Happy Birthday Andy!

just when i thought i went to my last "40th BIRTHDAY PARTY", I forgot that we have another crop of birthdays around the corner!
with that amount of candles, a blow torch SEEMED like a good idea....
and a big piece of cake also seems like a good idea....
and a cake covered smooch also seemed like a good idea!

Reenie, Barb, Diane & me

yup, the entire night was a lot of fun!

Why can't Starbucks get it right?

sometimes i just don't understand why the barista's at Starbucks have such a hard time with getting my drink order correct. After everything i went thru in the past (which you can click HERE to read) with my Starbucks by my office (who btw, now just ask me if I want "my ususal"), I just wish there was a way not to get eyeroll from every other location when I order a GRANDE DECAF SUGARFREE HAZELNUT SOY ICED COFFEE.

they write it on the cups...i just don't get the difficulty!

Here is Amie with not just one frappachino, but a mug full of coffee:

Here i am way back in college - the reason i know what I'm talking about is cuz I USED TO WORK AT STARBUCKS!
....and I love their coffee drinks!

weekend trip down to DC, MD and VA

this past weekend, Randy & I went to visit Amie & Jeff in MD. One of the places they took us to was The Great Falls, which has awesome views on both the Maryland and Virginia sides.

Here are some cool pics on the VA side

Randy & me

Amie & me
yup, just me :) georgous views!

Next time we are in town, Amie is taking us to the MD side, which also has some awesome hiking trails

one of the days we headed into downtown DC and walked along the Mall. Here we are in front of the Washington Monument. After we visited that, we went into the Holocaust Museum. I was expecting to really be emotional (and it was), but I really enjoyed visiting that museum. Besides the Permanent Holocaust Exhibit, I really enjoyed The Power of Nazi Propaganda Exhibit. I was amazed how many original hand drawn posters they were able to gather (and each one had a miniature right next to it with translation)

oh, no visit would be complete w/o Ames & I looking silly in our 3-D glasses while watching Coraline!

I'm lovin' all pools this summer!

LIFE JUST DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THEN THIS!

R.I.P John Hughes!

back in HIGH SCHOOL i watched john hughes movies religiously. I could prob quote 3/4 of them line for line verbatim! Here are a few of my favourites:

Home Alone (1990)
Uncle Buck (1989)
She's Having a Baby (1988)
Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)
Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Weird Science (1985)
European Vacation (1985)

The Breakfast Club (1985)
Sixteen Candles (1984)

National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)

Mr. Mom (1983)
Class Reunion (1982)

Depeche Mode - MSG

can't really say that I LOVED the show last night....i thought I was a big fan back in high school & i did download a few yrs ago Singles '81-'85 and Singles '86-'98, but alas - even tho their sound stayed their same....they added A LOT of new songs into their repertiore. I think i really only knew 5 songs out of the entire set list. I'm glad that I payed less then face for our sec 131 tix! MSG Aug 4, 2009 setlist
1. In Chains
2. Wrong
3. Hole To Feed
4. Walking In My Shoes
5. It's No Good
6. A Question Of Time
7. Precious
8. Fly On The Windscreen
9. Jezebel
10. A Question of Lust
11. Miles Away
12. Policy Of Truth
13. In Your Room
14. I Feel You (holy moly was there a girl going NUTS over this song!)
15. Enjoy The Silence
16. Never Let Me Down Again
Encore:
17. Stripped
18. Master And Servant
19. Strangelove
20. Personal Jesus
21. Waiting For The Night

RANDY IS SMOKIN'.....

Last weekend when we were at Byran & Donna's home they made this AMAZING BBQ pork with an Orion Smoker. We loved it soooooooooooooo much, 2 days ago Randy bought one & so we had a BBQ this sunday & on the menu was BBQ RIBS!

how yummy are these rubbed ribs - and look how CLEAN this smoker is - never will look like that again!

FIRE!!!!!!!!!

OK EVERYONE - DIG IN!
so this is how YUMMY those ribs were!

MOROCCAN NIGHT OUT

REALLY FUN GIRLS NIGHT OUT THIS PAST FRIDAY NIGHT....BARB, REENIE & ME HEADED TO PARSIPANNY, NJ TO TRY OUT THIS MOROCCAN RESTAURANT CALLED MARAKESH

THE DECOR WAS AWESOME!
AND SO WAS THE BELLYDANCER WHO GOT EVERYONE UP & DANCING AFTER DINNER!

Summer 2009

relaxing this summer has been wonderful - i'm loving all my friends with their awesome POOLS & BBQ's. Here is how I spent a very lazy saturday afternoon:

did I mention that Donna has 2 adorable HUGE puppies?
Joanne, Donna & me - perfect ending w/ margarita's to a perfect day!

Happy 4th of July

hope everyone had a great weekend - I sure did. We threw a party on Saturday & had perfect weather with a really nice turnout (and hopefully once Sherri sends me her pics I can post them here with everyone else's faces!)

every year I take this same pose with my lovely ladies...and every year we get BETTER LOOKING!

(Barbara w/Maddie, Reenie & me)
whats a backyard without a pool? (though I do miss my adult size one...this one seemed to make the kiddies happy)

GO FISH PLAYERS

so i get on the evening express bus home the night before my 4 day holiday weekend & for once I have to admit I'm not THAT tired, but I do hate if I can hear chit chat above my iPod. Well, right behind me I can hear two rows of teenage girls playing cards, passing boxes of Pop Rocks & drinking soda.

UGGGHHH! Immediately, I'm annoyed.

After about 3 minutes of fuming, I turn around to tell them to keep the volume down & this is what I see:

I see the cutest bunch of 12 year old girls playing GO FISH. I cant help smiling & my annoyance is gone. I even start chit-chatting with them (which is prob pissing off other riders, but I'm sure they have pissed me off in the past so I guess payback is a b*tch!). Lastly, I give them a quick rundown on how to play SPADES & then ask them if they will pose for a pic for me (which they did)

Turtleback Zoo w/Todd

Today I had a summer friday - so Sherri, myself & Todd ventured to the Turtleback Zoo. I'm not exactly sure what the symbolism with peacocks are, but the second I walk thru the front gate - check out what was there to great me. I just pray the symbolism is good!

Todd must be a HUGE fan of Meerkat Manor, cuz he needed to join the prairie dog's habitat as closely as possible!
and i've never seen so many parakeets flying free in one place in my entire life. Being fed birdseed on a peanut butter stick is really the life!
and the goats & sheep know exactly how to suck up to little kids....they got them eating right out of their hands!

R.I.P - Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson & Ed McMahon

this was a sad week in the celebrity world - we lost THREE powerhouses:

Ed McMahon (3/26/23 - 6/23/09

Michael Jackson ( 8/29/58 - 6/25/09)

and

Farrah Fawcett (2/2/47 - 6/25/09)

Back in the early 80's I was still in junior high school, but I thought Farrah Fawcett Majors was the luckiest woman in the world. She was a movie star (for all I know LOGAN'S RUN was the movie that got me hooked on SciFi), was married to the Six Million Dollar Man {sigh}, and had absolutely GORGEOUS hair! Here I am with my version (back in 1981) of the "Farrah Flip"

Coffee on the Express Bus

if you're gonna bring your own coffee on the express bus (which is a NO-NO according to my "what you can & cannot do on the express bus" manual), DON'T DRINK IT OVER SOMEONE'S HEAD! And definately DO NOT OPEN IT so you can blow on it cuz it's too hot....jeeez!

update on ankle

well, the ankle wasn't broken (thank goodness!), but it was sprained pretty bad - so I was fitted with a walking brace that I will have to wear for the next two weeks.

Walking cross town to my office is gonna be a pain!

...oh, and here I am 15 years ago in the same damn cast (although in a prettier color) on the same damn ankle! Back then I was so happy to wear the brace since I was stuck in a hip - toe cast for 6 LONG MONTHS!

Sprained Ankle & a Peacock

so this past weekend I went to help my parents with their garage sale. Considering it was a nice summery day - I wore Capri's & my flip-flops. Went we started to line stuff up out my parents garage, I noticed a jump rope that was mine from when I was about 10 y/o.

I HAD to play with it...unfortunately, I'm not very good at jumping rope anymore....

...and especially not good when I'm wearing wedged flip-flops!

so here I am leaving the hospital after getting my ankle splinted - and who is there to great me, but a PEACOCK! Totally wasn't expecting that!!!!

CEREAL on the EXPRESS BUS

Today I was just blown away when I noticed the lady sitting directly across from me EATING CEREAL WITH MILK on the 8:05am express bus!

I never even thought of putting "NO EATING FOOD IN LIQUID" in my "DONT YOU DARE DO THAT ON THE EXPRESS BUS" manual. It's going right under "NO STINKY SANDWICHES ALLOWED"

(btw: "stinky sandwiches" would be best described as a Whitefish Sandwich on a Bagel with Onions & Tomatoes. Super Yummy, but not on an enclosed capsule w/poor ventilation)

i met Dave Matthews!

today was a pretty damn good day for Shannon & myself. Around 3pm, Shannon got a message that Dave was filming his new video in Bryant Park (which is a block away from our office). Doesn't matter that it's drizzling out, we throw on our jackets & case the park. The band is nowhere to be found. Back to work we go. About an hour later Shannon gets ANOTHER message that the band is back in the Park. This time it takes us about 5 minutes to think it over...but we throw our jackets back on - and off to the park we go. I'm SOOOOOOOO GLAD we did, cuz look who we ran into:

I have to tell you that I was a bit nervous to go up to Dave, cuz I didnt want to seem like a groupie stalker. He wasnt surrounded by a ton of people, just a few - and he looked at us & smiled...so I went over & said hi.....and boy am I glad - he was the NICEST GUY! Didnt make either Shannon or myself feel goofy about coming over. Even offered to take our picture (which I'm so glad Shannon had her cell on her, cuz mine was dead).

Yup, today was a damn awesome day!

HIGH ROCK CHALLENGE

This past Saturday Randy & I competed in the annual HIGH ROCK CHALLENGE, which is a 10k run thru the S.I. Greenbelt. Along the way - all kinds of "obstacles" are thrown at us, such as: scaling up a rock mountain, climbing over a cargo net, pulling ourselves up a rope hill on a dolly, shimming along a 2 ft high drainage with rushing water, all while running along a muddy terrain (and let me tell you as the day progressed, it got muddier!)

Here we are at the starting line (team # 37) w/o a clue what we were getting ourselves into:

a little over 2 1/2 hrs later we arrived at the finish line & were BEYOND EXHAUSTED...but were damn proud of ourselves that we finished the course!
...and a minute later my legs called it quits & sitting in the shade seemed like a better plan :) I found out a few hrs later that the organizer added AN EXTRA 1.3 MILES TO THE COURSE, just to make it a bit more challenging (thx matt!)
click on the video below to get a glimpse of what we went thru. It was A LOT of fun, but man-oh-man was it tough!

High Rock Challenge