Valentine's Day turned out great. Alden surprised me with a dozen pink roses, the movie "Ever After" on DVD (it's my favorite movie and I only had it on VHS) and the biggest surprise was a painting for our room. I have been looking at this painting for a few months at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I thought it would look great in our "Asian" inspired room. But I never could justify spending the money and wondered if I would even have space for it in the apartment. Well, we hung it up last night and it looks great. The colors match the bedding and it gives the room an entirely different feel. So much more sophisticated. Now I need to rearrange the other decorations to finish the project. The painting is on canvas with a dark frame around the outside and the paint actually has some depth and is raised off the canvas. So beautiful!

I felt really bad for not getting Alden any presents, but he wouldn't tell me anything appropriate for Valentine's Day. So he got a couple of meals (we went out for breakfast one morning and out for dinner another night) and we went to the movies. He was so sweet and even let me pick the movie. We watched "He's Just Not That Into You". The movie was so funny and told a lot of truth about relationships.

I made a "big" purchase with some of my tax return money. This year I splurged on a carpet shampooer. It works so good, and I love not having strangers come in the apartment to clean the carpet. We figured it was worth the money to buy the machine since it would only take about 4 times paying the apartment manager to do it before it is payed off. And I like doing small sections of the floor at a time instead of the whole place being wet. There is something about wet carpet on bare feet that gives me the heebies.

For anyone keeping track...still no ring.

Until next time...

Ramblings

Life has been crazy busy and boring all at the same time. I feel like I have been running around busy but when I try to post something on my blog, I realize how boring my life really is. We went to a fun Superbowl party in Malibu to a friends house. It turned into an all day affair. We got there around 2pm and went home at 12am. The game was fun to watch, even though none of us at the party were really cheering on a particular team. We just wanted a good game and that is what we got. During half-time (and most of the third quarter) we walked on the beach and took pictures of the sunset. I made some really yummy salsa (it's not spicy at all but I think you can call it salsa), and it was a hit with the other guests. Thanks Lucy Bowns for the recipe. Alden went to Arizona this week to help his older brother move and give him some emotional support. He needed someone like Alden to pick up his spirits.

While I may complain about the details of my job and dealing with a lazy director, I am so happy that I have a job right now. Health care is one place where they cannot get rid of a bunch of employees. People still get sick and still go to the hospital and still need rehab. And for that reason, I get my butt out of bed five (sometimes six) days a week and go to work, when I would like to stay under the warm covers and sleep longer.

It is finally raining some here in CA and it cracks me up to hear the people complaining about the rain and the "cold" weather. We need the rain badly for the crops and to lessen the fire danger. Some of the people know not to complain about cold weather to me because I just call up my dad and see how much snow they have and how cold it was when he went out to do the chores that day. It shuts them up fast.

I got my taxes done already and I found out that it was a good thing too. If you don't have your CA state taxes filed by February 10th, the state is not sending your refund. The state is in such bad debt and they can't balance the budget, that they are giving out IOU's for the tax returns. So while you still get your federal refund, the state is keeping more of your money.

Until next time...