half of the money back.  I mean seriously . . wow.

So we cleared the Sandler Center that evening at 11PM and spilled out into the nearby bars, the majority of us ending up at the Red Star Tavern.  At 2 AM, a good number of us were basically closing down the bar.  I went home after that but many of our classmates went to the nearby IHOP-like diner.  I know there were a few that went to the oceanfront even after that and watched the sunrise.  I know I had a total blast even if I did have to work a good amount that night but everyone really seemed to be enjoying themselves.  Check out the pics for proof!

I daresay that I may even want to do the next reunion.  Please don't quote me on that but for now see you in 10 years Tallwood High School class of 1998!  ;)

My friend who got me and Ryan the Steelers vs. 'Skins tickets was one of my best friends in high school.  We lost touch over the past 10 years but reconnected when he moved to the area.  Now the seats that he got us are great seats and I think that's awesome but I didn't ASK for nice seats.   It just so happens that his connection was just able to get us great seats.  Since he's gotten them for us he's been saying things like, "I know, I'm the man.  You should buy my two reunion tickets for me as compensation" in addition to paying him back for the tickets.  Or "Do you know how much I can get these tickets for on eBay?!?!"  It's not like I wanted to plan the reunion.  I hate planning things.  I'm doing this for my classmates, not for myself.  I'm doing this for my friends.  I've spent a lot of my own time and money trying to get this thing off the ground.  He claims he's just joking but you can only say that so many times before it's obvious you are not joking.  It isn't like he had to do much but work his connection.  Again, I didn't ask for NICE seats I just asked for any seats whatsoever. If the tickets weren't for me and Ryan, I'd be tempted to let him do what he wanted what the tickets but right now he's really, really pissing me off.

W00t!

Hi Angel,

Your account was disabled because you took repeated actions that could be construed as spam.  For instance, it is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Use to repeatedly send the same message or to make the same post.  Facebook prides itself in protecting users from spam, and we take this standard very seriously.

However, after reviewing your situation, we have reactivated your account, and you should now be able to log in.  Please refrain from sending the same message or repeating the same post, as further violations of our Terms will result in your account being permanently disabled. 

Please also be aware that when a warning message appears on your home page, it will generally be displayed for 24 hours.  It can be displayed for longer, however, if you continue to perform these actions.  We appreciate your cooperation going forward.

Thanks for your understanding,

Taylor
User Operations
Facebook

As I've mentioned in the past, I have been helping plan my class' 10-year high school reunion.  So what would any tech-savvy person do who is trying to find 500 classmates?  Search for these people on MySpace and Facebook!  Isn't that what these social networking sites are for anyway?  There seems to have been a surge in people on Facebook that I'd been finding lately and since I hate MySpace's interface I started using Facebook to find my classmates and hit them up about the reunion. 

On Wednesday, as part of my reunion planning tasks I started messaging people who graduated with us (according to their profile) who hadn't yet accepted my Friend Request.  I had already managed to message everyone who graduated with us who already was on my Friend List no problem.  Because of the speed in which I was messaging these people Facebook's algorithms said that I was spamming people.  After a few warnings, my account automatically became disabled.  All references to me on Facebook (including me as class officer of our high school group I created there) were nowhere to be found.  When I try to login I only get a link to some FAQs about abuse on Facebook.  I have sent an e-mail to warning@facebook.com and appeals@facebook.com and disabled@facebook.com.  Truth be told, after reading what I have on Google about Facebook's customer support for such things and not being given an e-mail address directly to directly contact them I seriously doubt that a.) a human will contact me back much less actually READ my e-mails and  b.) I will get my account reinstated.

All of this is really a shame, the response or lack thereof from Facebook on not just my issue but others' as well.  i really like Facebook.  It's been a great tool for me thus far.  The fact that it is a great site and very easily integrated on lots of stuff on the web these days and that it is a better and easier site to navigate than MySpace made it a no-brainer for me to use.  But it looks like my problem isn't an isolated incident.  As much as I love Facebook I'm hesitant to create a new account using another e-mail address simply because of principle.  I also don't want to go through the trouble of having to add all my friends (and classmates) back and stuff.  So for now, I'm headed back to MySpace to try to contact the majority of my classmates.  At least there my account won't automatically be disabled.

On NKOTB . . .

"Hahaha...sweet! Have you heard their new song? I saw the video the other day on MTV and it makes me feel weird. Like you shouldn't see men that old in matching outfits doing synchronized dances...its just wrong."

By the way, we were diehard NKOTB fans growing up. This is her reaction after I told her I bought their Greatest Hits album. . . which I am now listening to.

Guess who's going to see the Monday night game on November 3rd to watch the Steelers play the Redskins?!?!

And did I mention on the 40-yard line?!

And for $130 a ticket?!

As much as I love the 'Skins when they're not playing the Steelers I will so be wearing my Hines Ward jersey to this one (gotta break it in proper after all) ... oh and I'm taking the following Tuesday off.  ;)

We've been having some crazy weather here lately. Today, for example, there was downpours in the middle of sunshine. The following are the results of such weather:

"Everyone commutes in the Smith household, whether it's to school or work. Wanda Smith rides with their son William, 7, to Highlands Grove Elementary, and she began commuting to her job at FITniche at Lakeside Village in early May.The bike riding served as a way to expend some of William's energy before the school day started. He previously attended private school and was accused of having attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.After lots of money and testing, only to find that William was "all boy," Wanda Smith said she began walking, running and riding bikes to school with him to help burn some early-morning energy. Now he's a straight-A student who doesn't get in trouble."

Bike Commute Tips Blog: Florida: Bicycles more popular

Growing up, my siblings and friends and I were CONSTANTLY outside playing.  Whether it was rousing games of team tag once the sun had gone down or just playing baseball in the backyard, we were almost always outside.  I remember when I was away at college my younger sister who was still in high school yet not old enough to have her license was lamenting how she couldn't get around anywhere.  It got me to thinking about what we use to do around that time.  Then it hit me that we walked or biked everywhere.  We would ride our bikes to friends' neighborhoods miles away. I feel that somewhere in the time between I grew up and my sister followed suit, the NON-emphasis on walking and riding a bike seemed to emerge, if you will.  I will even go so far as to say "playing outside" was de-emphasized and I didn't really notice it because I was just getting older. We grew up with video game consoles too but they were things you played when you couldn't go outside like when it rained.  I fully believe that if you give a kid an outlet for all his energy you'll find yourself with one happy maybe even balanced kid.  I'm glad that Wanda Smith figured this out as well.  Don't medicate your kid, get him outdoors instead!

Ryan and I went down to Va Beach this weekend to participate in our first ever metric century (100 km, approx. 62 miles) and to spend Mother's Day with my family.  We left DC around 3 PM only to have it take us about 4.5 hours to get home. If there is no traffic that drive usually only takes 3 hours.  We had dinner with my sister, her boyfriend, and Miss Carmie at Panera Bread to carb-load for our ride the next morning.

Saturday morning, Ryan and I were up at 6 am to get to the ride start by 7:30 am.  It was cloudy just as was predicted but it was surprisingly pleasant temperature ride.  Ryan and I are horrible when it comes to remembering things early in the morning.  I kept having to run back inside the house because I forgot things and we had to turn around about half-way to the ride start because I realized I hadn't forgotten my GPS and Ryan really wanted to have it on the ride.  So back we went.  We did get to the ride start at 7:30 and hit the road by around 7:45 am.  The first ferry (37 miles from us) was going to be leaving the dock at 10 am.  The ride was incredibly flat, the scenery was nice (buttercup-filled fields with horses grazing), and there were hardly any cars on the road.  We didn't make the 10 am ferry but made the 11:30 ferry that would take us to our next leg of the journey which was around 21 miles or so.  Because I didn't turn my GPS timer back on when we got off the ferry (even though I thought I did) there is some discrepancy as to how many miles and what our time was.  According to Ryan's bike computer, we rode 61 miles in 4 hours and 15 minutes of ride time.  I feel like the ride time was actually longer than that.  My Garmin calculates about 64 miles with 5 hours of ride time but I don't feel I can trust that since it wasn't on the whole time.  Either way, we ended the ride with a post-ride spaghetti meal thrown by the Tidewater Bicycle Association and a great sense of accomplishment. 

Some pics from the ride:

The rest are here.

Sunday after mass, we came home for a brief switch-out time (in which my sister and my mom opened their Mother's Day gifts) before hitting our 2:30 PM brunch reservation at The Lucky Star Restaurant.  The food at Lucky Star was really good but we believe they may have been a bit overwhelmed as there seemed to be a lot of waiting going on.  Our waitress, Erin, did however comp us a round of alcoholic drinks for being so patient with her.  It was a 4-course meal and dessert for $35.  My mimosas were only $4 a piece!  Ryan and I laughed because we're so use to DC prices where the meal would have probably cost $50 a person.  Poor Carmie was a bit cranky as she was tired.  Carmie is growing up so quickly.  She is 2 going on 13, we swear.  The amount of sass in such a little girl should really be illegal.  She used the potty several times on our visit but mostly for #1.  She is absolutely a ton of fun!  We took the following pics before heading to mass:


I so heart my family!  We decided that Aja would be coming home with us this trip since she seems to have gotten fatter since 'vacationing' with my dad.  That evening the three of us hit the road around 5:30 pm when a NASTY storm blew in and escorted us the whole way up to DC.  It took us a whopping 6 hours to get home!  That's like driving there and back when there is no traffic.  We decided to take a personal day yesterday so that we could catch up and rest since we didn't get in until 11:30 on Sunday.  The long drives aside it really was an awesome weekend!

Ryan and I live in an older townhouse in a complex that is a mix of townhouses and apartments. These townhouses are more like multi-level condos more than anything. We've been living here a little over two years now and one of the townhouses next to us has been blissfully empty and quiet in the past few months. This after an interesting year of living next to people that kept odd hours and whom I could hear snoring through the wall in our bedroom. It turns out that that place was rented out to a school or a company and that's why every few months there are random people there. It was the oddest thing and really quite annoying as sometimes they would come home at like 12:30 AM and not fall asleep until it was time for us to get ready and go to work.

So for months after it was vacated it was empty and Ryan and I were enjoying the blissful silence. Since they moved in on Friday night there has been never-ending thumping. Granted, there is a small child that lives there now and a baby we woke up to at 6 am, and they DID just move in but the constant thumping is really annoying. I'm hoping all of this annoys Ryan to want to buy our own place now. I'm sure the guys downstairs are loving the noise from the family next door too. Right now we're listening to the little kid throw a temper tantrum and stomp his feet. Can we buy a house now or at the very least move? Oh by the way, we said we'd be renewing our lease for a year earlier in the week. Lovely . . I tell you.

Future self,

One day you will have kids and one day those kids will grow up and become adults and marry people you hope make them happy. Please refrain from making references to sex with their father especially in a current tense even if they are old enough to know you probably do still have sex. Don't do what your mom just did to you.

I am really digging that my old clothes fit me way better. I don't think I am QUITE to where I was when I bought these clothes in the first place but I am totally digging that I can wear these things and comfortably. Maybe it's my shorter hair but I also am surprised at the thinner me in the mirror whenever I see myself. AND it's still so early in the cycling season which means I'll only become more fit from here! W00t!

ETA: Oh, and I'd forgotten what a good movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was.

So, I'm getting rid of a bunch of stuff via Craiglist. I've had a lot of people contact me about my stuff and so far only one of them so far has resulted in someone actually meeting me and exchanging money for said item. I have several e-mails since Sunday. I'm always very prompt and courteous when responding to people. So why do these people just leave me hanging? I had to e-mail one guy again today after he e-mailed me earlier today asking if he still wanted to meet to see the bike. Only after the 2nd e-mail, did he respond back saying that he was sorry and didn't realized that the bike was a woman's bike. I have a feeling a lot of the other guys who e-mailed me probably had the same reaction and just dropped me like a hot potato. Let's not even get me started on the couple that had me waiting 30 minutes outside the nearby mall after exchanging several e-mails and never showed and never e-mailed me back. . nothing. Have we really become this discourteous? Sheesh!

Friday - My award from work was a $100 AmEx gift cheque. Not too bad! I asked Ryan what I should do with it because part of me thinks I should just save it but he said I should buy myself something. Who doesn't like to hear that? Now, what to buy, what to buy?

Saturday - Rekindled my romance with photography today at my first Washington Photo Safari of the year and got to catch up with my friend, Julia, who joined me.

Sunday - Ryan and I went for a at-times hilly 25-mile bike ride from our house to the outskirts of DC, through Arlington, and back home. It was a great, exhausting ride and I'm glad that we were able to share it together.

My neighborhood is having a community yard sale this Saturday which is the perfect opportunity to purge. I probably won't be selling clothes per se since they don't typically sell well at yard sales anywhere but there are plenty of other things to get rid of. I wish they had given us more than a week's notice though. Going to be a busy week!

Today, I came to my office to find a voicemail waiting on my phone. I don't typically have very interesting voicemails but I am always curious so I dialed in. It turns out I had won a REALLY nice Saris Bones bike rack for transporting your bike on your car at a cycling event I went to yesterday. And the kicker is that it's pink! She's totally going to rock on the ol' Sentra. Ryan has already said he's not driving the car with that thing on it. He can drive the Camry with the hitch rack and I can drive the Sentra with the pink rack. I think it works out well! ;) I am still waiting to actually speak to someone about how to get this thing.

From Saris' website:
My other good news of the day was that I was nominated for an award at work. Several times a year, my team at work holds an awards ceremony which isn't as bad as you think because it's a fairly intimate gathering and only a few minutes are spent actually presenting the awards. Also, because we have it at Morton's Steakhouse and all food and drink are on the company. :D I'll let you know what I end up getting.

I started doing our taxes back in February (on Ryan's birthday, in fact) and stopped once I saw how much we were getting back (NADA) and how much we were going to have to pay (MUCHO). Note to self: don't do taxes on spouse's birthday ESPECIALLY if you have to pay. So I completed them today after we had transferred some money from our savings. I told Ryan that we either had to buy a house or have a baby to prevent this from happening next year. If you hadn't noticed, we're opting for the former.

On that note, we ARE still buying this year but I heard Ryan saying that we were "out of the market." What he means is that we're not buying in the next couple of months. Our lease ends at the end of May and we're thinking to renew it for 6 months with the intention of breaking it if need be. We're looking at buying at the end of the summer thereabouts. It is hard to be patient but that is what I'm trying to do. In the meantime, I dream of my future house and bikes.

I really should start purging our 'house' of crap. We have craploads of crap from clothes to shoes to bags to electronics and monitors and you name it. The theme of Spring will be purge, purge, purge!

Positive note for today: Ryan and I took a great 'leisurely' bike ride for a couple of hours today that was great and a lot of fun. He is in great shape and looks great in his spandex and cycling jersey! ;)

Inspired by dear T . . .

Friday's Positive Thought - I really love date night with hubby on Friday nights. You would think that with us living and working together that we would be sick of each other and wouldn't need to reconnect but Friday Night Date Night always allows us to do that. We spend most of our evenings unwinding in our own ways not really sharing with each other. We went to Ruth's Chris for the first time and finally used that $25 gift card from there that I got from MyPoints.

Saturday's Positive Thought - It would seem that we have upped our price range for our house-hunting foray. Woo hoo! Heck, I'm not complaining! Ryan does not come to decisions like this without a lot of research and foresight and heckling of our realtor so I am happy that he has finally come to the realization that I've had for months.

Sunday's Positive Thought - Our internet and cable went down for a few hours. This allowed quiet time without the TV blaring and a couple hours of reading before the internet came back up. I suggested to Ryan that we have one night where we don't turn the TV on and he said just name the night. I will really have to consider this.

So I have mentioned in passing that Ryan and I are finally getting serious about looking for our first home. We started the process by getting pre-approved which was no problem. We are incredibly ideal candidates in that our credit scores are very, very high and even at the high-end of our first-home budget we'll still be in a very low debt-to-income ratio. We found our realtor and actually our pre-approval guy through a friend of Ryan's from college that is a realtor down in Richmond, VA.

We've been out two or three times with her. We know what general area that we want to live in. We pretty much want to stay in the area we currently live in now because of it's fairly central location. We live between two major highways which gives us easy access to the whole area and we're very close to downtown DC. We are also a highway away from our work place. We have a reverse commute since we live closer to the city and our workplace is further out. All that being said, we are going to be sacrificing space and price for location.

We have figured out 2 neighborhoods that we really like. One is the one across the street. The other is a bit further South from here but in a great area. When I ride my bike on the W&OD trail I pass through this area and neighborhood all the time on the way to work. The houses in both areas are essentially the same. None of them are new but many of them are re-done. Some of them are foreclosures. The biggest difference between the areas are the neighborhoods themselves. The further one is in a bike and walk-friendly area close to a main street and businesses. The people there can afford to maintain their properties better than the people in the other neighborhood. That neighborhood, however, has a prime location.

We are essentially looking for a detached, single-family home with at least 3 bedrooms and at least 2 bedrooms. It would be nice to have a basement or work area for me really. We want at least 1100 square feet since that's what we live in now and Ryan wants lots of storage since he seems to think I have too much "stuff." We've seen a lot of great houses and some potentials but nothing yet we're ready to make an offer on. I can't wait till we find our house and we make it our home.