- Blogging on my life events & whatever that comes to my mind!
The rabbits have been eating my lilies. These lilies are situated on the far end of the backyard. Look at what these suckers did to my lilies??? 
The rabbits ate all the leaves and flowers. They are suppose to look like this! Celaka!!!
On a happier note, the lilies on the front yard are much better. Them rabbits have not got to the lilies yet.
I went to Rainbow, a local grocery store, which is a little higher end than Cub Food, to pick up a plant. Been eyeing it for awhile and was just waiting for “the day”. I thought this plant is easier to take care since it’s more mature and I do not have to repot it. All it needs is a stake to hold it up….it looks pretty limp 
Why did I buy another plant? Coz my green thumb did not work as well as I thought it would be. I drowned this plant.
From Rainbow, I went to Kohls and bought more shorts since I have given all of the smaller sizes to the Vietnam Veteran donation thing or to the consignment shop. I bought 3 pairs of shorts and a pair of capris and deducted $35 from my checking.
Next stop was across the street. It’s my favorite shoe store, DSW. I received a 10% coupon on Monday for opening a member account with them. When I walked into the store, there were extra discount off for all shoes. This is what I bought (from L to R): a pair of Ann Kline, Dr. Scholls in Mary Jane style and another pair of Dr Scholls in whatever style you call it. Spent $100 on these three pairs. Didn’t expect that three digit amount, but oh well, I like them a lot as they are so damn comfortable.
And of course, my usual weekly $280 groceries from Sams Club, Tar-get Boutique, and Cubbie, add on to my shopping weekend.
Happy that I spent so much in just a few hours? Hell yes! And I’m not really done yet. Need to order some stuff from DHC and that will complete my shopping for the week till my next payday!
But then I received this catalog yesterday….
And these are what I want to get….will see. DB kinda hinted, “Did some shopping today, eh?” Let see how my checking account looks like after I balance it
Justin, DB’s number 3 sister’s boy is dying to come to Minnesota for his summer break. He is from New Braunsfel, TX, and he can’t wait to finish high school and join the Coast Guards. He really wants to join the Navy so he can travel the world, but his mama has not cut the umbilical cord yet. So the closes ma allows is the Coast Guards.
Picture below was taken two years ago, with his sister, Jessica, during their cousin’s wedding in Plainview.
Anyways, Justin is flying in to Minneapolis on August 2 and will be staying with us through the weekend. SD said we could take him to Valleyfair and the Mall of America (MOA) since MOA has five or 6 types of entertainment in that one mega mall. Besides that, there is not much he can do in the Cities besides eat and shop. I rather go to MOA since it’s a mall!!!
From the Cities we will take him to Plainview to stay with his other uncle’s place, Bill. I am sure his aunt will take him to her beloved cheerleading sessions. Justin will have a lot of fun in Plainview with his other cousin, Brandon. There are lot more outdoor stuff down in the boondocks.
I wish his sister could come along, too, but she can’t. She is still in recovery mode from a car accident some time in December last year. They are one pair of cuties.
I’m glad that my company has discounts for tickets to Valleyfair and MOA theme parks. If not, “pook kai” (broke), man!
……first day of summer and we were supposed to get about 14 plus hours of daylight.All I can say was we there was some light but very gloomy, cloudy daylight. We hardly saw the sun.
And the best thing was…..
I was in bed at 9:00 p.m. CST.
DB was so surprised I went to bed that early. He thought I was not feeling well. I told him, I am indeed not feeling; I am sleep deprived.
Since I started summer classes, I have going to bed around 10:30, and when I get to bed, it takes me another 20 minutes or so to wind down since I’m so wired doing my school work. And when I get home from work, I try to take a 30 minute nap, or sometimes an hour.
Yesterday was SD’s BF’s birthday. He turned 30 and he is already saying he feels old. We took him to Bon Fire, a restaurant franchise of Axel’s. We stuffed our faces with walleyes for our early dinner and marble cake with vanilla ice-cream for dessert. That kid gets his driver license back today and he can drive again. We are so happy for him coz we know how it feels to loose your “wheels”. SD told me he will be chauffeuring her for many months to come. Atta, girl.
Saturday morning while having our brunch, the doorbell rang. I was not expecting anyone at that hour (9:45 a.m.) and so was DB. The boys went crazy barking their heads off.
DB went to the door while I continued to stuff my face with noodles and meatballs, the USPS guy was there with an envelope. DB had to sign for it, too, hence, it was an important piece of envelope.
When I heard the front door shut, I let go of the boys and DB handed me the envelope. I asked him who was it from, he said, “I have no idea.” I looked at the envelope and sure enough, no one can read who the sender is. All I could read was New York, NY 10017, and I saw the stamps on the Express Mail envelope. Right of the bat, I knew that important piece of envelope came from the Consulate General of Malaysia in NYC, and it contains my passports.
Indeed my new and old passports were in the package together with my original birth certificate and IC plus a letter of acknowledgement I had to sign and return. I was awfully surprise I received the package in less than 2 weeks. I thought it would take more than 2 weeks. Consulate General of Malaysia in NY “ada system”!! (Got system)
So, what the Malay girl at the Consulate told me was right: “About two weeks you will get it back.”
Spanking new passport is all ready to be stamped, vacation days updated on my calendar and department’s out of office calendar, all I need now is to book my tickets – cheapest tickets from MSP/KUL/MSP. I looked up flights from MSP/KUL/MSP on Expedia, Travelocity, NWA, and Orbitz, they were pretty much the same, price wise. I used my company’s travel desk online flight search and the fares are considerably cheaper; however, I need to call in to speak to a rep for personal travel arrangements.
So far I am looking at MSP to AMS (Amsterdam) to KUL, or MSP/LAX/NRT/KUL. The flight time rounds up to 25 hours to 30 hours depending on which one I pick. I guess I have to look up for rides from KUL to Ipoh, too. Thinking of the flight times just scares me!
(Will do a count down when I get my tickets.)
This weekend started off with clogged up drains. DB was all red the most part of Saturday.
It started on Thursday evening, after our dinner, I cleared up the dishes and threw DB’s unfinished rice into the garbage disposal. I did not turn it on as I threw the rice down as I thought it would be okay.
Towards 8 p.m. I was in the shower and DB asked if I dumped the rice down the disposal, and I said “yes”. He said “don’t do it the next time coz it clogged up the laundry room sink.” We dumped in Liquid Plummer and an hour later, it was still clogged up. Shit, I felt so bad. He dumped the entire bottle of Liquid Plummer in and let it sit overnight.
The next day, Friday, DB took a mental health day and wanted to do laundry earlier while it’s cool out. Checked out the sink, and still no luck. Oh boy, I felled so, so crummy. He said he will get a few more bottles of Liquid Plummer or Draino and try it again and, of course, it was a waste of our time. He used the plunger, a metal clothes hanger, no luck.
On Saturday, after many tries, he decided to go to Home Depot and bought a “snake” and other plumbing tools instead of calling for a plumber who will charge $100 an hour.
When he got home we got to business. He kept saying “I’m just not looking forward to this.” But he had to……
I was cooking chicken for the week’s dinner and he came upstairs told me not to use the kitchen sink because the water from the kitchen is filling up the sink downstairs.
When I was done in the kitchen, I went down to help him. He was lying on the floor under the sink, “snaking” the pipes. He had to do it three times to unclogged the pipes. (He said he should have bought the electric one.)
When he pulled the “snake” out, there were lint, dog hair on the tip of “snake”. It’s funny why they call it a “snake”. That thing is made of coiled up wire and it’s super flexible.
The pipes were so damn disgusting – black stuff all over the “snake” and it was oily. Sure looks like automotive oil and the smell of sewer.
When the drains were back to normal, we started our laundry and I went upstairs and started working on the pork ribs. Sharpened the fillet knife and worked on trimming as much fat as I can and cut up the ribs to individual pieces.
Ouch! Goddamnit, son of a bitch!!!
I sliced a chucked of skin off my left thumb. Ran it under water and wash my hands from the grease. I saw the skin was still hanging in there and lifted to see how deep it was. Damn, it was super deep. Blood was just gushing non stop. I was thinking to myself, after 10 plus years fiddling around in the kitchen with knives, I have not cut myself till today.
Waited for DB to get out from his shower to help me get some gauze and Band Aids. The entire piece of paper towel was soaking with A+ blood type. When DB got out I showed him my thumb and he said I should get it stitched up. I said No and he put on a good layer of gauze but it was soaked through in less than 30 minutes. He said I should have let him do the butchering “I have butchered a lot of animals before.”
Murderer!!!
He said he should put a turnakit (not sure of the spelling) around my neck to stop the bleeding. Oh, how sweet of him J
Yesterday while I cutting some flowers from the garden, I jammed the scissors on my wounded digit. Later in the day, I banged it against the cabinet door. How I did it, I had no idea. The entire weekend, all he heard was:
Ouch!!!!
It’s Monday, and it’s still bleeding, but not gushing. It’s now all wrapped up with Band Aids and I can’t wait to for it to heal. Not sure long it will take but I forgot how painful it is to have a cut from a knife.
I wanted to take pictures of DB working on the pipes, but seeing him all fuming and even extended his vocabulary farther, I stayed away from the camera.
Stunning.
Unbelieveable.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/qwkVnyfdGYQ]
I saw this clip from Daily Blurt Dosage‘s blog and I am amazed how wonderfully well this cell phone salesman performed Nessun Dorma, made popular by Luciano Pavarotti.
It was breathtaking.
I have been going to the consignment shop. Plato Closet, a lot lately.
Why???
Because I could not fit into my clothes anymore. They were all sizes zeros, ones and twos. It’s really sad to say goodbye to those clothes. They were the ones that I bought when I was still smoking.
Funny how smoking kept my weight down.
I love those clothes that I bought from Express, The Limited, Gap, and Abercrombie & Fitch. These are the few places I go to for my work clothes. They are a little expensive but they all have my kecik mayung (petite) sizes.
I could not believe I put on so much weight since I quit smoking 6 months ago. Cigarette smoking do increase metabolism. Sad to say I am now three sizes up.
The clothes I am not able to wear anymore goes to the consignment store. As long as they are not too old, they would accept them. Plus, they only accept branded lables. And since my weight is slowly going up, I thought why buy new when slightly use is fine? The clothes in this store are in very good condition. I bought four pairs of capris, 1 dress pants, 1 blouse, 2 shirts and 2 pairs of jeans for $70. Two of the capris and a pair of jeans were brand new with tags on.
This weekend, DB and I are going to the consignment store again. He has tons of shirts and jeans that he want to get rid of. If the store accepts them, I will have another shopping spree.
After much complains from me and SD, DB finally gave in and bought a new vacuum cleaner, a Dyson Animal DC17.
The first time I saw the Dyson ad on TV was about a year plus ago. I wanted it but told myself that expensive sucker has to wait since we were still trying to restore our credit history. I know DB liked the idea of bagless vacuum (don’t have to worry about buying and changing the bags) and dog hair really bugs the crap outta him.
Our old vacuum, a Hoover Windtunnel, is about 8 years old. The Hoover is good but it is very heavy for me to carry it up and down the stairs. Anyways, who likes to vacuum the stairs. Man, I had doing the stairs.
The Hoover sucks up dog hair but in order to thoroughly do a fine job, I have to vacuum the path a few times. SD said our vacuum sucks to high heaven.
On Friday, I sent DB an email and mentioned we should look into a different vacuum cleaner for upstairs. Since I will be receiving my tuition reimbursement for my previous class this coming paycheck, I told him I will get another vacuum cleaner for upstairs. I didn’t think of getting a Dyson; maybe another Hoover or Bissell. Low and behold, DB said “Let’s get a Dyson and that way we know it’s a good vacuum.”
So we did on Saturday at Sears, his favorite store.
I’m happy with it. That vacuum cleaner rocks. It sucks good
It sucks so good it sucked up the threads from the rug and the thread wound around the roller. GD!! Couldn’t believe it.
That’s me…..its something about me using a new toy. At least I got some of it out and the new toy is still working and I’m happy with the results.
I am so ready to call it quits with this class. The course I am taking is Principles of Management and there is a lot of work to it. This is an accelerated course and I should know from previous experiences that accelerated classes are tough and require a lot of my free time. I have free time right now and I’m blogging.
Why?
Because I’m so tired of watching the videos that came with the book. I took as much notes as I could and I now need to summarize them to a 1.5 or 2 pages summary. There are 10 videos to view and each video is 40 minutes. I have till July 25 to complete these videos.
Don’t get me wrong. I find this course to be very interesting. Forming an organization, managerial hierarchies, ethics and diversity, globalization, control, planning, leading, and resources – all these sound so familiar to me. I am fortunate to work in a corporation that has the exact formulas within the organization. I am particularly interested in mergers and acquisitions. I assume there are great deals of processes to follow that intrigue me.
With summer around the corner, which I think with the heat and humidity we have, summer is already here. I tend to spend my summers out on the trails or just working on my scrapbook and jigsaw puzzles. I told DB I usually slack a lot when I’m in a 16-week class and I work a lot harder in an 8-week course.
I know I need to get my credits in to get my degree quicker and that’s why I signed up for the summer class, but now I am totally kicking myself in the ass for doing that. However, I will be kicking myself even harder if I didn’t sign up this summer. Either way I’m stuck. I suppose I simply need to sacrifice a little for something more important.
That is life……
Here are some pictures I took last week. I’m trying to figure the camera out.
Found this pine cone on our backyard, still hanging on to the twig
Taken at work: the walking trails
Company’s south entrance parking lot
Pine cone on our backyard
Ranger done grazing the grass
Coopster taking a snoozer under the dining table
I have moved my Blogspot blog to Word Press because the former is driving my up the wall. I wanted to post a few posts last week and earlier this week, all Blogspot did was returned me to the login page. I was pissed!!!
So, please update your bookmark. Thanks and welcome!
Thursday afternoon 3:05 p.m. after work, it was too hot to go for a walk. Instead, I brought my text book out “Essentials of Contemporary Management”. I flipped to the page I dog-eared and was started reading and “ding dong”. Followed by “rolf, rolf, roooolf”, and of course, I jumped. Each time the boys bark in the house, it makes me jump, literally. Good thing my heart is still in good condition.
Anyways, I turned towards the front of the house and saw the big brown truck, UPS truck. I went to the door and the guys was still scanning the barcodes on the boxes – 1 big box and 3 small boxes. What the heck are in there? The first thing that came to me was what did he buy now?? Opened the door amidst all the “rolf, rooolf” and saw that the boxes were addressed to me. WTF???? They were from California. Well, the facial products I ordered came and I didn’t order anything else, what are in those boxes.
Thank the UPS guy and hauled them boxes in and were sniffed out first by the sniffers. When all is clear, I opened them up. I thought I should wait till DB gets home, hell no. Got the letter opener and slit them boxes up to a ton of packing peanuts in the big box. Then to the 1st small box……a Canon AS630 digital camera. I didn’t order that. Opened up the last box which was the lightest. Found nothing except a piece of shipping invoice and a rolled up bubble wrap. What in the world, I thought. Looked again, crap….there is a 1G memory card wrapped up in a big piece of bubble wrap.
Opened up the package and took the camera out, checked it out, wondered why did he get this for me?? I told him I was looking for one but didn’t expect to get one that’s FOC. I rummaged through the big box and there was a tripod, camera case, and rechargeable batteries.
I didn’t even hear “Helloooo, I’m home!” I was too busy fiddle jacking with the camera, the boys didn’t hear their old man either because I had the fan blasting at me and them. As soon as they hear him, they ran to the door, tails all wagging 90 miles an hour.
So, here are the pictures I took with the camera.
….and…..finally, the strawberries, they are fruiting. I thought I was seeing things, but had to do a double take on that.
Took some of these pictures last weekend but forgot to post them on my last post.
Coopster and Riley panting like a freight train….it was 82F in the house!
