28 Days Until Christmas...

This one is going to be a brief one...well brief for me anyway. Haha! This is the last week of November already. I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone by! Thanksgiving was last Thursday and as far as Thanksgivings go, it was pretty calm and peaceful this year. I love Thanksgivings when you can just hang out all day and just relax.

The rest of my weekend wasn’t as calm and had a fair share of ups and downs. Oh well! Cest la vie! Thank goodness Gina is around though because she helps keep me sane. Not sure what I’d do without her. Although she’s clear across the country now…she’s still a phone call, email, or message away. I love technology! Speaking of Gina… she’ll be home for Christmas in just a few weeks. Yay! I’m so excited to see her and am looking forward to just hanging out together. There’s never a dull moment when we’re together!

Oh and since we’re on the subject of Christmas time… the Stockings for the Homeless Children project is coming up fast. Nif and I will be doing it the weekend after this one. I still can’t believe it’s that soon! I always look forward to this project though because it’s such a wonderful cause and it always seems to give me hope for humanity and the future. It’s so amazing to watch all the people and the children that come to help out to give those children in the shelters a better Christmas. It’s sappy I know…but it gives me hope because I do believe the children are our future. Oh and speaking of the Stockings project…my donation box is filling up quite nicely. I added some pics above of my donation corner and donation boxes in case anyone was interested.

The other project I’ve been helping out with is the Northwest Harvest food drive through work. We’ve split up into teams at work and I’m proud to say that so far…my team has donated 475 items in the last couple of weeks. Not too shabby! We still have 2 more weeks, but I think we’re doing pretty good. One of the other teams only has 25 items.

Well…I think that’s all for now! Can you believe that it’s only 28 days until Christmas???!! Craziness!!!

You Don't Have to be Yogurt to get Cultured...

It's been awhile again since I posted. The time seems to have flown by! I know part of that was because I was sick in bed for days about a week or so ago. When you are in bed for almost a week...time seems to slip away from you. I can't believe it's the end of November already!

So what have I been up to? I've been keeping busy throwing myself into community service. It's that time of year again and everything goes on at the same time. I'm involved again this year with the Stockings for Homeless Children. Nif and I will be volunteering again on both days. This year I thought I'd try something different and set up a donation box at work. I have a pretty good size stash of stuff to bring when we volunteer. Oh and I've also been getting involved with the food drive for Northwest Harvest. This time of year always makes me feel a little guilty about my life when I think of all those unfortunate people who have so little when I have a lot of things I take for granted in my life. I think that is why I like volunteering so much. I feel like I am working towards a better future for all.

Other than work and volunteering... I've been attempting to be more cultured. Nif, Jeff, and I had talked about doing our International Cuisine dinners again so we went ahead and started that up again. So last weekend Nif, Jeff, Katt, David, and I ventured to Seattle in search of cultural experience. I was in charge of this last International Cuisine night. Yeah...that didn't turn out so well. I had researched Caribbean restaurants and found one called Calypso Kitchen that had great reviews. The only problem was that when we got to the address we had for the restaurant, it no longer seemed to exist. I'm thinking I should have checked the dates on those rave reviews! So we all became brave and tried out an Ethiopian place we found on Roosevelt in the U-District. It was so not what I imagined it would be like. For one, the food is pretty spicy which I didn't expect. The portions were huge which you can see in the above pic. Poor Nif's lips were burning at one point. Some of the things I felt were very flavorful. Unfortunately, the service was so slow! It was one of those places that is literally in someones house. I'm not sure that I'd go back, but I'm glad I got to experience that.

My other brush with being more cultured was dinner out the other night. I ended up having dinner with Jen and Laura at a Persian restaurant. Now before I went, I had no idea what kind of food Persian food was. We went to a place called Kolbeh in Seattle. The food was amazing and I really like the ambience of the place. I would absolutely go back there!

I've also gone to dim sum and chinese in the last week, but that's nothing new. Although we did try out a new dim sum restaurant which was in Factoria. It was called Top Gun and seemed popular as well as being very good.

Oh...Navan will be flying in tomorrow for a visit. My mom's condo is finally dry and we just need to worry about getting new carpet put in. My brother is still at Swedish and liking it. He's not liking the Seattle commute from the southend, but he's adjusting.

Well..I guess that's it for now.

Rain, rain go away...come again another day!

Well the rain has not let up in the last few days. We’ve even experienced minor flooding, road closures, and all that fun stuff. Another casualty to all this rain is my mom’s condo. It’s been raining so much the last few days that Sun came home from school today to find water all over the floor in most of the rooms in the condo. Unfortunately, my mom is on the bottom level and it’s one of those places where the bottom level is partially below the ground. Luckily, my brother got off work early today and was able to go out there and help out. After talking to the on-site manager, the condo association called in their emergency crew to take care of the water. I guess the ground water was actually seeping through the pads and the carpet of the condo. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure it’s not a pretty sight.

Other than the rain, the other highlights of the last week or so include: the end of Daylight Savings Time, Halloween, Nifer & Jeff’s Open House/Reception Event, and me learning to play poker.

As far as the Daylight Savings Time ending and Halloween…those are kind of self-explanatory. All that I really have to say about them is that they happened.

Nifer & Jeff’s Open House/Reception Event took place this last Saturday. That day was an especially wet one and there was even flooding nearby. There was lots of good food, good people, and good fun. There was even a fair share of excitement. Jeff’s 84 year-old great-uncle ended up slipping when he tried to round up Tubbs the “Speedy Gonzales” cat. I actually saw the entire thing. I was clear across the kitchen and was looking at the front door. I knew I was way too far away to do anything so I felt kind of helpless. It’s like when you see something that you know is going to happen and you feel like you’re in slow motion trying to get there. The paramedics were called and he was taken away to get stitches because he’d banged his head. Luckily he was okay though.

After the Open House, we played some poker. This was my very first official poker game. Fortunately, I had a poker mentoring session earlier that week with Nif. I still felt a little lost, but I know it would have been worse if I’d gone in without any mentoring. I learned that I’m not so good. I did still end up with 75 cents by the time I left so I was at least happy that I didn’t lose everything. I think I just need to learn things like the whole knowing when to hold them…knowing when to fold them…knowing when to walk away…etc, etc. That was my mini tribute to Kenny Rogers.

Later that night, I headed up to Laurie’s house for a mini party she was having. I got to see Teddy again while I was over there. It’s always kind of strange seeing Teddy now. There’s not any weirdness or anything between us… we get along fine. It just is so odd to me how we’re like friendly somewhat acquaintances when we used to be so close back in the day. That was a long time ago though. Back in the day when Pat and Mar still lived in the state…and Ms. Helen’s was still around.

There’s not all that much else going on right now. Oh! My brother got a new job. He’s working in the IT department at Swedish Hospital now. It’s cool because we can hang out after work if we want to now that he’s in the city. Yay!

Okay…I know I’ve said it before, but I can’t believe how soon Thanksgiving is!!! Holy heck! My mom and I are already starting to prep for that. Can you believe that? Plus, I need to start making lists and check out my Xmas stash so I can prep for that too. Where the heck did this year go?!