Happy New Year!! (Dec. 31 + Jan. 1 wrap-up)
ORIGINAL POST HAD GLITCH w/ LJ cut feature; 90% of blog = unreadable! :( Sorry! Here's the FIXED version. Please give me another chance. *blush*
Happy 2012! :D In the spirit of getting back into blogging, what better date than to write an entry than the first day of the new year? Not that I'm "making a resolution" to do this, because I think resolutions often backfire! heh
[ADDENDA: I TRIED to put each of the days under an "LJ cut" so as not to show a bunch of paragraphs at once time, but there's a BIG GLITCH in this text box/template, or something! :( I've never had this before, but each time I try to do LJ cuts, and then save my entry, when I click on the links to the cuts, they go NOWHERE. So frustrating! I'm sorry if anyone tried to read this entry yesterday or today & couldn't find anything to read. My original text is below. Thanks!]
Yesterday, Dec. 31, 2011, Shawn & I slept in very late. Then we went to Max's Cafe for a late breakfast. I recommend their "build your own omelette" option -- up to 4 items for $9.99, and those items include various types of veggies, cheeses and meats. For that price, you also get hash browns and choice of toast or pancakes, and everything is nicely sized -- at least to me!
After breakfast, we went back to the house and got suited up in our motorcycling gear and went geocaching in and around the Woodside/Skyline Ridge area. We found 3 out of the 5 or 6 geocaches we sought. We visited some beautiful parklands and open space preserves, met some friendly folks and got good exercise! not to mention some very creative &/or challenging cache hides! If you're on Geocaching.com, feel free to look me up as scaryshari and send me a friend request! One of the highlights of this geocaching trip was "meeting" Methuselah, a beautiful 1,800+ year old redwood tree right here in San Mateo County. Click here to visit a website with lots of great info & pix of this local celebrity! BTW, there's also a much older tree in California, also called Methuselah, located in the White Mountains of Inyo County. It's a bristlecone pine. That tree is more than 4,800 years old, THE oldest living thing on the entire planet! You can learn more about it here. Another highlight of the geocaching trip was that we found one cache container large enough for me to put in a festive geocoin that Shawn gave me as one of my stocking stuffers! It's a keychain with a pretty rainbow-colored peace sign and a flower on it. It's kind of small/thin, tho, so I attached it to another keychain -- a thick strong plastic one w/ a SpongeBob SquarePants theme! (Click the geocaching link at the top of this paragraph to learn more about this awesome worldwide activity!!)
After our geocaching adventures, we came back home, got into comfy clothes and spent a quiet New Year's Eve. I prepared a yummy dinner of empanada appetizers (Safeway Select has some awesome ones, & these happened to be on sale), a comforting tomato soup course and, as a nice complement to the tomato soup, an entree of baked macaroni & cheese that I found on sale at Key Market the other day. (Grilled cheese sandwiches aren't the only cheesy thing that goes great w/ tomato soup!) Even the dessert happened to be on sale at Safeway, due to an overstock. They were called "dessert spirals" (original name, eh?) and consisted of little flat spirals of chocolate cake w/ some type of frozen mousse inside. I thought it would be nice to have something a little different for dessert, in honor of the festive night. (My folks never made huge amounts of money & I never have either, so I was brought up to clip coupons, look for sales, etc. when feasible. I'm always happy when I can find nice things without spending a lot of money on them!)
Anyhoo, we then turned on the Wii and played two different games: Super Mario Kart (a Nintendo classic, and always good for lots of laughs) and Marble Mania, about the closest I found ever find to one of my all-time fave video/computer games: Marble Madness. Alas, it is no more. :( Anyhoo, Marble Mania is made by Hudson, a software company located in San Mateo, about 10-12 minutes from here (Redwood City). Cool coincidence! It's fun, the music is addictive/mesmerizing, but in a good way, and the graphics are gorgeous. Unfortunately, it differs from Marble Madness in that you control your marble in a way that makes the landscapes/mazes/etc. move too. That sometimes leads to confusion & frustration. I prefer the stable, static landscapes of Marble Madness, where you only have to worry about rolling your marble thru them using the mouse or trackball or whatever. Also, in Marble Mania, there are too many places where it's too easy to lose your ball. But even tho Marble Mania is more frustrating, I'm still very glad it exists so I can get my marble fix! Plus I know I'll get much better at it w/ practice.
After the video games, we played three hands of Eco Fluxx, one of the many special-themed Fluxx card games made by Looney Labs. I won one; Shawn one two! Finally, we turned on the TV to watch one of the local news stations and watched some New Year's Eve festivities going on in the Bay Area. After the countdown, they had a spectacular fireworks show over the San Francisco Bay. And I mean spectacular! I don't think I've EVER seen so many different colors and designs of pyrotechnics before! The colors included several shades of purple, and the designs included hearts, smiley faces, cubes and Saturns! (the planet, not the car! LOL) I've seen hearts & smileys before, altho not often. And I've never seen cubes or Saturns before! And finally, we went outside and shot off some party poppers (the kind where you pull a string & ignite a tiny gunpowder charge, which discharges multi-colored streamers). They're loud, but they were NOTHING compared to some of the racket going on in the area! Not only did we hear many firecrackers, but we even saw/heard some fireworks! But not the professional kind (which means some people were being very dangerous & very illegal! heh). I am so happy, lucky & grateful to have Shawn to ring in the new year with! So many New Year's Eves I spent alone and depressed, wishing I had someone to love who also loved me. Well, for the last few years I HAVE had that person! <3 <3 And I plan to have him for a loooooong time! It's hard to believe we'll be MARRIED in a little more than 6 months from now!
Today, New Year's Day, Jan. 1, 2012 we also slept in very late,due to being up late the night before (would you believe we did some Facebooking &/or internet-surfing after all the NYE commotion? We're such nerds, especially ME! I'm a darn Facebook addict! :"> Anyhoo, we had a light breakfast at home this morning, I re-filled the squirrel feeder, then we headed to San Jose to spend part of New Year's Day w/ my folks. My mom tends to get kind of sentimental on New Year's Day, especially with my dad's advancing age and deteriorating health, so I was glad we could visit w/ them today.
While I helped my mom w/ some computer stuff & some calendar-related stuff, and also changed the furnace filter (which she can't really do, due to her short arms/fingers and her osteoarthritis in her back), Shawn tinkered w/ a storage table on casters that was getting rickety (and fixed it), and replaced all 16 plastic feed on the 4 kitchen table wooden chairs. My mom baked a chicken & veggie & cheese cannelloni entree (from Safeway Select again) and it was delicious! She also warmed up some breadsticks while I made a big salad for everyone. Later, for dessert, we had a frozen checkerboard cake thing from Trader Joe's. OH! And Shawn also helped me take apart a stack of stacking (is that redundant?) storage drawers, tape them up so they don't open in transit, and load them all into the back of Elmo, his Subaru Legacy sport wagon. He and I also carried downstairs and out to Elmo a bunch of my very old photo albums and sticker collection albums.
After we left Sanazay, we made a quick stop at Lucky here in Redwood City for some moo juice and a few other things. We've been kicking back the rest of the afternoon and evening. And would you believe that for the majority of time I've been blogging, Shawn's been playing Marble Mania? (That's why it's taken me so long; I keep watching him & rooting for him! LOL!) He's progressed way, way further in the game than I think I ever could, unless I wanted to lose my sanity! But now I think he's addicted!
Happy 2012! :D In the spirit of getting back into blogging, what better date than to write an entry than the first day of the new year? Not that I'm "making a resolution" to do this, because I think resolutions often backfire! heh
[ADDENDA: I TRIED to put each of the days under an "LJ cut" so as not to show a bunch of paragraphs at once time, but there's a BIG GLITCH in this text box/template, or something! :( I've never had this before, but each time I try to do LJ cuts, and then save my entry, when I click on the links to the cuts, they go NOWHERE. So frustrating! I'm sorry if anyone tried to read this entry yesterday or today & couldn't find anything to read. My original text is below. Thanks!]
Yesterday, Dec. 31, 2011, Shawn & I slept in very late. Then we went to Max's Cafe for a late breakfast. I recommend their "build your own omelette" option -- up to 4 items for $9.99, and those items include various types of veggies, cheeses and meats. For that price, you also get hash browns and choice of toast or pancakes, and everything is nicely sized -- at least to me!
After breakfast, we went back to the house and got suited up in our motorcycling gear and went geocaching in and around the Woodside/Skyline Ridge area. We found 3 out of the 5 or 6 geocaches we sought. We visited some beautiful parklands and open space preserves, met some friendly folks and got good exercise! not to mention some very creative &/or challenging cache hides! If you're on Geocaching.com, feel free to look me up as scaryshari and send me a friend request! One of the highlights of this geocaching trip was "meeting" Methuselah, a beautiful 1,800+ year old redwood tree right here in San Mateo County. Click here to visit a website with lots of great info & pix of this local celebrity! BTW, there's also a much older tree in California, also called Methuselah, located in the White Mountains of Inyo County. It's a bristlecone pine. That tree is more than 4,800 years old, THE oldest living thing on the entire planet! You can learn more about it here. Another highlight of the geocaching trip was that we found one cache container large enough for me to put in a festive geocoin that Shawn gave me as one of my stocking stuffers! It's a keychain with a pretty rainbow-colored peace sign and a flower on it. It's kind of small/thin, tho, so I attached it to another keychain -- a thick strong plastic one w/ a SpongeBob SquarePants theme! (Click the geocaching link at the top of this paragraph to learn more about this awesome worldwide activity!!)
After our geocaching adventures, we came back home, got into comfy clothes and spent a quiet New Year's Eve. I prepared a yummy dinner of empanada appetizers (Safeway Select has some awesome ones, & these happened to be on sale), a comforting tomato soup course and, as a nice complement to the tomato soup, an entree of baked macaroni & cheese that I found on sale at Key Market the other day. (Grilled cheese sandwiches aren't the only cheesy thing that goes great w/ tomato soup!) Even the dessert happened to be on sale at Safeway, due to an overstock. They were called "dessert spirals" (original name, eh?) and consisted of little flat spirals of chocolate cake w/ some type of frozen mousse inside. I thought it would be nice to have something a little different for dessert, in honor of the festive night. (My folks never made huge amounts of money & I never have either, so I was brought up to clip coupons, look for sales, etc. when feasible. I'm always happy when I can find nice things without spending a lot of money on them!)
Anyhoo, we then turned on the Wii and played two different games: Super Mario Kart (a Nintendo classic, and always good for lots of laughs) and Marble Mania, about the closest I found ever find to one of my all-time fave video/computer games: Marble Madness. Alas, it is no more. :( Anyhoo, Marble Mania is made by Hudson, a software company located in San Mateo, about 10-12 minutes from here (Redwood City). Cool coincidence! It's fun, the music is addictive/mesmerizing, but in a good way, and the graphics are gorgeous. Unfortunately, it differs from Marble Madness in that you control your marble in a way that makes the landscapes/mazes/etc. move too. That sometimes leads to confusion & frustration. I prefer the stable, static landscapes of Marble Madness, where you only have to worry about rolling your marble thru them using the mouse or trackball or whatever. Also, in Marble Mania, there are too many places where it's too easy to lose your ball. But even tho Marble Mania is more frustrating, I'm still very glad it exists so I can get my marble fix! Plus I know I'll get much better at it w/ practice.
After the video games, we played three hands of Eco Fluxx, one of the many special-themed Fluxx card games made by Looney Labs. I won one; Shawn one two! Finally, we turned on the TV to watch one of the local news stations and watched some New Year's Eve festivities going on in the Bay Area. After the countdown, they had a spectacular fireworks show over the San Francisco Bay. And I mean spectacular! I don't think I've EVER seen so many different colors and designs of pyrotechnics before! The colors included several shades of purple, and the designs included hearts, smiley faces, cubes and Saturns! (the planet, not the car! LOL) I've seen hearts & smileys before, altho not often. And I've never seen cubes or Saturns before! And finally, we went outside and shot off some party poppers (the kind where you pull a string & ignite a tiny gunpowder charge, which discharges multi-colored streamers). They're loud, but they were NOTHING compared to some of the racket going on in the area! Not only did we hear many firecrackers, but we even saw/heard some fireworks! But not the professional kind (which means some people were being very dangerous & very illegal! heh). I am so happy, lucky & grateful to have Shawn to ring in the new year with! So many New Year's Eves I spent alone and depressed, wishing I had someone to love who also loved me. Well, for the last few years I HAVE had that person! <3 <3 And I plan to have him for a loooooong time! It's hard to believe we'll be MARRIED in a little more than 6 months from now!
Today, New Year's Day, Jan. 1, 2012 we also slept in very late,due to being up late the night before (would you believe we did some Facebooking &/or internet-surfing after all the NYE commotion? We're such nerds, especially ME! I'm a darn Facebook addict! :"> Anyhoo, we had a light breakfast at home this morning, I re-filled the squirrel feeder, then we headed to San Jose to spend part of New Year's Day w/ my folks. My mom tends to get kind of sentimental on New Year's Day, especially with my dad's advancing age and deteriorating health, so I was glad we could visit w/ them today.
While I helped my mom w/ some computer stuff & some calendar-related stuff, and also changed the furnace filter (which she can't really do, due to her short arms/fingers and her osteoarthritis in her back), Shawn tinkered w/ a storage table on casters that was getting rickety (and fixed it), and replaced all 16 plastic feed on the 4 kitchen table wooden chairs. My mom baked a chicken & veggie & cheese cannelloni entree (from Safeway Select again) and it was delicious! She also warmed up some breadsticks while I made a big salad for everyone. Later, for dessert, we had a frozen checkerboard cake thing from Trader Joe's. OH! And Shawn also helped me take apart a stack of stacking (is that redundant?) storage drawers, tape them up so they don't open in transit, and load them all into the back of Elmo, his Subaru Legacy sport wagon. He and I also carried downstairs and out to Elmo a bunch of my very old photo albums and sticker collection albums.
After we left Sanazay, we made a quick stop at Lucky here in Redwood City for some moo juice and a few other things. We've been kicking back the rest of the afternoon and evening. And would you believe that for the majority of time I've been blogging, Shawn's been playing Marble Mania? (That's why it's taken me so long; I keep watching him & rooting for him! LOL!) He's progressed way, way further in the game than I think I ever could, unless I wanted to lose my sanity! But now I think he's addicted!