My Fantastically Funny and Brilliant Weekend

Per Tink's request, I did have a fantastically funny and brilliant weekend, so now I get to blog about it.

Friday night, Grant and I had a date night. We went to Cafe Istanbul at The Greene, which was awesome. It was a beautiful evening, so we chose to sit outside. The food was fantastic, although Grant's Turkish classmates aren't too impressed by it. But for those of us who have never been to Istanbul, we were pretty happy with it.



After dinner, we saw a movie, also at The Greene. This is the brilliant part of my weekend. Beginning April 17, and going until April 30, active military plus their dependents can enjoy free movies (any time, any movie - no restrictions), plus a free small popcorn and a free small fountain drink. This is with any theatre owned by National Amusements. You can read about it here. So, we took advantage of that and saw In the Land of Women, with Adam Brody, Meg Ryan, and Olympia Dukakis. I really enjoyed the movie. Definitely a chick flick that guys can watch.

Saturday, we went to see another movie (still brilliant!). This time, we saw Blades of Glory. I knew not to expect too much, but I did expect it to be a little funnier than what it was.

Saturday night, and this is the fantastically funny part, we went to a dog birthday party. Our neighbors, Leslie and Logan, had a birthday party for their dog, who turned 1. In reality, the reason for this party was so Logan, who is OBSESSED with Dairy Queen (really, obsessed), could have an excuse to get a blizzard ice cream cake.

We had a great time. Most of the neighbors came out, so it was a good time just to hang out with everyone. The dogs all got along, for the most part. Oh, and the blizzard ice cream cake was delicious. I'd gladly go to another dog party, or anything, for this cake!







Sunday, we saw yet another movie - Perfect Stranger, with Halle Barry and Bruce Willis. It had a really good surprise ending, and I love that!

Then we went to Tracy and Jeremy's house (friends from church), and Shaun and Jessica came, too (also friends from church). We had dinner, played with the kids a little, laughed our heads off at some YouTube videos, then played a semi-violent game of spoons. It was great!

Sorry

Life has been pretty routine lately, so that leaves little for me to write about. Routine is good, though, I guess.

Something kind of interesting happened last night. Grant went to yoga with me for the first (and maybe only) time! He did much better than I thought he would, too! I really enjoyed him coming with me, so he can see what I do twice a week, every week.

Oh, something else along that note...my yoga teacher also teaches boot camp aerobics at 6 am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I was asking her about it a few weeks ago, and said that I would come once, just to try it out. I never went. She never noticed. That was fine by me.

Last week I get this email from her saying something to the effect of, "I thought you were going to start coming to boot camp aerobics." Uh-oh. I'd been caught. So I basically told her the truth, that 6 am was way too early, and I was just too lazy add that to my regimen, but that didn't mean she needed to take it out on me at yoga, which would be meeting that night.

She did sort of take it out on me at yoga that night. I was already trying to do my best, which was pretty hard, but she would come to me and tell me to "sink down a little lower" while I was doing lunges or squats, or "I think you can do a full plank" as opposed to a modified plank, etc. Fun.

So she convinced me to promise to go to at least one boot camp aerobics class this week. That will be tomorrow morning. I've already set my alarm so I won't forget.

5:15 am.

That's early.

What am I thinking?

Book Club

As most of you know, I joined the AFIT Spouse book club right after I got here. Well, we have this great bookstore here (Books & Co) that regularly has authors come and do readings and promotion for their book. So far, we've gone to 3 of those. This last one, we decided to take pictures of the event.

We did it a little backwards this month...We usually read the book first, and then go to the event at Books & Co. This time, we picked the book, based on the fact that the author would be here, and then we're going to read and discuss a few weeks later.

This newest book is called The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz. A few of us were sick of the dark, depressing, heavy books we've been reading, so we wanted something light and funny this time. This book definitely fits the description.



At Books & Co on Wednesday night, instead of the author herself reading passages from the book, she called on people from the audience (all 10 of us) to help her read some of the characters. The excerpts she picked to have read were hilarious! So I knew right away that I would like this book. I did not volunteer to read, but one of the girls from our book club did, which was cool (only 3 of us actually made it to this event).



After the readings, and the Q&A time was over, we had a chance to have the author sign our book. Apparently, she said something really funny, because I'm laughing my head off.



And here are the only 3 ASPA book club members who showed up. The author was pretty excited to know that we were reading it for a book club. She even offered to do a call-in!



Just to give a little synopsis of the book, here's what the inside flap has to say (I started to write something in my own words, but then realized that there are people who get paid to do this, so their words are way better than my words):

"Meet Isabel 'Izzy' Spellman, private investigator. This 28 year old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors - but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations. Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, black-mail, and wiretap a Spellman.

Part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry, Izzy walks an indistinguishable line between Spellman family member and Spellman employee. Duties include: completing assignments from the bosses, aka Mom and Dad (preferably without scrutiny); appeasing her chronically perfect lawyer brother (often under duress); setting an example for her 14 year old sister, Rae (who's become addicted to 'recreational surveillance'); and tracking down her uncle (who randomly disappears on benders dubbed 'Lost Weekends'). But when Izzy's parents hire Rae to follow her (for the purpose of ascertaining the identity of Izzy's new boyfriend), Izzy snaps and decides that the only way she will ever be normal is if she gets out of the family business. But there's hitch: she must take one last job before they'll let her go - a 15 year old, ice-cold missing person case. She accepts, only to experience a disappearance far closer to home, which becomes the most important case of her life."

Boys and their Toys

I'm going to give some background to this story, before I get to what happened this weekend.

For Christmas, Grant's mom got him a remote control helicopter. As far as RC things go, even I have to say this little guy was pretty cool.

Well, it broke.

A couple months back when he went to return it, we spent about half an hour in Radio Shack while he looked at all of these RC vehicles. I was bored out of my mind! At least when I'm shopping at the mall, Grant has stuff he can look at, too. I was all alone in Radio Shack. All alone. He ended up not getting anything that night, except for store credit for the helicopter.

So that brings us to last week. Grant found out that there was one RC truck that he had his eye on left at Radio Shack, so he used his store credit and got it. He was so excited about this truck! Watley hated it, by the way.

Evidentally, he showed one of the neighbors, Logan, the truck. Logan got really excited about it, too, and told Grant he was probably going to get one.

That was Friday.

Saturday morning, at around 8:30, Grant and I are in our upstairs room that looks over the street. What do we see "driving" around the circle? The stupid RC truck that Grant influenced Logan into getting!! So Grant tells me how he has to go out there, and I told him to not forget his truck.

So, there they are...2 grown men, playing with RC trucks on Saturday morning. You know this was way too good of a photo/video op for me to pass up.



PS - since Saturday, they got together last night to play with their toys, and then again this morning before their classes. AND, they've convinced another neighbor, Ryan, that he needs to get one. AND, Grant is actually thinking about telling the other guys on our street, so they can all get one, too, and have a big RC play date! Oh, and Logan has now built ramps, so the trucks can go up curbs. Yay.

Pity Party

I said in my last post that since I didn't believe the nice weather would last, I couldn't be disappointed...well, I was wrong. I am disappointed! Our gorgeous 70-something degree, no humidity weather is gone!!

We went from having our windows open, fans on, to having the windows closed, fans off, heat cranked up. We also went from being able to wear shorts, tank tops, and flip flops, to being bundled up. It's very strange to see beautiful, lush, new green grass with patches of snow throughout. The temps will go back up in the next week, but only to the 50s and 60s. It's very hard to go back to this when we've been enjoying fabulous weather.

I just keep telling myself that it's April now....this can't last too much longer. Summer will be here before I know it, and I'll forget all about the cold and the snow.

When I write completely depressing posts like this one, I like to do something a little random. So, here's a picture from high school. This is "the group" on our Senior Trip in Williamsburg. Enjoy!



**There are a couple of cool things that I'm reminded of when I see this picture. Grant and I were high school sweethearts who got married. The guy and the girl in the background were also high school sweethearts who got married. There is at least one other couple from our graduating class who got married. That's pretty rare! Another cool thing, is that I still keep in touch with everyone in this picture.**

Wallflower

It started about 3 years ago. I'm obsessed, and I can't quit. "What?" you ask? Wallflowers from Bath & Body Works. If you don't know what these are, they are home fragrance thingies that you plug into the wall, and the scent lasts for about 6 weeks. When I worked at Coca Cola in Albuquerque, one of my co-workers told me about them, and since then, my house has never been without.

I love so many of their fragrances, it's hard to pick a favorite. But I have. It's the newest one I've tried - Midnight Pomegranate. Some of my other favorites are Brown Sugar Fig, Creamy Nutmeg, Spiced Cider, and Cherry Blossom. Some that I'm not crazy about are Moonlight Path and Cappuccino Hazelnut Torte.

The scents that I've mentioned as my favorites all last pretty much the whole 6 weeks, which is really amazing! The Cappuccino one, I could hardly smell at all. Figuring out which ones smell the best and which ones last the longest is really just a trial and error thing.

Unfortunately, these bad boys are pretty expensive. That's why I wait until they go on sale, and when they do, I stock up big time! When my Midnight Pomegranate has run it's course then it will be time to try another new one - Eucalyptus.

Call me weird, but it's all very exciting to me when I try out a new one, or even when I get a scent that I know I already love. I love for my house to smell good! It's one of my "things" I guess. Maybe I should've listed that on that weirdness quiz from a while back.

More video!

So, here's another video for your viewing pleasure. I apologize for the lack of blogging lately. There's really nothing going on, hence, nothing to blog about.

We took this video last week. We've been having some gorgeous weather lately. Really. Gorgeous! So we took Watley to a field so he could do what he does best. Our gorgeous weather has been interrupted here and there with rain showers, so the ground was very muddy. But Watley loved it. I don't think he'd ever run in mud before.

By the way, we're supposed to get snow showers this Saturday. I'm glad I'm staying somewhat pessimistic about the weather here, otherwise, I would be really let down. But since I had a feeling this weather has been too good to be true, I pretty much expected this. It's the only time I can think of when pays to be a pessimist!