Ihilani, Here We Come!

Yay, we're checking into the Ihilani this afternoon! I still need to finish packing! I'm still feeling a little under the weather, but it could be worse. I just can't seem to get rid of the congestion. Maybe the fresh air out there will be just what I need. See you all in a couple of days!

I'm Sick :o(

Ugh. It has finally happened. I haven't been sick in a really long time. Aside from that stomach bug I had last July, I'd say it's been over a year. Brian is finally getting over being sick for 2 weeks.

On Sunday, I woke up with a sore/itchy throat. I took Monday off of work (planned vacation), in celebration of our anniversary. I still had the sore throat, loaded up on Benedryl, and took a nap. When I got up from my nap, the sore throat was gone, but I had some sinus congestion. Aside from having plugged ears, I felt better on Tuesday and went to work.

Yesterday morning, I woke up feeling worse than Tuesday with a sore throat and headache. I decided to stay home since I really wanted to get over this (whatever it is) before our Ihilani weekend! I spent much of the day sleeping. By the time I went to bed, my nose was running and I had a bad headache.

I woke up this morning not feeling much better than I did yesterday. Ugh. My ears are plugged, my nose is stuffy, I have a headache, and I'm feeling a little light-headed/dizzy. I'm thinking I feel dizzy because I basically slept all day yesterday and now I'm up and about. At least my nose has stopped dripping. :P

I feel like going home and resting some more, but, sadly, I don't have a whole lot of sick leave. I'm pretty much right at my lowest comfortable level of sick leave since I took yesterday off. I could burn some annual leave, but, again, I want to keep that at a certain level. *sigh* We'll see how the rest of the morning goes. I think I'm stressing myself out a little since I really don't want to be sick this weekend while we're at the Ihilani. :(

Our Anniversary Cake!

(This is the follow-up to the previous post Our Upcoming 1st Anniversary: Cake.)

Our cake was wrapped up in this pretty pink bow

Cake (before)

Cake (after)

Yummy!

In honor of our anniversary (and since we didn't bother saving our top tier), we contacted our cake vendor, Tiers of Joy, and had Leigh make us a little 6" round anniversary cake in our wedding day flavor. It was White Chocolate Raspberry, complete with fresh raspberries, whole white chocolate chips, and white chocolate mousse. Mmmm, it tasted just like how I remember it 1 year ago! We picked it up on Monday.

Oh, and it was only $15! We've cut it into 8, decent-sized slices. By my calculations, that should last us until Thursday. Definitely worth the price. Waaay better than anything we would have normally picked up at Zippy's. :P

Surprise Anniversary Gift: Revealed

Brian bought me an anniversary band, so now I have a 3 ring set! He's very sneaky. I didn't even know he had bought it and had been hiding it in our tiny townhouse the week before our anniversary. I was actually looking for something the other day in our "office" and Brian actually got kind of irritated, asking why I needed what I was looking for so badly. It all makes sense now. He didn't want me snooping around and accidentally finding this little box! :D He's the best!

Cute little wrapped box with a pretty blue bow

The ring on the right is my surprise gift!

This is how it looks all together. The ring on the bottom is my wedding ring and the ring on top is my anniversary ring.

Our 1st Anniversary!

I need to get a post in for today! Today is our 1st wedding anniversary! We spent a quiet evening at home, after I got home from work. I hoped we would be able to watch our wedding video and slideshow, but there just wasn't enough time tonight.

I made a big pot of spaghetti, one of Brian's favorite dishes I make. We watched some TV, had a slice of wedding anniversary cake, and that was pretty much it.

I'll post more about our cake and my surprise gift tomorrow. Must head off to bed now!

Surprise Anniversary Gift!

Any guesses?

Dry Embossed Butterfly

Another friend of mine at work is getting married early next month. Her theme is butterflies and her color is a nice Carolina/Cornflower blue, which is one of my favorite colors and was also one of my wedding colors.

I decided, once again, to try out another design and get some exposure. I'm going to give her a set of these as a surprise gift. Who knows, maybe she'll be able to use them as Thank You cards!

The light blue background is "Blue Bell", the dark blue shimmery accent paper is called "Lapis Lazuli", and the embossing is done on "Virtual Pearl" which shimmers in a blue color.

A different color combo for the butterfly. The possibilities are endless!

Dry Embossed "Ai"

I made this for this girl in my office who's getting married at the end of this month. My boss asked me to plan a surprise luncheon for her and get a card to pass around the office.

Although I really am not close to this girl, no one else would do it. My other co-workers are all guys and the only other female in my office and this bride-to-be don't like each other.

Anywho, I saw this as an opportunity to try out a new design and sort of advertise my services. I suppose the more exposure I can get, the more opportunities might come along.

My little brother pointed out to me that in the Japanese culture, black cards are normally used for funerals. I had a feeling this might be the case before I made the card, but the girl's wedding color is red, she's having an Asian theme, and kanji is always written in black ink. So, a black card background worked out the best. Oh well.

White Chocolate Decadence

I had this at Chili's the other night. OMG. It was heaven! I think I nearly made myself sick from all the sugar, but it was so worth it! I've had the regular chocolate one before, but most of you may know that I absolutely LOVE white chocolate. I was even lucky enough to have a white chocolate raspberry wedding cake! I really hope they keep this dessert around permanently.

Brian is sick...

...or something. Poor thing. He cleaned the house last week Friday because we invited some friends over for a pot luck on Saturday. He must have stirred up some vicious dust because he had a bad allergy attack. What's worse is that he still had to go into work on Friday night.

By Saturday, he had an itchy/sore throat. He's still pretty congested today. I hope this doesn't develop into a sinus infection.

The vog and non-existent trade winds have not been helping, either. Vog is a vicious and terrible thing.

I woke up this morning with allergy issues. Itchy, watery eyes, sneezing and just an over-all "fuzzy" feeling in my head. Ugh. I hope it passes and pray for tradewinds!!!

It's been a while....

Yes, we are still alive. I've been MIA from the laptop a lot lately. Just don't have the energy to turn it on when I get home. Work has been...a challenge. I was told by a co-worker the other day that she didn't want to deal with me and my "frustration" and would rather work alone on a project we were assigned to. Basically, she defines "frustration" as me providing input and questioning if there are other approaches we can explore, i.e. I won't turn off my brain and blindly follow her like a sheep. Wow. How professional. What's ironic is that she asked my boss if I could please help her with this project that she originally volunteered for because she now realizes she's in over her head. So, I told my boss what she said and that I didn't think I could provide her with the kind of help she's seeking. When she asked for help, what she was really looking for was a minion who would take direction and do her bidding. Now, I'm off the hook. Thank goodness. Sociopaths still amaze me.

Good looking bunch, eh?

(L to R: younger brother Steven, me, older brother Ryan)
I've been thinking a lot about my family lately and thought I'd post this photo of me and my brothers. See where all the tall genes went?! This was taken back in 2005. It was providence that we ran into each other at Zippy's after so long. I'm hoping we get to take an updated photo soon!

Guitar Hero III

We got sucked in. :P This is how we're wasting our precious time these days. :P It's insane. My little brother has the Wii version and let us borrow it for the weekend. The hubby got addicted and decided to get the Xbox version for us.

I must say that the graphics and sounds are a lot better on the Xbox version than with the Wii version.

On to GameStop. I picked this up today after work. Took it home, hubby opened it up about an hour after I got home. It looked dirty, crud stuck in the crevices, looked used (I paid the "NEW" price), scuffed, and the strum bar didn't work. So there we were, 2 hours after I purchased this thing, hauling ass back to GameStop to exchange it before Brian had to go to work. The guy who helped us was really cool about it, but his wise-ass co-worker (I think he was a superior) said, "You know, next time if something is wrong with the guitar, you need to deal directly with the manufacturer. Oh, by the way, the Xbox guitars are known to have problems." WTF?!

VOTE for our Wedding Photo!!!

Petal Toss at Paradise Cove Crystal Chapel
Photo by Michelle Davies
Please VOTE for this wedding photo taken by the talented Michelle Davies!!!

Here's the deal...

Our wedding photographer, Mark Nomura, brought along his friend and fellow photographer, Michelle Davies, to help shoot our ceremony. Michelle was super sweet and I really enjoyed having her help us on our Big Day.

I don't know the whole story, but the above photo was taken by Michelle and it has made it into the Wedding Photography Directory's 2008 Wedding Photography Contest as a Top 100 Finalist!

As you can see in the photo, Brian is making the funkiest face, which is why I'm pleasantly surprised to see this photo as a finalist in any contest! I think he was desperately trying to avoid being blinded by a rose petal to the eye. :P

Michelle never contacted me about this and we aren't getting any kind of perks from this. Just a little disclaimer. I just think it's cool that a photo of our little ol' wedding is in a contest. It's even more cool considering some of the other dramatic photos we're up against. But, I love how natural our photo is and that it truly is a moment captured in time. (Dior, stop me before I get up on my soap box!)

I would also like to give Michelle a little plug. She takes some really awesome photos and I'm happy that she could share in our special day. Check out these links:

• Michelle's photography business, I Do Believe
• I Do Believe's Blog

Thanks for letting me share and special thanks to Dior and Lisa for letting me know about the contest!!!

Crazy Bosses

Work seems to suck the life out of me. I work on projects that seem to have no end and have all the signs of being doomed for failure from the get-go. I work for 2 "Wimpy, Disaster Hunters". Both terms are explained in the book "Crazy Bosses" by Stanley Bing.


HERE is a Honolulu Advertiser article on the book. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Woe to the worker who has a wimpy boss. Such a manager often hides under paperwork. He or she also is fond of meetings — long ones. The wimpy boss also will abandon support of an underling if upper management comes attacking. "A wimp is a terrible burden for those who work beneath him, capable of prodigiously manipulative behavior and cowardice that poisons a normal employee's ability to function," according to Bing. "Those who work for a wimp may find themselves making the decisions he won't make, taking the risks he won't take."

Finally, there is the disaster hunter. This type of boss doesn't listen to reason. Instead, he or she will pursue inadvisable strategies, from bad acquisition to outrageous sexual liaisons without heeding warnings.

HERE is a blog by the author I stumbled upon today. Looks interesting and may just be the levity I need today.

UPDATE on "Weirdness"

I haven't had another incident since last Wednesday night. However, my neighbor, Grant, came by to tell us about some problems building in our area. Grant and his family have lived in their unit for over 10 years and he said things have been getting worse and worse. My delusion of living in a "nice" area was somewhat crushed and the reality of not being immune to druggies and evil-doers finally set in.

Grant told us that he had just come home from work and walked right by a drug deal in progress along the road just outside our townhouse complex. What's scary is there's a small little playground with a jungle gym on this road and I hate to think that children are nearby. This road is not really a high traffic area to cars or pedestrians. The road services 2 townhouse complexes and a very large empty lot, which is supposed to be the future home of some church. On 2 occasions, I did see some strange activity. A while back, I think I witnessed some kind of exchanged on my way home from work. This past Thursday morning at about 5:40AM, I saw a man, dressed in a black t-shirt, black shorts, and slippers (maybe a black cap) crossing our complex driveway, talking on a cell phone. He didn't look familiar.

Grant also told us about a run-in he had with some iceheads, involving gun-fire, last year. We never heard about it because I think we were away for our wedding.

So, I'll just have to be more watchful. I don't want to feel like a prisoner in my own home and it is no where near that level yet. But, I'm just concerned that it will get worse. I live within walking distance of the road I mentioned above so we are more "exposed" than some of the more interior units. It seems no neighborhood is immune to these kinds of things.

I am kind of annoyed, though. For those of you who know where we live, we pay a premium for living in our area and specifically chose our area because we thought it would be safe. We pay a large "maintenance fee" every month to our townhouse association, as well as Town Association dues for being a homeowner in the town we live in. You would think some of that money would be used for security or neighborhood watch-type activities. Hopefully, these things are only happening in the townhouse areas and not in the residential areas with homes.

A new management company took over our townhouse complex and I have not been impressed by them so far. I remember seeing signs for a Neighborhood Watch group for our townhouse complex a while ago, but have not seen anything since the new management group took over.