Furiously Playing Catch-Up: San Francisco

Here is proof of my great skills as a procrastinator--I'm finally getting around to posting pics of my New Year's trip. This skill is also helpful in college for getting papers done about ten hours before they are due. Anyway, I went to San Francisco for New Year's with Nick's family. It was wonderful!

Also, San Francisco has the BEST food EVER. Love the clam chowder bread bowls from the sourdough company!

This is at the Academy of Sciences, which was absolutely brilliant. Hugely long lines. Amazing exhibits, fish and forests and food and an aquarium and a planetarium. Here is a very very lazy alligator. Or crocodile. Or possibly an albino iguana. ^_^
Duuuuuuude. Goofy lizard-thing looks drugged.

In the Chinese Gardens. BLINDED BY THE LIGHT! That is the whiteness that is me. I radiate whiteness. Like a....(lamely) really, really white person.

Awwwww he's so cute! Hi Nick!
It's a wonder I saw anything else at the museum.

PENGUINS! Squishy penguins! I want one! I will hug it and squeeze it and call it GEORGE.

Clair, Nick's 8 year old sister, and I outside the Academy. (Katie, put on some mascara for God's sake! Also, fix your hair!)

Nick and Clair and some random girl playing with balls and gusts of air--the balls are hovering! This is at the Exploratorium, which is AWESOME. It's fun and sciencey and cool!


This is some black sand/possibly metal that is you sculpt to magnets. It gets spiky and is soft to the touch. Also it is a good height to use your elbows to keep the kids away so you have it all to yourself! Mwahaha!


Famous winding Lombard street that doesn't take good pictures. Hmph.


The sea lions off of the pier! So cute, and far enough away to not smell them. (Ohmigod the pier had crepes, delicious crepes with nutella and strawberries and mmmmm. Also a merry-go-round, which was so cool!)


The awesome view outside our hotel--that is a statue of a man climbing the building. How cool is that! I did a double-take the first time I saw him!


Me, being very very touristy, and dorky, as my sweet boyfriend tells me. I ignored that and made him take a picture of me anyway! Focus on the awesome merry-go-round and not me looking kind of chubby and brown, and also ignore that man's back. And ignore the weird plastic wrap stuff. Huh. This isn't the awesome picture I was hoping it would be. Oh well! Focus on the positive. Within 50 feet of me and Nick there are 3 different candy/fudge shops!


So yeah. San Francisco was awesome! We did way more than this, but it takes too long to upload photos. ^_^ Also they are not the best pictures ever. We ate at delicious and expensive restaurants--on New Year's we dined on steamed crab and clams and other deliciousness. (ThankyouthankyouthankyouNickandNick'sfamily!) We walked. And walked. And were freaked out by mass birds flying overhead and for the fireworks, we thought we had a great view until it turned out the view was ON THE OTHER END OF THE PIER. Ten minutes later we saw about 1/4 of the possible fireworks view for a about two minutes and called it good. It was hilarious.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Fruit

I just ate a peach.

That's exciting because I generally don't eat fruits, I prefer vegetables, but after doing a Diet Analysis for school I realized that hey, fruit is probably a good thing to eat once in a while. (Nick started the fruit-can-be-good thing by giving me two delicious peanut and caramel apples for Valentine's Day!)

On a not-very-related note, my Nanny said "Tutti-Fruitti" (tootie-fruity?) this morning (apparently an older word for gay) and it cracked me up, especially when she said it without any attempt at humor!

Worry

Something that I've always been a bit proud of is my stubbornness. I got it from my mom and it helped me (a lot!) when we argued all the time in my early teens--even though it was probably my stubbornness that got me into trouble!

Here's the bad bit about inherited stubbornness though: my Nanny is the queen of being stubborn! And I say that lovingly, though with a bit of frustration. ^_^ My family, including my uncle and aunts, would love to have Nanny move out from Florida up to where we live. She lives all by herself, and we are afraid of having anything happen to her. We showed her a wonderful apartment just ten minutes from us--and she likes it! Nanny met a sweet neighbor who also plays cards and also a worker at the assisted-living apartments who was very kind. But whenever we bring up her moving here she changes the subject! We want her to move up here so we can see her more often, and so that she can see us!

Any ideas on how to convince Nanny to move up here?

Awake

I have had another revelation:

Getting the right amount of sleep will actually make you feel AWAKE. Also NOT TIRED. This is ridiculously exciting to me.

Yesterday in psychology class we did a "sleep debt" quiz and I scored as so high in sleep debt that my quality of life was suffering, as in I did not have any interest in things I once did. And it is TRUE! So last night I actually made myself to go sleep at 11:15 and woke up at 8:00am, so I had over eight hours of sleep! Yay!

My mom just rolled her eyes at how it took a psychology class to make me comprehend what she has been telling me my whole life. ^_^

Post Secret

This postsecret card could have been written by me. (It wasn't). My mom's parents, Grandma and Grandpa, met and secretly eloped at age 19, and were in love for over 50 years. My dad's parents, Nanny and Boppa, were happily married for I think even longer. This card struck a chord in me--I hope everyone is so lucky.
"My grandparents at age 19, before they were even engaged...
My greatest fear is never finding what they had for nearly 60 years. (I'm 19 now)."

(Edited to note: this is a picture I found on the website postsecret.com, it isn't actually my grandparents. ^_^ )

Smokin' Hot

Here is proof of my awesome hotness: the treadmill started smoking while I was jogging!

It was actually kind of scary. I was jogging while watching Mamma Mia! and singing along at the top of my lungs (in between gasps for air) and then the treadmill abruptly turned off and smoke curled up from the motor.

I took it as a divine sign that I am correct in not loving jogging, and that I should cease running immediately. ^_^ I was good though, after I got off of the treadmill I did some lunges and crunches. But still! Jogging=bad. I understand now. It is not my fault that I don't like jogging--the treadmill is trying to tell me something! (Do you think this excuse will get me out of jogging at the park with Nick? No? I didn't think so either. Worth a shot though!)

The Awesomness of Snow+Cars=Nearly Badness

About twelve hours after I wrote my glowing snow post, I left Nick's in a hurry, as we had been watching Star Trek until we noticed that holy god it's SNOWING! And it's STICKING on the ROAD! Crap! NeedtogohomeNOW!

So I was driving slowly home in the SUV in automatic, so that it would switch to four wheel drive if necessary. So of course it had to become necessary, right?

I was driving slowly around a curve, with a ditch and trees on my right and a dirt cliff on the left, when my car suddenly started sliding! It was turning to the left, and my car was sliding on the snow and my brakes weren't working, so I panicked and over corrected by turning too sharply to the right, and started sliding towards the trees. Even though you think it wouldn't, my mind was clear and time seemed to be slowing down. I whipped the wheel back to the left and kept the pressure on the brake and the car slowly stopped sliding, leaving me facing the tall cliff on the other side of the road, blocking both lanes. I gently accelerated and went into my own lane, then stopped again and went into low four wheel drive and drove about 15mph the rest of the way home.
Once safely home, I waited until I was upstairs and on the phone to Nick to get the shaky adrenaline rush. But it went away, and I was fine! Just left with a healthy respect for snow.

My Last Snow Day

I woke up this morning, thinking I would need to rush around and get ready for work, when I looked outside and saw WHITE! Everywhere! No road, no grass, even the air was thick with swirls of snow. I ran downstairs and called my boss, who lives nearby, to see if we would need to go in to work, and he said work was canceled, and to enjoy my snow day. And then I realized, since I go to college in a lower elevation, this is likely to be my last snow day ever! So I plan to enjoy the snow. The dogs sure are enjoying it, as you will see!

Our backyard: with a blurry hummingbird drinking sugar water to keep warm. I felt bad for him! (Fun fact: hummingbirds with bright colors on their necks are males. It's cuz they need the prettiness to get the girls).

Our front yard AKA Winter Wonderland

Our back yard: Sage and Kali don't know what to think!

Mmmmm, yummy! Fluffy water!

The huge blue oak tree in our backyard, so beautifully white and covered in snow.

Kali sniffing around, trampling through our plants. Who needs roses when you have snow?

Run! ColdfeetcoldfeetRUN!

Keep running! Don't stop running!

Running past the camera.

The girls spent about fifteen minutes with Kali chasing Sage--never catching her--while I furiously snapped pictures and only got funny looking blurry dogs. But it was cute, really!

Brrrrrr. Did you know my toes are cold?

Well, didja?! I need doggy slippers!

Mmmmmm NOM NOM NOM SNOW.

Mamma Mia!

. . . Is my new favorite movie. How is it possible to resist the singing, the dancing, the sexily unclad tan men? And the music is from ABBA! I used to dance around my room (Okay, and downstairs, but with friends!) to remakes of ABBA by A*Teens! Seeing this movie brings back nostalgic moments of my earlier teenage years, and it makes me want to pop on the CD and grab Andra and start dancing around!

Now, for the important question. Does anybody know how to get a 20 year old guy to watch Mamma Mia, short of tying him up and gluing his eyes open?

Nanny!

My Nanny's here! She's visiting us for about 3 weeks, and she flew up from Florida today! I'm very glad to see her, the last time we saw Nanny was a while ago for my Boppa's funeral. (Translation: Nanny=my dad's mom, Boppa=my dad's dad.)
Nanny is my last living grandparent. We are trying to convince her to move from Florida to an apartment near us. Wish us luck!

Busy Mundane Life

Firstly, I think I did well on my Anatomy test! Yes! *dancingwhirlingtwirling*

Secondly, the dogs ran away again. While Mom was yelling at them to come back. And they ignored her. AGAIN. Mom now wants them to be outside-only dogs, and I keep picturing the poor outside-only dogs at our clinic that are stinky and sick. Waaahhh!

Thirdly, Troy is rebelling in his teenage way, but this is the kicker! He TOTALLY DOES NOT UNDERSTAND how darn GOOD he has it! Mom was so much harder on me when I was his age! (She admits it!) And now Troy's bitching about how he has to come home "at 5:45pm for dinnnnneeer, like Moooooommmmm, I don't waaannnnnaaaaa, and maybe I'll come home after 6pm instead? OK? You're lucky if I come home at 6pm! Whiiiinnnneeeee." And Mom is like "Be home at 5:45pm or come home RIGHT NOW AND LOSE YOUR CAR." She be the awesome.

Fourthly, I abandoned Nick at school so I didn't have to wait 2 1/2 hours for his class to get out, and now I feel bad. Except he has my car. So hah!

Fiftly, this list sucks. I need to go eat something. And watch a movie and veg.

Sixthly, I am going to do some homework because that is how awesome I am. Nutrition, here I come!!!

Mental Note: ZzzzZzzzZ

A brilliant fact I just figured out on my own:

DO NOT DRINK THE EQUIVALENT OF THREE OR FOUR CUPS OF COFFEE AT STARBUCKS BEFORE TRYING TO SLEEP. My venti caramel macchiato and my tall white mocha (and my Subway soda) all combined to keep me awake until about one. I have gotten five somethin' hours of sleep. AWESOME.

BRING IT, Anatomy!

Gaaaaahhh!!! VentiCaramelMacchiato Plus TallMocha Gaaaahhhh!!!

There are a lot of bones in the human body. Also foramens, fossa, (fossi?) and other things that I cannot think of because I just left a study group (at Starbucks! My brain is over-caffeinated!!!) and big words are jumbled together and I keep randomly pulling things like "canaliculi" and "synarthrosis" and "temporal process of the zygomatic bone" out of nowhere. Oh! If anybody is wondering about that sneaky eleventh organ system that you just cannot remember, it is the lymphatic system. (Ten minutes of going over every system in the body with a friend and we just COULD. NOT. REMEMBER IT.)

Also, Troy and I went through HUNDREDS of Grandma's music books (which is really only about half of them) and inhaled dust and hurt our backs and now we have some of our own and a LOT of boxes of music are going to the Music Teachers Association and I feel kind of sorry for them because that is a LOT of music to deal with. (But YES! So long as we don't have to figure out what to do with it...SCORE!)

Now, I think I am going to take a bath and mule over different types of joints and why the heck a synarthrosis joint doesn't have the synovial fluid, it is the diarthrosis joing that has synovial fluid, and that just screws with my head a bit too much.

Test tomorrow AGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Car Troubles

I love my boyfriend. ^_^

For lots of reasons, but the big one today is he knows what to do when a car dies, (and he knows how to change hoses, and other weird mechanical stuffs that I have no clue about) but today when my car's battery died he didn't do the panickyness like I do and he fixed it. And then he bought me a new car battery. And he's gonna install it! Yay! He also knows how to take a Grumpy Katie and make her laugh and turn into a Happy Katie.

In other news, I had four plus hours of NOTHING TO DO at school in between classes breaks and had to killlllll people because I had no good books to read, and I studied Anatomy for 2 hours in my car and had 3 hours of Anatomy class and then had upset tummy and got too hot.

But now I'm home with mac-n-cheese (homemade!) and it is all better!

Cough. Wheeze. Sniff.

I am still sick. And I am sick of being sick. Luckily the fever resolved itself within a day, and now I am merely stuck with the usual cold symptoms: snot, snot, and more snot. Also a very, very sore throat that is swollen this morning. And fatigue. I am tiiiired.