How to be a Cactus

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(small army of pipe cleaner "needles")

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needle, thread and Forrest Gump on TNT

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  felt to make flower and lizard  

two happy cacti!

Happy Halloween!

(you can't really see the felt flower on my hoodie or the felt lizard on K's chest, booooo!)

Still Trucking

Wednesday, November 4 - Ran 3.50 miles on treadmill.  I know, treadmill training = bad, but it's already dark by 5:30 pm nowadays and I don't feel comfortable running outside alone when it's dark.

Tuesday - Yoga

Monday - 25 minutes of cardio + weights.

Trucking Along

Saturday, October 31, 2009 - Ran 4.0 miles at De Anza Cove on the grass.  No pain!

Pain-Free for Now!

A whole mess of us are confirmed for the Carlsbad half-marathon at the end of January!  Yay!  I ran three pain-free miles on the treadmill today...I haven't been running since the AIDS Run at the end of September which was a shin pain disaster, even with the Kiniseo tape.  Baby steps I guess...must work back up to 13.1 miles.

That's What He Said -- His Version of Our Engagement

Here is K's side of our engagement story.  And this concludes my experiment in the difference between the way men v. women, and engineers v. attorneys tell stories :) 

Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Why hasn’t Don (the jeweler) contacted me about the ring being on schedule to be delivered to me tomorrow?  I just called him at 7PM and he didn’t pick up so I left a voicemail explaining that I needed the ring before S- and I head up to Orange County Thursday night.

Thursday, October 8, 2009
Don hasn’t responded to any emails and any of my phone calls.  I still haven’t planned anything to propose since I haven’t gotten confirmation from Don that the ring will be ready later this afternoon. At 11AM, Don finally contacted me, explaining that the ring will not be ready.  I responded immediately that the ring being ready on Friday afternoon was not an option.  On Friday, S- and I would already be up in LA to take care of family business.  

Don eventually called back and I asked him if there was any possibility that I get the ring today so that I could propose to S- this weekend as I had planned.  I asked him to find out why the ring was delayed and figure out what options I had.  I threw several ideas out there for him.  He could complete the ring on Friday and meet me somewhere between Orange County and San Diego, but I would have to come up with an elaborate story explaining why we would have to drive somewhere and not have S- become suspicious.  There were some complications with the ring but I eventually convinced Don to let me take the ring as is for the weekend to use for the proposal and have the complications changed a week later.  He agreed and dropped it off at my work.  The ring looked amazing!!!!  It was exactly as he promised!  I just needed to be able to hide the ring from S- and keep all my excitement inside without tipping her off that it was coming.

Friday, October 18, 2009
Dang A-, my cousin’s daughter, had to ask both S- and me when we were planning on getting married.  I tried to play it off and claimed that it would just happen when the time was right.  Luckily S- still didn’t suspect a thing,  Later that night we had to try to plan something for the weekend.  I tried to find any vacancies in Solvang, our special escape from the world, but every hotel was completely booked.  Solvang was our first option for the weekend since that’s where we went for our first road trip when we started dating and it's also where we got our stuffed animal kids.  I kept looking online and could not find anything in Solvang, Santa Barbara, or even Buellton which is a only a few miles west of Solvang.  I made reservations to Parker’s Lighthouse, which is where we went on our first date.  Our first date was a trip to Disneyland and dinner at Parker’s Lighthouse in Long Beach.  This reservation was more of a safety blanket than set plans.  I kept looking for hotels and could not find anything until I finally fell asleep on the floor in front of the computer.

Saturday, October 19, 2009
I asked S- immediately after waking up if she was interested in still going to Disneyland.  She responded with, “I don’t know hun….I’m pretty tired and I don’t know if I can stay on my feet all day.” I panicked and immediately began searching for a plan B.  I kept trying to convince S- that we needed to get another stuffed animal from Wishing Bear.  I knew that there was only one location left in Santa Maria, which is about 20 minutes south of San Luis Obispo.  So we agreed on SLO and I began looking for vacancies.  I had always wanted to stay at The Madonna Inn.  The Madonna Inn has 110 rooms, each with its own unique theme.  I called to book a room and apparently there was only one room left.  The room that was still available was the “Vintage Room” and according to the hotel employee the room has a private patio with a fireplace.  This would be perfect for the proposal; the patio would give us privacy while the fireplace would make the atmosphere romantic.

The whole drive up I kept trying to come up with the line/proposal and decide whether I would propose in the private patio, outside the restaurant where we were going to eat dinner, or at the table during dinner.  Nothing came to mind, just a whole jumble of thoughts.  I had so many thoughts, but I couldn’t find a way to put them into coherent sentences.  I eventually gave up and decided to come up with the proposal either on the fly or right before actually doing it.

We made it to the Madonna Inn around 5PM decided to relax a bit after the long drive.  I tried to make reservations at the Steakhouse at the hotel, but they were completely booked until about 900PM.  I told them I would talk to S- and get back to them.  After unpacking we decided to eat at the steakhouse at 9PM.  I called to make a reservation at 9PM.  Unfortunately the earliest reservation they had was 930PM at that point, so we decided to go out to eat.  On the way out, I worked with the Front Desk and we made reservations at Steamers located in Pismo Beach.

I quickly got ready and waited for S- to finish getting ready. The Florida versus LSU game was on TV, but I was way too nervous to even worry about the game even though I had been looking forward to watching this game for weeks.  I could tell she was a bit suspicious in my lack of interest in the game, so I made a quick excuse that I wanted to enjoy our private fireplace and relax to some music.  I brought my laptop outside, turned on some slow jams, and watched the flames in the fireplace all while trying to come up with the right words to ask S- to be my life partner.  I nervously paced around trying to figure how I was going to convince S- to come outside and what I was going to say.  I hadn’t been this nervous since I first asked her out; it was so bad that I couldn’t even choose a song to play when proposing.   

S- kept peeking into the patio to see what I was up to and luckily when she did peek I didn’t have the ring out in the open.  I must have checked the ring box a hundred times to make sure it hadn’t fallen out.  She poked her head outside and told me to come inside to watch the game since the game was close to the end.  I came inside and saw that there was only a few minutes left.  I couldn’t concentrate on the game, so I made an excuse that the game was stressing me out and that I needed to relax in the patio until we were ready to leave.  She finally was ready and I asked her for a dance with me out in the patio.  I know most couples don’t do this normally but we do.  She agreed to dance and came outside.  Wow was she beautiful!!! I almost forgot that I was about to propose to her and couldn’t believe that she could be mine forever!

On several occasions S- came so close to accidentally touching the ring in my suit pocket, so I had to keep pushing her arms back onto my shoulders.  I took a deeeeeeeppppp breath and took a step back and dropped to one knee.  S- looked down at me and immediately began tearing.  I could see straight into her ’s eyes and it was obvious that she knew what I was doing.  Tears were rolling down her face.  I prepared way too loooong to not say anything and said “S- we’ve been through a lot together.  I have known that I want to be together with you forever and I am committing myself to you forever.  < a whole bunch of words that I don’t remember since I was so caught up in the moment >  Let's travel the world together and be with each other forever.  Will you marry me?"

S- paused for a few seconds and said, “Of course…..I will.”  I had a big sigh of relief and asked her if she wanted me to put the ring on.  Her first response was “I can’t see the ring.” Doh!  I was so sad that she couldn’t see the ring.  I didn’t think it was small at all.  Good thing she immediately clarified her statement saying “I can’t see the ring since I have so many tears in my eyes.”  I wiped away her tears and put the ring on her.  She gave me a huge hug and we danced to one song before we headed out to dinner.  This was one of the happiest moments in my life…the proposal worked our perfectly.  Her two lil sisses, A- and J-, both knew but never clued her in that it was coming even though I had shown both of them the ring while it was being finalized.

Now onto the wedding planning…

We're Engaged -- My Side of the Story

K- and I headed up the California central coast on the morning of Saturday, October 10, 2009 on a spur of the moment road trip.  The trip was spur of the moment because we only just decided that morning what our weekend plans would be, in spite of the fact that K- had been insisting for a few weeks that we do something special on that particular weekend.  All the hotels in Solvang (our favorite nook in the Santa Ynez Valley) did not have vacancy so K- booked us the Vintage Room at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo.  On our way up, we did some wine tasting in Los Olivos and stopped by our beloved Wishing Bear Workshop in Santa Maria.  K- made dinner reservations at Steamer’s in Pismo Beach based on the concierge’s recommendation.  That night, K-put on the Florida v. LSU game while we got ready for dinner.  As usual, he was ready much faster than me, so he said he was going to test out the fireplace in the private patio out back.  I could hear K- shuffling through his sappy love songs playlist while I finished getting ready.  At one point I told him to come back inside after LSU made it to the 5-yard line so he could finally see them score (Florida was up 10-3) but he claimed the game was making him too nervous.  I finished getting ready and opened the patio door to tell K- “Let’s go!” but he asked me for a quick slow dance before leaving for our dinner date.   We often slow dance together at home so his request did not really strike me as out of the ordinary.  I tried to get K- to come inside to dance because the air was pretty chilly but he claimed the fire place would keep us warm.  As we swayed around together, I remember chatting about the cold weather and recent family events.  K- started to turn the conversation more serious about commitment to one another --- also not out of the ordinary because we have been together for over 5 ½ years --- but then he dropped down on one knee and my heart started pounding like crazy!  I do not actually remember the entirety of his proposal speech because of the aforementioned heart-pounding and the fact that my eyes were already watering up, but I do remember his promise that we will always still travel the world together and make new adventures for ourselves.  He pulled out the ring box and my words immediately after saying “Of course I’ll marry you!” were “I can’t see it,” meaning that my tears completely blurred my vision and all I could see was K-’ big smile and the fuzzy outline of a ring...I know, typical me!  We had a wonderful dinner at Steamer’s, dessert at Denny’s (haha, yup!), and then came back to our room to reenact our engagement and take some photos using the self-timer...I know, typical us!  K- later confessed to me that the he used the whole no-plans/spur-of-the-moment thing to throw me off – I must say it totally worked!  

  

Reenactment of K- proposing.

The ring!  After taking a few photos of the ring on my hand, I came to the inevitable conclusion that hand skin is weird.

Franklin, our teddy bear kid, helping model a better picture.

Carpe Diem!

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
     by Robert Herrick

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
     Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
     To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
     The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
     And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
     When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
     Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
     And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
     You may for ever tarry.




I love this poem.  Seize the day!  Grab life by the balls!  Live like there's no tomorrow!  Call it what you will...at this past Women of Color in Law, Inc. luncheon, the fabulous & spunky Beth Kransberger (Dean of Student Affairs at TJSL) reminded us to be good to ourselves and good to others...after all, we're among the upper echelon of those blessed with health, education, and opportunity.  That is awesome advice --- to live each day with purpose.