Guess what I'm writing on right now? A brand new laptop!! What a very nice surprise I had when I came home from work tonight. My dad bought it for me because my old one crapped out. It's a Dell Inspiron 6400 and it's really cool and fast!!

The weekends go by WAY too fast, but I’m OK with it this time, because now we’re less than two weeks away from Mexico!

On Saturday, Steve and I did a lot of shopping in preparation for the trip. We both got a bunch of new shorts and tops, and some dressier stuff for dinners. We went to Santa Cruz for dinner at Vasili’s to celebrate Steve’s promotion. We totally gorged and pretty much negated our dieting efforts. After that, we drove to Capitola and hung out around the beach for the rest of the evening.

Yesterday we attended two birthday parties. The first was a 60th birthday brunch at California Café in Los Gatos. I really enjoyed my strawberry Bellini and basically inhaled the lovely little array of muffins provided in the bread basket. The second was a first birthday party for our tiny next-door neighbor. It was fun to chat with our neighbors and to meet a few new ones! After that, we had dinner at my parents’ and were indulged in a little Target shopping spree. I picked out some books to read by the pool – I can’t wait!!

Back to Blonde

Today I had my hair restored to its traditional blonde shade. I liked the brown when I saw myself in the mirror. But in pictures, I thought it was horrible. I’m quite happy with the result!

Also, my sister sent me the new “Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol” game for PlayStation 2 and it is fantastic! The character personalization options are cool and the song choices are excellent. Steve and I just played a match and I beat him quite handily.

Jump at Your Own Risk

I visited Sky High Sports in Santa Clara yesterday to attend its AIRobics class with some girls from work. It’s basically a place for children’s birthday parties that consists of like 30 giant trampolines sort of patched together, with another few slanted up the walls, so kids can essentially “bounce off the walls.” There’s also an area with some trampolines and a giant foam pit and another that is used as a dodge ball court.

Sounds fun, right? Um, wrong.

First of all, it’s located in a big huge warehouse with zero ventilation, so it smells and it got unbearably hot during the AIRobics. As we waited in line to sign up, I noticed a girl limping out of the previous class, supported by two friends, with an ankle that was so bruised it was basically black. Ow. Bad sign.

Once we got on our trampolines, it was fun to bounce around for about 10 minutes. Then the class started. Two minutes in, a girl in the front fell, screamed the F word and started bawling. Seems she had also experienced an ankle injury and was rushed out by her boyfriend and a staff member. At this point I wanted to walk out, cause it was clear that the odds of leaving there on two legs were not good.

But I persevered. Next up was an exercise in which you had to jump, fall down on your butt, and bounce back onto your feet. The first time I tried it, I got a sharp stabbing sensation running up my spine. Not good. Maybe I was doing it wrong? I tried twice more and kept feeling pain, so I decided to stand that one out.

As the exercises continued, it became clear that the instructor was just some random guy who worked at the place and had no fitness training whatsoever. The moves he taught were absolutely ridiculous and defied all guidelines of what is safe form for one’s body. For example, I have a feeling that running across some trampolines and throwing your body, shoulder first, into the wall is not a good thing. He also led some more traditional exercises like sit-ups and pushups, but again, I think those are probably not so good to do on a concave, jiggley surface.

The whole place just skeeved me out because you know they don’t wash those trampolines. An the foam pit? Ewww! I can’t even imagine what they’d find in there if they cleaned it out.

Overall, I would say that this is a place for kids and NOT adults (though the majority of girls I went with really liked it). I should at least admit that it was a good workout – I was totally sweating and out of breath. But I’m not really willing to risk life and limb for an exercise class.

P.S. Big congratulations are in order for Steve! He got a well-deserved promotion today! Hooray! He's the best accountant ever!!

A Watercolor Wonder

My mom placed a Stampin’ Up order with me last week that included some products I had not used before: the Watercolor Wonder crayons and Aqua Painters. We played with them last night (see above) and let’s just say I am going to be needing to place an order with myself! They’re really fun and easy to use, and I think they make the finished product look very professional! Not to mention how well they complement the cute “Voila” stamp set she picked out. You can change the food on the chef’s plate to suit the occasion.

Baseball, Grilling and Rags!

There’s been a lot going on here lately! Yesterday, we went to the Giant’s game with the tickets I won. GEEZ! – It’s $30 to park there! No wonder so many people take BART. I guess it’s not so bad, Steve told me it’s $80 to park at Fenway.

We’ve been doing the low-carb diet thing for a week now in preparation for our Mexico trip. It was excruciating to see all the delicious food and not be able to have any. We both had a hot dog with no bun. No fun.

The game was good, and we got to see Barry Bonds hit a homerun. Now we can exchange our tickets for special collector’s pins, which is kind of cool. It started raining in the bottom of the seventh inning, so we headed home after that and had some tasty salads at California Pizza Kitchen for dinner.

Last Thursday, Steve and I took a class on grilling at Sur La Table in Los Gatos. The class was excellent – we learned how to grill a lot of tasty things, including tri-tip, salmon kabobs, vegetables and fruit. They even showed us how to bake flatbread on the grill! At the class, we bought a really nice grill pan that can be used on the barbeque or on the stove. It has a side with grill lines and a flat side, which will be nice for pancakes, etc. I decided to try it out this afternoon and grilled up a bunch of zucchini, eggplant and onions. I figured it would be good for us to have some veggies ready to go for during the week because of the low-carb thing. I think they turned out pretty good! I can’t wait to try out the rest of the things we learned (especially the fruit and the flatbread), but those will have to wait till we’re back from the cruise!

Also, in honor of Earth Day today, I thought I would do something environmentally friendly. I decided to start lowering our consumption of paper towels by cutting up a bunch of stained dishtowels and Steve’s old undershirts to use as rags. I cleaned the whole house without using one paper towel! I even recycled this old coffee container to make the rags a little home that will be located under the kitchen sink. I’m thinking about trying to switch us to fabric napkins too. Obviously, there will be situations in which a paper towel or napkin will be necessary, but I think it’s still a good little start!

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Today was a good day. First, at work, I won a little trivia contest. The theme was baseball and the prize was super-generous: tickets to a Giants game next Saturday! I knew listening to Steve talk would come in handy one day!

Then, at spinning, the teacher complemented how strong I was looking. I guess hanging in there when I was ready to practically collapse during all those hellish classes has paid off too!

Martha is having a scrapbooking contest, and I’m kind of stressing out over what to enter. The problem is that you can only enter one page, and most of my favorite stuff is best when viewed as part of a two-page layout. I’m kind of toying with creating a special page just for the contest, perhaps to highlight all of my Martha-like endeavors. We’ll see how I’m feeling once the weekend comes.

It was cold and it rained today. I had to break out the closed-toe shoes and sweaters. That is the one reason why I don’t like spring – it can’t seem to ever make up its mind!

Above is a really horrible photo from Easter. I know it’s ugly, but it’s all I had. It features Steve, me and my sister at Hayes Mansion, which is where we had Easter brunch with my parents. I don’t think we’ll be returning. The service was terrible and the food was just OK. My mom made a luscious ham and some potato salad so we could snack when we got home. Her stuff was vastly superior to the Hayes offerings.

Other things that have been happening:

-- Since my sister was in town, we had a yummy family dinner at Claim Jumper on Friday night. I ordered a plate of sliders and french fries, and I must say that the fries were the best I’ve ever had!
-- I got Steve the game Pop5 for Christmas. We played it for the first time this weekend with my parents. Hilarity ensued. I definitely recommend purchasing it if you’re looking to broaden your board game library.
-- I started shopping for some sun dresses for our cruise. I can’t wait!
-- I made some good headway on the honeymoon scrapbook.

-- I watched the “Beverly Hills 90210” senior prom episode on TV. I CANNOT believe that it was almost 15 YEARS AGO! Oh my gosh – I’m SO OLD!

Well, that’s all for now. Hope everyone had a lovely Easter!

Ugh. Baseball is back. I can tell I'm going to get a lot of crafts done in the next six months!!

Steve and I decided on our summer vacation last night and booked it tonight! I’m very excited – We’re going on an eight-day cruise to Mexico, with stops in Cabo, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan. It’s just a little more than a month away!

My Mexico travels have only extended as far as Tijuana, and Steve has never been. I think we’ll have a lot of fun! Now we just have to decide on our shore excursions. Any recommendations??

You might recall that I sort of hate pilates. I never really felt like I was getting a workout, and the classes are expensive. Well, my office started offering a pilates class after work two days a week, so I decided to try it out tonight. It was really good – I definitely felt some exertion. I think I’ll make it a regular Monday night thing.

Also, I know the Amy Winehouse album “Back to Black” is getting crazy hype all over right now, but I need to give it one more plug. I bought it on iTunes and it is absolutely fabulous. I really recommend that everyone check it out. It’s been making my commute to work a pleasure!

I did a good mix of things I wanted to do and things I needed to do this weekend. I feel like I accomplished a lot. My major feat was that I finished scrapbooking my wedding and all pre-wedding activities. Geez! Now I’m just a little bit less than two years behind! I used to be, for the most part, totally on top of the scrapbooking. Like I’d have to invent reasons to take pictures to make new pages. But the whole wedding thing threw me for a loop – I felt like I needed to devote all of my creative time to wedding-related crafts. Anyway, next up are the honeymoon pictures. Once I’m done with those, I think I’ll be able to catch up pretty quickly, since I haven’t had many recent occasions that have warranted loads of photos.

This little guy hung out while I worked. I'd like to think he was enjoying my company, but I have a feeling it was all the ribbon that kept him around.