Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Even in these tough economic times, we still have soooooo much to be thankful for.

I actually had 2 Thanksgivings. One with my family and one with Nanci's very large extended family. I can say that I'm officially stuffed enough that I can go into hibernation until spring.

Note: Notice the beautiful bird-of-paradise napkins? Courtesy of our napkin folding practice at the Boys and Girls Club charity dinner.

Looking forward to this week.

Here is next week by the numbers:
3 Days of Work
2 Days Off (creating a 4 day weekend)
2 Thanksgivings (My family's and Nanci's)
1 Black Friday to avoid

Then I need to start preparing my Christmas wishlist. Don't worry though, being a minimalist the list will be short. My family just wants to know what to get someone that doesn't really want anything. Because I could always use another motorized ice cream cone spinner. *that's sarcasm...so don't actually get me a motorized ice cream cone spinner, mom and dad*

Can't go wrong with the Old Spaghetti Factory

Last night Jonathan, Aaron, Stephanie, Nanci and I went to Riverside to hang out with Rebecca (Stephanie's twin sister and a student at UCR). We started off the night with a tour of Becca's apartment which was small but quite nice. Then we got to see where she works, which is about 50 feet from her apartment, at the rental office.


We were all pretty hungry, but still wanted a good value, so we decided to go to the Old Spaghetti Factory to enjoy a nice meal. After finishing everything on our plate, we went back to the apartment to play board and card games and enjoy some delicious Reeses peanut butter cup ice cream. Of course no night or weekend would be complete without someone needing computer help. So I helped Becca with some of her laptop issues before the night was over.

Hanging out in her cozy apartment brought me back to the days when I used to share a small apartment with Mikael. It's always good to remember where you've been, to see how far you've come.

Boys & Girls Club charity auction

This weekend Nanci and I attended the Boys & Girls Club charity auction at Pechanga. Since Wim is a board member he had a table reserved with a couple of extra seats. There were tons of gift baskets and items such as autographed guitars to bid on at the silent auction, but nothing that really stood out. Although there was a mini "chopper" motorcycle that caught our eyes.


It wasn't quite our style. Now if it was a scooter, I definitely would have put in a bid.

Once we were seated at our table we enjoyed some good food and enjoyed entertainment by the kids. They were really good for how young they were (ages 10-17). Then they had the live auction portion of the auction, with a real auctioneer. "TwentyfivehundrendTwentyfivehundredDoIHaveAThree...S-O-L-D..BAM!" Quite entertaining.

Since the items being auctioned off were a bit more than my budget, we began folding napkins into various designs.




At one point our waiter came up and asked if we'd worked catering services before. Haha

At the close of the event my mom and Wim ended up walking out with about 6 or 7 different items and gave Nanci their Catalina island trip with 6 hours of golf cart rental as a thank you for house sitting last month. So you can look forward to a Catalina blog post in the future. ;)

I Voted

I participated in our country's democratic process and voted!
We'll see how right I was in just a few hours...Just kidding, that's not what it's all about.

And for what it's worth, I wrote in Ron Paul.

Now I just need to be on a jury and I'll have completed my civic duties.

Just What I Needed

After a long and tiring week of getting up early, staying up late, having multiple off site trainings, and juggling work and school...I was finally able to do the things I had pushed back and catch up on sleep, thanks to this weekend.

Unfortunately, this wasn't one of my every-other-Friday-off weekends where I get a 3 day weekend, so I needed to make the most of it.

Here's a daily list of what I did.

Saturday
Slept in 'til 10AM
Mowed the Lawn
Cleaned around the House
Rode Scooter into town with Nanci and...
-had dinner at Gyros and Kabobs
-bought a housewarming gift (2 Scented Candles)
-went to Nanci's house to pickup a gift bag
Went to housewarming party (nice house Johnny D.)
Left the party to get rest 4 tomorrow

Sunday
Thank you time change (extra hour of sleep)!
Church at 10AM
Lunch at Nanci's house
Homework
Scoot-scoot over to my Dad's house for dinner

All caught up on sleep, Hooray!

Note: Is there anything you can't use cats to express???