Nobody Cares What You Ate For Breakfast: April 2007

More Flowers? Sheesh.

Well, the trip to Trader Joe's was very fruitful. In some cases literally (har de har har). I think I am well short of 17 pounds. First time purchases for me include: freeze dried rambutan and mango, red mole sauce, 5 Chinese spice sauce, Burundi coffee, chocolate meringue cookies, and dried hibiscus flowers (Anna, I want to make that drink you blogged about a while back!). Repeat purchases include: Hawaiian style hickory barbecue potato chips, chile spiced mango, and Ethiopian and Costa Rican Tarrazu coffee. I am not ruling out another trip at some point!

Alright kiki, I won't leave you in suspense any longer. The reason I came out here is because I am going to see Air in concert tomorrow night. They aren't coming to Dallas on this tour, so I thought I would come out here because I could stay with my parents. I'm pretty excited about it because I haven't seen them before. The only downside is that I have to drive about 2 hours to get to Phoenix. Since the only return flight on Sunday that I could get at the super-cheapo price leaves here at 7:15 Sunday morning, I'm thinking I may get about 2 hours of sleep on Saturday night. Oh well, I can sleep later. One kind of funny thing is that when I called my parents about a month ago to see if they would be around this weekend, it turns out they actually already had plans to be out of town. They left this afternoon, so now I'm here all by myself. My parents are always doing stuff, actually they do a hell of a lot more stuff than I do. I can tell you this much, the thermostat won't be set on 78 anymore!

I figured I might as well continue the JC Happy Funtime Flower Blog, so here are a few photos I have taken. The cacti are blooming all over the place!

Labels: Flora, Travel

Made It

Well, I finally made it to Arizona. The 6:45 departure turned into a 7:30 departure. I also discovered that you have to wait a long time for your giant suitcase to appear on the luggage carousel when 2 flights from Dallas arrive at the same time. My new suitcase has its first battle scars, but they're minor.

Thankfully it's not too hot (although it's still somewhat early) because my parents are having their air conditioner replaced as I type this. I want to avoid swampbutt.

That's all for now, I must go to Trader Joe's. My suitcase was a little more than half empty and weighed 33 pounds at the airport. I think the weight limit is 50 pounds before they start charging, so I can buy 17 pounds worth of crap! Hopefully, I won't actually buy that much stuff.

Today's birfdays:

Carol Burnett
Jessica Lynch
Joan Chen
Marc Andreessen
Duane Eddy
Giancarlo Esposito
Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Jet Li
I.M. Pei
Barbet Schroeder
Roger Taylor
Gary Wright (that Dream Weaver song beats me down as few songs can)

Labels: Travel

Wildflower Redux Redux, Part 2

OK, one last post before I leave with my giant suitcase. Here are some more wildflower pics from the other day. I never knew there were so many kind of poppies!

Now I'm off to the land that Daylight Savings Time forgot.

UPDATE 1 (10:15AM): Um, that leaving around noonish thing? Yeah, not so much buddy. My flight was cancelled! But the good news is that after a half hour of being on hold, I am now booked on a flight leaving at 5 this evening.

UPDATE 2 (3:03 PM): I just called to check on my flight as it is now the time I was planning to leave for my second attempt at getting out of here. Estimated departure time is now 6:45 instead of 5:25. Mother puss bucket!! It's going to be one of those, huh?

Could this be Big Pink?

Labels: Flora

Yep, I'm a Sicko

Ugh. So Sunday I started getting a sore throat and yesterday it was hurting quite a bit. I actually didn't feel bad except for the throat, so I thought I would go ahead and try to get in my half hour on the Nordictrack last night. Maybe that wasn't such a hot idea. I seemed to feel OK when I was exercising, but things seemed to go downhill after that. I started feeling like I had a slight fever (I couldn't confirm this since I couldn't find my thermometer). All my energy was sapped. By the time I went to bed I had pretty much decided that at the very least I would be going to work late today.

I took my last remaining old-school Nyquil caplets, and slept pretty well. I woke up around 6 to call in and tell my boss that I was not coming in unless I started felling better later. I went back to sleep and ended up staying in bed until about 10, which made it a nice cozy 12 hour rest! When I finally got up again, I was feeling kind of achy. I took some Tylenol though, and it seems to have helped. I've had no trouble eating today. I think all things considered at this point I'm actually feeling pretty good. I'm a big believer in the echinacea and zinc (even though they haven't seemed to help me much the last 2 times I got sick), so I've been hitting those. I went and bought a thermometer today, and my temperature read normally (but the reading was rectal, so maybe I should try oral this time. And I am so totally kidding on the rectal thing!). So, I think I have probably dodged a bullet this time as far as getting really sick.

I'm planning to go in to work for the first half of tomorrow. My flight for my trip leaves around noon, so I will be leaving work early. I'm going to be that jerk on the plane that gets everyone else sick. The actual where of my trip isn't all that exciting, I'm going to Arizona. The "why" is more exciting, but I'll leave that for another post later in the week. Sorry kiki!

Today's cake ingestors:

SPC - My Leg

My precarious health condition has messed up my posting schedule!

This is the final week for the theme of "The Body" at SPC. This is my leg. For some reason my calf here kind of makes me think of an elephant head. The birthmark kind of looks like an eye.

I've always had pretty large thighs, I think due to a combination of genetics and playing a lot of soccer during my childhood years. The fact that I've had to quit running does not bode well for their leanness in the coming years, hopefully I can keep them in control with the Nordictrack.

To see others' takes on the theme, click here.

Labels: SPC

Ill Communication

Just in time for my upcoming trip, I feel terrible. I have an extremely sore throat. It started yesterday afternoon and was really bad when I woke up this morning. I wonder if it's an allergic reaction to all those flowers yesterday? There was a lot of pollen. I'm not achy or feverish, it's just the sore throat. But if it was an allergic reaction I would think I would have been sneezing yesterday, and I wasn't. But I'm no proctologist.

This weekend I tried to get some work done on the paper that I have due for one of my classes in a couple of weeks. It's a 4000 word paper, and I was trying to knock out 1000 words a week in April. Last week I managed to add nothing, so I was a little worried. However, I went from about 1200 words to 3100 over the weekend, so I think I'm OK. I don't want to have to work on it a lot while I'm gone. To my surprise I also knocked out all three discs of Entourage Season 3, Part 1 over the weekend. Not to HBO: Knock off this "Part 1" and "Part 2" nonsense. We know it's just a way for you to get more money out of your already overpriced DVDs.

Today's cake masticators:

UPDATE: English teachers forgive me, but this ain't no allergy.

Wildflower Redux Redux, Part 1

Just when you thought you were safe from wildflower pics...

Labels: Flora

Why I Love Internet Shopping

I've needed a new suitcase for a long time. Now that you can't carryon liquids, checking a bag has almost become a necessity for a trip of any length (thank God I can still carry on breast milk, though...that's a joke people!). My old suitcase was not really designed to withstand the baggage goons, so I decided to finally go out and get a real suitcase.

I'm not going to bag (har) on my old suitcase too much because it was a gift from my grandmother, but it was pretty ugly. As you can see below it was starting to really take a beating. I did get a lot of use out of it though.

I knew I wanted a hard-sided case for checked luggage. It's kind of hard to find anyone who sells hardside cases in stores. The first place I went was the Infranets, and I found some pretty affordable stuff. I felt like I wanted to actually see some in person though because I wanted to make sure I get something that lasts. We have a Samsonite outlet here, so I went there to try and figure out what size, model, etc. If they had good prices I would have bought from them too. One thing that threw me is that the model names were different between the actual store and the online store. I guess they're trying to discourage people from saving money?

I decided on a size and build quality, but the best the store could do was $250. With tax that would have been $270.63. I found one online that looked identical, but it did have a different model name. Online price: $166.90 with free shipping. I took a chance and ordered the online item. I was happy to find that it was identical to the one I saw in the store. Net savings? $103.73! I loves the Infranets. I get to try out my new suitcase next week...