Jared's great-grandfather celebrated his 88th birthday this past weekend. There were presents, cake, lots of food, and family. What more could one want?
More pics here.
People always ask, "What have you been up to?" I personally find this question to be a little annoying. What do you think I've been doing? I'm dedicating my life to raising a child. Of course, there are more aspects to my life besides this, but not much, and raising the child is a priority over whether I want to make my stationary or embroider.
Well, finally, there is news. After studying for a couple months, I have passed the Clinical Vignette Exam and now am a licensed clinical social worker in the state of California. What does that mean? It means several things:
1) I get to practice and "do my thing" without supervision.
2) There is a considerable pay jump. (not that that matters right now)
3) I eventually get to supervise and create anxiety and self-doubt in other social workers.
4) I could possibly start a private practice.
So there it is. Validation. Thanks to all those who made it possible with their guidance and support: Sue Moss Chapman, Grant Duncan, Robert Sherbow, Ceth Ashen, Art Capella, James McEwen, Karen Todd, and good ole Xanax. Oh my, and before I do a Hillary Swank, of course I thank my husband, Paul, and my son, Jared.
So bring on the crazies...
Posted some new pictures of Michelle's 30th birthday party at Lawry's. I will try to post pictures of the baby shower later. Click here to see the pictures.
I have a few pet peeves that really irk me sometimes. The latest one is people who drive SUVs and brake suddenly to go over a small bump, pothole or dip. I drive an SUV and love blasting through these minor city annoyances simply because I have a bigger car with higher ground clearance. I understand if you need to slow down if you are driving a normal car or a car with ulra low clearance (another pet peeve), but to slow down for a small dip in an SUV is ridiculous. The worst are those SUV owners who stop completely to go into a driveway. They will suddenly come to a stop as they slowing inch their way up the mall driveway. Come on!
My all time pet peeve has got to be people who misuse hands-free headsets. You know the kind you get for your cellphone that dangle out of your ear and the mic is located on the wire. There are too many people out there that don't understand the concept of hands-free. They will literally take the mic portion of the headset and hold it up to their mouth to talk. IT'S HANDS-FREE!!! That means you don't have to hold the mic people! The worst offenders are those people who I see driving along on the freeway holding the mic. WHAT THE HECK is the purpose of using the hands-free headset in the car, while driving, when you are holding the headset. COME ON! The whole reasoning behind the headsets are so you can have both hands on the wheel.
That's my rant.
My friend/co-worker Joe showed me this cool effect pictured below:
I thought this picture from the honeymoon album lent itself quite well to this new effect. You can find a larger version of this picture here. Thanks Joe!
Normally I welcome the rain with open arms--especialy during the Winter months. It is a sign of snow in the mountains and means fresh powder for snowboarding. However, as a homeowner, I have grown to dread the rain.
We have 2 places that we know of in our house that are leaking. One is the master bathroom and the other more serious leak is in the guest closet.
We didn't notice the leak in the guest closet until it was too late. It first started off as a musty smell. Then one day as Michelle was cleaning out the closet she noticed the back wall of the closet was covered with black fuzz. MOLD!
Mold is one of those words that homeowner's have grown to fear due to the media hype about "toxic mold." They make mold sound like this deadly killer. I don't give much credence to the hype, but seeing as the guest bedroom was going to become the nursery, I had to the cautious parent and make sure it was cleaned right.
Over the past few days, a company came in to clean up the mess. It was quite a process that included a HAZMAT-type clean room right outside our closet and a huge air pump that has been constantly on for the past week.
Today is the big day. Another company is coming in to conduct air samples and we shall know by Monday if our closet has been given a clean bill of health. If all goes well, we should have our closet back by next Tuesday. I then have to go in and replace all the drywall that was ripped out and re-carpet the closet.
Please... no more rain.
I finally put up pictures from my 32nd birthday at C&O Trattoria in Marina del Rey. I had a great time and enjoyed seeing all my friends in one place. Thanks to all those who came out to help celebrate.
We'd like to thank our dear friend Joyce who created the artwork you see in the banner of this page. To see a larger version of this picture, please check out the About page.
There must be a name for this... what do you call it when you Google yourself? If you think of a word, please comment about it.
So I Googled my name and I came across this old article ffrom the Daily Bruin. It must be me and my old age, but I can't recall ever being quoted in the Daily Bruin. It's been over 9 years since I graduated UCLA, but was it really so long ago that I can't remember such a profound experience? Frankly, I sound like an idiot in the quotes. I don't think I made much sense at all. :(
If you are reading this and it's the latest entry in the blog, you'll notice that things look a bit different. I'm almost finished redesigning the layout for the site. I thought it was time for a change since this was the year for changes.
I plan to write a lot more to this blog and post a bunch of pictures, especially with the baby on the way.
You'll notice there may be a few broken links and things will not look great on some pages, but that will be fixed soon enough. I hope to be finished with the redesign by the end of the week. So for those of you who are actually reading this, please post a comment and let me know what you think of the new design!
I'm back at work today after shoulder surgery on Tuesday. I didn't quite expect my recovery to be this quick. I was also pretty bored at home.
To recap...
My surgery was at 1 p.m. on Tuesday. We arrived shortly before 12 p.m. to check-in. At around 12:30 p.m. they called me in and I got dressed, or rather undressed, for surgery.
Perla was the nurse who was in charge of getting me prepped. She had me lie down and she started my IV. It was cold. The anesthesiologist soon came to see me. He was a really nice Chinese man, Dr. Wong I think. He told me about the different types on anesthesia and how he recommended just getting a general as opposed to an interscalene block. No clue what that meant but when he said he wasn't an expert at the interscalene block, I told him just give me the general.
The anesthesiologist administered the first part of the anesthesia which relaxed me. Things got all blurry and I became very happy. After that I pretty much don't remember anything except for the nurse who asked if I liked rap music. I had no clue what he was talking about until they wheeled me into the OR and I heard rap music in the background. Then darkness came and I suddenly woke up in the recovery room...
To sum things up...
I'm better. Recovery has been fast. In a sling for 6 weeks. Back at work. :)
Just came back from watching planes at Santa Monica Airport. It's REALLY hot outside. The benches on the observation deck don't provide much shade and I was seriously roasting. That said, I definitely would go back.
As some of you know, I took flying lessons about 2 years ago and had to stop due to financial reasons. It's just too expensive and I have to spend my money on more grown-up things like a mortgage and 2 car payments. :( I think I spent about $2,000 a month on flying lessons and I was barely halfway done by the time I stopped. I probably need to spend about another 20 to 30 hours of flying to get my private pilot's license. I hope to go back one day.
Did I mention how hot it is outside?
Well at 31 years of age, I'm going in for my second surgery. As many of you know, I had surgery in late 1999 to remove my gall bladder due to gall stones.
You may also know that I'm kind of prone to shoulder dislocations after a snowboarding accident in 1998. Ever since then, it has become easier and easier to dislocate my shoulder. I'm now up to 14 disloations. Yeehaaa! My last two dislocations occurred while I was sleeping. After those 2 dislocations, I realized that it was time to seriously do something about it.
Next month I will be going back to Cedars Sinai Medical Center (great hospital) to fix my shoulder. As many people keep telling me, I'm just broken. :)
Count the "F's" in the following text:
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FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.
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Let me know how may you count.
Added three more albums to the album page. One is of our cat Lucy, and the others are from our trip last year to San Francisco and Michelle's 28th birthday.
Check out the album page. I updated 2 albums, Fiji and the housewarming. More to come soon...
Go see Bad Santa. It was good. There. I did my part. I wrote a blog entry finally after almost 3 months.
More soon...
This past Saturday we held our housewarming. FINALLY! It's been about 6 months since we've moved in and we can finally say, we're done! Well... almost. There's still little things to fix, but for the most part I can breathe a heavy sigh of relief. Although we still need some furniture here and there, we think the condo looks pretty nice.
We had about 40 people over (not all at once) including one toddler and one baby. In the picture you can see Terry holding Zoe Utsler with Papa Joe looking on. Check out the Housewarming Album for more pics.
We had a BBQ going all day. Thanks to Master Chef Terry who gave his arms a permanent sun tan to provide us with hot food. We think everyone had a good time. We mingled, watched episodes of Joe Schmo and played some poker. Our kitten Lucy had a great time running around and bathed in the affection.
Now that the house is done, we can start having dinner parties and having guests over. Thank you to all who attended and helped make our house warm.
Michelle and I have been trying to be healthy. Right now we are on a diet and have watching what we eat. We both have been craving sweets. I especially have been craving baked goods like cookies, doughnuts, and brownies.
Last night the cats were being loud and woke us up. Michelle was so cute. She said she was having the best dream. She was eating an apple fritter.
I admit... the whole Mars hype has taken over me. Last night (at 10pm) I convinced Michelle to drive out with me to the temporary Griffith Park Observatory next to the Autry Museum of Western Heritage.
It didn't take us long to get to the museum area. After getting off the freeway we finally found our way into... TRAFFIC! Massive traffic. Cars as far as the eye could see. Hundreds of cars. And the museum wasn't even in sight. We thought about it for a second and decided to give up. There was no way we could make it to the museum, fight the crowds, and make it back home at a decent hour.
We couldn't believe the massive amounts of people.
My boss this morning said the day before there were close to 2,000 people there and the LA Astronomical Society (which he is a member of) had been asking volunteers to bring their telescopes.
Luckily my boss has offered me a viewing of Mars from his telescope at his house. I may just take him up on the offer.
Today the Lord of the Rings Two Towers DVD comes out. It's just the movie cut and not the extended edition. The extended edition comes out in November.
I think I'll wait...
For the past few weekends we have picked up the pace on house renovations. I finally got started on painting the kitchen cabinet doors. We have been living without cabinet doors ever since we moved in. It's actually been quite convenient since everything is in plain sight in the kitchen. However it's not very attractive and the kitten seems to love wandering in and out of our bakeware and pots.
To help facilitate the painting process, I purchased a Porter Cable PSH1 spray gun. I thought this would help speed up the process. Boy was I wrong. Not only did I have to tarp off a large area, the spray gun was totally useless. It wouldn't atomize the paint at all. I tried thinning the paint and that helped a little. However, the amount of paint coming out was so thin that it would have taken me a long time just to paint a small door. I would have had better luck using a kid's blow paint straw. I'm sure if I thinned the paint out to the consistency of water I could have had better luck, but I would have wasted a lot of time and paint to cover a small area.
I finally had to run to Home Depot and pick up a paint brush. This seemed to work pretty well although I did have some initial problems with the paint being too thick. It the paint is too thick you end up with some nasty paint streaks. I also learned that you should not paint the doors on the ground. The paint that drips from the sides ends up on the tarp and makes it difficult to pick the door up off the tarp. I finally realized that I needed to elevate the doors onto blocks and make sure paint didn't drip off the edge.
I estimate I have another couple days of painting ahead of me. I've been painting in my mom's garage to avoid any wind blowing crap onto the paint. But she lives in the San Fernando Valley and it's been HOT. Not to mention that fact that I've been working in a closed garage (with proper ventilation of course).
I've brought home a few doors that I finished and for the most part they look good. It's not the most perfect of paint jobs, but what do you expect from an amateur painter? The most disappointing thing is that the paint I used for the doors and the paint I used for the cabinet faces and drawers are a different shade of white. I think it looks fine to have the different color door against the cabinet face. Unfortunately I will probably have to touch up the drawers so they match the doors. I'm hoping the enamel based paint I used on the doors will stick to the oil based paint on the drawers. I'll cross my fingers on that one.
This weekend I also picked up the base shoe to go around the edge of our Pergo flooring. That will be a weekday project that I do after work.
Almost there...
I think the website is finally at a point where I will start making frequent entries to the weblogs and upload some more pictures.
The newest addition to the site is the "cat" page. For now this just has a webcam image of our new kitten. It's kind of boring since all she does right now is sleep.
Welcome to Paul and Michelle's site. Thanks for stopping by.
In the next few days you'll see this site evolve into a place where you can read and comment on what we've been doing recently.