Cruising, Clapping and Stomach Sleeping

Maddie's doing all of it. She's super solid at pulling herself up and getting to her feet. Also at cruising around the line that we set up for her; a chair, next to a box, next to a shelf. She also claps and hits high fives. It's pretty adorable. A couple nights ago I found her sleeping on her stomach several times. I haven't really seen her roll too much, though I'm confident she can do it easily still.

Maddie and our cat also have a very strange relationship to watch. Our cat will let Maddie grab chunks of fur out of her body. I've even seen her pull so hard that Stella was yanked over to her side. This, the cat that used to be pretty specific about where you would touch. She used to meow to warn you and then she'd get mad. She also has this habit of sitting down next to you and eventually deciding that you're in her space.

Last night the Draw4 crew came over for some games. There's a large change coming and it's really too bad. We'll miss them. But we do plan on visiting. (Tangent: maybe this will give me more persuasive items to help convince my honeypot to visit the NW often? Then it'd be easier for me to really decide if it's okay to eventually drag him up there. Are there other cheap places with tech jobs, because I'd like some different options?)

Maddie had a small fever last night and seemed a little run down during the day too. I ended up going down and hanging out with her pretty early.

Chirp, chirp.

My Honeypot got a guitar

He's been playing and fiddling with it for days now. I think he's a fan.

I had a crafty weekend. I attempted to strip the dye out of two pairs of pants worthy of "reworking." This is the first time that I've ever not been successful. It's almost like no dye came out at all, even though the bath it was in turned dark grey, like normal. Something went wrong, but it's unclear what went wrong.

I also dyed this skirt that I love. It's purple with some tie-dye flair. (I had stripped the dye out of it several months ago.)

I also made another batch of beer. This time it's a ginger beer. I added some tea and saaz finishing hops. It's my first time making anything quite like this.

Sometimes yar comes over and we have a limited number of games that the three of us can play. We added another one to the collection. It's called Citadel.

This is a pretty fun and educational geography game.

Just make sure you only use letters and numbers for your username/password. Otherwise it blows up.

http://www.geosense.net/

(Thanks Lance!)

And What a Week it's Been

Wow, what a crazy week it's been. I felt like I was constantly running just to keep up with everything that came my way.
There were so many extra errands and so many more social events than normal for me. It was extremely fun, and also draining.
Last week I went to get the visa for my India trip and that took hours of standing in line.
There was this fantastic Girlz Night that I attended on Tuesday night. That was such a blast. It was a new group of friends and we hit it off really well. I hope I get to hang out with them again. An intriguing sounding movie called "The business of being born" came out of our discussions there.
Then on Wed morning we had an apt with our friend, who happens to be the real estate agent that sold us our Oakland house. There's a recently fixed up 4 unit place a couple doors down from us that we were interested in looking at. Slightly for investment purposes, and more for a couple friends that are looking to buy. This place was perfect. It's a reasonably priced spacious 2bd, has a huge yard and the entire building was recently overhauled. New foundation, new roof, new everything. It had been a rental previously. (If you're reading this Yar - what are you waiting for? We would be the perfect neighbors.)
I had two friends from out of town visiting this weekend. My Chicago friend arrived while I was at work on Friday and I didn't get to see him until Sat morning! I had dinner plans after work and a pretty large group of us went to Happy Shabu Shabu. The experience was interesting - the service not so great. Basically each person had a hot pot of boiling water in front of them and then you get served veggies and you make your own food! Sorta like Korean BBQ, except with boiling water instead of a grill. We had a 20 person group which might explain the bad service. The rest of the gang went on to the Cornelius show, and I went home. Before that my co-workers and I went out for drinks at 5pm to celebrate our success. we have about 1/3 of the staff, but we recently beat Zillow in unique visitors per week. It's a huge milestone and really demonstrates our growth, and our potential. Woo Hoo!
Saturday my Chicago friend, my honeypot, and I walked up to Rockridge for a lovely breakfast. Then we all went our own way and I bought supplies for the party we threw that night. It was a lot of fun with hours of gaming. The games went on until 5am! (I thought I was too old to stay up that late. he he he)
Sunday I finally got to see my other friend in town from DC. She was at the shabu dinner on Friday, but she was so far away I didn't really get to talk to her much. We had plans to hike but were both so worn out from our previous nights (she wasn't able to attend the party due to another show she went to) that we chose to walk around 4th ave and browse. It was a lot of fun. I don't really browse anymore. I probably didn't much before either, but I never do it now. Except yesterday. There's quite a bit of unique/weird stuff down there so it was good times. After our shopping experience, we went to Jupiter and had pizza to fulfill my friend's craving and some other friends met up with us. Then we went home, hung out and played some more games. It was fun.
Today I got up and went out to breakfast with my friend from Chicago and finally got some more time to hang out with him. Then I went to work and he prepared for his travels back.
Tonight I had dinner plans, but everybody was just too tired, so it pretty much fell apart. But that's ok. I'm tired. I'm really happy to be home and just relax a bit because I'm leaving for another adventure on Wed afternoon.

Our company has an off site planning week at the start of every year to figure out which projects are most importnat and make a tentative schedule for the year. This year we're all (60 people plus significant others and families) are going up to Tahoe on Wed through Sunday. My honeypot is coming up Thurs night and it sounds like it might get a little crazy. I expect good times!

The trip to India is official - I leave on the 31st and arrive back on the 17th and I'll get 5 days at the end when I'm not working. Also, I have a plane ticket into New Delhi and out of Mumbai.

Projects and Grand Theft Auto

Have you seen this game? It's been out a while and it got quite a bit of attention when it did come out. My honeypot was playing it for a long time tonight. It's so bizarre.

There was one time when we couldn't tell if there was really a couple screaming at each other outside or it was part of the game. (Yes, these things happen more than you would think around our neighborhood.) Truthfully, I think certain cultures are just louder than others. But beyond that, we do have our moments here in the neighborhood.

We've had this extremely long wonderful vacation! I love it. It's been so mellow and amazingly relaxing.

It's given me time to do a bunch of projects; like buying a bed frame, setting it up, and swapping our yoga room with our bedroom. I also wrote a script to automate some of the organization of my digital images. It's pretty cool. I also cleaned out part of our basement. It's still a little chaotic down there but I made some room and progress.

My honeypot built some juggle club holders for the wall and a skateboard holder.