A Penny For Your Thoughts....

About 15 years ago I started collecting flattened pennies. You know, where you spend 51 cents to get a penny flattened and embossed. I'm not some serious collector, but generally if I see the penny machines, I stop and get one. Maybe two if the designs are good. I know I have gotten more over the years but I didn't always try and keep track of them. A few years ago raine_days gave me a nifty folder to hold my pennies.

It holds 36 pennies and after my trip to Universal Studios last weekend, I have finally filled it up! I have pennies from the Pacific Science Center in Seattle; the Space Needle; the Mariners; Leavenworth, Washington (a "Bavarian" town in Eastern WA); the Mall of America; Wild waves (water park near Seattle); Lake George, NY; Kings Dominion (amusement park in VA); Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum; American History Museum; Natural History Museum; the White House; the National Zoo; the Washington Monument; Oregon Zoo; Chesapeake Bay, MD; Detroit; San Francisco; Sacramento; Redondo Beach, CA; Route 66; Cherokee Nation, OK; and Cedar Point (an amusement park in Ohio). I also have two from London, one from Prague, and one from Rome. Technically those aren't pennies but they are flattened pieces of metal nonetheless!! If anyone took the time to count all the places, you'd realize they don't add up to 36. I do have some duplicates. Anyway, when you are out and about, you now know you can get me a souvenir for 51 cents (sometimes 76 cents at the more pricier locales) and I'll actually be happy!

Of all of these, there is one I wish I would have gotten when I had the chance. At one travel plaza in Maryland you had a choice of a couple designs. I believe I chose the Naval Academy and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. I foolishly skipped over the one with Frank Zappa. It was so awesomely bad!!

Third Time Is A Charm

So this is my third attempt at writing a post tonight. My first two tries both went down in a blaze of glory in magnificant shame spirals. They started out alright but then took a turn for the worse. For whatever reason I am feeling a little emotional. (NOTE: it would be a very bad thing for me to watch "Field of Dreams" or "Delta Force" right about now. I would be bawling. And yes, you read correctly. I really do mean the Chuck Norris / Lee Marvin movie from the 1980s.) I think my self-esteem flatlined around 4:12pm because something very innocuous brought me on the verge of tears. I think my self-esteem is lying in intensive care somewhere. Thankfully there is no DNR, so it will be able to recooperate and get better before I have the chance to completely pull the plug!

Anyway, before the other posts went bad, they were about Facebook and about me wanting to have a party. I was thinking a game night would be fun. I'm just not sure if anyone would be interested in that. I don't won't to delve too much further into the details of those posts for fear of resurrecting the negativity!! Hopefully this hasn't been too much of a Debbie Downer post either!!

Feeling a Little Ho-Hum

I'm glad my friend came to visit but now I am the midst of a post-visit funk. You have no idea how great it was to have someone to hang out with and talk to! I wasn't a hermit. I was being social!! When people ask me what I did over the weekend, I will actually have something to share other than simply saying "it was good" or something to the like which is code for "I didn't do jack except go to Starbucks, Town Square, the grocery store, and maybe Target so I won't bore you with the lack of details." Now it is back to just me and Mandy.

Food Glorious Food...And Some Shopping Too!!

My visit with my friend was great! It seemed like the last 5 days have been nothing but eating and shopping....not that there is anything wrong with that! Friday we went to CPK. Mmm....red velvet cake. The last time we went to CPK was in the ABQ. We were on our way out to Vegas from DC and stopped for lunch in the ABQ (that was also the name of the shopping area) on our drive from Amarillo, TX to Winslow, AZ. That day we both were wearing sweats and t-shirts. It wasn't until we got up to leave CPK that we realized how severely underdressed we were and most other people realized it too! Thankfully this time we were appropriately dressed! Saturday we drove out to LA (well, Pasadena really) and met up with my brother for dinner. We went to the Yardhouse. Now before raine_days arrived, my mom told me that if we met my bro for dinner I could use her credit card to pay for dinner. HOWEVER, that is only if my bro was unaware of my mom's potential generosity. See, if he knew, he would order 4 or 5 imported beers and the most expensive item on the menu without hesitation. Since the bro remained unaware, he ordered clam chowder, crab cake sanwich, and one beer (he had two before we were seated but he foot that bill). But here's the best part! When the check came, he asked me "you still have mom's credit card, right? Why don't you use that?" LOL!!! Oh yeah, my bro is 33 years old - not 13! We also went to a few places I haven't been to before: Kona Grill, the Elephant BAr, and some Mexican place by my house.

When we weren't eating, or visiting Starbucks, we were shopping. We went to the outlet mall by work, Town Square, the outlet mall in Primm, Fashion Show, and the District. Phew! We found some great deals. Raine_days got a blazer/jacket from Ann Taylor Loft, originally priced at $100, for $7!!!! You read that correctly! I got a few tops from there for under $11. It was so cheap we almost felt bad....almost. We bought a few other things here and there. Banana Republic sucked me in once again. Why does blue have to be the "in" color this season??? Don't be surprised if I start wearing blue every day of the (work) week. I think I could go almost a month before repeating a blue shirt. What can I say? It's my "signature" color!

Booty call? I don't THINK so!

So I picked up my friend today and we had a nice afternoon shopping. We went to the premium outlets by work and then to Town Square. We stopped for coffee at one point and I was telling my friend that when she called when her plane landed I was talking with one of my case agents and he was obviously intrigued about who I was talking to. He heard me say how I'd leave work soon and pick this person up at the airport. But then I didn't mention anything about who I was talking to. Then I recounted how I told another guy that "my friend" was coming to town and that we were going to LA for the weekend. That's when it dawned on me - I bet these guys think I was discussing a booty call! I wish! I'll have to make sure I discuss hanging out with my girlfriend (as in a friend who is a girl) when I come back to work next week! But then we joked, knowing the kind of guys we work with, they will be even more intrigued if they think the booty call was from a girl!! I don't know if the humor translated to what I just wrote, but it was funny when we were talking about it!! And FYI - if I had a booty call flying into town, trust me, I would not be discussing that visit with these guys!!

Anyway, we had lunch and went back to my place before heading out to go shopping. When we got home, Mandy was waiting as usual but was NOT purring! She actually shunned my friend and spurned attempts at friendship. And Mandy has met her before! Thankfully though after we came home from dinner Mandy had adjusted her attitude and now wants to be friends. Phew! I thought my litte girl developed an attiude problem!!

MANDATE

What's a Mandate you ask? Why it is an update on my Mandy!! My little girl is practically 5 months old and just as crazy, mischievious, and loveable as ever! She has reverted back to her "bitey" stage as I like to call it. That is where she nips at my feet and hands with her razors, I mean kitten teeth. But then she'll start purring and I'll forget everything. Her latest "trick" is pulling down the shower rod in my guest bathroom. I believe we are up to 5 times now that she has pulled the shower curtain, rod and all, down. This is since Sunday evening.

Mandy also has a taste for paper products - toilet paper, napkins, toilet paper rolls, gum wrappers, and the treat of all treats - paper towels. I have to be careful when the roll gets down to the end because it is light enough for her to bat around. This evening I come home from work to find an empty paper towel roll on the kitchen floor and 6 wet paper towels on the floor. Mandy must have been playing with the roll when an edge of one sheet landed in her water dish. Capillary action did the rest. Ugh. Mandy is also a fan of water from the tap. Most cats I've owned will come running when you call "here kitty kitty." Not Mandy. You just turn on the faucet. Hey! Maybe Mandy turned on the water in my backyard last week and just forgot to tell me?! My favorite is when she comes running in from another room and when I pick her up, her paws are totally wet. She also likes to stick her paws in one of her 4 water dishes. (Is that too many?)

Send in the Clowns

In a little more than two days one of my bestest friends, raine_days, will be in town!!! She gets in Friday morning and leaves Tuesday afternoon. So I will be taking most of Friday and all of Tuesday off from work. However, we will be making a visit to the office on Tuesday. I have mentioned raine_days before (and maybe you have seen her comments from time to time), but to refresh, we became friends our analyst training (we are alphabetically next to each other so we sat next to one another for several weeks). Raine_days is the friend that I can truly show my snarky side to. I can say the most politcally incorrect things - things I would never say around my new co-workers. You would think that I was not such a nice person. Okay, who am I kidding, I'm not a nice person, just in the sense that I don't love everyone and wonder why we can't just all get along. I may be a liberal tree-hugger, however, I draw the line at not shaving my legs and armpits and blaming men for every ill of society. It's not men, but white men.....kidding, kidding. Seriously. It's white men. What? Who's typing here? Must be another bug from facebook.

ANYWAY, once raine_days discovered how I hate clowns she does nothing but get me clowns for "gifts." They are only cool in the sense that they come from around the globe. Well, the OG clown is Bobo. A musical art piece from our very own Las Vegas. The description on his box says "clown, red, hat." He is dressed mostly in blue. The others are Chepe (El Salvador), Nigel (England), Rene (Belgium), Pavel (Poland), Jerome or Girard - I can't remember which (France), and one from Austria and Italy but I can't remember their names. Raine_days and I decide upon the name. It must be representative of the home country. She claims Chepe is a baby toy, but it squeaks and looks more like a dog toy. In fact, Mandy likes playing with him. Nigel is my "travelling gnome" and travels with me. Nigel also has a brother, Alastair, that raine_days has. Only Rene and Pavel are on my desk at work - hidden by my desk calendar. Oh my gosh! I almost forgot Chuckles!! He is an Amish clown with a coke habit. And not the kind of coke I'm addicted to. We picked him up outside of Philadelphia. He was the original travelling "gnome." But he was scary looking so Nigel got called up from the minors to take Chuckles' place.

So how weird do you think I am now? Carol, you better not be retracting your comment about being glad I joined the work group!! LOL!!!!! I know where you sit!

us @ the Golden Eagle

Chuckles in El Salvador

Chepe and Bobo

Chuckles @ the Outer Banks, NC (aka the OBX)

Nigel in London w/ St. Paul's in the background