Happy Halloweenie!

In celebration of Halloween today, I give you my favorite Halloween costumes from this past weekend's party. I've been saving them special - just for you. Enjoy!

Don't Mess With The Zundel

I got this in an email the other day from someone I work with: "Don't mess with the Zundel." My boss and I had a good laugh about it and she in turn said that a new slang term around our office could be "Zundel up." ha. Well, needless to say - and you know this especially if you know me in real life, that I'm not one to back down easily. I'm fairly resilient and I don't take no crap from nobody. Today someone who I thought was my friend accused me of being close minded and discriminating by voting on Prop 8. Well my friend, the time to stand up for what is right is here. My decision to vote for Prop 8 doesn't mean that I don't love my fellow man. I live in San Francisco for heaven's sake and I'll be damned if anyone who really knows me ever says that I'm close minded and a bigot. Those who know me know the truth. As someone who has grown up a Mormon (and in North Carolina), I know what it feels like to be discriminated against. Girls in my elementary school class weren't allowed to be friends with me because their parents thought I was a member of some cult. My ancestors were run out of their homes because of what they believed and I've been made fun of all my life. But I digress. I don't just automatically believe what my church tells me and we are encouraged as a church to figure things out on our own. I am not a robot and I've decided for myself that I believe in a living prophet who knows better than I do.

This article describes perfectly the way that I feel about Prop 8. I believe in religious freedom. I don't want to take anything away from same sex couples who want to be together. In California, couples who have a civil union have the same exact rights as couples who are married. And I agree with it.

And you should know that this is my blog and I can delete whatever comments you put on this. Because, after all, it is all about me - at least here.

So many happy times today.

Tomorrow I'm making my way to Phenix City, Alabama. I don't think I can even say it without a southern accent. Here comes my twang, y'all. My sweet Young Women's president from high school lives there with her husband and I am going to spend some time with them. She even promised me biscuits and gravy with peach cobbler for dessert! Hot dog!

Today has been the day of happy things. I actually had food to eat a healthy breakfast at home, I got free pizza for lunch, a sales call brought in some delicious cake; I got a text message on my way to work this morning that some good friends just had a baby girl. Then my aunt called to tell me that my cousin had her baby this morning. A few minutes ago, I got word that this amazing couple is FINALLY engaged. Seriously, they've only been dating for 7 months, but I could have told you that was going to happen about 6.5 months ago. :)

Oh; and did I mention that I'm going to get a massage right now? As in - while I'm at work; and the massage is free because one of our suppliers sent this to us as a gift before we leave for Atlanta. Woohoo!

Ok so. Tell me how spoiled I am and tell me what YOUR happy thing today was.

Hot-pink-lanta!

With the dying of my hair a few weeks ago, I decided that it was time to start wearing more pink. Not that I couldn't before, but I it seemed that everything in my closet was blue. Now, I'm heading towards having everything in my closet be pink. I took a half day yesterday and got some much needed new clothes. Jane went with me to be my decision maker. I'm so much better when I have someone to say yes or no. Seriously. Here are some of the things that I got. I'm even wearing two of my purchases today!

I also purchased a few accessories from H&M and got a really nice pair of pants from Club Monaco. After wandering around the mall for a while, Jane and I went back to my house, watched Pushing Daisies and then Rachael came over so that we could make our Prop 8 calls. Only a few more days! I mean - in about 51 hours, I'll be heading to the airport to go to Atlanta for 12 whole days. Yee haw!

Ingredients for a great day

Saturday, the Fish Scientist and Roommate were married.

The wedding suited them perfectly and for me, it was a great day. The top five things about Rebecca & Cameron's wedding day - for me at least:

1. Getting a massage at Bed Bath and Beyond before their wedding reception. Boy oh boy do I have some knots in my back right now. If Rebecca or Cameron is reading this, shield your eyes - your wedding gift is in my hand!

2. Spending time with old and new friends. I finally met Jason's new wife and was even able to spend the day with her! So great! I love her!

3. I am a girl toddler magnet. For some reason, there weren't hardly any boy toddlers at the wedding - but oh. there. were. girls. everywhere. And I was on the dance floor with them all night long. AND I loved every second of it. They even taught me some new moves.

4. The first time I saw a picture of Roommate's brother, I thought he was hot. In person, he was even hotter. He even plays the guitar and sings. And he sang for the newlyweds for their first dance. Did I mention he was hot?

5. Watching people getting coerced into talking to aforementioned hot brother. Priceless.

Congratulations to Rebecca and Cameron. So so so happy for you.

Such a good weekend.

This weekend was non-stop from one thing to the next. Shocker, I know. I'm a little hesitant to post pictures from the Halloween party on Friday, only because I don't want people to get the wrong idea. Or, maybe you will get the right idea. Nevertheless, here I am in all my Halloween glory.

{full credit for the idea goes to Uzi}
Sister Stephanie and Sister Eliza - true Sister Wives

With our hubby, Scott. He was real excited.

When I walked outside on Friday night to drive down to the party, I stopped a couple on the street to ask them if they knew what I was dressed as. Immediately one of the men said "You're one of those fundamentalists! And don't tell anyone, but my family lives in Utah." I said "Oh? Are they Mormons?" He quickly replied "Oh no no no." and walked away. ha! When the costume contest winners were being announced, we quickly got upset when we didn't win the "best group." We even started shouting things like "Equality for all!" and "God loves polygamists too!" Fortunately, we won the contest for "Funniest costume." Good thing too - everytime I looked at Liz's unibrow, I started laughing despite the scowl you see in the pictures.

We got home at about 3am on Saturday morning and then I left Saturday at 11am for a wedding in Sacramento. Pictures on that to come tomorrow, so stay tuned. Yesterday I got home from Sacramento at about 3:00 and the first thing I did after arriving home was jump in the shower and relax on the couch while watching a movie. As soon as the movie was over, I decided to get in bed. It was only 6:30pm!!! Can you believe that I slept like a rock all night? I got 13 hours of sleep and the alarm still had to wake me up. Obviously, I needed it, so yeah. More pictures to come tomorrow.

**please note the polygamy in the Mormon church ended in the 1890's. Fundamentalists are NOT Mormons, like me. Here's the wikipedia article about it if you're curious.

If you want to act like it, you have to believe it.

The kitchen in my house has turned into a makeshift call center this week. And will continue to look like this until the election is over. So everyone has their political beliefs and you don't have to share mine and I'm not even calling people to convince them to agree with me. Just to see how people are going to vote. Quite painless and sometimes even funny.

Work craziness is plateauing for the next week or so since I just shipped all of my meeting supplies to Atlanta so that it will all be there to greet me when I arrive in a little over a week. A little over a week! Yikes! I will be glad when it is all over though and I can relax a little. I'm going to start cleaning my desk ASAP so that it will be nice and clean for me when I get back in the middle of November.

I think that doing a boot camp just a few days after running my race was a bad idea. I seriously am so sore that I woke up continuously through the night due to the pain of rolling over.

In other news, here's an email I sent to a friend about our group costume tonight for the halloween party:

"I hope you were being serious the other night when you said you'd be my polygamous husband...and boy, do I hope I am emailing the right person right now. ha."

Photos to come, don't worry.

This weekend I'm going to Sacramento and Placerville to celebrate Roommate's nuptials! I can't wait. It will be especially fun to see some mutual friends at the wedding. Yay for it being a small world!

I've watched a few movies this week. If you want to know what I watched, click here or here. I'm all about the cheesy chick-flicks these days.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Event Photos

The pictures from my race came in today. Pretty fast service with 20,000 runners to find pictures of, right? Here are some of my favorites.

I was so happy to have LaNae running with me at mile 10. AND, I was running downhill after a few miles of a steady incline. That's the cliffhouse behind us.

At the finish line. The caption for this photo should read "Which hot fireman should I go to for my Tiffany's necklace?"

I'm such a sucker - I just bought a magnet of the above picture. I have a magnet of my first half marathon and it definitely needs a friend.

October LAC

Check out Emily's blog to see what I did last night.

Keri Smith.

Am I the last one to find Keri Smith's stuff? I mean - this is at least 8 years old, right? Regardless, I am loving it. I'm buying one of her journals right now with a birthday gift certificate.

This was is hilarious. I'm going to make one for my desk. Make your own by printing this out.
And last but not least, here is the idea list.

Can it get any better?

Today I had the immense pleasure of getting a surprise visit from some of my favorite people, Angie & Derek. They live in Rhode Island now and a few months ago, they were blessed with a little boy they named Porter. I knew that they were going to be in the Bay Area for a few days visiting family and in my wildest dreams, I thought that maybe I'd get to meet the little guy and see my dear friends. Well, in my world, dreams do come true and today I got a text asking if I would come downstairs and meet Porter! A picture was taken, so hopefully I can show it to you one day soon. Seriously - such a cute baby. It made me so happy to see Derek & Angie though too - what great friends.

Upon arrival at my desk after my quick Starbucks lunch, I came across an email in my inbox that told me that I am eligible to take the CMP exam in January. Time to hit the books! My application was rejected a few weeks ago and since I am totally eligible, I sent in an appeal and it was accepted! Hooray!

And....a few weeks ago, our office blocked gchat, which all in all has probably been a good thing so that I get more work done. I do miss the daily chatting with my friends though and today, through some kind of weird miracle, gchat suddenly appeared along with the names of all my friends that I've been missing for the past few weeks. Ah, bliss.

Really, today can't get much better. How was YOUR day?

Survivor. Again.

Well, you guessed it. I survived my second half marathon. Pictures were taken and hopefully I will get them to you within the next few days. Running in the midst of 20,000 other women was quite inspiring. (Side rant - HATE MARATHON WALKERS!!!!!! It was a RACE people! Get the H out of my way!!!) Anyway - the race went very well and I beat my previous time! I improved by a whopping 3.28%!! haha. Well, so that may not be a lot, but hey - I improved! Considering that this course was considerably harder than my first, I am very proud of myself. There are a few things that helped me along the way:

The night before the race, I found a great i-Mix on i-Tunes from Joan Benoit Samuelson. I have listed the songs that were included so that you can download them yourself or listen to them by clicking on the links provided.

Change For You - The Midway State
Love Like Winter - AFI
Drama Queen - Switches
Carcinogen Crush - AFI
Let it happen - Jimmy Eat World
Everything's Magic - Angels and Airwaves
The Adventure - Angels and Airwaves
A Million Fireflies - The Midway State
Never Be Lonely - The Feeling
All We Are - One Republic
Sun Red Sky Blue - Kenna
Miss You Love You - Maroon 5
Dirty Little Secret - The All American Rejects
Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World
Miss Murder - AFI
Sorry Sorry - Rooney
Big Casino - Jimmy Eat World
Fill My Little World - The Feeling

I was totally in the zone with this music ringing in my ears. Of course there were some personal favorites in there as well, but I can't give all my secrets away. The best part of the race though was when LaNae met me at mile 10!!! Here's a cute picture of LaNae and I at the beach in San Diego a little over a year ago while we aren't sweaty and gross.

In the past few months we've become running buddies and I knew that I'd need someone to drag me in to the finish line. I owe her big time. I felt bad when she was yanked from the finish line just moments before I was handed this little beauty by a man in a tuxedo. And what a handsome man he was!

I have a feeling I'll be wearing my necklace for a few days. or maybe years. So now that I'm finished with this race, I'm thinking about running the Salt Lake City Marathon on April 18th. Who wants to join me? I'd better sign up while I'm hallucinating, right? I'm only walking with a slight limp today, so a full marathon's pain can't be that bad, can it?

Excited

Want to know a little secret? I've been dreading the half marathon this weekend.

Today I went with my two coworkers to pick up our bibs and other random items that we'll need for Sunday morning. After seeing the number of people down in Union Square and inside Niketown, I felt a little inspired. In fact, just being down there almost brought tears to my eyes. What an amazing thing - to be running in a race with ALL women! Excuse the poor quality of the picture, but here I am with my two coworkers who I'll be running with. I'm SUCH a poser - can you tell? :)

Although I'm dreading the hill in the Presidio and the one by the Legion of Honor, I can't wait to be surrounded by so many great women who are all running for their own reasons and causes. I saw a sign today that said Team in Training has raised over $18 million for this race alone. Isn't that amazing? If that money even helps one person live for one more day, I guess it is all worth it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has been so supportive of me in this. Just thinking of you will keep me running at mile 12. If I decide to run a full marathon in a few months will you be supportive of me then too? Please expect a full report on Monday and lots of sweaty pictures of me. xoxo!!!

Want to know what's really going on?

I woke up late again this morning - I think my body is going into "must get sleep" mode. Really though, my mind is in "need to be at work more" mode. I find it rather annoying that my body needs so much sleep when I have so many other things to do.

Tonight is my last chance to run before Sunday's big race. I think I'm ready, but I guess we'll find out in a few days how I actually do. I'll be thinking of so many of you though who have donated to such a worthy cause - I feel so loved!

In other random news, I saw these yesterday and thought I'd pass them along.

I'm sorry that I've been such a slacker lately with my blog. Excuse my boring life, OK? I've been super busy and I guess I have pictures that I can put on my blog, but that requires getting pictures from the people who took them, or maybe even taking pictures in the first place. A blog is nothing without pictures, right?

I've wanted to talk about the time my exboyfriend added me on facebook a few weeks ago (I shouldn't have added him, probably), so I blocked his permissions so that really the only thing he could see was my basic information - and then he IMed me from his brother's name one night and now knows that I blocked his viewing. Also, he probably reads my blog now that he's getting computer savvy. And I'm not sure if that's a good thing. He's also married now with 4 children, so why is he adding me on facebook anyway? Hm. Let's all move on, shall we?

Then there's the other time that I started crushing on another ex of mine, but I don't think I have a chance anymore. Oh how I wish I did.

But I shouldn't really talk about such personal things. What I CAN tell you though is how I got a red light violation in the mail a few weeks ago with a ticket for $409.00!!! Seriously? $400 for running a red light? I'm an upstanding citizen and I didn't do it on purpose, so I wrote in an appeal. I'm happy to report that They took off $300 from the ticket and told me that if I went to traffic school, they'd take it off my record to boot! I'll take $127 over $400 any day.

Tonight I'm doing laundry and watching my netflix movie, "Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill." Anyone seen it before? I'm intrigued...

As long as its only in Utah, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

My coworker was getting out of my car yesterday after dinner and said "Hey you should get some sleep some time, ok?" ha. I agree.

I haven't collected all of my pictures from Utah, but there are other things that I didn't get pictures of, that I guess I can talk about now as well as I could talk about it later, I suppose. I was able to see and do so many great things while I was in Utah this trip and I'm so grateful for all of my wonderful friends. I had low expectations of this trip and even though it snowed and I had to go running in it, everything was great.

On Saturday evening, I hung out with Erica in Salt Lake. That was a real good time and it was nice to meet some new people as well as catch up with my friend. On Monday, I was able to swing by a few friend's houses - namely Joy & Tammy - and had a wonderful time seeing them and catching up. Seeing their adorable children was a bonus too. I spent the rest of the afternoon with Jonna, who was in Utah for a few weeks and while we were shopping, ran into my friend Traci, who I hadn't seen in 5 years. 5 years!! Seriously - that is WAY too long to not see someone. Running into her was another testament to me that God is in the little details of our lives - it was definitely no accident.

I have pictures of my nephews and niece that I'll hopefully have up by tomorrow. And maybe if you're really lucky I'll have some other goodies.

I'm in Utah and will be back to my regular scheduled lack of posting on Tuesday. It is snowing here - and I still can't decide how I feel about it.

Happy Columbus day!

Friday Items of Business

1. The below picture doesn't exactly follow where I stand politically, but I did think it was quite hilarious. Only in San Francisco, right?

2. And speaking of the election...I voted last night using my absentee voter ballot. This was my favorite San Francisco initiative. Living here, there are usually some wacky ones and you'd ONLY find something like that here. Or maybe in Berkeley. And if someone guesses who I voted for (for President), and you guess correctly in the comments, I will send you a prize.

3. Fleet week in the Bay Area is here. In fact, I can hear the Red Barron somersaulting through the sky right now. Awesome. Too bad I'm going out of town.

4. My half marathon is only about a week away (holy crap!) and I think I'm actually prepared. My three mile run this morning was super easy and if you still would like to donate to the cause of my fundraiser, please click here!

5. Last night I went to the gym only to find that it was Yom Kippur and the gym was closed. I added all Jewish holidays to my google calendar this morning so that I can avoid that in the future.

6. I hope everyone has a nice weekend! I just got an email from my crush. My weekend is definitely off to a good start. sigh. <3

Cameos

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you may recognize someone in this video. I'll give you a hint. He's in a wetsuit. This was aired last night at the Proposition 8 Broadcast that I attended. Enjoy!

Hot Chocolate & Hot Topics

I like to treat myself to Starbucks on a semi-regular occurrence. I usually stick with one order for a few months until I get sick of it and then I rotate through my limited menu options. For example, I frequently get a tall vanilla bean frappuccino or a tall skinny hot chocolate with a pump of pumpkin. Oh yum. Well, last week, I walked in, and noticed that there was a new drink on the menu board that included the words "hot" and "chocolate." The words "caramel" and "iced" were also involved in the chalkboard advertisement. I've gotten the plain and the salted caramel hot chocolate --iced-- a few times now and it definitely is a once a week treat. (And as an FYI, MOM - I NEVER get whipped cream on my drinks there - I just think they are wasted calories on something that already has enough calories to make my hips bigger on their own)

Today, I decided that to save money, I'd go down to our work coffee maker and make some hot chocolate and then put it on ice and see how it tasted. For the record, that is something that you should NEVER try at home. Just thought you should know.

Tonight I went to a church broadcast on Proposition 8. It's a touchy subject for a lot of people - especially those that I work with, but I really do believe in the strength of marriage between a man and a woman. That doesn't mean that I don't love and respect those who make decisions that I don't agree with, but I hope we can all be tolerant of each other AND stand up for what we believe to be right.With my busy travel schedule the past few months, I haven't been able to do as much as I'd have liked to, but tonight, I was asked to blog about it and encourage those of you who read this blog and live in California, to vote YES on Prop 8 in the upcoming election. If you want to see why, click here.

New treadmill! Squee!

Last night I decided to go to the gym. I'm not even going to tell you how long it had been since I had last been to the gym...

ahem.

But! (And that is a big BUT) - this beauty was there to greet me. You can't see it well in the picture, but on that display, there is a tv built in. But if you don't feel like watching tv, you can watch your progress around a track, or watch your heart rate, or sundry other things. Before I knew it, I had run 5 miles and had recommitted myself to the JCC. Heck - with the monthly dues I pay, the new equiptment was WAY overdue. Obviously when the new treadmills at the gym are the most exciting thing in my life, life is good.

Tuesday Ramblings

What have I been doing lately? I already told you that I've been busy - which is a slight understatement. Last night I had a work dinner at The Presidio Social Club:

Doesn't it just look like the kind of restaurant you want to eat dinner at? Not gonna lie - the service was a little slow, but the food was worth it. I'm still dreaming about the beef stroganoff I ate. Oh yummy. Company wasn't bad either. I've been working/traveling with the same people for about four years now and I thoroughly enjoy them. About 7 of them were in from all over the country, so it was good to catch up and have some laughs.

And speaking of people that I enjoy being with, I met up with Becca and Kirsten today for lunch here:

Although it was really foggy this morning, the weather at noon was amazing! Seriously - we were all sweating by the time we left. I haven't been such a party animal lately - I'm more about the small, intimate group. Well, except for that one time today when there were 5 people in my cubical and we were having a dance party. And in my cubical, that's a crowd.

I'm really looking forward to seeing my nephews and niece this weekend. It's been way too long since I've seen them. I've been in a weird mood though lately - I guess I'm excited about going to Utah. It feels like home in some ways and then in other ways, no place really feels like home to me anymore. If home really is where your stuff is, then I guess I need to do some cleaning out of my old room in Lindon. I'm really just feeling like something is missing in my life and I've been trying to figure out what that something is. Maybe it's my ipod. or my bluetooth. or my will to run 13.1 miles. or most of my 401K.

Yeah - maybe if I had those things back, I would feel better. Oh - and if someone could arrange for there to be more hours in the day, I'd owe you BIG TIME.

busy bee

I just realized that I haven't posted anything since last week. I wasn't at home this weekend, though I was all over the bay area - from Vallejo, to Marin, all the way down to the east and west sides of San Jose.

Give me some time to catch up today - I'll be back tomorrow.

So You Think You Can Dance - The Tour

A few weeks ago I was invited to go to the SYTYCD tour with some friends. Unfortunately with my travel schedule and some other factors at work, I wasn't able to make it. Lucky for me, Dave offered to take me in Oakland this week and how could I resist?

Here is a lame picture of one of the group dances, but it was very cool - definitely reminded me of something I did in Winter Guard back in high school since so many of them had sticks they were throwing around. :)

Bad news first.

Some of you know of my love for Taco Bell. Really. I could eat it for every meal. To some of you, this may be disgusting. To me, pure heaven.

I was a little shocked when I heard the news of my favorite Taco Bell and past high school haunt going up in flames yesterday. Remember when I went here this summer? No more late night drive through nachos at the arboretum, my friends.

In better news, Pushing Daisies goes back on the air tonight! I can't wait!