November 26, 2006

Ummm..hi? I haven't written in here in forever..or so it feels. I have a lot of updating to do. Let's see. I'll start with my birthday. I was going into my birthday feeling a little blue. Not b/c of the whole age thing at all, but b/c it sucks being sooo far away from family/friends around important occasions. Seriously sucks. I can't evven describe it..it just sucks. But Dave rocked it. He brought me up some cake at work including candles that wouldn't blow out. Nice. His birthday gift to me was a killer vertical briefcase that is perfect for music, and a palm pilot. We went out for awesome western massages in Bangkok. We actually went to the hotel where everyone stayed at before the wedding. Being there again was fun in itself. We decided we're going to start going there on the weekends to get some pool time! Oh yeah. But the most memorable part of my birthday was our dinner. We went to a great teppanyaki place downtown. We drank lots of sake and I had filet mignon and lobster for dinner. Yeah..hello! So at some point Dave goes to the bathroom and sneaks to tell the waitresses it's my birthday to see if they'll do something. Dessert comes around and sure enough they bring out a mango cheesecake (how did they know that mango and cheescake are my 2 favorite food groups?). There's a little bar of white choclolate that says "happy birthday, Leslie." And of course they start singing the real version of happy birthday. When they get to my name is where this story gets hilarious. Instead of attempting to say my name they sing "happy birthday dear raaa raaa." Oh my gosh! I DIED! It was the funniest thing ever. They were standing right behind me so it was super loud. And while the whole restaurant was clapping I was crying laughing so hard. Oh yeah! It really ranked up there with my Mexico birthday expereience. Gosh, that was a while ago but one of my favorite stories from Mexico. I think this would have been November of 2002. Yeah. So I go out with friends to a karaoke bar and nothing is in english, literally except for Britney Spears "oops, I did it again." Yeah, only my favorite song at the time. haha. So I'm all signed up and am only on tequila number 2 when they call my name. I'm thinking "shoot..I need one mroe tequila and then I'm good to go." But there's no time. So I run up on stage and the room is totally packed, there's even a little stage up front. I start singing and I swear, it was the funniest thing in the world. A swarm of people comes up to the front of the stage and is acting as if I'm in fact, Britney Spears. They were screaming and cheering and blowing kisses. HA! It was soo funny. And then once they found out it was my birthday..the traditional Las Manzanitas comes on and the whole dang bar is singing. Another tradition at a birthday party is to line up to give a hug to the birthday person. And line up they did. The line extended the length of the bar, and they kept cirlcing back to the end of the line, meanwhile my friend is overseeing the hugging and making sure no one gets to comfy. haha...it was sooooo hilare. HILARE!

Enough birthday-stuff. So what else has been going on..we had an amazing thanksgiving at a really excellent brewery. THe sweet potato thing rocked as did the pumpkin bread pudding..hello! So we had a great time and are just in the swing of the semester. I can't think of anything else to write about...it'll come to me soon. See ya.

November 9, 2006

Oh yeah, go donkeys! Dave and I are going to have a blue party this weekend. Pretty much a good excuse to make a batch of cupcakes...but with blue frosting. YAY! I was soo not expecting that. After the huge dissapointment from the last election. Oh man! I almost want to move back now! And Rumsfeld! Holy cow! There's reason to smile today..that's for sure. I'm not even really into the democrats, I'm just so happy there's a balance. I'm all about the balance. Enough of that.

We're having a good week back. We had a free afternoon on Tuesday so we took a trip to Bangkok. Dropped off our stupid broken video camera..I hate JVC, saw "The Wicker Man"....ummm hi? Totally lame. Had a great dinner and saw the Bangkok Symphony perform. "An Inconvienent Truth" is coming out here this weekend. That is on our to-do list.

So our trip home rocked. Going anywhere usually rocks. But this trip especially. The wedding reception was a blast. The food and wine were sooooooo good. It was a whirlwind weekend, with family and friends flying in and out. Man, I was saying this the whole time but I'm so glad we didn't have a weekend wedding! Crazy. I was exhausted and there was no wedding involved! Anyway, it was awesome to see everyone and it was fun to re-celebrate our wedding. We've totally already planned our 1st anniversary trip...well, really we've planned our first 5 anniversaries. hahaha..we're going to use all our sweet new camping gear and break it in for anniversary #1!

We also took a trip to L.A. I haden't been there since 2002! Crazy. We stayed with family and saw "Doubt," a must-see play. Had some amazing new food and our favorites like DeeDee Ries (sp?). Dave showed me around UCLA and I showed him around USC. We tried to count all the events that we were both at during our undergrads. I think we counted up to 5 concerts/events that we were both at, at the sametime. Nuts! We took the scenic route on the way down, saw the ridiculous Hearst Castle, did some wine tasting and stayed in a little coastal town. So fun. The whole time we were both experiencing moments of glaring culture shock. It's weird..being in the U.S. on vacation, I feel like a foreigner. I move slower and find myself talking more to strangers...mostly excited that I can communicate without using bad English, but weird nonetheless. It's so weird. People are loud, and eat a lot. haha.

What else happened...man, feels like we were busy every second but I can't remember doing what. There's always loads of errands to do. OK..I'm running on low. My jet lag hits me around 8pm. Last night I fell asleep at 8:30pm and slept until 6:30am. Sweet. Oh, we got sonicare toothbrushes...they pretty much are my new favorite invention. YAY!

November 5, 2006

We made it back to Thailand. I'm not really in the mood to write out our amazing few weeks in the states. We just unpacked and got settled at home. It's really weird to be back here...in a good way, I think. We'll see. School starts tomorrow and I'm sure I'll have some time at work this week to write more about out trip. Sweet.