back to school

I bought a new lunch box today. It makes me feel like tomorrow is my first day at a new school, instead of my first day at a new office. My old one was falling apart so it didn't make the move with me. So instead I have a new lunch box for a new office. It's pink and polka dotted and pretty.

Today I made it on all my errands, and apartment visits without using my phone navigation, pretty awesome right? I was impressed with myself! And I had a funny/sad/slightly embarrassing incident at the gas station. Due to being out of town for a few weeks I have not had to fill my gas tank in about three weeks. So I go today and what happens? I can't get the gas cap off. Like at all, it won't budge. I tried and tried and tried, nothing happened. Not good. My fuel light was on [something I rarely let happen] I could not drive away without gas. So I had to suck it up and ask the man at the pump next to me to open it for me. I felt so pathetic. But at the same time SO thankful there was a semi normal looking man next to me and not just the scary looking workmen across the parking lot. And for the record it took him two tries to get it open - so I was not just a total weakling.

On a different note I would like to report [as a few people have already asked] I do now have my first day or work outfit picked out, ironed and ready to go.  I have also made my lunch, prepared the coffee, set my alarm and looked up directions, alternate routes and average traffic patterns. I am as ready as I will ever be for the big day tomorrow.

official

My car has been an official resident of Arizona for two weeks now, but I myself have not been. Still a California resident. As sad as I was to move on from my California driver's license ( I only had it for two years after all) I was more than happy to get a new photo taken, the CA one was definitely an embarrassment.

So here she is $25 and no test later, Amanda Kathleen a licensed Arizona driver:

Thank goodness I look ok in this one because check out that expiration date (if you can read the little print up in the corner. July 18, 2050, wowsa!  I don't need to get a new license until I am 65. I think if I am still living in Arizona at that age, I will be sad to see my young twenty six year old smiling face go. 

On a different note tonight is the season premier of Chuck. Fun of course but also sad for the following reasons:

1. It is the last season :(

2. I no longer get to watch it with my Chuck peeps [Angela, David and Elizabeth....sad I miss you friends]

and 3. The house I live in now is really into baseball and this silly thing called the World Series....and so I will be watching it tomorrow, thank goodness for DVR and Hulu!

Fall

Some days I still can't believe that Rachel of the Trop 207/Kibber/Penthouse years lives in Spokane. I was thinking about it more today, how funny it is that when I go back to my hometown it's not people from High School that I visit with but a friend from Biola that was from Colorado, so funny. And yet SO wonderful!

After lunch as Rachel's favorite place that has uber amounts of Garlic on everything [seriously I am pretty sure I could still repel vampires with my garlic breath] we went to Manito to explore and see the fall colors.

We were having so much fun crunching through the leaves, and remembering this day when just a few measly leaves in the fullerton loop made us feel like it was fall. Oh how the times change. Not only is Manito Park five hundred million times prettier than the Fullerton loop, but at that time I am pretty sure I had never been to the loop - and now I can say that I am quite familiar with it, having run it many many times.

Yesterday I was blogging about Christmas and today it's Fall, I think I got my season mixed up there.

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I am breaking all of my rules now. Rebel, rebel. It all started with a trip to the grocery store and a spotting of this goodness:

Naturally it had to be purchased. This one is technically not a broken rule as my rule is that I use half & half in my coffee until Peppermint Mocha creamer is available. BUT this defiantly contributed the feeling of Christmas.

What really led me to break my rules was the release of TWO great Christmas albums on one day. Both A Very She & Him Christmas and Michael Buble Christmas, what a good day in the world of music. So of course mom and I rocked out to the Christmas tunes as we cruised the streets of Spokane.

Normally I hold strict to not listening to Christmas music or watching Christmas movies until after Thanksgiving, but this year, I just don't care. This morning as I sat drinking my coffee (with peppermint creamer) watching the youtube videos of Zooey singing the National Anthem at yesterday's world series game, trying my best to keep my little toes warm I just couldn't help feeling like it was Christmas, especially since that is usually the only time of year I am at my parents house, and I also felt the desperate need to watch Elf.

Who have I become?
It's not even Halloween yet.

the tour

Just a warning I don't know that many of you will really love this slide show - if you get bored I warned you. Now onto a few more details:

1. This was my first time to the University of Washington campus

2. I took photos mostly with my phone as to cause the least amount of embarrassment for Cam (in other words they are not of the highest quality.

3. It was drizzling and getting dark part way through our tour

4. The campus is HUGE! I could not believe it.

5. I thought the buildings were really large and neat....thus lots of photos of random buildings I have no idea what they are called or what goes on in them.

6. There are not many photos of Cam - he avoided them as best he could.

7. This is a different slide show program than I usually use, you have to put your mouse over the photo to get the caption.

8. Enjoy!

seattle, not so sleepless

After a very sleep filled night, mom and I hit the town to do some good ol Seattle exploring. We actually skipped the Space Needle because, well I am too cheap - I just snapped that photo from the street near our hotel. Then it was off to Pike Place Market. I wanted to start off our day with the totally clique Seattle tourist thing to do - go to the first Starbucks. Perfect it's at the market, we walk over, get our coffee, I have mom take a photo of me by the sign I saw that said 1st. Only to have mom tell me later is says 1st street, not first Starbucks woops. Later on in our journey through the market we did find the actual first Starbucks. But have no fear I still had my coffee in hand and I snapped a photo, so I can just pretend.

1. Space Needle

2. The Market (where Rachel where buy all her fresh flowers)

3. The place where Tom Hanks learns about Tiramisu in Sleepless in Seattle

4. The actual real first Starbucks

Oh and I can't forget the AMAZING "World Famous" Macaroni and Cheese I had for lunch at Beecher's Handmade Cheese. It was so tasty and so much better than even the Panara mac and cheese I love so much. Ok enough about food, then we hit up Gasworks Park, and the rain started. lame. This was all followed up by many sets of incorrect direction from my phone navigation - a trip the wrong way down a one way street and three passes through the same intersection all from different directions. And finally a tour of UW by Cam. Oh yeah did I forget to Mention that visiting Cam in his natural habitat was the actual reason for the trip to Seattle.

1. Gassworks Park - which I know from 10 Things I Hate About You

2. FALL, leaves and colors oh my!

3. The UW campus

4. First class tour guide, brushing up on all his campus history

You like how I manage to squeeze in some movie location viewings even while not in LA? 

More on the Awesome campus tour tomorrow - prepare yourself for photo overload....I may have thought the campus was really pretty and taken way to many photos.

legit

Too legit to quit.

Thats me all right.

Check it out, my pillows were on the Etsy gift guide email.

Woot Woot!

six states in six days

Ok well, it may have actually been seven days, or five days depending on how you calculate it, but for the  fun of it/the sound of it I am going to say six days. Those would be states traveled by car by my parents and me yikes. I am SO happy to be at home [their home]. We started in California, l and cruised over to Arizona. After a short stay there we were off to see the rest of the World.

The first night we stayed in Utah. My first time there YAY! I was hoping to have some lovely photos of Bryce Canyon to share with you all, as that was the plan. To do a little bit of exploring/hiking before hitting the road again. But as luck would have it I decided to get deathly ill instead. So annoying/sad/gross. Instead of having a lovely time at a National Park, my only memories of the state of Utah revolve around throwing up on the side of the road.

After Utah we moved on to Idaho, from there to Montana, and then we wound back around through Idaho. And yes I asked, it is faster to get to Washington by going from Idaho to Montana and back again to Idaho, it sounds funny. And then of course we ended up in good ol Valleyford. I don't think I had realized what exactly I had signed up for when I told my parents I wanted to ride back with them. I thought it would be a two day drive, not three...long days. But it allowed me to catch up on some reading, I managed to listen to three books and nearly finish the beast I am physically reading, good thing I have two more in my bag for the drive to/from Seattle.

Some things in my parents house are always changing - every time I come home there is something new or different, but at the same time some things never change. Because well look what was there to greet me downstairs. My lovely bedroom door....or at least I am pretty sure that room belonged to me and not Lindsey, Jake or Cam. Maybe I got lost a lost a lot, or simply could not remember which bedroom belonged to me :)

Finally I shall round out this getting to be far to long blathering post with this funny tid bit. Remember a while ago when I got the American Girl Catalogue in the mail and got really excited only to realize it was not actually addressed to me? Well guess what was waiting in the mail here at my parents house when we arrived today?

An American Girl catalogue, actually addressed to me hehe. I have no idea why this makes me happy, as I am not going to order anything from it. I guess it's the sentimental side of me having joyous flashbacks from my youth.

productivity

P.K.

 aka Prince Kaboo

 aka my car is now an official resident of the state of Arizona.

I don't mess around these days.

Been here less than 24 hours and I have a new license plate.

moved

It's done.

 I'm moved - said goodbye to California and hello to Arizona.

I can't believe it.

What a long/hot/tiring/heavy lifting filled day.

Started with sad sad goodbyes with the roommates [totally miss you guys for reals already]. 

Picking up/loading of the Uhaul trailer. Thanks a million and a half times to Pops who is the best trailer packer/driver ever. Last minute cleaning, also thanks a million to mom who was a huge help with all my final cleanings, definitely not the fun part of moving. Then we rounded out the day with a nice long drive, unloading of stuff at storage, and then unloading and the Holt house, aka my new home.

It's really strange to see my bed in their house. 

I'm not quit sure when it will actually set in that I've moved - but it hasn't yet, I don't think.

el cerito

A final work visit for a final week.

After a couple years in the schools district I finally got to see Angela in all her glory.

All those lucky kids that get to visit classroom 11. I was quite impressed by her large powerful desk (ancient computer and printer)....and mass amounts of cupboards. I even got to sit at the little table, and pretend to get therapy.

new years resolution completed!

That's right, it was an official, I wrote it down so I had better do it new years resolution, and it's finally complete. Thank goodness I was able to convince Elizabeth to run with me, because the training, and race day would not have been anywhere near as enjoyable without her.

Here I am crossing the finish line, mile 13 baby I made it. Funny story: As I am crossing the finish line the announcer says "and here she comes ladies and gentleman" and I start thinking "oh fun they randomly choose people every-now and then to announce and they picked me how cool!" then I listen to the rest of what he says, and it is actually that the first place women's MARATHON runner was finishing - at the same time as me. YIKES! She was twice as fast as me. Uh yeah, so instead of focusing on how slow that made me feel I decided to think of it in these terms - she finished with a time that qualified her for the olympic trials, so in the 2012 London Olympic games when I see Abigail Swift running I can tell people "oh yeah that girl, I ran with her." I could even go so far as to say we crossed the finish line at the same time.....but that would be far less believable, even though technically true :)

So going into the race we had three goals, in decreasing importance, they were as follows:

1. Finish the half marathon

2. Finish without walking

3. Finish under three hours

And woot woot! We totally rocked it, achieving all of our goals!!!

Also a big huge wonderful thanks to all of our fans that came out to support us. It was really fun/motivating to see you guys along the course - especially at mile 11, the buddy run really kept me goin!!

food trucks

We finally made it to food truck night. YAY!

After a round to check out all the options we ended up with two tacos, a crab and brie grilled cheese, a gyro and a chili cheese baked potato. You'll never guess which was mine hehe.

makin the rounds

Monday it was Jake, Wednesday it was Sylvan and next Monday it will be Angela. Getting all my lunch date/office visits in, have to take advantage of the time off and do things I could normally never do.

Wednesday I headed down to Costa Mesa to visit Sylvan at his office and lunch with him. For nearly the last four years Sylvan and I have been honorary co workers, via gchat. We keep each other company, discuss office happenings and tell jokes all the live long day. So naturally I jumped at the chance to actually see him in his office/cubicle.

This is where the insurance magic happens.

After a quick tour we jetted off to lunch. One of the daily things we discuss is what we are eating for lunch. Clearly we have a lot going on in our days that lunch is the highlight haha. Anywho Sylvan ALWAYS talks about StoneFire Grill and how tasty it is, and how it's such a special treat. And now I have tasted it's goodness. Yum....the breadsticks, oh my word I could have eaten ten million of them.

The only downside of having all these lunch dates and last meals with people is that I may be slowly gaining a twenty pounds or so. Not Good!

biola

While visiting Jake on Monday I had to of course take a final walk through of Biola. Took in a viewing of the newly refinished Jesus mural, toured the new [AWESOME] parking garage. Seriously, very nice.....why didn't you do that years ago Biola? We journeyed to the tip top corner and enjoyed the birds eye view of campus. And finally I made my first Biola clothing purchase [for myself]. It was a big deal, eight years in the making.

farewell biola

birthday yay!

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROTHER BEAR!!

Yay it's Jake's birthday - and due to days off I got to have lunch with him and Hannah and do a quick office visit - checkin his new digs in Metzger. Now off to the PAR-TAY!!!!

last day

Even as I sit here watching the Today show...in my pajamas when I would normally be driving to work it has not fully set in yet. That I will never again work in little India. Friday was my last day, and for some reason it was a lot easier to have my last day than to tell them I was actually leaving. Everyone was so gracious to me, giving me a bonus and some cards and gifts, it was a really unexpected and nice parting. We had an office lunch, to a place of my picking. I chose Mimi's because we haven't eaten there in years and I really like it. Well, part way through lunch I remembered that Mimi's is where they took me on my very first day of work there. Funny. 

I snapped a few photos to remember my four years. The first one is Rico, he is the messenger that comes to the office everyday. He is really funny, and sings to me a lot....Friday included a final serenade of "Mandy." Then we have the boss, Steve and Barbara, I didn't manage to get one of all the coworkers, this was the best I could do. And finally we have Leanna, my lovely replacement, we had a lot of fun together the last three weeks.

Now I get a month off [YAY!] until I get to be on the other end of things being the trainee instead of the trainer.