Six

Hey!  We've been married for six months!  Get out of town!  It's been ridiculously awesome. 

All photos by ETF:

Going into the photobooth at our small family party.  I wish our photographer had snapped one of us while we were in there...

Our strip.

 

Heck, yes I signed our own guest book!

 

 

The C's have a playground that is fenced in on the far side of the backyard.  It was quite popular.

 

One of my BFFs E and her T

 

My dad got our shin-dig started.

You better believe I was eating!  And I changed shrugs!

 

T's good friend M and his wife K.  They got married just a bit before us.

The backyard.  I am so in love with all the beautiful green!

The playground (not pictured)  is to the far left...

Checking out the guest book with my family.

A sequence of L...

 

 

 

And a preview of things to come...

 

See s'more:  Five months and Four months

Favorite Things IV

Youtube gives us The Hoff. This music video makes me laugh every time. Without fail. See how many strange things you can spot in one go. An unrelated video that I like is baby panda. I reacted just like the mother the first time. And of course this kid.

A Cake wreck is "any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons." And the commentary isn't half bad either. And I'm so glad / relieved that our wedding cake didn't turn out like this:

(here)

There are lots of cakes like this:

(here)

Really, just explore the fan favorites and classics on the right. You can thank me later because there will be much laughter. This one was made for a baby shower:

How can you cut into and eat that?!

This is the cake that started it all:

(here)

"...And underneath that, write 'We will miss you'. Got it?"

Oh yeah, they got it.

Oh, and they are not all cake wrecks. On Sunday the cakes are "sweets" or amazing cakes that defy words:

And yes that R2D2 is a life size cake:

(here)

Y'know, just doing my civic duty providing valuable time wasters.

Song 1

I have so many songs that are associated with memories of specific people.

When ever I hear the Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly" I think of my brother J and his friend A. I think of our old neighbors whenever I hear The Proclaimers "500 miles." Ace of Base "I Saw the Sign" makes me think of A's fourth grade birthday party because we sang that song a million times. And "All Star" by SmashMouth makes me think of being in the tepee and playing Tabloid Teasers with the N.O. cousins.

Every time I hear "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield I think of T.



Freshman year T, P, and I went on a road trip (our first of many together) from Southern California to Utah over President's Day / Valentine's Day weekend. We were in T's little white hatchback. We taught P how to drive a stick shift. Okay, we didn't so much teach him. It was more of a "it's your turn to drive - it'll be fine, it's mostly freeway" kind of thing.

T actually had a pretty good sound system in that little car and we listened to his ipod the whole way. During this trip we found out that "Jessie's Girl" was on T's Top 25 Most Played list. T claimed that he had no idea how it got on his top 25. We made a lot of jokes about it - was T Jessie? Or the guy singing the song? And who exactly was the girl?

It was a running joke for the freshman family all freshman year. I mentioned it pretty much every time I wrote to T while he was in South America (I only wrote him about 8 times in two years - but it's okay because we weren't dating then). I teased him about it when he came back from South America.

I don't tease him about it anymore and "Jessie's Girl" is on my Top 25 Most Played. Every time I hear that song, I giggle and think of T.

Not So Fabulous Friday

I'm not feelin anything fabulous about Southern California this week.

Last night T and I were falling asleep when we heard four gunshots in a quick row.  They were loud and would have woken us up if we were sleeping.  Two minutes later there were all kinds of sirens around our apartment.  T shut and locked the patio door (it's still warm here).  Seven minutes later the ghetto birds (police choppers) were out right above our apartment.  We could hear the choppers very close to our apartment for 15 to 20 minutes. 

It's one of those situations where you want to see what's going on, but you are not going to turn on the lights or look out the window or anything.  We realized that we don't have anything in the house to protect ourselves with except the mace in my purse and the steak knives in the kitchen. 

I had a hard time falling asleep last night.  I'm thinking that we should invest in a baseball bat to keep under the bed...

Tonight I tried to pull into our apartment's garage, but there were teenage boys blocking the key card access point.  I wanted to honk or roll down the window and ask them to leave except I was scared they would shoot me (last night and our not so nice neighborhood make me think things like this).  I went around the block and waited for them to leave so I could get into the garage.

I got into the building and found that someone had roped the door (that you need a card key to open) to the lobby wide open.  This door faces a main street.  It made me feel very unsafe especially considering last night and our not so nice neighborhood.  I tried to undo the rope, but it was wrapped several times with lots of knots and I couldn't get it.  Plus it was getting dark outside and I'm a big scaredy cat.

I told the apartment manager about the door and he said he was the one who had roped it open because the intercom system wasn't working.  I told him that it made me feel very unsafe and he said too bad, it would remain open until the intercom was fixed.  His reasoning was that the door was open because potential residents couldn't get in without the intercom.  Plus he said the open door was fine because he could watch on the surveillence camera to make sure no one got in who wasn't supposed to.

Except the manager's office is on a different floor than the lobby.  And it was 5:30 and the apartment office closes at 6 and it was very unlikely that someone would come in the next half hour.  And the manager's office phone number is listed next to the front door if someone did come.  Couldn't potential residents just call to be let in instead of using the intercom?  Or couldn't he leave the door shut and watch the camera to see if potential residents were trying to get in?  These options sound better to me than just leaving the door wide open so anyone can get in. 

Except the apartment manager didn't think any of my points were valid.  He said if he shut the door he would inconvience a lot of people and the only person the open door was inconviencing was me.

I asked when the intercom system would be fixed.  He said "soon."  I asked if it would be done tonight and he said "soon."  I asked if it would be done tomorrow and he said "soon."  I asked if he would close the door for the night and he said "it will be fixed soon."  Apparently, the apartment manager doesn't feel believe that "safety comes first."

And thus, my friends, Southern California is not so fabulous.