Category Archives: friends

My Autumn Vacation

Warning: The following post has nothing to do with sewing, cooking, or vintage shopping. I took the weekend OFF, yo. :)

If you read me regularly, you know that my darling boyfriend lives in Sacramento, while I reside in Denver. This, as you might imagine, leads to a lot of travel back and forth. This past weekend was my most recent trip out, and we “accomplished” a bit more than usual. I thought I would share with you all a potentially dull breakdown:

FRIDAY
I arrived in the evening, feeling tired and somewhat unwell, but antsy to go to the Starbucks where Nick and I always hang out with friends. We were lucky enough to see a favorite friend-who-is-a-barista on her break, enjoy our drinks, and as I grew more tired and more unwell, Nick kindly took me home, where I sacked out almost instantly. Fun times.

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SATURDAY
I woke up feeling much better, but Nick now felt sluggish and cranky. We took our time getting ready for the day, and finally headed out to Starbucks (of course) to meet up with our friend Ally who was honoring Nick and me by spending her last day in town with us. The three of us spent a little time playing around in Old Sacramento, reading Christmas cards and looking for t-shirts and trying on amusing hats. Eventually it was time for Ally to go, and we hugged and wished her good luck in her new life in Virginia, with no shortage of watery eyes. Nick and I drowned our sorrows in fried goodness from the Spud Shack (poutine for him, France-style fries for me, fried zucchini sticks to share). We later welcomed our friend Rob over for a dinner of grilled London Broil, potatoes, garlic bread, salad, and still-warm Toll House cookies. Classic comfort food!

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IMG_3100SUNDAY
Nick and I both woke up feeling healthy, but a minor, nagging headache I had kept getting worse and worse. Thank goodness for Advil, and lots of it! After stopping for coffee (at a DIFFERENT Starbucks!) we drove down to San Francisco to meet our friends Rich and Patricia for a dim sum lunch at Yank Sing. It was, as to be expected, absolutely delicious. It was Nick’s first dim sum experience, and he seemed to enjoy it. We practically rolled out on our tubby bellies! Neither of us realized at the time that we were mere blocks away from Miette macarons and Cowgirl Creamery cheese over at the Ferry Building, but I doubt that either of us could have stood to look at MORE FOOD at that point. Instead, we drove a short way to Fisherman’s Wharf, which Nick warned me would be touristy, but hey, I’m a tourist. We squished a few pennies, tried on more amusing hats, watched the sea lions bark and fight and mostly sleep, bought a couple of snowglobes, and decided to head home once darkness descended upon us. On the drive home, I finally got to taste my first In-n-Out burger, ‘animal style’ as instructed by a now-Colorado-once-California friend.

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MONDAY
Nick was back to work on Monday so I washed some dishes, read a little Steven King, watched the season finale of Mad Men, blah blah blah. The treat of the day was dinner with Nick at a Mexican restaurant called Kico’s. Mmmmm, was their salsa ever tasty! Full of cilantro, and so fresh. House-made flour tortillas. Deep-fried tacos. The biggest bottle of Tapatía I’ve ever seen (above, photo by Nick). Our dinner platters were overflowing with food, so the Big Yellow Dog had quite a treat ahead of him on Tuesday!

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TUESDAY
My flight wasn’t until 3, so while Nick was toiling at work our friend Rob kept me company and we hung out, enjoyed a delicious lunch at the old service station which is now Suzie Burger, talked over coffee, and finally parted ways at the Sacramento airport. Time to plan my next trip out!

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Filed under amusement, food, friends, romance, relationships, shopping, vacation

as promised: pro photos

The umbrella was NOT part of the costume, but a fun prop in the studio!

Ah-ha! The link for the pro photos from Halloween 2009: The Future Is Now has been posted. Feast your eyes on this slide show from Peek Photography, our wonderful and hard-working hosts.

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Filed under friends, Halloween, holidays, sewing

This (was) Halloween

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Present at the “The Future” themed Halloween party:

  • Ripley and Kane (Alien)
  • Obama Christ
  • Dr. Who
  • Axiom passenger (Wall•E)
  • Miss Galaxie 1959 (yeah, that was me)
  • Star Trek TOS and TNG
  • Terminators
  • Jayne, Inara, and the “Two by two, hands of blue” guys (Firefly)
  • Seth Gecko and Santanico Pandemonium (From Dusk Til Dawn)
  • OctoMummy and her archeologist
  • 2012, uh, “ascenders”
  • My New Bikini Body (STAR magazine cover)
  • Illegal Aliens (aliens in convict stripes)
  • Fortune teller
  • Robot vampires
  • Pigs In Space
  • Jessica 6 (Logan’s Run)
  • Zombie (only one!)
  • Jane Jetson
  • a few others, yeesh!

Snapshots taken by me, @jgamet, and @lesafumi are posted on my flickr page. Professional photos to come later. Also, stay tuned for photos from my current client’s office Halloween party, which was postponed due to snow and is being held this coming week!

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Filed under friends, Halloween, holidays, sewing

Unrelated to anything: My Most Embarrassing Moment

Side Note: Those hands-free mobile phone headsets? They’re very good at transmitting the caller’s voice, and also at voiding out most background noise like traffic, other passengers in your car, and the radio.

Once Upon A Time, there was this guy I liked. Giving you some background but maintaining his privacy, he’s a fairly successful local musician/singer/songwriter, and you can buy his albums on CDBaby and eMusic and iTunes and Amazon. For the rest of this story, remember that he’s a professional singer.

Okay, so we’re hanging out at his place one night, and he asks if he can kiss me. Asks. If he had just leaned in and DONE it, that would have been one thing. But no, he asks. Now, I had only very recently broken up with a long-term boyfriend, so I was still reeling from that. And even though I WANTED to kiss this guy, I fumbled and sputtered and told him “not yet” and blathered out some incoherent, long-winded explanation and when the dust settled and I wanted to curl up into a ball and die, we continued to stay in touch. I wasn’t sure if I’d blown it or not.

But that’s not the embarrassing part. Oh, no.

One night, I’m driving a coworker/friend home from the office. There is an AMAZING moon on the horizon, and I pop in my headset, flip open my phone, and call this guy to alert him to go outside. I get his voicemail. I leave a quick message, and flip the phone shut. My pal in the car and I start singing “I see the moon and the moon sees me…” and when we’re all done with the song, maybe a couple of times, we turn on the radio, where we start singing along with Linda Ronstadt, belting out “When Will I Be Loved.” I’m pretty sure that we got through the whole song by the time I hear my phone beep, and realize that my headset is still in my ear. And discover that my phone does NOT hang up the call when you flip it shut if the headset is plugged in. And that I have just left a 10-minute voicemail serenading this guy, asking When Will I Be Loved. Because he CANNOT HEAR the radio, or my passenger, and does not know that any of this was unintentional.

I never heard from him again.

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Filed under big fat mouth, friends, music, romance, relationships, Ultra Maroon

Twerps. Twoids?

Snippets of information that WOULD be tweets if I could squeeze them into 140 characters. But I talk too much.

  • I smashed a large, lumbering, pesky fly last night. Whacked it a few times to make sure it was good and dead. Didn’t rush to dispose of it because 1. euw and 2. it wasn’t going anywhere. But 15 or 20 minutes later when I decided to do something about it, it was gone. I’m hoping that one of the housecats got it, but I don’t recall seeing either of them in the area. I’m waiting to be attacked by a giant and vengeful fly, hopefully in my sleep.
  • Mom brought over a DVD of Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas that she borrowed from the library, which reminded me of two things: 1. The library is a wonderful resource for obtaining books and music and movies FOR FREE and 2. I am not in the mood for watching a Christmas movie in August.
  • Yes, I was in Sacramento for Midnight Mass. Yes, I had a wonderful time. No, I didn’t take a single, solitary photo. Not even with my phone. My friend Rich posted some, though, so here’s a link for those. Nick took some pretty nice car photos, when he sobered up enough to figure out how to focus Rich’s fancy camera, and those are posted here. I’ll be heading back to Cali for a friend’s birthday at the end of the month, and I’m toying with the idea of heading out again in September for Billetproof.
  • After a few people put the idea in my head that I should consider going to school for hair cutting/styling, combined with the dismal print design jobs being advertised (or even whispered about), I decided to contact a local reputable-looking school. According to the enrollment gal who called me back, Colorado requires 1800 hours of combined training to get a cosmetology license, which works out to going back to school full-time (Mon-Fri from 8:30 to 5) for 11 straight months, or choosing the part-time option which is “only” 4 hours every weeknight except Friday, plus all day Saturday, for two years. We didn’t even get around to discussing the cost, beyond the application fee. I’m just not that serious about it, I guess, but that’s not a time commitment that I’m ready to make right now.
  • I’ve posted a few vintage patterns on my etsy store (more to come as I get the pattern pieces counted and envelopes scanned), and I woke up one morning thinking that one pattern, which was in my size, was just too pretty to let go. Of course, that was the one that had sold overnight. I did my best to make a hurried copy of the pattern before I shipped it out, but it’s not likely I’ll get to it in the near future. I have too many other unsewn patterns!
  • I have a basement full of stuff that I need to photograph and get listed in the shop. It takes an enormous amount of time; I’m sorry that I haven’t been better about it. If there’s a particular item that you’re waiting for me to list (I know there are a few of you waiting for specific dresses) then please harass me about it and I’ll get to those first.
  • My radish garden was a waste of soil this year, but my cherry tomatoes are doing well in their EarthBox. I’m also growing artichoke leaves (no actual blossoms yet) as well as Brussels sprouts and cauliflower in there. SOMETHING is chewing holes in the leaves of the cruiciferous plants, but I can’t find any bugs. Hopefully whatever it is leaves the actual veggies alone.

I need a nap. I’m cranky. I hope you all are doing well, please drop by and visit!

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Filed under blogging, friends, gardening, sewing, vacation