two and a half weeks in 346 seconds - go!

Three biggies:

1 - Rob's 28th birthday! My honey is getting old...
We celebrated with a whole mess of fellow troublemakers at Rock Bottom. Happy hour lasted three solid hours in honor of Rob's birthday. The sun was blazing when we arrived and it was dark when we left...whoops. Naturally, my camera died immediately after taking this photo:



2 - introducing...the Ring!
Rob and I moved from Casa Saratoga to a teeny tiny minuscule little studio in Sunnyvale. There are lots of wins in this: A - driving the Matter horn twice a day is a thing of the past B - when Rob's away at school, I'll have tons of room to romp (annnnnd its really not bad with two of us here...) C - we're 3 blocks from downtown Sunnyvale and not far from downtown Mountain View and D - Summer lives a block and a half away. No joke.

Why has it been dubbed "the Ring", you ask? Our studio measures 410 square feet, and we saw nothing but a floor plan before renting the place. As you can imagine, me + one month lead time on a move = over planning to the extreme. I can attest that its quite difficult to plan and re-plan your furniture layout without a reference to the size of the room. In attempts to discover what else on earth might be 410 square feet, I turned to Mr. Internet, who informed me that a boxing ring is typically 20'x20'. Yup. We live IN a boxing ring.

our front door's on the right
(interior pics on their way, once we clear out the cardboard jungle)

we tossed a few boxes into our new pad and practically sprinted downtown to our fave Wednesday night haunt: Murphy's Law. moving can wait, I have beers to drink and bbq to eat.

3 - Fourth of July. Go big or go home.
After a lazy morning of farmers marketing and unpacking our apartment, we joined Summer, Katie and John for a no-pool-pool-party at Casa LG. Usually, np3's are laid-back affairs, with no one getting, shall we say, out of control. This was the exception of all exceptions.

To sum it up briefly, five people killed two 30-packs of beer, ate all of two frozen pizzas, christened K&J's triple beer-bong Sally Jesse Raphael, somehow got ahold of sparklers (Casa LG still stands) and greeted Sum's sis Faryn with a bathing suit-clad rendition of "kum-menih-yayhaaah!" from Saving Silverman. (side note: Faryn just returned from 6 weeks in Vietnam...and the first thing we do? Ask her to go on a beer run for us. Winners.) Let's point out: no one drove home, we were safely contained, and Sunday was a much mellower day for all involved...

meet Sally. she'll rock her signature red glasses soon, don't you fret...

(and yes, we were drinking Bud Light. it was practically free)


Faryn brought us keychains from Vietnam...who ever said there's no sense of humor over there?

To protect the reputations of folks featured in the 897 photos taken on the Fourth, you get three psuedo-shots. Its probably for your benefit, anyways...

let the no-pool-pool-parties begin...

On Memorial Day, we fulfilled two of our must-haves upon returning to the US: barbequed meat and a no-pool-pool-party. It would be the first of many to come this summer, and we kicked 'em off right.

Summer did me proud by arranging all the food and drinks, including the newly beloved beverage sangria. She kicked some serious ass. The sangria was phenomenal, particularly when paired with Psycho Donuts as an appetizer. Two versions of my famous Nic Dip, Joyce's clam dip, and the boozy fruit in the sangria further filled our tummies. Dooglass barbequed up some fabulous burgers, and we completely stuffed ourselves.

At typical no-pool-pool-parties, we play kickball and flip cup, but we were in mellow mode for this one. Flip cup ended after three quiet rounds, and kickball just never really materialized. We were whooped, and ready to head up to Casa Saratoga to see KaliLou and get some rest. Little did I know that Summer had a trick up her sleeve to celebrate all the fun things that've happened of late...birthdays and a graduation. She picked up a delicious guava cake, and we all got goodie bags (which may have been even more fun to create than to own...although my new cheerleader-dog notepad rocks). All in all, it was a perfect day and precisely what we needed. Yay for home.

flip cup team B: Jen, John, Katie and Rob

flip cup team A (aka my team): Pay, Fargo, Summer, and me

that's right, you do see a(n): slapbracelet, hamburger/hotdog/blt erasers, pushpop, rubber ducky, popper, doggie notebook, wax lips, Pez dispenser, finger monster, stick on earrings, temporary tattoo, nerds, poprocks, 'let's party' pencil with eraser top, and high school musical stickers on my goodie bag

((not pictured, but in attendance - because we keep attendance at these things: Joyce, Doug, Kellie, and Joe...woot! noteworthy noshows: Whit and Ryno...fail))