Thursday, August 30, 2007

Miss Norco 2007

I left work early so I could go with Bobby to Norco and to the Miss Norco Pageant that his little sister was competing in. When she first signed up, I wasn't sure of her chances. I remember the contestants in the Miss Norco pageant when I was in high school being that year's popular cheerleader-type seniors. All very pretty, all very used to attention.

When I saw all the girls that were running, I was sure Erica was going to win. Not only was she by far the prettiest one up there, but out of the twelve girls, Erica and one other girl honestly belonged in a beauty pageant. The was one girl that I thought would be the competition was young (16), a cancer survivor, very well spoken, and very pretty.

The pageant was terrible - it was poorly managed, there was too much downtime, it took way too long for what it was (3 hours), and was filled with lame fomalities. They must have told the girls to "take a half-step" four different times, which seemed to translate into "show us your larbard side" (in my best pirate accent, which honestly isn't that good). Honestly, why do we need the girls lined up on the stage facing away from us. In a speech, one of the girls was talking about how she wanted to be a teacher, but she was messing up the tenses of her words. I hoped she wasn't intending to be an English teacher - maybe P.E. Bobby kept pretending he was Al Gore talking about ManBearPig - the sound of her voice reminded him of that.

When they (finally) annouced, they called out three of the four princesses, and they hadn't yet called Erica or Competition Girl. First runner up - Competition Girl. At this point, I'm sitting in my seat thinking that's it - Erica has to have won. None of these other girls could possibly have been a better choice. Then they announce the winner.... and it's... not Erica. What?!? Seriously, how is this possible? Bobby, Emma, and I just sat there stunned. It had to be more politics than we realized - it's the only way. Emma said it was a terrible pageant.

Erica, of course, is a much more gracious than any of us. Here we are shocked, exclaiming that the pageant is rigged... and she is whole-heartedly congratulating the victor, telling everyone how much fun the pageant was for her. So diplomatic... see - she should have won.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Bold Colors

Sunday we picked colors to paint the living room. I just wanted to paint the mustard wall (I was fine with the pale orange-yellow of the rest of the walls). I would have even been fine with painting the one wall to match the others. But Bobby didn't like the yellow. He wanted blue or grey. I thought blue and grey were boring. I thought an olive or a pale creamy yellow would be nice. We picked up some color samples, and I was even thinking of a wine color or lavender. One of the pictures I thought looked really nice, and Bobby thought it was ok. He finally said we could do whatever I wanted, so we went with the colors in that pic - Fossil Butte and Chocolate Sparkle. We went and bought paint and supplies, and made a few necessary patches.

Saturday night I went to bed around 10:30, but I woke up at 1:30 in the morning, and could not get back to sleep - I was wide awake. Lying there, thinking about the paint we'd just bought, and was it a mistake - did we buy bad colors? What color rug can I buy that would possibly look good? And the furniture, what will match? Around 4am I gave up and just got out of bed. I surfed Wikipedia and made a pot of chili I'd intended to make that day. At least I got the cooking out of the way before it started getting hot. Are these colors going to look ok? What have we done?

Sunday we painted. When we opened the can of Chocolate Sparkle, we were both a little cautious. That's a little darker than I expected. But we figured we'd give it a shot. So we start painting. Wow, this is really dark. When we opened the Fossil Butte, we were disappointed. How did we pick the color of pea soup? But we'd already started...

Maybe it would surprise us. As we were painting, I was starting to feel like we were going to have to paint all over again. All my thoughts from earlier that morning were haunting me. As it started drying the Chocolate Sparkle was growing on me, and while I wasn't excited about the Fossil Butte, I started thinking that once the base boards were in and the furniture was in, maybe it would look better. It has since grown on me, especially since I put the base boards and furniture in, and hung pictures.


I put the table in the courtyard too. I find there are a lot of spiders out there, so I wonder how much time I'll spend there. I need to shade it in some way - I'm thinking something simple, like a shade cloth canopy.

Friday, August 24, 2007

A Concert, and Some Role Reversing

Sunday we headed out to Irvine Meadows to see The Wailers (as in Bob Marley and The Wailers minus Bob Marley), Matisyahu, and 311. There was another band that opened, but I've never heard of them, and don't even remember their name now. The Wailers were great. They have a new singer (obviously) and he was really impressive - definitely had some big shoes to fill and did it quite well... great voice. I'm not a fan of Matisyahu, so I could have skipped him altogether and been quite happy, but 311 put on a good show. 311 is one of those bands that while I can appreciate thier talent, they don't really do anything for me - I don't like or dislike them, they're just there. But the show was entertaining and I enjoyed their set.

But again, I get tired early, and we didn't get home until 1:30am, and weren't in bed until 2am. So when the alarm went off at 6am, I was negotiating away my shower (I just took one last night, I could go without one this morning), and breakfast, and.... Finally I woke up around 7am, and wound up late for work. Again. I probably wasn't worth much at work.

But at the end of the day Monday, I had scheduled my facial, courtesy of my company (the boys went golfing on a day I couldn't, so I got a facial). I'd called Dadra to see if she wanted to join me, knowing she loves that particular spa. We only got to chat for a few minutes before our services, but decided to get dinner afterwords. It was really nice to catch up. We really must do that again. Jared had joined us for dinner, and suggested going to a bar afterwords, but I was still so tired from the night before that I wanted to get home.

When I did, Bobby had just come home from class, and started saying he wanted to go out and get a drink. Um... I just wanted to sleep. He had started organizing the garage, so I let him continue and went to lay down for a minute. I was tired, but was willing to go out for a drink if he wanted. But he saw how tired I was and just made himself a drink at home instead. I felt bad - like I was being a party pooper. I hate that.

Tonight, Bobby went to an Angels game with some friends. One of his friends is newly single, so he's calling about three times a week or so to see if Bobby wants to do something. I was fine with him going, but told him that I wanted us to do something after the game so he needed to come home when it was over. I was feeling bad about not wanting to go out Monday, and had started feeling like I was becoming too much of a homebody lately. I wondered what we could do when he got home. Where could we go? Then I thought of Stubrik's. I checked online and sure enough, Blue Baron was playing. This was perfect.

I checked the score online to see when the game might be over, and I got ready to go out - dressed up and put makeup on and everything. When the game ended, and Bobby called to say he was on his way, I told him we were going out, but wouldn't say where. It was a surprise. I sent a text message to his newly-single friend, telling him my plan in case he wanted to join us (but not to say anything because it was a secret), and another to a friend of mine. A few minutes later, received a text from Bobby: Are you sure you sent this to the right person, love? Damnit!!

I'd sent the text meant for his friend to him instead. My surprise was ruined! Oh well. I resent the text to his friend, sans the part about it being a secret.

But when Bobby got home, he wasn't feeling well. His stomache was bothering him again. As much as he wanted to go out and see Blue Baron, he just was't feelin up to it. Our roles were reversed. He was willing to go, but I said we could just go another time. We stayed home and watched a movie instead.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

New Floors for the Front Room

Today we took on the front room of the house with the help of my parents, my dad's friend Murray, and my good friend Erin. We knew there was tile under the carpeting, and that it might be a pain to take it out. Mom was suggesting we just put the new floor right on top of the tile and leave it. Dad wasn't having any of that - no half-assing the job. So we pull up the carpet on the half of the room the piano is not on (and again it is gone 10 minutes after we put it out on the curb) and discover linoleum. Pull up the linoleum, and there is the tile. We start chipping through the tile to discover not one, but two additional layers of tile.

Suddenly the problem with the doors makes sense. The front door and the side door never sat properly in the door frame - the bottom was too high. We'd had to buy special thresholds that are adjustable so that we could raise the bottom of the door frame by about 1.5". Clearly instead of pulling up old flooring when installing new, the new was just installed over top, and the bottom of the door was shaved off in order to fit over the top of the flooring.

So we did the right thing and took out all the old flooring. Once one side was done we got ready to move the piano to the now bare side so we could remove the rest of the flooring. We all gathered around this piano - the goal was to lift it out of the indentations in the carpet and roll it over to the other side. Ready... go.

"WOAH... Hold on!" The leg on Bobby's side, which is the side we were moving towards, had began to buckle under the piano the moment we'd moved towards it. The leg is not even attached - there are screws, but they are just barely hanging there, and when the piano was moved slightly, they'd fallen right out. We re-adjusted our method a bit - the boys actually picked that side up - and moved it to the other side of the room. Then Bobby pulls an old amplifier out of the garage to prop on its side under the piano, throws some phone books on it, and they set the piano down on it.

I about had a heart attack. We went about taking the rest of the flooring out and then took a break - the boys went for beer, and Mom went to visit Gpa. When she told Gpa about the fiasco with the piano, his response was, "Oh yeah, that's been broken for years." Um, ya think you could have told us that when we told you we were putting new floors in? Oi.

At lunch the boys were drinking beer, and Mom doesn't like beer, so I pulled out the bottle of a really good Cabernet that I got in my first Wine Club shipment from Wine.com. When Bobby had tasted it the night before he was so enamored with it that he wanted to buy a case. I had Mom try some, and she wanted to buy a case. As a wine club member I get 15% off, so I went to place the order for us both, and found that there were only 11 bottles left in stock. So I bought them all and we decided to split what there was (I let her take 6, since she intended to send two to my aunt and bring two to Italy with her - I wanted her to have 2 to enjoy).

We'd started at about 10am, and at about 9:30pm we finally got the last peice of flooring in. Then we had a party to get to, so I let my parents clean up and jumped in the shower...

Sunday, August 5, 2007

A Day at the Beach, A Night at Disneyland

We usually go to Shaw's Cove in Laguna, but we couldn't find anywhere to park. We must have driven around four or five times. Finally we headed north on PCH and stopped somewhere else. We made camp and Emma dragged Bobby into the water.

Emma usually goes in no more than knee high. She is a very cautious girl, and doesn't like to do anything that could possibly be construed as remotely dangerous. She was afraid of Pirates of the Caribbean until this summer. But this time she wanted Bobby to take her in farther. He was carrying her and took her out so far he could barely touch the sand - jumping into the waves so they covered him but usually kept her head above water, occasionally telling her to hold her breath. And this time she not only wasn't afraid, she kept wanting to do it again.

It's strange. Until very recently she never wanted very far from us, never wanted to go on any remotely scary rides, never wanted to venture out. It has actually been a frustration of Bobby's that she seemed so afraid of things. But the last couple months or so, she's been increasingly more willing to go off to do something knowing we'll be right where she left us. Go into a public bathroom by herself, play with some other kids a little farther down the beach, jump off the diving board. Little by little more self assured.

The sun was starting to make me really tired, and if we wanted to get something to eat and go to Fantasmic, we were going to have to start packing up soon. So we left the beach, grabbed a bite, went home to clean up and headed to Disneyland. Fantasmic starts at 9pm. People start camping out in the good spots before 8pm. We left the house at 8pm - weren't even in the park until 8:45. We wandered around trying to find any decent spot, but it wasn't happening, so we decided to go on Pirates, watch the fireworks, and then see Fantasmic at 10:30 instead. After Pirates we were wandering around in a sea of people yet again trying to find a good spot when Emma's shoe broke. She was wearing flip-flops and the strap busted, so from then on Bobby had to carry her.

But then we noticed that the reserved area for Fantasmic has started to clear out - and snuck in. It turned out to be a great spot for fireworks, and we decided we would just camp out there and wait for the 10:30 show. We couldn't really walk around with Emma's shoe broken, and the worst that could happen is they would kick us out of the reserved area. They didn't. We had front row seats along the Rivers of America. Best seats there are - people even pay to sit there.

After the show we went home. Emma wanted to go on more rides, but Bobby and I were exhausted, and the girl weighs 65 lb. now - neither of us really wanted to be carrying her all over the park. When we got home, she wanted to stay up and watch movies. I think she might be nocturnal. We put in Lilo & Stich, and Bobby and I went to bed...