Adventures in Albuquerque Part 1

Joshua and I took a short trip to Albuquerque this month to visit my grandma, uncle, and cousin Alex. My dad was there as well. One bonus to visiting in October ... the Balloon Fiesta! We were very excited to see hot air balloons from all over the world rising high into the sky over us. So excited in fact that we got up at 3:00 am to catch the 4:00 am train from downtown to the bus pick up. No one but Joshua, Alex, and myself were brave enough for such an adventure. Here we are on the brand new Rail Runner metro.
After being dropped at the bust stop, we were stranded at the dark, rainy station while waiting to hear the fate of the balloons. Sure enough, the lift off had been cancelled due to inclement weather. Back on the train to downtown... Not to worry, we had tickets to go back that evening to see the balloons all lit up.
Before heading back to Grandma's for a nap, we stopped off at Denny's for breakfast. Alex got a fun dye packet that turned his water into green slime! He said it still tasted like plain water.
Alex enjoyed Joshua's reading of The Boy Who Looked Like Lincoln (an absolutely hilarious book that Joshua bought me for my birthday). 

Note card saves the cat

This is a tale of how a 3x5 note card and a nagging wife can save a cat's life.
It's 2am and we are just about to leave for a 12+ hour drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I am performing last-minute checks to make sure all items are accounted for. I run upstairs and grab a note card to jot down gas mileage statistics. Once there I realize, “I should brush my teeth or Erin will get upset.” I run into our room and grab my toothbrush, but cannot find the toothpaste because it's been packed. I run to the downstairs bathroom because I know we have sample toothpastes from the dentist there.

While brushing my teeth, Erin gets upset at me for taking too long and complains that I left the lights on upstairs. “I'm going to put the toothbrush back when I'm finished” I say.

“That's stupid just leave it down here. I'll turn off the lights.” And she drags herself up the stairs with tired eyes to turn off the lights.

A few short moments later we're in the car ready to leave. I close the garage door and realize, “I don't have my 3x5 note card. I must've set it down when I got my toothbrush. I knew there was a reason to go back upstairs.”

I open the garage door and start up the stairs picking up my toothbrush along the way. At the top of the stairs I noticed our bedroom door was wide open. We don't let the cat in our room because we don't like the hair all over. I replace the toothbrush into it's holder and pick up the 3x5 and place it into my pocket. Next I search for the cat because he is obviously being naughty. When ever our door is cracked open he dashes in. But he is nowhere to be found in our bedroom. So I search the other rooms of the house. Nowhere to be found.

The screen door to the garage has a mysterious hole in it. “Great, now we lost the cat!” Cats are curious so he can't have gone too far. I search the entire complex while Erin searches the garage. Thirty minutes pass and still we haven't found him. “This is a great beginning of our trip.” Moments later I hear a noise from the far side of the garage, and sure enough it's Six (the cat). When he sees me he leans down on his front paws and extends his orange hairs and tail straight up to look like a mean devil cat. I picked him up threw him in the house and slammed the door behind him. I yelled through the closed door, “I just saved your life, you stupid cat!” And we started our trip.

Upon looking back I realized that if I didn't have a stupid need to track my MPG on paper during a road trip, or have a wife that nags me to brush my teeth the moment I wake up, we may have returned from our 5 day trip to a very sick or dead cat in our garage.

I'm 28. Yay.

That's right folks, I turned 28 on Sunday. Although I've been feeling a bit under the weather, I did have a fun day. We started off bright and early by eating a delicious breakfast at the Pancake House in Anaheim. In honor of the owner's retirement, they served their amazing dishes at 1950's prices! For Less than $5, Joshua and I feasted on Dutch Babies, apple pancakes, potato pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, and coffee. Amazing! And we brought home leftovers. When we got home, I took a nap while my wonderful husband cleaned every nook and cranny of our home. (This was in part thanks to the tv being broken!) Then, we met my family for a late lunch at Lucille's BBQ.
We continued the party at our house with dessert, coffee and games. I was badly beaten at a fierce game of Scattergories. Doesn't anyone know they're supposed to let the birthday girl win?
One last stop of the day: To Bed, Bath, and Beyond to spend one of my giftcards. After too many minutes poking and squeezing all of the therapudic pillows, I decided on a winner. Unfortunately, it didn't work so well. I had one of the worst night's sleep ever! Alright, it wasn't the pillow, but the nasty head cold I had. I slept on it ALL day yesterday and it's as cozy as a pillow could be. Let's see if Joshua's birthday can beat all that!
 

Thursday - No Luck Day

So, Thursday of last week I had a pretty rotten day. I needed to get up early to drive to San Diego. At 6am it's still dark out and the freeways are already starting to get congested. It seems as if any large vehicle (also known as SUVs) is late to get somewhere and tailgates me until he decides to choose one of the faster lanes to the left. One particular GMC sped around me but didn't seem to care to get fully in the other lane to do so. Once in front of me he didn't seem to have any dedication to any one lane. If another car tried to pass him on the right or left he would swerve halfway into thier lane. I think he was double-foot driving because his break lights were flashing constantly. Suddenly I became charged with super-citizen powers and sped up to be next to this large truck and see if there was a child or drunkard driving it. Once parallel with the driver I could see this short red, curly-haired irish-looking man peering over his steering wheel who, it seemed, couldn't see past his nose. I dropped behind him and dialed 911. I did my responsible duty and reported the drunk driver with vehicle type and license plate. I hung up the phone and the traffic came to a standstill. He plowed into the two vehicles in front of him. I called 911, "It's me, again. He wrecked."

An hour and a half later I'm 15 miles from my destination and the Interstate 15 freeway is under construction. The traffic is stop-and-very-slow, so I decide to put my new GPS to the test and route me a detour. I choose a three mile detour. It routed me just fine through the city streets until I got close to the freeway again and the street was just a parking lot. So I route another detour, this time 5 miles. I travel to the other side of the freeway, and when I think it's going to take me left back to the freeway, it says to go right. I zoom out the map and it shows that I'll be going around a lake. "Ok" I say, thinking that the GPS knows what it's doing. For the next ten miles I'm on a two-lane country highway that's hopefully taking me to my destination. I happen upon stop-and-go traffic again. This time I zoom way out on the map and notice that I'm being routed to the Interstate 5 freeway and back to the 15 via a third freeway. I calculate my trip from either direction and now I'm 25 miles from my destination in both directions. I decided to U-turn and get onto the 15 freeway as I should've. I happened upon my destination 1 hour past my planned arrival time.

While there I was to install applications and transfer data to a user's new notebook computer before he was to catch a plane. Everything was running fine and dandy. He had ten minutes left and I had one thing left to install. McAfee VirusScan (which I highly recommend) finished installing and the computer starts giving me errors and ultimately shuts itself down. "I've never seen this before" I say. "Sure" the user is probably thinking. I hate Dell computers. I reboot the computer and the same thing happens. Luckilly I could start in safe mode but you can't uninstall programs while in that mode. By now the user has left to go to the airport, so I go to the thinking room to ponder my problem. I came back and tested my theory to get the software removed, and it worked. I called McAfee support and explain my problem. I tell him it's a new Dell Notebook. He says, "Is it a D620?" "Yes", I say. "Does it have biometric software?" "Yes" "We have a patch for that, for some reason Dell's software conflicts." Great, I'm just glad it wasn't user error. But it was too late as the user was already boarding his plane then.

On the drive home, I'm happily on cruise control going the speed limit. I look in my rearview mirror I see a large pickup truck barreling down the road at 90-95 mph thinking he owns the road. When he gets a little closer another truck pulls into his lane in front of him causing him to slam on the breaks and change lanes almost clipping my rear bumper. The truck driver was considerably calmer after that and exited the freeway at the next exit.

At dinner I told Erin about my horrible day and she was sympathetic. I cleaned up the plates as Erin got her workout items together and turned on the television. "Look at this." she said. The tv was only showing an image on the center horizontal line. Now we have a broken television.

Apple Picking Fun

Last weekend we took a family trip to Oak Glen in Yucaipa. It is a tiny town filled with apple orchards. First stop: the bakery so Joshua could have an Apple Fritter (he hasn't stop talking about wanting another one!) then off to do some shopping in the local boutiques. One of our stos landed my mom and husband in jail (notice his hand sticking out over the top of the "cell").
Our final stop was Los Rios Ranch where we got to do some apple picking of our own. We bought a bag to share and had a blast looking for the perfect apples to fill it with.
Here are two methods for reaching the apples high up on the tree. :)
After a fun day, we went back to Mom's for a BBQ and of course, apple pie for dessert!
 

The Wedding!

I know I've been slacking a bit (ok, a lot!) on my blogging, so here is something for your viewing pleasure ... Gary and Jennille's wedding! The pistures aren't the best, but hey, they're better than nothimg!
The cake ... buy was it delicious! I took some to work to share almost a week after the big day and it was still good! Way to go Mom!
The dance... The song was from the soundtrack to Amelie. Very appropriate since they honeymooned in France! 

DVD Mixup

You may know by now that I am a Little House on the Prairie fan. I have collected the first 3 of the 9 seasons available. And I will not stop until I have completed my collection. My only complaint with this release is the authoring. Whoever compiled these episodes and put them to disk did a horrible job. Scenes are cut abruptly and sometimes the sound is a tad off. I don't mind so much though because it still gets the message across. However, tonight, Erin and I sit down and put in the final disk for of third season. The screen comes up with a bunch of robotic arms in the shape of an X but no title. We press play and it's X-Men 2. I pull the disk out and it says Little House, Season 3, disk 6! What's the deal? The DVD's were authored by Imavision who is, aparently, an amature DVD authoring operation from French Canada. When I called the company the message machine was in French first then English, Spanish wasn't an option, weird. I left my name and number and someone will get back to me. I will get my disk replaced once Francois is done walking his poodle and returns my call.

Grandma's Rant

We cleaned up the spare bedroom a couple of weeks ago and I uncovered a magazine ad that featured Erin's dad's family in McCall's magazine.

Apparently, Erin's grandma was so impressed that her washing machine hadn't died after so many years; she wrote Maytag a letter of thanks. They then published the letter along with a photograph of the family. Good work, Grandma Graham! (from left to right: Grandma Jean, Grandpa Charles, Terry 'Erin's dad', his twin Larry, and not pictured is Les)Published April 1972 for 50 Cents:

Now going on 13, that washer still faithfully turns out 10 or 12 loads a week.

For almost thirteen years now, her Maytag Washer has performed above and beyond the call of duty, reports Mrs. Jean Graham, Whittier, California.

"She has raised three boys with all their dirt and grime, and one husband with all his grease and oil," says Mrs. Graham. "Still, on Monday morning, she is ready to make my sheets and pillowcases put the neighbors' to shame."

According to Mrs. Graham, her Maytag has done it with few complaints. Just 3 repairs in all these years, and her husband made them himself.

"For this I have moved her across the country with me, talked to her about her troubles, burped her through her cycles, and treated her lik the lady she is. After all, don't we all grow old? I just hope I do as well as my Maytag," concludes Mrs. Graham.

Of course, today you can get New Generation Maytags with all the latest features. A washer with giant capacity tub. A Maytag Halo-of-Heat® Dryer with Electric Control. Both have Maytag's special Permanent-Press Cycle.

We don't say all Maytags will equal the record Mrs. Graham had. But dependability is what we try to build into every Maytag Washer and Dryer.

Fun Stuff

Okay, so for those of you who are bored on the internet here are two fun things for you to do.

First click here to view a couple of pictures taken at the Hoskinson household. If you just keep clicking it, it's fun to watch the shifty eyes and baby Aubrey's changing expressions.

Next, I always thought it was fun to build toy robots, but never did I think they could dance like these guys:

http://www.plyojump.com/movies/qrio/qrio_fandance.wmv
http://www.plyojump.com/qrio.html

Have fun!

What's your super-power?

Rock Harbor (our church in Costa Mesa, CA) is having its annual "Volunteer Appreciation Night" which we are unable to attend because of a prior engagement. (Rock Harbor is always last minute planning things that we can't go to) However the theme is superheroes. And to help those attending choose a superhero to be, they have provided us with this website:
http://www.blogthings.com/superheronamegenerator/

This is who I am, supposedly:

Your Superhero Profile

Your Superhero Name is The Chimp Flame Your Superpower is Complements Your Weakness is Booty Your Weapon is Your Rusty Blaster Your Mode of Transportation is Pony

What's your Superhero Name?

I think they mean Pirates Booty...

My Handsome Husband

WIth the upcoming wedding, the Hardwicks needed to do some shopping. Joshua went by himself on Saturday and picked out a suit that he absolutely loved. He took me on Sunday to check it out. The suit was pretty amazing, but it was also an ivory zoot suit! Great for swing dancing, but not my brother's wedding! After much debate (aparently he thought I was making up the rule that you shouldn't wear white to a wedding), he settled for this black pinstipe number. And doesn't he look great?! Yes, the cuffs on the shirt and the collar match the tie and handkerchief. Joshua chose this shirt to go with the zoot suit, so this was the perfect compromise! Now what am I going to wear ... 

Jennille's Bridal Shower

My little brother is getting married in two weeks (crazy!) to the lovely Jennille. Jackie and I threw her a bridal shower on Saturday. With the cost of a shower ranging from a lot to a whole lot, we decided to get crafty. We made the invitaions using stamps and colorful paper, we stamped the napkins, we put wedding stickers on the cups, and our best idea of all: we made the fruit salad into a watermelon flower basket!
Soon-to-be-Graham, Graham, and formerly-Graham Girls! Usually my mom makes beautiful cakes- I guess she had an off day. But it tasted very good! Jennille made the flowers and did the decorating. The wedding cake will have stiffer frosting with a tint of sage green so the flowers stand out better. Countdown:13 days!

 

Serve Day, School, and Sales

I don't really have anything interesting to say, but Joshua has been outblogging me like crazy, so here is some miscellaneous information from me. Saturday was Rock Harbor's Serve Day (a day to be the church instead of going to church). Joshua signed up to do computer networking while I chose labeling library books. We both worked at the Maple Learning Center in Costa Mesa. I's a very interesting set-up: a rented apartment with a tutoring room in the living room, office in the kitchen, and computer and art rooms in the bedrooms. The staff there works with elementary students in the community providing homework help as well as Bible stories and lessons. If we didn't need my income, I might enjoy working somewhere like that.
Speaking of working, I am off to school tomorrow to prepare for the new year. Tomorrow is cleaning day in my classroom, then Wednesday meetings and Thursday and Friday planning and prep. I get to meet my new students on Monday! How many days until the break in November??? I am really going to miss my mornings of sleep until 7:30 followed by coffee and crafts and lunch with my sweet husband. It had to end sometime I guess.
To celebrate the new school year I decided to do a little wardrobe update. Macy's had a 50% off of their 50% off sales racks, so I took my time sorting through every one! Joshua enjoyed the fashion show when he came home and he also enjoyed hearing that I saved $145.00! That sure makes spending $60 seem like nothing.
So there you have it: Serve Day, School, and Shopping. And you thought you were not very interesting people ...

GPS fun

I've been researching GPS' for our trip to the East Coast in November to visit Tommy and Tara, and boy is there a lot of stuff you can do with 'em. If you're into exercise you can use them to track your progress as you jog or bike, and trace your custom made trails using MotionBased.com. Since a GPS can track Latitude, Longitude, and Altitude others have found they are fun for drawing pictures on the earth like a giant etch-a-sketch at GPSDrawing.com. Included are pictures of a giant Tic-Tac-Toe game on city streets, and a guy who rowed out the word "WATER" on a blow up rubber raft.

But the one site that intrigues me the most is GeoCaching.com. This site is a collaborative effort of all those involved. People leave these "caches", goodies stuffed in amunition boxes, and post the coordinates online for others to find. When you find a cache, you take what's inside and leave something else behind. They are typically all found on public land. I think this makes for a great way to explore new areas, or just get out of the house.

If you're interested in getting a GPS, I would recommend Garmin. But if you're in for some research, GPSInformation.net is the place start.

How would you use your GPS?

Life imitates Art

Sometimes, through maintaining a job and building up savings, we forget that we live in Southern California. Home to some of the most innovative and creative displays of art and entertainment in the world. Erin introduced me to one this week that absolutely stopped me in my tracks. The Pageant of the Masters, which is part of Laguna Beach's Festival of the Arts, is a sight to be seen. Completely unassuming, this show caught me offguard. I thought this was going to be a snoozer, but Erin insisted.

What they do is take famous paintings and put real people into them. It's like a living art museum, outside in the warm evening coastal air. The narrator guides you through time and art history of each reproduction among the background of a 20-piece orchestra. Over the course of two hours they displayed over 30 living pieces. It was amazing to see these images as two dimensional--and then they would move, breaking the barrier, sending your mind into a warp. All of the people in the paintings or statues were volunteers; there were over one hundred of them.

At the end I was hooked, I would see it again, but next time I'd be a little closer. It's hard for me to hold those binoculars steady. And if I were to volunteer, I think I'd want to do a nude.

http://www.foapom.com/

Weather

In the morning it's normal to turn on the TV and find out the weather for the day. The national weather service is all over telling us that we are having extreme heat warnings and North Los Angeles County is having Flash Flood warnings. Our temperature today should be about 103 degrees, but with humidity it should feel about 114 degrees. That's how it was yesterday too, but this morning there are deep rumbling sounds in the sky. All the sky that I can see is clear and some white clouds. The electricity is going haywire, all I can do is hope that the coffee brews fast enough before we lose all power.

Stocking up

In today's volitile society, you never know when World War III may strike; or, perhaps, the Y2K bug took an eight year detour and will finally come out to sting us. If that day ever happens, we'll be ready. Will we have ample supply of water, clothes, fuel, batteries, etc.? I don't know, but I do know that we will have enough Fluffernutters until the Lord returns. "What if Albertson's stops selling fluff? What would we do?" This is the beginning of a lifelong addiction. I'm not a drinker, smoker, or druggie; but fluff is the stuff of which I cannot get enough.

If you haven't yet had a Fluffernutter, don't start. Unless you want to turn into a white puff of sweetness, whipped to perfection. Erin and I have become followers of the creamy treat, and I can say for myself that I feel like I'm getting a fluffer-butt-er!
Seriously, we are using the fluff for life group snacks and family gatherings, and Costco only sells Peanut Butter in two jar packs.

Vacuum Kaboom

When I turned on the vacuum the other day, it made a really loud horrible sound. Kaboom! Now we are in need of a new vacuum. No big deal, I'll search the internet and find one I like. Wow! There are more vacuums on the market than I knew existed! How do you go about choosing one that will last a while, do the job, and not cost an arm and a leg? Does anyone have a cleaner that they really like (or one that they really dislike) so I can narrow my choices? I have to act fast because we have a cat and when it's hot, he sheds like a maniac! Please help!

Free phone calls

Here's a tip for those of you still paying for long distance calls on your home phone or if you have free incoming calls on your cell phone.

http://local.live.com

This website is maintained by microsoft as an alternative to Google Earth; an exceptional alternative, if I might add. If you want to search for a type of business in a certain area just click the name of the business (eg. Home Depot, or Bed and Breakfast) and it will show you all the locations within your current map view. The results that come up are based on Phone Book entries in the area. When you find the business that you want you can view all the listings for it: name, address, phone. As an extra service the site provides you can click "call for free" and put in your phone number. The site will then call the business and you to connect you. The call looks to your phone company as an incomming call and you won't be charged (unless you pay for the minutes anyway).

It's a very cool site if you want to find stuff. I think far more useful than Google Earth, because you don't have to know what you're looking for in advance, and has more detailed arial shots in more areas. The site provides three different views: regular map, satellite map, and (in certain areas) bird's eye view. Bird's eye view is a great feature, they hired pilots to fly by certain areas and take pictures with their camera to get a closer side-type view of the area. Excellent for getting to know your surroundings.

Other features: A Scratchpad to save all your favorite destinations, email your scratchpad to a friend or your blog, nothing extra to install on your computer.

I've Got Jury Duty!

Can you believe that in my almost 10 years of being an adult, this is the first time I have been called for jury duty?! I had to postpone my assignment because they wanted me to go on my 6th day of school. Every teacher will tell you it's not a good idea to be out so early in the year. So, instead, I get a mid-February day away from my class. I'm actually pretty excited and hope I get to be on a jury. Unless it's one of those big deals where you have to stay in a hotel and not talk to anyone for months on end. Hmmm... I'll let you know how it goes.