Wandering in the Woods

Went over to Newpark Mall with James, wandered about while he underwent his second laser treatment for the removal of his tattoo. I found a purse for my cousin's wedding on the 24th, I still have to go with my Mom to pick up a wedding gift for them though and I need to get my hair trimmed. James met up with me and we went over to Rasputin Music and each bought a copy of the new They Might Be Giants CD that was released today, "Spine." After that we went over to a Japanese restaurant at the Hub in Fremont and had lunch. While at the Hub James picked up a travel brochure on Scandinavia, we want to try to go next year. Tonight we're going to be visiting his best friend, Jason Butler and I believe the plan is to go swimming in his pool. James won't be able to join me in that though since he's supposed to keep his tattoo dry. I was sent a newsletter from Loreena McKennitt's website saying that she's in the developmental stages of her next release that is slated for coming out in the fall of 2005. I hope so, it's been a long time since "Book of Secrets" came out. It would be wonderful if she toured somewhere near here when it is released, James has been wanting to take me to a Loreena McKennitt concert for years, but she hasn't been doing any touring.

P.S. - Had a great time swimming at Jason Butler's house! We got there around seven and since he has a solar heated pool we waited until the sun went down to get in. In the meantime we ordered a pizza and watched "Butterfly Effect." Weird movie, interesting, but weird.

I can't recall the last time I've had to work on the fourth of July, it's been a few years at least. Despite the fact that nine still seemed an awfully late hour for closing for a holiday, I did appreciate not having to be there till eleven-thirty. It was a nice change of pace. The store was incredibly slow yesterday. I think we should have closed even earlier. It would have upset the people who come to use us as a library, but ah well, c'est la vie.
After I got out of there James picked me up and we decided to head over and see if anyone was still around at mikesama and monkeysminion's house. We missed the fireworks, but we did get to see lianleviathan, azurdragon, and Jennifer M. Dragons aside it has been a long time since I saw any of them so that was very nice. While driving through Newark James and I did get to see a few fireworks.

This time around we were successful! There were no car problems, aside from Dragon ending up running a little late since her family needed to use the car for a bit in the morning, but we were headed out in plenty of time. Our friend, Maria Raimundo was also able to join us. Yay! I love getting to see Maria and hadn't had a chance to enjoy her company since around Christmas. That is entirely too long, but she and I have known each other so long that a little time really doesn't make a lot of difference. She and I have been friends since we were in the YMCA Father/Daughter group called Indian Princesses. I have no idea now if the organization still exists or if it's called some new PC name now, but it was a wonderful group. She and I started in it when we were about five so we've known each other over twenty years by this point.
Dragon picked me up (Thank you!) and we headed over to Maria's to get her and then were off on our way to the city. It was very foggy in there that morning. The exhibit was very interesting, although I was surprised that there were only two Tamara de Lempicka pieces featured in it. I would have liked to have seen some more examples of her work in person, but ah well, c'est la vie. The rest of the exhibit was well worth looking at anyway so it was worth the trip. I wasn't feeling terribly well since I hadn't hardly slept the last two nights and it was starting to catch up with me physically, but I managed to muddle through. I certainly wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to traverse about through SF with a couple of good friends just because I wasn't feeling one hundred percent. Life is too short for that. It really was a great day. After the exhibit we went to Mel's Diner for lunch. Mmmm...hamburger and milkshake. While eating we debated about what to do with the rest of our day. We were debating between going to see "Troy" to enjoy some eye candy or going to China Town or Japan Town. We agreed that we could go to "Troy" any old time really and headed into Japan Town. It was a little bit of an adventure trying to find parking, but we were able to locate a parking garage. I realized that I had never been to Japan Town before! How weird! I've been through China Town many times, but had never made it into Japan Town. The shops had an amazing, slightly overwhelming array of cute stuff. There were cute little plush things everywhere! Everywhere we went there was a wide selection of cute novel little Japanese style tourist trinkets. For the most part I was able to resist. Maria, because she's sweet, bought me a plush keychain Kuro Maneki Neko (Black Luck Cat). I bought a pair of chopsticks with a Kuro Neko on them at a dollar store and found a cute little magnet of Jiji from Hayao Miyazaki's "Kiki's Delivery Service." Obviously I was focused on black cats. At one shop I was able to find a proper belt to go to James' Kimono that he inherited from his friend, Liz. When I say inherited I mean that she gave it to him since she no longer wanted it, not that she passed away. Liz is alive and well! While wandering around a little shopping plaza I heard a ringing and discovered that my purse was ringing! I'm not used to leaving my cell phone on and it really caught me off guard, to Dragon's amusement I think. Imagine that, Dragon being amused by something. I actually lifted my purse to my ear to see if it was me! It was James checking to see if I was still in SF and was a little disappointed to find out that we weren't going to get to see each other that day. We wandered around for a bit more till I was starting to really crash so we headed back to Fremont and Maria and I ended up napping a little bit in the car. After getting back in to Fremont a little after six we headed over to my house so Maria could visit with my cats and we ended up deciding on going to a movie. Went to see "Shrek 2" at the Great Mall. Bought our tickets and went to the food court to get some dinner and then rushed back to get seats. It was so cute! It was a very pleasing sequel! I was actually laughing out loud at some of the jokes, that's pretty rare for me. Puss in Boots was an adorable character! So cute and vicious! It was a fun end to a great day off.

My Mom called me at work on Thursday to tell me our Water Heater had blown on us and had attempted flooding the house. Fortunately she's still off because of her surgery or it probably wouldn't have been stopped in time to save our carpets, etc. I would have been very, very annoyed if it had gone into my room and ruined my floors and I had to have my room torn up again to replace it. She had to have a neighbor turn it off out on the street so she called to suggest that since we didn't have any water at the house that I might want to be elsewhere for the night. James and I ended up staying at a motel and then after leaving from there we went for breakfast and caught a showing of "Van Helsing." It was fun, I would watch it again. I would have to say I am most pleased with the look of the werewolves in it. I think they are conceptually the best werewolf I have ever seen in a film. I'm not sure if they are quite how I would picture a wolf/human hybrid, but I liked the look a lot better than most film werewolves I've seen. They were much furrier than the the ones in "Underworld." After being home for a while my Aunt Sandy showed up. We don't get to see her very often, but she was in town for Mother's Day. After getting to visit with her Dragon came over to show me "Master and Commander." She couldn't believe that there was a film that she had seen twice in the theatre and owned that I had never seen. It happens so rarely. =)

YAY! I managed to go to a party at Chris Foley's and not get drunk! A very good thing. =) I had a few glasses of mead and a few sips from James' Beamish, but I'm okay. James and I had fun, but I think I like it better when we get to throw our own party. I didn't know much of anyone there. Chris, who we used to work at Barnes& Noble with, was too busy being a host to talk to us too much, but fortunately another previous coworker, Mike Pickering was there. It's always good to get to see Mike. I wish we could hang out with all the old B&N people more often.
I loved my costume, even if it did make going through doorways hard. I wore (still am wearing actually) my blue Renn Faire costume with my white Irish chemise under it with a pair of fairy wings and elf ears. James wore his Renn Faire costume and a really cute set of horns that I happen to have on right now. I love my ears! I want to wear them all the time. I'm also covered in glitter, which is pretty fun too.
Ooooo! My parents got expanded cable! I get the History channel and Cartoon Network now! WooHoo! I got to watch a special on Vlad the Impaler on the History Channel yesterday.
We didn't get trick or treaters here till pretty late in the evening. I'm used to people bringing their little kids around maybe a little after they get out of school, not waiting until it's completely dark out to take their kids around. The first two to our doors didn't even have costumes on. Uh, here's a dollar, tell your parents to get you Halloween costumes next year.
The cats, especially Smudge, were pretty ticked off that they weren't allowed outside all evening.
Today is James and my four year anniversary. Wow. Not sure what all we're going to do, we definitely want to work on going through our Ireland photos and try to put together an album to show everyone a good sample of our experience.
I hope everyone had a lot of safe fun!