my handicapped placard expired yesterday :( it was fun while it lasted.

i know there a bunch of you out there sad since you all took advantage of it with me. let's mourn together.

a teaser for what happened this weekend...

took the bachelorette to visit domaine chandon, a sparkling winery. actually learned quite a bit about the history of champagne & sparkling wine. ask me if you care:


all the gals (minus janet & shrie) at the entrance:


went shopping at the outlets where olivia won for most colorful outfit (by the way, friendliest jcrew ever. all the staff joked around with us and even gave alinna a $10 gift card since it was her special day. one of the guys even did a dance for us, and another told me about his drag racing days):


and mary won for best superstar pose:


and ate at a very yummy french restaurant, where we had the aforementioned below best.tomato.soup.ever.


sunday afternoon, i will leave you with this:


we ended the trip with a very late lunch at zacharys. more yum. girls with puffy eyes we will leave to your imagination.

the end.

p.s. best quote of the weekend, by olivia, in reference to Chris Tomlin's song, Famous One: "it's like... equating God to hamburgers!"

is there such a thing as overloading on fun? i think that's what happened this weekend. as well as overloading on the food, the shopping, the pampering, the sharing, the tears (in the middle of zachary's, no less. let me know the next time you see 10 girls crying in the middle of a restaurant), it's amazing what a weekend in napa can do... unfortunately, it's back to reality... and to quarter end at work. last week! hope i survive! Al... you rock. and i am in complete denial of that picture. i think seri photoshopped it or something.

by the way... THE.BEST.TOMATO.SOUP.EVER.

YUM.

ummmmm update to the below post's update.

the freaking spider is BACK. relentless little sucker! he's back with a vengeance, recreating a web in practically the exact same spot. and he already has victims rolled up in his tangled mess of a web.

since ang was the only person to suggest a name, we shall call him willie. and as your prize... you get to hose him down and chase him out of our property for good. or you can choose any method you like. yay for andrew! :)

we have a new pet in our household!

let's welcome him with some pictures.



jenie found him this morning as she was taking out the trash.

the backside of our pet.


and here he is, in his full glory.


perhaps he's the cousin of our previous pet, who, fortunately, ran away?


we haven't named him yet. perhaps we'll give a prize to someone who comes up with the best name?

**edit** update! down came the rain and washed the spider out! yay for the rain! bye-bye itsy-bitsy!

went with o and bops last night to icing on the cake in los gatos. Anually for their birthday, they hand out free cake and have a mini-party to celebrate. so of course we took advantage of it and ventured down there after dinner. can we say YUM! they offered four different cakes: chocolate, pumpkin ribbon, banana, and carrot. I tried the first three (since the carrot had raisins in them, which i don't like, plus the three pieces of cake already took up the whole plate). YUM! these slices were big, not measly slivers you'd expect because it was free. my favorite was the pumpkin ribbon although banana was also scrumptious. They also passed out vanilla gelato, which also was really good, and free punch and coffee.

Besides the copious amounts of sugar consumption (um, ask o what she was like for the rest of the night), it was the best dessert i've had in a long time.

if you ever remember this, check it out next year! Oct 12.

i'm ready for my next vacation! where are we going? i still have 4.5 weeks of PTO as of today... this after taking 2 weeks off for spain and more than a week for my two surgeries.

TV arrived today, just in time for lost! woohoo. lost party at our place. (sad how alias party has been replaced with lost party. y'all are welcome to come watch alias too.)

i don't even want to talk about the cal-ucla game. and our huge drop in ranking. :( we'll see how the rest of the season turns out.

I've been tagged by reni. and uh by alinna, which i've been ignoring. so i'll do both. and for the 20 random facts, supposedly you're supposed to tag as many people as the number of minutes it takes you to write this up, but i ain't tagging like 60 people. so i'll leave it to 6. it sounds like a good number.

20 Random Facts
1. I have 10 scars from my knees and below, as a result from four surgeries and an accident that required stitches.

2. I have 1 scar from my knees and up, as a result from an accident when I was two years old that required stitches (I don't even remember it, I just know I have a small scar under my lip.)

2. I have a horrible memory, which is also why i always lose or can't find my stuff. ("where are my keys???")

3. I can still put both legs behind my head, even after three knee surgeries.

4. I spill food on myself a lot. I had to bring Tide-to-Go to work because I kept spilling food all over my clothes.

5. My favorite tv show right now is Lost. Everyone watch it! I got the season 1 dvd!

6. I have a secret blog that only one other person knows the location of. Hehe :)

7. Wednesdays are my least favorite day of the week because it usually means I have to get to work early for a meeting, stay late because of another meeting, and then work from home (so that I can watch Lost!) to finish some weekly reports in time.

8. I don't like shopping. I like football. I'd rather watch a football game than go shopping. I'm a Cal football freak.

9. I HATE mustard. If I am starving, and all that is available is a sandwich with mustard, I would rather starve. Don't even TRY to wipe the mustard off the bread for me, it won't work.

10. I used to hate spinach and mushrooms when I was little. Now I love both.

11. I used to have ugly, bloody toes. Okay, well I took ballet lessons from when I was four until high school... and being on pointe does ugly things to your feet. I had to stop when cheerleading/song took up too much time.

12. I'm a super light sleeper. I wear earplugs everyday. And if I'm in a new environment (ie on vacation, retreat, or sleeping over somewhere) I usually cannot sleep at all the first night.

13. This is hard... I'm running out of facts

14. Yes, I cheated on the above one. I love mangos. I love mango with sweet sticky rice. I love mango soft serve they serve at indian restaurants. I love mango smoothies. I love mango cake (sorry ev, I think I'm killing you here.)

15. I am an allergy queen. I have hayfever and sneeze at any given time. I have eczema (basically skin allergies). I am allergic to most seafood, dog hair, most grass, most trees, bug bites, etc. Although... I eat most seafood, love puppies, frolick in most grass, stand around most trees, and bugs sure do LOVE to bite me.

16. I started out with hard contacts. I tried them for 3 years because I have astigmatism, but I had so many problems with them that my eye doctor finally gave up and just told me to switch to soft contacts.

17. Despite all my surgeries, I've never broken or fractured a bone. And I don't like milk and haven't drunk it (besides with cereal) regularly since middle school. So ask me again in 50 years if I've never broken a bone.

18. I've played piano for 22 years, took lessons for 14 years, yet now cannot play any music besides worship songs and canon, jesu joy of man's desiring, trumpet voluntary, wedding march... well, you get the picture. i'd be lucky to even be able to play my 7th grade piano recital piece. sigh. my piano teacher would have been so disappointed. although if i had a piano to practice on, and i actually practiced, then it might be a different story. I'm horrible at sight-reading, and would much rather play piano off guitar chords at any time than off sheet music.

19. I don't like meetings. I have way too many to attend at work. Actually, when I first started working, it felt really weird to not start and end meetings with prayer because the only meetings I had ever attended before then were for church, fellowship, etc. hahaha.

20. I took the GMATs way back... um 3 and half years ago. They're going to expire soon. Even though I scored pretty well, I dislike studying so much that I don't plan on ever applying to school again.

And number 21 (but really number 20 since I skipped number 13), just because I think everyone already knows this fact...
21. I am NEVER skiing again. not in my lifetime. not if/when i have kids and they plead and beg me to go. not if it was free and all expenses paid for. not if everyone else in the world was doing it and i was the single only person out of a billion not doing it. not if Jesus came down, shook my shoulders and told me that i MUST go skiing. okay, maybe i will if that last one happens, but you get the picture.

Okay! i'm done! number 20 was kind of lame, but this is hard! Tagging:
al
ev
arex
the hyuns (yes, i count them as one)
jamon
ang

okay... onto my musical tag. i'm going to cheat. ha.

5 things I'm listening to now
1. Sarah & NoName on Alice Radio (in the morning)
2. Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway Album
3. Freaky background music while watching Lost
4. Chris Tomlin's Arrival Album
5. My coworkers phone calls since our floor is so freaking quiet

Okay i'm done. I tag no one since I'm tired of tagging people.

**edit** uh... just realized i have two #2's for the 20 random facts... so i really did come up with 20 facts and one bonus. oops. hahaha. too lazy to fix.

guilty as charged.

i didn't think i'd ever pay to join a photo gallery, but this article scared me a bit.

so... here you go! my smugmug! finally uploaded the pics from our trip. :) maybe one day i'll reupload my older pics. they're all over the place... yahoo, ofoto. i hope this is the last. :) i'll leave the posting of pics on a blog to our spain blog, which has others pics as well. otherwise to see my pics, go to my smugmug.

also uploaded pics from david & anna's wedding.

in response to this post...

BOB, WE NEED ALIAS!!!!!