White Christmas

Hi! So I know that it's been a while since I've updated this blog, which is why I'm adding this entry in now (one of my new year's resolutions is to update this more regularly).

I'm not sure what to say 'cuz so much has happened since the last entry. We bought a new loft in the Marina Del Rey in early November and we moved all our stuff there a couple weeks before Thanksgiving. It's a huge place with 17 foot tall ceilings and a mezzanine level that we chose to cover in hardwood flooring. We just got the drapes installed on the big wall, which is a wonderful thing 'cuz we've been having to live in the loft with a few uncovered windows. Kitty also seems to like the new place as well since there's so much space for her to run around and act cat-like.

For Thanksgiving, Nick and I went to New York to visit his family and to celebrate the holidays with them. We worked out of the New York office during that time and that was fun. The office moved to Chelsea and is huge...so huge that it's common for the employees to ride on razor scooters from one end to the other. Thanksgiving dinner was great--a lot of food was made and a lot of leftovers, including a lot of squash, which I tried to eat more than my fair share of, but had to stop after my 3rd serving of it.

Oh, so there's a wonderful story of our trip to drop off Kitty at the cat kennel before we left for New York. We decided to go with a much closer kennel since driving to Burbank took too much time, but the traffic was so bad that night, that we might as well have driven to Burbank instead. Anyway, Kitty was unhappy the entire time she was in the crate and partway through our trip, she sprayed. And then about 10 minutes later, she pooped in the crate!!! So Nick and I are driving through traffic trying to find our way to a kennel that we've never been to and sitting with a very dirty and smelly cat. We finally make it to the kennel, so I told Nick to go in and ask them if they would take our cat in her current condition, and while he was doing that, I took Kitty out of the carrier and put her in my lap. Nick comes back to the car to tell me that we're at the wrong kennel, so now we have a filthy cat walking around loose in our car. During the time it took to go from that kennel to the kennel that we were supposed to go to, I held Kitty down, thus covering myself in kitty sewage...it was wonderful :(. But, the kennel was very nice and said that they've experienced such disasters and told us that it was fine to leave our cat with them, which was a very big relief. We've now decided that for any car travel with our cat, we'll just let her roam the car (she hasn't sprayed yet...).

Last weekend, we had the holiday office party at the El Rey Theatre. The theme of the night was "old vegas," so there were various table games and a Sinatra impersonator. According to many people at the party, the highlight was going to be the "office guitar hero tournament finals." During the entire work week preceding this party, the office held a guitar hero tournament (if you have no idea what Guitar Hero is, read this). For the finals, it was me and one of our friends in the office, and we were going to play our final match on stage at this theatre with the sound piped into the theatre audio system. I've never been to this theatre before, but I've been told that many famous musicians have graced the stage, so being able to "play" on the same stage was a really awesome feeling. So the finals started and finished...I beat Rob and am now being called the "guitar hero champion" around the office (I had to go to my boss to assure her that I do spend time in my office doing real work). What was amusing was that earlier this week, my boss bought the game for her brother and asked me to teach her how to play the game...so we went up to the game room where I tried to mentor her. Anyway, no one wants to play me at the game, so now I've been forced into retirement and can only coach :(.

Currently, Nick and I are in Tahoe with Nick's family--later we'll fly to Seattle to be with my family and friends for my birthday and New Years. Nick's happy 'cuz he was able to ski for one day here, and that might be the only day he's skiing 'cuz the weather reports supposedly aren't very favorable for skiing conditions.

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and now it's been waaaaaaay past when all the events above happened, so Ii'll continue summarizing:

Seattle was great...Nick and I played a lot of maj jongg. We celebrated my birthday at a nice Japanese restaurant. For New Year's we went to Emily and Joshua's new apartment and played some games, which was a lot of fun. It was nice to see everyone again, especially 'cuz we're not sure when the next time we'd be in Seattle.

After we came home, we finally had some people over to our new place. And then a couple of weeks later, we held our long overdue housewarming party. Unfortunately, we gave our invitees less than a week's notice, so only 1/3 of them showed up, but it was still great to have them all over and socialize.

Last weekend, Nick and I went to Vegas. We had originally reserved a suite in the Luxor, but we didn't know that there were two towers next to the Luxor--we thought all the rooms were in the Pyramid. So, not only were we disappointed that we were in the tower, we were also stuck on the first floor. Nick complained to the front desk and was able to get an upgrade to a much bigger suite in the Pyramid on the 29th floor, which was soooooooooo much better.

The next day, we saw "O." It was a spectacular show with amazing acrobatics and choreography. We weren't sure about all of the plot and what each character was supposed to represent, but it was still an amazing show. The next morning, we went to the Aladdin to get our facials at the spa. It was our first facials, and we both had peels and random other crap put on our faces...Nick didn't believe it was worth it at all, but I enjoyed it. Anyway, the entire trip was tons of fun...costly, but fun.

And now the next big thing is the Google ski trip up in Squaw Valley on Tuesday. I'll tell you how that goes in the next blog post...