Work Garden

Today at work I came in the office to find these gorgeous hydrangeas!
It was for administrative persons week, since I type and do a lot of paper related work. We once knew it as secretary's week, before that it was servant week.
But, these sure made my day and I am hoping that they will transfer nicely to my empty
flower beds.

Upgraded

This weekend went by way too fast, but then again most weekends do. Friday, we checked out a Thai restaurant down the street that is in part of a motel. It was delicious, and we will definitely be going there again. I got my favorite: Chicken Pad Thai and we had wonton appetizers that I could eat all the time. Saturday, we took a trip down to Long Beach to visit a book store because I had a huge bag of books to trade in. The store was a warehouse of dusty shelves and precarious shelves of books, which was fun to go through, although the prices on the used books did not impress me. I traded in quite a lot of books and they only gave me a credit of 20 bucks. Lucky for them I was just not in the mood to barter and took their meek credit and got two books. The next book place I want to try out is Bookaneer in the valley which I heard is pretty good. In the evening we hung out down at Old Tony's on the pier and watched the sunset...three pic at top is in Old Tony's. I like going there when you can grab a table looking right out over the end of the pier and the ocean, and you can feel the entire pier move with the waves if you sit still for a while.









Today, we hung out with the neighbors cat and took pictures at the ocean for a school project called "Flat Stan" that a relative sent for us to do. We took a pic of him surfing. Then, I finally got a new cell phone. I had been hanging onto a phone that I got back in 1999. Yikes is all I can say about that....time to turn in the grey brick and get something a little more updated, so I got myself a pink razor. :)

Hope you had a Happy Bunny Day!

Finally got out this weekend! Saturday, spent the day at the Museum of Natural History located in the heart of downtown LA. They had a special exhibit called Sonic Scenery-music for collections where you could rent headphones and stroll through the museum and each different exhibit had a soundtrack to go along with it. It had music by Autolux, Nels Cline, Ozomatli, Matmos and more.
So, of course we signed up! It was very cool! I think my favorite music was Ozomatli in the Cenozoic Fossils room although I think one of the coolest exhibits was the Gem & Mineral room. The special collection on display was the Bog People and featured mummies and artifacts that were found in the bogs of Northern Europe. Creepiest aspect was that most of the people found in the bog were violently killed.
In the morning before the museum, we caught up with some friends that we had not seen in a long time. They are both high profile people in the entertainment industry and they had us meet them at IHOP......at IHOP of all places...but this IHOP does have valet parking, so I guess that does say something.
Today, being easter we went out to breakfast with a friend and hung out outside taking a walk down by the ocean, here are some plant pics:
We then headed up north to celebrate easter with family in the valley. Rita's is the place to be on a holiday. We had ham and grilled filet mignon and things got out of control with all the kids and the different languages that are spoken at our get togethers. Half the family is from Columbia and most of the kids are bilingual, but they often will only listen to one language and ignore you if you speak the other. Believe me, they are crafty, but very cute. The food was fantastic and it is always great to see the relatives....we are all so busy that we really only see each other on the holidays. :(

Working 9 to forever

I have not been able to update lately because I have been glued to my computer at work for the past week. My eyes are close to bugging out right now. Ack.
It happened last week. I was working on graphics and advertisements in a catalog that I am putting together for an event at work. I had 82 pages and was working really well on it when all of a sudden the file crashes and states that it is corrupted.....
I calmly call IT and ask if I can get the back-up from the day before....unfortunately I discover that our IT department has not been backing up our departments server since 2004.
So, this last weekend and most of this week I ended up working on creating a brand new catalog. Tonight I came home and sat on the balcony with a book to decompress. I am really looking forward to this weekend and some relaxation. :) I definitely need to try and find the digital camera that has gone MIA...I have no idea where we put it. I hope to find it soon so I can inundate this site with photos.

My evening with a Nobel Laureate

This afternoon one of my co-workers offered her tickets to the distinguished speakers presentation this evening. These tickets are hard to come by and members must buy the entire season to have these tickets. Tonight's presenter happened to be Mikhail Gorbachev.
Before the presentation, audience members could fill out a small index card with any questions that they would like Gorbachev to answer during the Q&A. They only pick ten questions out of the entire audience so I thought there was little chance that I would be chosen.
The start of his speech was a little unnerving as there was a translator that spoke right over his words. It took me quite a while to be comfortable with that, but it was such an interesting speech. I am now very interested in Gorbachev's environmental organization, Green Cross International.
It was also really refreshing to hear someone's take on US and International Politics that is not swayed by the media.
At Q&A time, out of the many questions that were submitted...MINE was one of them. I had the only non-political question and I could definitely tell that Gorbachev was refreshed to have a different question. I asked, "Growing up, what was your greatest aspiration?", to which he replied that all he wanted to do while growing up was learn, because his parents were peasants with no education and he grew up in an environment that was poor and not encouraging to in-depth study. After this evenings interesting speech, I believe that I would like to have tea with Gorbachev (and his translator). He handled the questions very well, especially when he was asked to compare the present Bush and the former Bush...the audience moaned at this question...Gorbachev calmly said, "I will leave that to the American public to compare, but I do know they have one relation...they are father and son. Oh, that Mikhail, he sure is funny.

Another fabulous weekend. We kept hearing of rain, but received none. Saturday, we walked down to the pier during the day and had fun at the "Fun Factory" playing one of my favorites...skeeball.
Saturday evening took us up into LA for a birthday party at "Mandarette" for Chinese and then over to a friend's house a couple of blocks away for a nightcap. Sunday, I woke up late thanks to daylight savings, grabbed the backpack chair and a book and went down to sit on the beach. I just started "Toyko Cancelled" by Rana Dasgupta (I totally remembered that name). So far the book is fantastic, great beach read because it contains a lot of little stories that are easy to start and stop.
The view was really nice and we have visitor in our bay area...a naval battleship is sitting pretty right off the shoreline for a little visit and supposedly a show for the school kids in the area.
Back in the office today and I am going strong on trying to get a mass mailing out today....hopefully it will not take us too long.