yum

Glorious lemon chiffon wedding cake

Fabulous Birthday and Weekend

Aww, I had such a good birthday with my husband and my bestest friends, H2O, A(middle name undetermined)C, AN and JAM. We went out to dinner at Pepino's which is bloody fantastic italian place near the house. It's got to be the best italian I've ever had. It's just really good OK? I need to post some pix but when I downloaded all the pix, I found that due to my sexy new top, I was exposing a lil' too much boobage in the pix. I need to xiaxue the photos first. ;)

On Fri. morning, one of my dear friends called me from Perth. I haven't spoken to her for a while. It was good to hear from her. Her birthday was on Sunday, 10/23, and she said that they were going to a vineyard which sounded fantastic. I've never done that, but sounds great. I've gone to a coupla wine tastings in Houston, and they are all fun. On Saturday, I started my Christmas shopping. Yes, you read it right. I had a coupon for the store where the coveted items were being sold, so I decided that then would be the time to get them. I'm going with this new thing where I only use cashmoney to pay for things, as opposed to evilcreditcardmoney. We've got some bigfatweddingbills to pay for, and I was inspired by Heather, and am going with her MO, cos it makes sense and it works. On our way home, we saw this guy and were so compelled to get off the freeway so DH could take a picture with him. We're just having too much fun as newlyweds over here!

It was a hectic wknd because DH was frantic about the Houston Astros in the World Series. Unfortunately we lost the first 2 games, but we're still hopeful. They play tonight and we better win!

Also I'm sick of the damn rentalcar. I hate driving it (though grateful that I have it to drive) but man, it sucks. I'm suffering from eclipsewithdrawal. I want my car back!

It's my birthday! yippee!

I lovelovelove birthdays! They are always so much fun. It has been a roller coaster year with planning for the wedding, health issues in the family, finance issues, fueds, sick friends, my dog died, my best friend had a baby, I become a wife, I had my first car accident ever . I have a fantastic husband who I believe in and believes in me. I'm surrounded by friends that I am fiercely loyal to and hold very close. My family is healthy and doing well. My cat loves me and runs to greet me when I come home. What more do I need?

Sunday at the butterfly park

Lovely weather in Houston lately, all bright and sunny and cool (by Houston standards). It's still shorts and t-shirt weather here and I love shorts and t-shirts weather. JAM invited me out to celebrate her mom's birthday and my upcoming birthday (yippee!), we went the the Houston Museum of Natural Science and visited the Cockrell Butterfly Center and the watched the IMAX movie, "Mystery of the Nile" - very cool, I love IMAX and then we went to check out the "Mummy: the inside story" exhibit they have going on now.

The first place we went to was the butterfly centre. I'd never been before and it was very interesting, they had all these displays of live insects that you go through before you get to the butterfly area. They had a display of really super freak out cockroaches, which anyone who knows me, knows I hatehatehate cockroaches and super freak out whenever they are in my vicinity. It's tough living in Texas. As you know, everything really is bigger in Texas including the damn cockroaches. eeeeee!

Once we got through the interesting insect exhibit, we checked out the butterfly park. It was very cool. They have it in a climate controlled glass enclosure, fairly hot and humid and all these butterflies all over. I was a picture-taking-fool trying to catch these elusive creatures. I did find evidence, though, of exactly how bootylicious JAM really is. {giggles}

After a while, it got really hot in the butterfly park. Hot like amazon hot, which is exactly the climate that they were replicating in the facility. We got out of there and went to watch the cool (literally) IMAX and then did the Mummy exhibit which had another film, except this one was in even cooler 3D. OMG I can't even remember the last time I watched a 3D anything. I think it was Jaws 3D at Shaw Tower. The had 3D scan of the inside of a mummy, which was very detailed. the cheeky film makers made it a point to show us that this particular mummy was male. I had seen this type of scanning before when we did a video at UT for work. They have a visualization lab there that show the same type of scanning. They had scans of cadavers. They are insanely detailed scans of all they muscle fibre and bone and everything.

We had a good Sunday out, I enjoyed myself. After the mess of Thursday's car accident (I'm OK, but the Eclipse has a big boo boo) with that irate rude woman, I needed the break.

digital money

I love online banking. I'm obsessed with it. I adore online bill pay. I use Bank of America, they have some problems, but their online bill pay rocks. The fact that I could run out now and use my check card and run back here and the transaction would already be showing as pending just makes me smile. I know, I'm an idiot. But I love online banking so much, that I hate writing cheques (checks). I hate writing cheques to people because cheques take forever to go through. People take forever to deposit them and I never know when they are going to do it. I wait and watch while my money is held for ransom. When I write a cheque I want the money to be out of my account in 3 days or less. Word of advice here, when I write you a cheque, you better run to the bank and deposit it cos, frankly, I don't know how long that money is going to be there. I wrote the cheque to you, that means you have first dibs, but if you wait too long, then some other creditor is going come along and take the money that was meant for you. For those people that I wrote cheques to 2 weeks ago, come on! Deposit those damn things now, people! It's been 2 weeks! Do you want your money or not? Come and get it, then. I hate writing cheques.

diggin' it

Over the weekend, DH bought some DVDs at Best Buy, one being the Director's cut of The Warriors. He watched the special features and the scene where they have the big gathering in the park, with the guy on the jungle gym saying, "Can you diiiiig it? Can you diiiig it!?" is stuck in my head right now. Yes I can dig it, people! This marriage business suits me just fine. I'm back at work now, ho hum, but there's not much going on. Seems like everything happened while I was on leave. That suits me just fine too. ;) People have been asking me how it feels to be married. I feels great, there is a difference but it's not a tangible difference. It's security, contentment, calm, balanced, a feeling of fullness. I know I've always wanted to be married, I just was never fussed about how I was going to get married, not very girly I know, but that's why I'm a grrl. I'm giving myself a few days to be in lalaland before I have to get back to the real world and do things like pay bills [groan and sob and then laugh]

I'm back!

It was fabulous and amazing and emotional and fast. I will be organising my photos to post some online and of course give a blow by blow account for all.

It feels great to be married. I wasn't too keen on the getting married part, on account of all the drama and stress that it causes, but now that it's over, the getting married part isn't so bad after all. I'm anxiously awaiting the pro photos from the photog which he said would be ready in 2 weeks for online viewing! yeah!