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.

Eternity and Mission Successful

My Dad is here! He arrived a day late due to the crazy weather that's hitting the east coast. There's been some schedule changes as a result and it's all working out with time off work and such.

In other news, I've been working on getting my wedding ring finished. (Either the cool one my honeypot was working on or just by buying one.) The cool one that my honeypot made mostly works, but sometimes doesn't. For those who don't know about it here's a description: Basically imagine a Tibetan prayer ring. You know the kind - they have a part in the middle that you can spin. Usually that spin part just rubs on the other part of the ring, but my super star engineer thought it would be much better if it had bearings. And not just any bearings, but sapphire ones. They're these tiny balls. They're pretty cool.

I while ago I spoke with one of his friends who has the skills to get the project successfully done (as my honeypot is worn out from working on it). He seemed pretty reluctant to get involved - even though I was offering to pay him like a normal customer. His reluctance is understandable given his relationship to my honeypot, but he sure would beat some random person found through craigslist. I pretty much gave up after trolling craigslist trying to find somebody to hire. I just want a wedding band that I can actually wear. Is that too much to ask for? I didn't think so.

While we were out walking around Burlingame I ran across this ring in a consignment shop and I like it a lot. The only problem is that it was just a little bit too large. So the purveyor walked over to a jewelry shop with me and I talked to them about fixing it. They did it right then and there by putting these two little beads in it. They also cleaned it and it looks so much better than when I bought it.

It's a really nice ring. That's not to say that I wouldn't love for the original project to be completed. Because really, how cool is a wedding band that moves freely that has bearings? Pretty freakin sweet! But I'm content with my completion of my "wedding band project."

For those who are interested: the new ring is an antique eternity band with blue sapphires made out of 14k white gold mixed with platinum. It's similar to this, but lose the diamonds and the metal is a different color.